Sydney Symphony Orchestra sets sail for a 2019 season full of big names and musical brilliance
From new “family-friendly” ticket prices, to guest appearances by world-renowned conductors and soloists, the SSO has unveiled a packed 2019 season.
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FROM reduced “family-friendly” ticket prices, to guest appearances by world-renowned conductors and soloists, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has unveiled a packed 2019 season to farewell David Robertson as chief conductor and artistic director.
The popular and acclaimed American joined the SSO in 2014. And it could be five years before Robertson’s replacement is announced, according to CEO Emma Dunch, who joined the SSO this year.
A global search for a “worthy” successor was under way, she said.
“Conductors plan their lives four to five years in advance, so we are having conversations now with people whose first real availability is in 2022 and 2023,” Dunch said.
To carry the SSO through to its next chief conductor and artistic director, the orchestra will collaborate with “four visionaries” who will each launch multi-year artistic cycles running from 2019 to 2021 — a first in SSO history.
Those visionaries will be Vladimir Ashkenazy, Donald Runnicles, Simone Young and Robertson himself.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the much-loved Ashkenazy’s Australian debut, the orchestra has named the maestro Conductor Laureate for 2019, an honour never before bestowed on any SSO conductor.
Ashkenazy’s three-year artistic cycle will be entitled Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Masterworks, and will include audience favourites such as Holst’s Planets and Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
Runnicles, general director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and a frequent guest of the Metropolitan Opera, New York, will present Music of Inspiration. This series will explore the connections between spirituality and music in works by great composers including Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration and Messiaen’s The Forgotten Offerings.
Simone Young’s Visions of Vienna series will encompass Schubert, Liszt and Mahler.
And Robertson’s farewell season will see him lead concert performances of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes with soloists including the amazing Australian singers, soprano Nicole Car and tenor Stuart Skelton.
Robertson will also conduct Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, a blend of theatre and orchestral music that tells the story of a political dissident sharing a room in a mental hospital with a madman who thinks that he has an orchestra at his fingertips.
International soloists to perform in 2019 with the SSO will include pianists Lang Lang and Behzod Abduraimov, American mezzosoprano Susan Graham, violinist James Ehnes and Shostakovich expert conductor Mark Wigglesworth.
A new focus on family events will see the SSO double the number of its family events, and reduce its ticket price from $39 to $25 per person for each of its 2019 family concerts.
Family concerts will be held on selected Sundays throughout the year and will last for one hour plus children’s activities before and after, Emma Dunch said.
“We have professional actors, dancers — it’s a real family presentation,” Dunch said.
“There’s an instrument petting zoo where you can touch a double bass and play a trumpet, that kind of thing. The kids have a great time.”
The SSO is heading west to launch its 2019 season, with a free Symphony Under the Stars in Parramatta Park on January 19.
“It’s a glorious setting and last year 14,000 or 15,000 people showed up,” Dunch said.
“I would say maybe 100 per cent of them had not been to an orchestral presentation before.”