The Arkansas Symphony’s Masterworks programs for the 2014-15 season will include big piano concertos by Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev; violin concertos by Johannes Brahms and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; and several works by distinguished composer John Corigliano.
The orchestra will be performing those six pairs of concerts at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center, Maumelle High School, 100 Victory Lane, while Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall is undergoing a two-year renovation, scheduled to start this summer. Celebrity Attractions and Ballet Arkansas will also be moving their Robinson shows to Maumelle during the hiatus.
The orchestra will play its five sets of 2014-15 pops concerts in the 1,700-seat Connor Performing Arts Center at Pulaski Academy, 12701 Hinson Road, Little Rock.
Music Director Philip Mann has “designed the season with the audience in mind, and to grow the orchestra,” says Executive Director Christina Littlejohn. And the move to Maumelle didn’t involve any program changes, she says.
Aside from the dislocation factor of moving from a space where the orchestra has been “at home” for more than 40 years, Littlejohn says, she couldn’t be more pleased with the new space.
“The Performing Arts Center is just perfect,” she says. “It’s a fabulous facility. The stage size is great; there’s an orchestra shell already there, there’s ample room backstage.”
However, “The seating is 1,200,” less than half of what Robinson holds, “so we may look at opening up dress rehearsals to accommodate patrons, but [first] we’ll see how subscription sales go for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon,” Littlejohn says.
The orchestra is also moving up its starting time for evening concerts to 7:30, from 8, taking into account longer travel times for many patrons.
Guitarist Sharon Isbin will return for her second “Beethoven & Blue Jeans” concert pairing with the orchestra, Nov. 8-9, playing Troubadours - Variations for Guitar and Chamber Orchestra, which Corigliano wrote for her. That program will also include Corigliano’s Three Hallucinations from Altered States, and the “Beethoven” contribution will Ludwig van’s Symphony No. 5 in c minor, op.67.
Isbin played a guitar concerto by Manuel Ponce for the inaugural “B&BJ” concert in November 2010.
SEASON LINEUP
The rest of the 2014-15 Masterworks schedule:
The name of the pianist hasn’t yet been announced, but Mann and the orchestra will kick off the season Sept. 27-28 with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in c minor, op.18, and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. The curtain-raiser will be Corigliano’s Promenade Overture.
Mann continues to spotlight orchestra players in solo roles with the season’s second concert, Oct. 18-19, with principal trumpet Richard Jorgensen taking on the Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major by Franz Joseph Haydn. The program will also include Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 in E major.
Randall Goosby will be the soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, nicknamed the “Turkish,” Jan. 31-Feb. 1, with a guest conductor to be announced. Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 will round out the program.
And Vadim Gluzman will solo Feb. 28-March 1, 2015, in Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major, op.77. Mann will also conduct the Prelude to the opera Die Meistersinger vonNurnberg by Richard Wagner and Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony No. 8.
Yeol Eum Son, the silver-medal winner at the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, will return to central Arkansas April 11-12, 2015, as soloist in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. It’s the Arkansas Symphony debut for the pianist, who played Artspree recitals at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in two consecutive Januaries, 2010 and 2011.
Mann will open the program with Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C, “Jupiter,” and close it, and the season, with the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss.
SIX-YEAR RELATIONSHIP
Mann met Corigliano while putting together the world-premiere performance of a new small chamber version (for voice and sextet) of Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man, a collection of seven Bob Dylan song texts, in September 2009 in Sydney, Australia.
Corigliano said in a note following the performance, now posted on Mann’s website, conductormann.com, “Philip Mann is an extraordinarily gifted conductor. I have seen and heard him prepare and perform a very difficult work of mine in Sydney, and cannot think of anyone who could have done a better job …. What I found amazing is that his musical instincts were so fine that he anticipated my comments, correcting things before I could even mention them. He is a true musician, a real leader, and will have a world-class career if given the opportunity.”
POPS LIVE!
Oscar- and Emmy-winning composer Bill Conti, best known as the 19-time music director of the annual Academy Awards broadcast, will be on the podium for “Bill Conti’s Academy Awards Show,” kicking off the orchestra’s “Pops Live!” series Oct.
4-5at Pulaski Academy. Conti earned an Academy Award for his score for the 1983 film The Right Stuff.
The rest of the pops lineup:
Dec. 19-21: The orchestra’s annual “Holiday Celebration,” still under construction.
Feb. 14-15, 2015: “Dancing and Romancing,” with Broadway stage veterans Joan Hess and Kirby Ward.
March 14-15: “Here to Stay, A Gershwin Experience with Sylvia McNair,” the Metropolitan Opera soprano and musical theater star.
May 9-10: “Ashley Brown’s Broadway.” Brown originated the title role of Mary Poppins on Broadway and on tour.
Masterworks season subscriptions are $103-$313, with discounts for “freshman” and new subscribers; for the pops concerts, $86-$261. Single tickets for both series will be $19-$58, up from $14-$52 in 2013-14.
The orchestra will continue its free (with paying adult) “Entergy Kids” tickets to Sunday matinees.
Call (501) 666-1761 or visit the website, ArkansasSymphony.org.
Style, Pages 47 on 02/23/2014