“The Philadelphia Orchestra opens next season with Placido Domingo, performs Bach’s monumental Mass in B Minor with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, returns to the Academy of Music for a week of subscription concerts for the first time since 2001, celebrates the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth [and] hosts dozens of women soloists, conductors, and composers,” writes Peter Dobrin in Tuesday’s (3/5) Philadelphia Inquirer. “Many [programs] pair works by Beethoven with scores whose ink will be barely dry. These ‘works in dialogue with Beethoven’ were chosen by Gabriela Lena Frank, who begins her tenure as the orchestra’s new composer-in-residence. A new work she is writing as a kind of response to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 will be premiered alongside the beloved ‘Choral’ Symphony…. The orchestra presents works by 17 living composers…. [Music Director Yannick] Nézet-Séguin leads three performances of Elektra … with soprano Christine Goerke in the title role.” Returning women conductors will include Jane Glover, Emmanuelle Haïm, Nathalie Stutzmann, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, and Susanna Mälkki; Karina Canellakis will make her Philadelphia Orchestra debut. Nézet-Séguin noted that while women on the podium are not new for the orchestra, “maybe the proportion is quite new for us.”
Posted March 6, 2019
