ProMusica offers tried-and-true, new in 2017-18

“For its 39th season, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra will present a blend of familiar faces, returning programs and fresh artistic endeavors.

The orchestra solidified its current leadership with a pair of contract extensions announced in January: Music Director David Danzmayr is under contract through 2021; violinist Vadim Gluzman, who serves as principal guest artist and creative partner, through 2020.

Such continuity allows for concerts to be planned years in advance, Executive Director Janet Chen said.

“When the three of us brainstorm together, there’s literally not enough concerts each year to program everything,” Chen said. “To have the ability to even vision out three, four, five years ahead of ourselves is … an advantage.”

The 2017-18 season will kick off with another musician with ProMusica pedigree: In October, pianist and composer Conrad Tao — who composed pieces for the orchestra while still in his teens — will resume his collaboration with the orchestra, with ProMusica performing a new work by the 22-year-old Tao. The musician himself will be spotlighted in Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Piano Concerto in D major.”

Return appearances will be made by soprano Kathrin Danzmayr, wife of the music director, who will sing Osvaldo Golijov’s “Three Songs for Soprano and String Orchestra”; and LancasterChorale, which will be featured in Mozart’s “Requiem.” Both works will be part of a program in November.

Gluzman will be showcased in concerts in January and next May.

Following its local launch in 2016, the program “Naked Classics” — in which classical masterpieces are first scrutinized by Scottish presenter Paul Rissmann and then performed by the orchestra — will also be given an encore. The series will highlight Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in October and Igor Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” in April.

Beethoven’s symphonies will be the subject of a new series. Soon to conclude its Schubert Cycle, the orchestra is set to embark on a Beethoven Cycle, in which the composer’s nine symphonies will be performed in concerts spanning two seasons.”

Read more: http://www.dispatch.com/entertainmentlife/20170505/promusica-offers-tried-and-true-new-in-2017-18

05/05/2017