CityLife

Classical highlights: August 20 to 26, 2010

Continuing a survey of the goodies to come in the Manchester concert season 2010–11, I’m taking a look at the orchestral scene, focusing on the BBC Philharmonic, the Bridgewater Hall’s international series, and Manchester Camerata.

For the Philharmonic, it will be a season of farewell and hello. Farewell to Gianandrea Noseda, in his last season as chief conductor – he will then become conductor laureate.

His years with the Phil will conclude with a big event – Verdi’s Otello, with a cast including Barbara Frittoli as Desdemona and the London Symphony Chorus, on April 16.

He begins with Verdi, too – the overture to The Force Of Destiny – and has Stephen Hough as soloist in Grieg’s piano concerto – before conducting Beethoven’s fifth symphony, a reminder of the Phil’s award-winning Beethoven symphonies project with him in 2005 (that’s on September 25).

On October 30 there’s Rachmaninov – whose work he has given with great success in his time here – in the form of the third symphony.

The concert on November 13 ends with Strauss’s Macbeth, the first piece he ever worked on with the orchestra, and the five CDs of Liszt orchestral music he has made with them are
acknowledged on February 26, with the Dante Symphony.

There are two concerts in the Manchester series for the Phil’s next chief conductor, Juanjo Mena. On October 15 he’s tackling Bruckner’s seventh symphony, and he brings the world premiere of Symphony no. 15 by Kalevi Aho on March 26.

There’s a visit from HK (‘Nali’) Gruber, with him in perhaps his best-known role as chansonnier in his own ‘pandemonium’, Frankenstein!!, and Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado’s concert on November 27 has a clear theme – the programme is Britten’s Sinfonia Da Requiem, Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Mozart’s Requiem.

Principal guest conductor Vassily Sinaisky has three concerts, including Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony and Mussorgsky’s Songs And Dances Of Death, Dvořák, Brahms and Janáček (Taras Bulba).

The Bridgewater Hall offers six visiting orchestras. Hans Graf (conducting the Hallé shortly afterwards) is in charge of the Houston Symphony on October 12, with high–definition film of NASA missions being shown as Holst’s The Planets suite is played, and John Adams’ Dr Atomic Symphony, based on his opera about the first nuclear bomb.

Covent Garden musical boss Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra of Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia on March 18 (Boris Berezovsky soloist in Liszt’s first piano concerto), and close behind (April 11) comes the Philharmonia Orchestra under Lorin Maazel in an all-Mahler evening.

On May 4, Alexander Lazarev conducts the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, with principals of the Bolshoi Opera, in Tchaikovsky opera excerpts and Mravinsky’s suite from his The Nutcracker.

Manchester Camerata are as active as ever in the city, though not at the Bridgewater Hall to begin with. Their ‘Urban Symphonies’ concerts feature a world premiere in each of three at the Royal Northern College of Music (September 25, October 23 and November 27) – while principal guest conductor Nicholas Kraemer gives a baroque programme to represent Venice on February 26.

Departing music director Douglas Boyd reaches Beethoven’s ninth symphony on January 29 in the Bridgewater Hall – with the CBSO Chorus – and conducts music of the ‘second Viennese school’ at the RNCM on March 26 (Berg’s violin concerto, soloist Gordan Nikolitch, and Schoenberg’s gorgeous Verklärte Nacht with real-time visuals).

Nicholas Kraemer is at the Bridgewater Hall for Bach’s St John Passion on April 19, with St George’s Singers.

Finally Douglas Boyd conducts there on May 28, with Elizabeth Watts as soloist in Berlioz’ Les Nuits D’Été and a presentation of Mendelssohn’s complete Midsummer Night’s Dream music.