Conductor Kensho Watanabe rehearses Philadelphia Orchestra string musicians at the Mann Center for a performance to be streamed September 8 as a preview to the orchestra’s 2020-21 season. Photo by David Maialetti
“The Philadelphia Orchestra is getting back on stage this fall, but it will return as a smaller version of its pre-COVID-19 self and completely online,” writes Peter Dobrin in Monday’s (8/17) Philadelphia Inquirer. “The orchestra … has plotted out the first four months of the season in repertoire for between just 25 and 50 players. Concerts will be filmed at the Mann Center in September and October, and in Verizon Hall in November and December. No live audiences will be present. Each program will be streamed online…. Concerts will be shorter, about an hour in length, and there are fewer of them—12 different programs as opposed to the original 21 between opening night and the end of the calendar year…. Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will be on the podium for seven programs with other concerts led by assistant conductor Erina Yashima and conducting fellow Lina Gonzalez-Granados…. ‘It’s very exciting to be thinking about repertoire that we don’t think about often,’ president and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky said, citing … Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in its chamber version by Erwin Stein, to be performed here with soprano Janai Brugger; Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks; and Walker’s Lyric for Strings.”
