It's been on the cards that the forthcoming winter season of concerts from the BBC SSO was going to be something special, not least because it marks the farewell season for Ilan Volkov as chief conductor of the orchestra.
With the new season announced this week, the BBC does not disappoint. In its most cogent season for a few years, the number of core Thursday night concerts at the City Hall will increase from 12 to 15. They are organised into three coherent strands. The repertoire is top drawer from all perspectives. The concerts will field a roster of world-class vocal and instrumental soloists. And, in a dramatic reversal of policy, the BBC SSO, along with all the other BBC orchestras and the BBC Singers, will once again give live Radio 3 prime-time concert broadcasts.
The first of the concert strands, each of which will overlap, is entitled The Symphonic Collection, and is a series of six concerts, all of which will contain blockbuster mainstream symphonies. Volkov launches the series with Beethoven's Ninth, featuring a stellar team of vocal soloists: soprano Susan Gritton, mezzo Karen Cargill, tenor Tim Robinson and bass Neal Davies. Other symphonies in the collection include Tchaikovsky's Fourth, with Andrew Litton conducting, Sibelius's Fifth with SSO associate guest Stefan Solyom conducting, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, which promises to be an electrifying experience in the hands of Volkov's successor, principal conductor-elect Donald Runnicles, Bruckner's Ninth (Volkov) and Beethoven's Fifth, with relative newcomer, the Polish conductor Michal Dworzynski.
The second strand, entitled The Story Tellers, is a five-concert series featuring music inspired by narratives, myths and legends, and will include a rare performance of Sibelius's four Lemminkainen Legends, which effectively amount to a symphony. Finn John Storgards will conduct the SSO in a programme that will also contain music by Nielsen, Thea Musgrave and Prokofiev. Other works in The Story Tellers include Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Respighi's Trittico Botticellianio, Strauss's Death and Transfiguration and Ravel's Mother Goose.
But the series that will go off like an explosive charge among music lovers is Russian Winter, a stunning five- concert series that includes all four of Rachmaninov's piano concertos and the Paganini Variations alongside masterpieces by Stravinsky. This is the series that will plunge the SSO back into front-line live broadcasting on Radio 3, with all evening concerts beginning at 7pm.
Soloists in the Rachmaninov concertos are outstanding. Mikhail Rudy will play the underrated first, the great Canadian Louis Lortie will play the second, Nelson Goerner plays the third, the dynamite young Russian Evgeny Sudbin will play the original version of the fourth, and Alexander Melnikov plays the Paganini Variations.
The Stravinsky element, which will be linked to a commercial recording project with Hyperion, is a blazing inspiration. The series will field performances of the great ballets The Firebird and the Rite of Spring, alongside complete performances of The Fairy's Kiss ballet, Jeu de Cartes ballet, the Soldier's Tale, the Scherzo a la Russe, the Scenes de Ballet and the great Dumbarton Oaks chamber concerto.
Conducting the Russian Winter series, which also features a rare outing for Rachmaninov's dark, brooding orchestral masterpiece, The Isle of the Dead, will be shared between Volkov and Solyom.
Other soloists appearing with the SSO across the various series include in-demand Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear (Gershwin's Piano Concerto), Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen (Prokofiev's third concerto), Jean-Philippe Collard (Mozart K488), Adam Golka, a young American being championed by Donald Runnicles (Ravel's left-hand concerto), soprano Ailish Tynan singing Mozart, Tasmin Little playing Karlowicz's Violin Concerto, Anne Akiko Meyers playing Samuel Barber's gorgeous Violin Concerto and Viviane Hagner with Szymanowski's voluptuous first concerto.
Of conductors new to the SSO, the most significant will be Carlo Rizzi, whose programme in The Story Tellers includes Cesar Franck's huge Symphony in D minor, a work that has fallen out of fashion somewhat these days.
All in all, it amounts to what Gavin Reid, director of the BBC SSO, describes as "a fitting conclusion" to Ilan Volkov's tenure as chief conductor.
But the SSO, being a BBC orchestra, has other commitments to the corporation. There will be four Discovering Music programmes and four afternoon performances, including Vaughan Williams's rarely-heard Third Symphony, great American pianist Steven Kovacevich playing Beethoven's First Piano Concerto and conducting Mozart's 40th Symphony, Alison Balsom playing Jolivet's Trumpet Concerto, and Andrew Manze conducting Bach and Schubert. And there will be, of course, modern and new music: yards of it. There will be a Xenakis tribute concert, also linked to a Hyperion project; Jonathan Harvey's latest work for the SSO, Speakings, in which the sound of the entire BBC SSO will be treated through computers as the City Hall bristles with Ircam electronics; and a Nigel Osborne 60th birthday concert.
There will also be a world premiere by Mark-Anthony Turnage, who was so taken with the ambience of the Old Fruitmarket he asked the SSO if he could write a piece for it to be played in that space. There is also the prospect of a performance of Messiaen's epic Des canyons aux etoiles, with SSO soloists and composer-conductor George Benjamin making his debut with the orchestra. There will be the world premiere of young Scottish composer Anna Meredith's Trombone Concerto, written for SSO principal Simon Johnson, and much, much more.
But perhaps the most striking initiative in the SSO's season - in fact, the first to hit the boards this June - represents a direct response to Sir Brian McMaster's recent challenge to classical music organisations to throw open their doors and stage free events. In an extended weekend, June 19-22, the SSO will do that with a varied and concentrated mini-festival entitled Listen Here, in which six events across the musical spectrum will be staged in the City Halls complex.
German violinist Christian Tetzlaff will be in residence. There will be orchestral concerts, including Tetzlaff playing Brahms's Violin Concerto, chamber music with Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt, orchestral performances with Scotland's two young Classical Stars competitors, Ian Watt and Karen Geoghegan, taster concerts for the new season, new music from Oliver Knussen and Jorge Widmann, and a family concert with video aimed at seven- to 12-year-olds and presented by Kirsten O'Brien and Heather Reid. And, as if they didn't have enough on their plates, the SSO players will have the matter of a tour of China to get under their belts before heading back to base for Listen Here, the Snape Proms at Aldeburgh, the London Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, the Edinburgh International Festival and an already-looming winter season.
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