Orchestra seasons

Aside from the returns of Jacques Houtmann and George Manahan and a re-creation of the 1957 opening-night program, the Richmond Symphony’s 50th anniversary season looks much like the others the orchestra has presented during its migratory years.

Since the closure of its downtown hall, the Carpenter Center, the symphony has staged most of its classical concerts in church sanctuaries. These spaces can physically and sonically accommodate an ensemble not much larger than the 65-piece Meinigen Orchestra that introduced Brahms’ Fourth Symphony in 1885.

That conductor Mark Russell Smith and the symphony musicians have overcome this constraint to do justice to larger, lusher orchestral music – the Bruckner Eighth and Sibelius Second symphonies, for example – usually with reduced string forces, testifies to their musicianship and moxie.

They are performing under a microscope, playing in 800-seat rooms (Meinigen-scale, again) at distances of 20 feet or less from most listeners. Such an in-your-face perspective makes miscues and lapses of ensemble and intonation glaringly obvious. I’ve heard remarkably little of that in the past three seasons. Mostly, I’ve heard alert, assertive musicians listening closely to one another and devoting extra care to balance and timbre.

In other words, I’ve heard Bruckner and Sibelius and Tchaikovsky and Wagner played as chamber music. Not many symphony-goers, outside of Cleveland in the Szell and Dohnányi eras, can make that claim.

These remarkable experiences, however, come at a price. The Richmond Symphony is struggling financially because its ticket revenue is diminished. It’s not for lack of butts in seats – the orchestra is playing to more people than it has in years, at least in classical subscription concerts. But the seat that cost $70 in the Carpenter Center now costs $35 in a suburban church. The orchestra set those prices to attract new customers, successfully, and to compensate for what it could not offer.

Large swathes of symphonic repertory are off-limits: No "Rites of Spring" or "Resurrections" for the duration. No piano concertos in the mainstage series, due to space constraints and the nightmare logistics of moving a grand piano in and out of some of these rooms. Even orchestrations with organ are problematical – two of the churches used for Masterworks concerts have pipe organs, but the third doesn’t.

Guest soloists are a luxury the orchestra can afford only occasionally, and big names are out of the question. Guests have included fine young artists, such as violinist Frank Huang, and principals of major orchestras, such as Chicago Symphony flutist Mathieu Dufour and Boston Symphony violinist Halden Martinson; but none has been a box-office draw. The orchestra has had to sell itself, and what it plays, rather than guest stars.

The symphony, in fact, made that choice long before it moved into churches. For the past 15 years, aside from a few galas, the Richmond Symphony has not engaged stellar, or even semi-stellar, soloists, because experience showed they didn't attract significantly larger audiences and because their fees are budget-busters. (The mounting deficits of many orchestras can be traced directly to the high, sometimes exorbitant, fees that celebrity soloists command.)

The best-known guest soloist of the coming season (other than Bugs Bunny) is Edgar Meyer, the double-bass virtuoso and composer, playing his own concerto for the instrument as well as the Second Concerto of Bottesini. The same May 2008 program features Richmond-bred Mason Bates, manning electronica (computer- and drum pad-generated sounds) in "Rusty Air in Carolina," a work he introduced in 2006 with the Winston-Salem Symphony.

Otherwise, for its 50th anniversary the symphony has hitched its wagon to the stars of its current and former conductors, and to repertory.

The highlight of Houtmann’s return will be Beethoven’s "Eroica" Symphony, which these days rarely gets the full-blown romantic treatment this conductor is likely to give it. Manahan will play to his strength in early 20th-century music, conducting Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Debussy’s "La Mer" and Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, with Karen Johnson, the symphony’s concertmaster, as soloist. (With that program, Manahan will need to draw on another of his strengths, using rehearsal time efficiently.)

Mark Russell Smith, the orchestra’s current music director, will revisit favored composers (Bruckner, Dvořák, Wagner, Brahms, Sibelius, Richard Strauss) in mainstage Masterworks concerts, and has devised some meaty programs of vocal and orchestral music for a four-part Bach Festival with the symphony’s core chamber orchestra.

Erin R. Freeman, in her first season as associate conductor and director of the Richmond Symphony Chorus, will prepare the chorus for Verdi’s Requiem and Bach’s "Christ lag im Todesbanden," as well as the usual Christmas fare, and has sprinkled some surprises ("Peter and the Werewolf?") in four Kicked Back Classics casual concerts.

The orchestra will return, briefly, to the city’s best space for music, Camp Concert Hall at the University of Richmond’s Modlin Center, for its 50th anniversary gala, highlighted by Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, with the pianist-composer Stephen Prutsman as soloist.

