That curious sound you hear: random bleats, tweets, twangs and thumps, fragments of melody and the hum of strings, coalescing around the plangent “A” from the oboe. Here, there and all around, musicians are hauling their black clothes out of the closet as symphony orchestras get ready for the upcoming season. Here’s a look at some opening programs.
How could you get any more classical than Beethoven and Mozart? The Lancaster Symphony Orchestra, directed by Stephen Gunzenhauser, will be opening its season Friday, Oct. 3 with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Mozart’s Symphony No. 32 in G Major. A romantic, but far less familiar work to many listeners, will be Jeno Hubay’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G minor, Op. 99, with Hagai Shaham as soloist. (CD collectors will note that Shaham has recorded all four of the Hubay violin concerti for Hyperion.)
Looking around the immediate area, we find several other orchestras with mainstream repertoire-heavy opening programs. The Reading Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Andrew Constantine, opens its season Saturday, Oct. 4 with “Working Vacations.” This big, beefy program includes Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35 with Elena Urioste as soloist, Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73 (both written while the composers were on vacation) and Beethoven’s Overture to “Coriolan.”
Another program with a late-romantic/very-late-romantic bent will be presented by the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, also Oct. 4-5. In “Prelude to Romance,” the orchestra, directed by Stuart Malina, will perform Liszt’s “Les Préludes,” Brahms’ Double Concerto, and Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2, “Romantic.” We’re lovin’ it!
The following week, Robert Hart Baker and the York Symphony Orchestra depart from this trend with a pops-infused program: “Spicy Classics.” The concert, which takes place Oct. 11, will include Richard Rodgers’ Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Gershwin’s Piano Concert in F (with Anne-Marie McDermott), music from Weill’s “Threepenny Opera,” the Finale from Darius Milhaud’s “The Creation of the World” and Paul Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria Von Weber.” Mmmm, sounds good!
