Classical Season Preview 2024-25: North America
Jack Pepper
Friday, September 6, 2024
What are the most exciting concerts and operas to look forward to over the coming season across North America? Jack Pepper is your guide
Boston SO’s home, Boston Symphony Hall, hosts Andris Nelson’s 10th season as Music Director, featuring a Beethoven cycle, a Korngold opera and the mysteries of Shostakovich
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Yo-Yo Ma joins Music Director Jonathon Heyward in the season opener alongside musicians from BSO OrchKids and the Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestras. The season theme is home, recognising how the BSO remains the only American orchestra with two full-time performance homes; two world premieres for composer-in-residence James Lee III reflect this theme. And look out for a showcase of orchestra principals, performing Rota’s Bassoon Concerto and Wynton Marsalis’s Tuba Concerto.
Boston Symphony Orchestra
It’s Andris Nelson’s 10th anniversary as Music Director, and he celebrates with a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, Korngold’s Die tote Stadt and a month-long exploration of hidden messages in the music of Shostakovich. Carlos Simon begins a three-year placement as Composer Chair.
Canadian Opera Company
Expect five new productions and an original co-commission. Alongside stalwarts Nabucco (October) and Eugene Onegin (May), composer Julien Bilodeau and librettist Michel Marc Bouchard make history in the first-ever co-commission between the Canadian Opera Company and Opéra de Montréal: La reine-garçon.
Chicago Opera Theater
October opens with Dame Jane Glover conducting the North American premiere of Paer’s Leonora (1804), based on the same story as Beethoven’s Fidelio. December marks 100 years since Puccini’s death, commemorated in a special concert. Fast-forward to June, and there’s the world premiere of the first opera written by two black females, composer Jasmine Barnes and librettist Deborah DEEP Mouton: She Who Dared tells of the forerunners of Rosa Parks, who helped to desegregate the Montgomery bus system in the 1950s.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
There’s expansive programming here. Hilary Hahn opens the season with Barber’s Violin Concerto, plus works by Michael Tilson Thomas and Ginastera; Riccardo Muti and Mitsuko Uchida team up for Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto, while Jakub Hrůša and Simon Trpčeski collaborate on Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto; Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts his own Sinfonia concertante for organ and orchestra (soloist Iveta Apkalna); and Randall Goosby joins Sir Mark Elder for Price’s Second Violin Concerto.
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
In October, multi-Grammy-winning banjo player Béla Fleck joins the orchestra for a celebration of the American sound, including his arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue. The American theme continues with Marin Alsop leading Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms in November, and in February when part of Wynton Marsalis’s Blues Symphony gets an airing alongside music by Price and Dvořák’s New World Symphony.
Cleveland Orchestra
Its a starry October: Klaus Mäkelä conducts Mahler’s Symphony No 3, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts his own Cello Concerto (a Cleveland debut for cellist Senja Rummukainen) and Oscar-winning Tan Dun makes his ensemble debut to conduct his Water Concerto (with principal percussionist Marc Damoulakis). In 2025, saxophonist Steven Banks gives the Cleveland premiere of Guillaume Connesson’s John Coltrane-inspired concerto A Kind of Trane.
Dallas Opera
Sandwiched between La traviata and La bohème are Dallas Opera premieres of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (starring Hugh Cutting and Madison Leonard).
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
A season-long celebration of jazz includes an airing of Duke Ellington’s take on Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker in December. Also throughout the season, Fanfare for Uncommon Women (a reference to a piece by Joan Tower) will spotlight six women composers, including contemporary figures such as Camille Pépin and Anna Clyne. In their PNC Pops Series, there’s an October Music of the Knights programme showcasing Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Handel and Haydn Society
The Boston group’s second season under Artistic Director Jonathan Cohen opens with Mozart’s Requiem paired with Michael Haydn’s equivalent; for the May finale, fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout performs Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto.
LA Opera
For its season opening, North America’s fourth-largest opera company presents Madama Butterfly on a 1930s film set (a Mario Gas production). Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar – with its flamenco-inspired score – gets a company premiere in April and May: it recounts a poet’s life in the last days of the Spanish Civil War. Also in 2025: solo concerts given by Renée Fleming, Angel Blue and Kelli O’Hara.
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel welcomes Lang Lang for the opening gala, before marking the Day of the Dead in November with Afro-Mexican and Cuban music including works by Gabriela Ortiz and Revueltas. He also leads the world premiere of Carlos Simon’s joyous Gospel Mass in April. The two-year John Williams retrospective continues in October, November and April, with the composer conducting and curating.
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Chicago legend Barbara Gaines directs and conductor Erina Yashima makes her Lyric debut in Le nozze di Figaro in November, and hot on its heels comes the Chicago premiere of Blue, a tale of police violence with music by Jeanine Tesori and a libretto by Tazewell Thompson. Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek are the team behind The Listeners, the mysterious story of a woman driven mad by a constant low-frequency hum; this Lyric premiere is hotly anticipated and will be staged in March and April.
Metropolitan Opera
There are four Met premieres and 14 repertory favourites. Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded opens the season, starring Emily D’Angelo as an Air Force drone pilot. It’s one of six new productions which also include Aida and Salome plus Met premieres of Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick and John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra. Star singers returning to New York include Aigul Akhmetshina, Lise Davidsen, Gerald Finley, Bryn Terfel, Pretty Yende and Sonya Yoncheva.
