The Pittsburgh Symphony Orhestra has posted their 2009-10 season schedule, and it's crowd-pleaser after crowd-pleaser: Beethoven's Ninth and Third, Mozart's Requiem, Four Seasons, Rite of Spring, Symphonie Fantastique, The Planets, Also Sprach Zarathustra... throw in Bach's Air suite and we're officially out of risk-free repertoire.
Some atypical highlights in 2009-10 include:
1) an honest-to-God RECITAL by the famous Joshua Bell. More recitals, Heinz Hall! This year featured a near-sold-out Lang Lang recital, which shows there's an audience and, more importantly, it's SO much better than flying in the world's most famous soloists to perform a war-horse concerto and then disappear at intermission.
2) Horacio Gutiérrez performing Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto 2. Gutiérrez made an outstanding recording of this romantic favorite back in 1991 with Lorin Maazel and the fabled PSO of yesteryear, still in print and worth your $8.99. Have 19 years cooled the burning Caribbean passion of this Cuban firebrand?
3) Yan Pascal Tortelier conducting Berlioz and Holst, hopefully offending someone in the process.
4) a Beethoven's Ninth featuring the awesome Canadian soprano Measha Brüggergosman, whose web site includes sections on "Where's the party at?" and "My peeps." Measha is a Deutsche Grammophon exclusive artist whose last CD, Surprise, features cabaret songs by the wild combination of Satie and Schoenberg...!
5) F. Murray Abraham, Salieri from the greatest classical movie of all time, Amadeus, live and doing something!
6) The wonderful, he-should-be-way-more-famous-than-he-is Stephen Hough!
Again, Honeck is continuing his approach from the current season, and that's fine... but we expect tons of Webern next year, Manfred.
3/5 Duchamps
