Live choice Brian Wise selects the finest concerts and operas in North America Janácˇek’s woodland tale is presented in a naturalistic new production by E Loren Meeker. Festival artistic advisor Eric Owens takes the bass-baritone role of the Forester and Venue of the month soprano Heidi Stober plays the eponymous Vixen. Presented The US’s best concert venues in a new English translation. 10. Blossom Music Bernstein’s Trouble Center 6 in Tahiti Where: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio Tanglewood, MA, 12 July Opened: 1968 Tel: 888-266-1200 Seats: 5,700 (+13,500) Web: www.bso.org Leonard Bernstein’s 1952 The Blossom Music Center’s one-act opera – a tuneful, jazzy inaugural concert by the sendup of postwar suburbia Cleveland Orchestra on – is presented as part of 19 July 1968 was nearly Tanglewood’s celebration of the called off, as a week of composer’s centenary. It stars race riots in nearby Akron soprano Alexandra Silber and had prompted a city-wide baritone Shuler Hensley, and curfew. Akron’s mayor lifted is directed by the composer’s it at the last moment – to daughter Jamie Bernstein. accommodate the concert – but many dignitaries had Adams’s Doctor Atomic already cancelled their Santa Fe Opera, NM, Canada drive: 7 plans. Still, nearly 6,000 14 July – 16 August music-lovers turned out Susanna Mälkki conducts Berlioz and Elgar (Choice 3) Tel: 800-280-4654 that night to hear George Web: www.santafeopera.org Szell conduct Beethoven’s John Adams and Peter Ninth Symphony. ‘The whole Sellars’s 2005 opera about the thing is rather frightening’, Norfolk Chamber Music Lanaudière Festival Manhattan Project is revived in reported New York Times 1 Festival 3 Joliette, QC, Canada, 7 July Santa Fe, not far from the Los critic Harold C Schonberg, Norfolk, CT, 6 July Tel: 866-842-2112 Alamos laboratory where it all ‘but that is America this Tel: 860-542-3000 Web: www.lanaudiere.org took place. Ryan McKinney summer of 1968.’ Web: norfolk.yale.edu The Lanaudière Festival brings stars as J Robert Oppenheimer Planning for the Blossom Turn-of-the-century Vienna is the conductor Susanna Mälkki and Julia Bullock plays his wife Music Center began in 1966 focus of this opening weekend and the nearby Montreal Kitty Oppenheimer. with a price tag of $8m. It concert at Norfolk. Pianist Orion Symphony Orchestra for Berlioz’s was named to honour the Weiss and members of the Yale Symphonie fantastique and Cleveland Orchestra Blossom family, long-time School of Music faculty perform Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with 8 Blossom Festival, OH, 15 July supporters of the orchestra. Schoenberg’s arrangements soloist Alban Gerhardt. Tel: 216-231-1111 With its pyramidal, space- of Strauss waltzes, along with Web: www.clevelandorchestra.com age roof, Schonberg reported chamber works by Korngold and Rockport Chamber As part of the Blossom Music that ‘it is a big structure, and Richard Strauss. 4 Music Festival Center’s 50th-anniversary a breathtaking one’. Today Rockport, MA, 7 July season (see left), John it seats 5,700 people, with Grand Teton Festival Tel: 978-546-7391 Storgårds leads the Clevelanders room for 13,500 more on 2 Teton Village, WY, 6-7 July Web: www.rockportmusic.org in Antheil’s Over the Plains, its surrounding lawns. It is Tel: 307-733-1128 Boston’s A Far Cry string Britten’s Violin Concerto (with surrounded by Cuyahoga Web: www.gtmf.org orchestra serves up Glass’s Vilde Frang) and Schumann’s Valley National Park – a Against the backdrop of the Third Symphony, Bach’s Third ‘Spring’ Symphony No. 1. boon for outdoor lovers, with Teton Range, conductor Donald Brandenburg Concerto, plus 33,000 acres of waterfalls, Runnicles and the Festival Bartók and Osvaldo Golijov. The Knights wetlands, fields and trails. Orchestra open this seven-week 9 Naumburg Bandshell, Guest performers in its festival with Copland’s majestic The Cunning Little Vixen New York, NY, 17 July 50th-anniversary season will Lincoln Portrait, Rachmaninov’s 5 Glimmerglass, Cooperstown, Tel: N/A include cellist Yo-Yo Ma and First Piano Concerto (with Daniil NY, 8 July – 15 August Web: www.naumburgconcerts.org singer Audra McDonald. Trifonov as soloist), and works by Tel: 607-547-2255 The Knights, a vibrant orchestral Britten and Kernis. Web: www.glimmerglass.org collective led by Eric Jacobsen, 110 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE SeptemberJuly Live return to New York’s Central Park Grant Park Orchestra with an eclectic programme: 14 Jay Pritzker Pavilion, BACKSTAGE WITH… Anna Clyne’s Within Her Arms, Chicago, IL, 25 July Komitas arrangements of Tel: 312-742-7638 Conductor Elim Chan Armenian Folk Songs, Janácˇek’s www.grantparkmusicfestival.com youthful Idyll and Brahms’s Gemma New, the New Zealand- Hungarian Dances. born resident conductor of the St Louis Symphony, leads National Youth Douglas Lilburn’s Aotearoa 10 Orchestra of the USA Overture, Liszt’s Second Piano Carnegie Hall, NY, 