February 10, 2008

MUSIC: LA Philharmonic 08-09 season

Renewal brochure arrived this week. Unfortunately, a variety of ongoing minor medical problems have cropped up every time one of my subscription concerts has arrived this season; I was particularly sorry to miss Britten's War Requiem a few weeks back.

Much less new music on the schedule this year; the focus is a celebration of Esa-Pekka Salonen in his final season as music director, with many of his favorite composers and performers on the schedule. There are a few new-ish works, though no premieres: Saariaho's oratorio La Passion de Simone is being programmed again, after having been postponed for two years now; there will be a new work from Salonen in April; Thomas Ades will be conducting some of his own music; and the Labeque sisters will be performing a Double Piano Concerto by Andriessen.

As always, the music that I most want to hear is never on the same series, and there will be a fair amount of ticket-swapping to do, but this, I think, is the season I'll wind up with:
  • Stravinsky: Fireworks; Tchakovsky: Piano Concerto #1 (Yefim Bronfman); Stravinsky: The Firebird (Esa-Pekka Salonen)
  • Copland: Appalachian Spring; Britten: Violin Concerto (Midori); Revueltas: La Noche de los Mayas (Miguel Harth-Bedoya)
  • Turina: La oración del torero; Respighi: The Pines of Rome and The Fountains of Rome (Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos)
  • Brahms: "Tragic" Overture, Violin Concerto (Nikolaj Znaider), and Symphony #1 (Marin Alsop)
  • Janáček: Sinfonietta; Andriessen: Double Piano Concerto (Katia & Marielle Labeque); Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Esa-Pekka Salonen)
  • Stravinsky: "Dumbarton Oaks" Concerto; Khachaturian: Violin Concerto (Gil Shaham); Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances (Stéphane Denève)
  • Stucky: Son et lumière; Schuman: Symphony #3; Glazunov: Violin Concerto (Hilary Hahn); Tchaikovsky: Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture (Leonard Slatkin)
  • Shostakovich: Violin Concerto #1 (Julia Fischer); Prokofiev: Symphony #5 (Christoph Eschenbach)

No comments: