Please rise for Louis Langrée’s last stand in Cincinnati

Louis Langrée is leaving, and it feels like we’ll never be the same again.

That sounds a bit dramatic, I know. But it’s true.

Langrée – who will lead his final concert here on May 12 – became music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2013. From the outset, it was obvious that things were going to be different with him around.

The CSO introduced Langrée to the city in early August of that year by presenting a pair of sound-and-light shows called LumenoCity. More than 10,000 people a night jammed into Washington Park and nearby streets as Louis – all of Cincinnati was on a first-name basis by then – conducted and the visual magicians from Brave Berlin bathed the face of Music Hall with eyepopping projections.

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Anyone who saw those shows is unlikely to ever forget them. The visual images that danced across the building were as dazzling as they were gigantic. Even more memorable was the sense of community that grew from the sheer joy of sharing music together. Rarely has the CSO felt so much in sync with the times and the community around it.

And Langrée was very clear that this would not be the orchestra’s last grand public experience.

In order for an orchestra to remain relevant and alive, he said in a promotional video for LumenoCity, “a great institution has to be a great place of experimentation. And the fact that we will try something new – it’s a wonderful feeling.”

He said he wanted to become one of us. A Cincinnatian. He said he would immerse himself in every aspect of life in our city. And for the next decade, he did just that. He moved his family here – most conductors don’t. His kids attended Walnut Hills High School and, like the attentive parent he is, he volunteered to lead Walnut’s orchestra several times.

Little did we know back then how much he would change CSO. And the city. And us. But he has. And now, he’s leaving. It seems too soon. You just know that he has so much more that he could share with us.

But, as CSO president and CEO Jonathan Martin has said many times in the past year, Langrée would “rather leave five years too early than stay five minutes too late.”

Today’s CSO has a distinctly different sound from the one Langrée inherited in 2013. Some of that is because more than a third of the current CSO members were hired during his tenure. Inevitably, an orchestra gradually evolves to reflect the character and tastes of its music director. Some is also due to the “new” Music Hall – the smaller and slightly reconfigured Springer Auditorium that emerged in 2017 after a sometimes controversial 18-month renovation. The sound we hear now is more lively than before the architectural changes. As a result, every line of the music is more finely delineated than ever before.

But mostly, this new sound has to do with the way Langrée works with the orchestra. He is a meticulous conductor. No detail is too small for him. Sit through a rehearsal with him and it feels as if he takes apart every note and every measure of every piece of music, polishes and refines them and then carefully puts them all back together again. The music is the same, but the effect is completely different from what any other conductor might conjure up. This is Louis’ orchestra now – crisp, clean and, in an odd way, more revealing of the music tucked away inside the notes. It’s as if he has imbued this mammoth musical entity with the clarity of a chamber orchestra.

He shepherded us through the pandemic, too. In March 2020, the CSO sent its musicians home mid-rehearsal – told them to pack up and leave the building.

But before long and against all odds, the CSO reappeared in streaming concerts. And, when quarantine laws permitted, Langrée insisted on performing in front of the minuscule audience that the law permitted – initially, just 300 people.

“It was small, but we were together. We were all in the same room together,” he said at the time. He was jubilant that the musicians had a live audience again.

Louis brought a passion for all sorts of music. Not just the classics, the warhorses. He introduced us to the unfamiliar and the new, as well. He commissioned more than three dozen new works and led world premieres of nearly as many.

There were high points, to be sure:

• The orchestra toured Europe and Asia and appeared as part of the legendary BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall in London.

• The epic, six-hour “Beethoven Akademie 1808” in 2020, for instance, recreating a legendary concert led by Beethoven in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien.

• The extraordinary production of Ambroise Thomas’ “Hamlet,” imported from the Théâtre National de l’Opéra Comique in Paris, where Louis is now the director.

• The CSO co-presented Bryce Dessner’s MusicNOW festival, turning Cincinnati briefly into the nation’s center of new music.

The list of unforgettable performances goes on and on.

“Louis’ music-making is an authentic reflection of how he lives his life,” Martin told The Enquirer late last year. “He’s intelligent and serious. And his music-making is filled with humanity.”

It’s those more personal aspects of Langrée, perhaps, that we will miss most of all. His kindness. His generosity. His devotion to collaborating with other artists. He is an unabashed lover of music, a proselytizer who wants nothing more than a chance to share his insatiable appetite for music with each and every one of us. And for more than a decade, we couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say.

I still remember my first conversation with him back in 2012, when he declared, “I am incurably optimistic.” I was skeptical. But for a dozen years, he has proven me wrong.

“As with all things in life, an orchestra needs fresh air to live,” he told me when, in 2021, he announced that he would not renew his CSO contract. “That doesn’t mean that it will have to erase everything that we have done. For the rest of my life, I will be a member of the Cincinnati Symphony family.”

Catch one of Louis Langrée’s final shows

Maestro Louis Langrée is preparing to lead the final concerts of his 11-year tenure as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony. He is scheduled to conduct:

• May 3, 11 a.m., and May 4, 7:30 p.m.; works include Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7” and two works by Bryce Dessner, “Mari” and “Piano Concerto” (CSO co-commission, US premiere) featuring pianist Alice Sara Ott.

• May 3, 8 p.m.; “Gymnopédie No. 1” and “Gymnopédie No. 2” (Satie, arr. Debussy) and two works by Bryce Dessner, “Wires” and “Concerto for Two Pianos” featuring pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque and guitarist Bryce Dessner.

• May 10-11, 7:30 p.m., and May 12, 2 p.m.; “Louis’ Grand Finale,” works include Beethoven's “Leonore Overture No. 2,” Anthony Davis’ “Broken in Parts” (CSO commission, world premiere), Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and Maurice Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2.”

For tickets, go to www.cincinnatisymphony.org or call 513-381-3300.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How Louis Langree changed the face of Cincinnati ... for good