The Curtis Symphony Orchestra will endure “the rigors of jumping from one European city to another before departing Wednesday on their nine-city tour, now underway in Helsinki and going on to Bremen, Berlin, Dresden, London, Salzburg,Vienna, and the Polish towns Wroclaw, and Luslawice,” writes David Patrick Stearns in Wednesday’s (5/17) Philadelphia Inquirer. “The Curtis repertoire will be classic showcase fare—Richard Strauss’ super-sumptuous tone poem Ein Heldenleben, with Adagio for Strings by Curtis graduate Samuel Barber for an encore. ‘It’s going to show what a strong and important music school Curtis is,’ … said guest conductor Osmo Vänskä, who [will] lead the Curtis tour…. It’s a major effort involving two-thirds of the student body—112 in the orchestra and 16 staff—all costing roughly $1 million…. The Curtis commitment to contemporary music is evident in Penderecki’s Concerto Doppio featuring violinist Benjamin Schmid (a Curtis grad) and [Curtis President and violist Roberto] Diaz on viola. (Krzysztof Penderecki, 83, is expected to attend the Poland performances.) … The Berlin Konzerthaus date sold 500 tickets in the first week…. The aim of a tour isn’t just to be consistently excellent, said Diaz, but to have a continually evolving viewpoint of the music at hand.”
Posted May 19, 2017