Details in the previous blog entry Richmond Symphony 2007-08 (March archive). Subscription information: (804) 788-1212.

* * *

Other orchestra seasons recently unveiled in the region:

* Marin Alsop’s first season at the helm of the Baltimore Symphony may be the most venturesome that an American orchestra will stage in 2007-08. Eleven contemporary composers – John Adams, Tan Dun, HK Gruber, Aaron Jay Kernis, Mark O’Connor, Steven Mackey, Christopher Rouse, James MacMillan, John Corigliano, Thomas Adès and Joan Tower – will be featured in major works. Mackey’s "Time Release" will receive its U.S. premiere; four other composers will conduct their music alongside their interpretations of Beethoven’s symphonies Nos. 1 and 4 (Adès), No. 2 (MacMillan), No. 7 (Adams) and No. 8 (Gruber). (Alsop will conduct Nos. 3, 5, 6 and 9.)

The new maestra also will sample 20th-century Americana, the rep for which she is most widely lauded: Gershwin (including "Rhapsody in Blue" as it was introduced by the Paul Whiteman Band), Copland ("Appalachian Spring"), Barber (the Piano Concerto with Garrick Ohlsson), Ellington ("Harlem") and Charlie Chaplin ("City Lights," with the film).

Other major repertory: Mahler’s Fifth, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth and Dvořák’s Sixth and Eighth symphonies and Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” all conducted by Alsop; and guests in Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique” (former BSO music director Yuri Temirkanov), Schubert’s Ninth Symphony (Günther Herbig), Mendelssohn’s "Scottish" Symphony (Hans Graf) and Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony (Thomas Dausgaard).

Soloists include Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1), André Watts (Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2), Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Gershwin’s rhapsody and Concerto in F) and Barry Douglas (Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3).

Tickets may be hard to come by. The BSO is offering deeply discounted subscriptions, and there have been lots of takers.

Details: www.baltimoresymphony.org

* Leonard Slatkin’s final season as music director of Washington’s National Symphony boasts few real surprises. Highlights of his programs are a concert version of "Eugene Onegin" with Sergei Leiferkus in the title role, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (seemingly obligatory for music directors’ comings and goings), and some American music with which he has a history: Copland’s Third Symphony, David Del Tredici’s "Final Alice," Corigliano’s Symphony No. 2, Rouse’s Symphony No. 2. Slatkin’s farewell concert in June 2008 features Gershwin’s "An American in Paris" and Bloch’s "Schelomo" with Yo-Yo Ma as cello soloist.

Guest conductors include Vladimir Ashkenazy (Sibelius, Grieg), Manfred Honeck (Richard Strauss), Lorin Maazel (Fauré, Saint-Saëns), Hans Graf (Rachmaninoff) and Hugh Wolff (Debussy, Dutilleux). The orchestra’s principal guest conductor, Iván Fischer, leads Mahler’s "Resurrection" Symphony and an all-Beethoven program.

Heading the guest-soloist roster are Stephen Hough (Saint-Saëns’ "Egyptian" Piano Concerto), Midori (Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2), Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2), Thomas Hampson (Mahler’s "Kindertotenlieder"), Sarah Chang (Brahms’ Violin Concerto) and Hilary Hahn (Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1).

Details: http://kennedy-center.org/programs/newseason/#NCL

* The Virginia Symphony, which performs in Norfolk, Newport News and elsewhere in Hampton Roads, bases its 2007-08 season – as it does most seasons – in comfort-food rep, celebrity guest stars and the cachet of its music director, JoAnn Falletta, who is featured in the March issue of Gramophone.

The celebs are Joshua Bell (Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1), Christopher O’Riley (Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G), the Eroica Trio (Beethoven’s Triple Concerto) and James Galway (Corigliano’s "Pied Piper" Fantasy and a Mozart potpourri).

The comfort food includes Tchaikovsky’s "Pathètique" Symphony and "1812 Overture,” Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony and “Paganini Rhapsody,” Ravel’s “Bolero,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio espagnol” and the Mendelssohn violin and Dvořák cello concertos – fortified by Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, Ravel’s “La Valse,” Shostakovich’s First Symphony, Rachmaninoff’s "The Bells" and John Adams’ Violin Concerto.

The orchestra’s Newport News venue, the Ferguson Center at Christopher Newport University, is much more accessible from points west and north than Chrysler Hall in Norfolk. (Bell and the Eroica Trio perform only in Norfolk.)

Details: www.virginiasymphony.org