19 July Concerto with Kirill Gerstein, and Tel: 212-247-7800 Sibelius’s Second Symphony. Web: www.carnegiehall.org This Carnegie Hall-sponsored Rubinstein’s The Demon training ensemble regroups with 15 Bard Summerscape, another full agenda: Gershwin’s Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Piano Concerto with soloist 27 July – 5 August Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Sibelius’s Tel: 845-758-7900 luxuriant Second Symphony and Web: fishercenter.bard.edu a premiere by this year’s Pulitzer Anton Rubinstein’s rarely London beat: Prize runner-up, Ted Hearne. performed 1871 opera, about Elim Chan has a Conductor Michael Tilson a fallen angel who tries to woo strong LSO connection Thomas leads the way. a princess, is given a new staging at Bard Summerscape. Haydn’s Creation A Russian cast joins conductor You’re the 2014 winner of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 11 Rose Theater, Lincoln Leon Botstein and the American Donatella Flick Conducting Competition, whose musicians Center, NY, 19-20 July Symphony Orchestra. Tel: 212-721-6500 will be joining you for a residency at the Music Academy of Web: www.mostlymozart.org Bernstein’s Mass the West. How does it feel to be an emissary for London? With the demise of the Lincoln 16 Ravinia Festival, Highland For a long time I thought I’d never go to Europe, let alone live in Center Festival, the Mostly Park, IL, 28 July London and have this association with the LSO. I spent quite Mozart Festival picks up some Tel: 847-266-5100 a long time in the US, going from Smith College to Michigan. of the slack by offering this Web: www.ravinia.org When the competition came in 2014 I thought, ‘I’ll try it’. And fantastical staging of Haydn’s Leonard Bernstein protégée that’s the one that worked out. oratorio by the Catalan theatre Marin Alsop conducts the troupe La Fura dels Baus. Chicago Symphony Orchestra Your programme on 21 July includes works by Holst and Acrobats and video imagery premiere of his 1971 music- Vaughan Williams. Do you feel a strong British identity? augment performances by theatre spectacle. The Back when I was living in Hong Kong, it was a British colony, but the choir Accentus, the Insula production is directed by Kevin it was something I had taken for granted. After the 2014 win Orchestra and soloists. Newbury and features baritone and I had graduated, I was like, ‘OK, I’m just going to pack my Paulo Szot as the Celebrant, the bags and embrace being a British person.’ With the LSO, I was Music Academy Chicago Children’s Choir and a there every day, soaking in the sound, attending rehearsals 12 of the West marching band. and taking notes. And I started doing bigger and bigger things. Granada Theater, Santa Barbara, And now I’m so happy that they gave me this opportunity. CA, 21 July Wagner’s Ring excerpts Tel: 805-969-8787 17 Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA, You won’t be that much older than some of the students you Web: www.musicacademy.org 28 July and the LSO players will be working with at the Academy… Elim Chan, a Hong Kong-born Tel: 877-965-3872 One of the reasons why the LSO and I work well is that they can conductor who has made waves Web: www.wolftrap.org see I can do it. They don’t talk down to me. They say, ‘Let’s do in the UK with the LSO (see A quartet of Wolf Trap this’ and we go from there. That’s something I’m trying to do box, right), leads the Academy Opera alumni – soprano every time with a professional orchestra: open a dialogue and Festival Orchestra in British Christine Goerke, tenor Simon go from there. fare – Holst’s The Planets and O’Neill and bass-baritones Alan Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia Held and Eric Owens – join the on a Theme of Thomas Tallis – National Symphony Orchestra alongside a local premiere by and conductor Patrick Summers Elizabeth Ogonek. to perform great moments from and Finnish composer Sebastian Missy Mazzoli, Ted Hearne and Wagner’s Ring cycle. Fagerlund’s turbulent tone Judd Greenstein. Handel’s Atalanta poem Isola. 13 Caramoor Festival, Aspen Festival Los Angeles Katonah, NY, 22 July 18 Orchestra Classically Uncorked 20 Philharmonic Tel: 914-232-1252 Aspen Music Festival, CO, 19 Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Hollywood Bowl, CA, 31 July Web: www.caramoor.org 29 July CO, 31 July Tel: 323-850-2050 Conceived for a royal wedding Tel: 970-925-9042 Tel: 970-827-5700 Web: www.hollywoodbowl.com celebration, Handel’s Web: www.aspenmusicfestival.com Web: www.bravovail.org One-time Hollywood resident pastoral opera receives a Behzod Abduraimov, a young The adventurous vocal ensemble Stravinsky is the focus, as concert performance by the Uzbek pianist known for his Roomful of Teeth and the Dover Matthias Pintscher conducts Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra way with Russian barn-burners, Quartet share a programme the Pulcinella Suite and Violin in its Caramoor debut.