Minnesota Orchestra
With Music Director Thomas Søndergård at the helm, there’s a two-week festival spotlighting Nordic composers and culture, the return of the Composer Institute and an opera-in-concert initiative with Puccini’s Turandot. There are virtuoso visits from James Ehnes, Alice Sara Ott and Yunchan Lim. Also, the orchestra celebrates 50 years of its Orchestra Hall home by revisiting the works it performed in its first season there, back in 1974-75.
Rafael Payare continues as Music Director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal
Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal
There’s a Latin American night in November, with music by Antonio Estévez and Gabriela Ortiz under the baton of Music Director Rafael Payare. Conductor Emeritus Kent Nagano conducts The Nutcracker alongside a premiere for Canadian composer Matthew Ricketts in December. In March, Angélique Kidjo sings music by Philip Glass.
National Arts Centre
In October, Jessica Cottis conducts Jonathan Biss and the NAC Orchestra in Sally Beamish’s piano concerto City Stanzas, alongside the piece it responds to, Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto. Hilary Hahn plays Brahms in November, and in January, Branford Marsalis shares jazz-infused works by John Williams and Peter Lieberson, and Randall Goosby makes his Ottawa debut.
National Symphony Orchestra
Music Director Gianandrea Noseda conducts music by Ravel, Bonis and Carlos Simon for the season opening, and Yunchan Lim makes his NSO debut. In October, Joshua Bell is on the violin for The Elements, his newly commissioned project featuring works by Kevin Puts (‘Earth’), Edgar Meyer (‘Wate’r), Jake Heggie (‘Fire’), Jennifer Higdon (‘Air’) and Jessie Montgomery (‘Space’) and paired with striking onscreen visuals. In February and March, all-female vocal group the Lorelei Ensemble join the NSO to perform Her Story, Julia Wolfe’s theatrical work inspired by the letters of suffragettes.
kennedy-center.org/nso/home
New York Philharmonic
In January, former Music Director Pierre Boulez is remembered in his centenary year as the orchestra mounts one of the programmes he curated back in 1975. The orchestra’s future Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel conducts the likes of Mahler, Stravinsky, Glass and Kate Soper, and in March welcomes Yuja Wang for Ravel piano concertos. The rich culture of the African diaspora will be celebrated, with music by Nathalie Joachim, Carlos Simon, David Baker and William Grant Still (including the Autochthonous Symphony, which portrays, in the composer’s words, ‘the fusion of musical cultures in North America’).
Pacific Symphony
The orchestra based in Costa Mesa, California, brings Halloween nights featuring music by John Williams, Kenji Bunch and Berlioz; Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony accompanied by cinematic visuals in January; and a February world premiere for composer-in-residence Viet Cuong.
Philadelphia Orchestra
In October, Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin welcomes Joyce DiDonato for Mahler’s Third Symphony, while January sees the return of Yuja Wang after sold-out performances in 2023, playing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. This will be paired with Bonds’s Martin Luther King-inspired The Montgomery Variations and Still’s Second Symphony, which the orchestra premiered in 1937.
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Pianists Tom Borrow, Janice Carissa and Víikingur Ólafsson are among 11 artists making their orchestra debuts; there are world premieres from composers Lera Auerbach, Hannah Ishizaki and Reza Vali; and star guest artists include Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax and Lang Lang.
St Louis Symphony Orchestra
Music Director Stéphane Denève conducts the annual free open-air season opener in Forest Park, before Gil Shaham plays Mason Bates’s energetic new violin concerto. In October, Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin celebrates his 80th birthday belatedly with a programme of music by Cindy McTee, Daniel Slatkin and Tchaikovsky and his own arrangements for orchestral wind ensemble of five of Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas. In March, there’s a chance to hear Magnus Lindberg’s new Viola Concerto, played by Lawrence Power.
There’s much to whet the musical appetite in Esa-Pekka Salonen’s final season as Music Director of San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Symphony
Esa-Pekka Salonen enters his fifth and final season as Music Director, conducting the opening gala featuring Lang Lang, a continued exploration of Stravinsky’s works, and world premieres of pieces by Nico Muhly, Xavier Muzik and Gabriella Smith, as well as the first San Francisco Symphony performances of his own Cello Concerto. Mahler’s Second Symphony will round off his tenure in June.
Seattle Symphony
Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, Hilary Hahn and Khatia Buniatishvili are among the guest artists, while 24 living composers will be featured throughout the season, including Angélica Negrón, Raymond Yiu, Abel Selaocoe and Justin Hurwitz. Eight of Ravel’s works will be performed to mark his 150th anniversary, and Tan Dun marks 700 years since the death of Marco Polo by conducting the US premiere of his own piece Sound River.
Toronto Symphony Orchestra
John Adams is in town in November to conduct the Canadian premiere of his eclectic 2023 piece Frenzy. January will see Emanuel Ax perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 25 in C, K503, paired with Tippett’s Concerto for double string orchestra, and springtime piano visitors will include Angela Hewitt and Yuja Wang.
Tafelmusik
The Toronto-based period ensemble’s new Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger leads an all-Mozart opener; the ensemble performs Bach’s Christmas Oratorio for the first time since 2015; and in March, violinist Miloš Valent explores how folk and Baroque music interact, charting how Telemann, Purcell and Vivaldi were influenced by Ashkenazi, Polish, Roma, Scottish and Turkish folk traditions.
Washington National Opera
Beethoven’s Fidelio kicks things off, conducted by Robert Spano, before Brenna Corner’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth appears in November. Fast-forward to May, and there’s the company premiere of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, with music by Mason Bates and a libretto by Mark Campbell; plus Kwamé Ryan conducts Francesca Zambello’s production of Porgy and Bess.
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This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Gramophone magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Gramophone today
