Palm Beach Symphony to welcome major soloists, spotlight American music in new season
Fresh off a 50th anniversary season that featured world premieres of music written specifically for the ensemble as well as a finale celebrating the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Palm Beach Symphony has announced its six-concert series for the 2024-25 season.
In addition to welcoming major soloists, the orchestra will also be putting American music of the 20th and 21st centuries in the spotlight, said its music director, Gerard Schwarz.
"There's a variety of selections from the canon, but also music from American composers, past and present, that people may not immediately recognize,” Schwarz said in a prepared statement.
Music by William Grant Still, Paul Creston, Howard Hanson, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Jennifer Higdon and Christopher Theofanidis will take prominent places on the orchestra’s upcoming programs, which will be performed at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.
“We have the confidence to mount this ambitious season thanks to the tremendous support we received during our 50th anniversary season,” Palm Beach Symphony CEO David McClymont said in a prepared statement. “Our enthusiastic audience responded to our concerts in record-breaking numbers, while our supporters challenged us to expand our vision by meeting a $500,000 challenge grant and raising more than $1 million at our annual gala.”
The first concert, set for Nov. 10, features Schwarz’s son Julian, a fine cellist, as soloist in the most popular of all such works, the Cello Concerto (in B minor) of the Czech Romantic composer Antonin Dvořák. Zwilich’s “Celebration for Orchestra” also is on the program, as is the epic “Pictures at an Exhibition” of the Russian Modest Mussorgsky, as orchestrated by Maurice Ravel from its original form as a piano suite.
The Greek violinist and conductor Leonidas Kavakos is the soloist Dec. 10 in the beloved Violin Concerto (in D major) of Johannes Brahms. Theofanidis’ “Rainbow Body,” based on a theme by the 12th-century German nun and mystic Hildegard of Bingen, is the American piece on the concert, which closes with Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony.
On Jan. 13, the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, long a favorite with Palm Beach-area audiences, joins Schwarz and the orchestra in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, a work with a distinctly jazz flavor. Higdon’s sensitive “Blue Cathedral” is also featured; like Theofanidis’ “Rainbow Body,” this piece is one of the most well-known works of contemporary American music for orchestra in the repertory today. Wrapping up the program is Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony (“Pathétique”), an innovative and powerful symphony that received its premiere, with the composer conducting, just nine days before his death in November 1893.
Two majestic works occupy the Feb. 6 concert program, opening with the Violin Concerto (in D major) of Beethoven, played by the American violinist Gil Shaham. Taking up the rest of the program will be Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (“Titan), an 1889 masterwork that first brought the young Austrian composer to wider attention.
The American pianist Garrock Ohlsson is the soloist March 2 in the much-admired Piano Concerto No. 2 (in C minor) of the Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Closing the concert is the big Symphony No. 2 (“Romantic”), composed in 1930 by the American composer Howard Hanson, once a familiar piece on concert programs that has been revived in recent years by Schwarz and other conductors. Also on the concert is “Invocation and Dance,” an energetic piece by the unjustly neglected American composer Paul Creston, who wrote the work in 1953.
Closing out the season on April 8 is pianist Anne-Marie McDermott as soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 1 (in C major) of Beethoven. Debussy’s iconic “La Mer” is also scheduled, as is Ravel’s second suite from his ballet score “Daphnis and Chloe,” a work that showcases the orchestra’s virtuosity and colors. In addition, the orchestra will play Still’s “Threnody: In Memory of Jean Sibelius,” which Still, known as the “dean of African-American composers” in his lifetime, composed in 1965 for the University of Miami Symphony (which Schwarz also conducts) on the centenary of Sibelius’ birth.
In addition to the six regular concerts, the orchestra will also present a children’s concert. This year’s event will feature “The Birds,” a suite by the 20th-century Italian master Ottorino Respighi (best-known for “Pines of Rome”) based on music from the 17th and 18th centuries. It will be performed as the basis for “Cinderella and the Orchestra,” a new tale written by Schwarz’s wife, Jody, a Juilliard-trained flutist. In this version of the story, Cinderella is a prodigiously talented flutist who entrances the prince with her musicianship.
That concert is set for 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26, at the Eissey Campus Theatre on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens.
Subscription packages begin at $120 for the six-concert Masterworks Series. Current subscribers may renew beginning now with new subscriptions available June 24. Tickets to individual concerts will go on sale Sept. 3. Tickets may be purchased online at PalmBeachSymphony.org, by phone at 561-281-0145 and at the Palm Beach Symphony Box Office weekdays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at 700 S. Dixie Highway, Suite 100, West Palm Beach.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach Symphony announces 2024-25 concert season
