Year: 2019

Plácido Domingo, who first sang at the Metropolitan Opera 51 years ago, has withdrawn from a production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” the day before its first performance, saying in a statement that his participation in the dress rehearsal was “my last performance on the Met stage.”

Domingo, who has faced a number of accusations of sexual harassment and an investigation by the Los Angeles Opera, where he is artistic director, “agreed to withdraw,” as a statement from the Met put it, after his appearance in “Macbeth” sparked “a growing outcry” among Met employees, The New York Times’ Michael Cooper reports:

In the second hour, a conversation with pianist Alexander Paley and violinist Amiram Ganz in advance of their performance in the coming weekend’s Paley Music Festival in Richmond. In the third hour, remembering Christopher Rouse, the eminent American composer who died on Sept. 21.

noon-3 p.m. EDT
1700-2000 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.net

Berlioz: “Rob-Roy Macgregor” Overture
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Alexander Gibson
(Chandos)

Antonio Casimir Cartellieri: Concerto in B flat major
Dieter Klöcker & Sandra Arnold, clarinets
Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra/Pavel Prantl
(MDG)

Chopin: “Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante” in E flat major, Op. 22
Daniil Trifonov, piano
(Decca)

conversation with pianist Alexander Paley & violinist Amiram Ganz
with works TBA by Mozart, Brahms, Enescu

Andrew Anderson: Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor
Australia Piano Quartet
(Navona)

Christopher Rouse: “Rapture”
Helsinki Philharmonic/Leif Segerstam
(Ondine)

Borodin: String Sextet in D minor
Nash Ensemble
(Onyx)

Marin Alsop conducting
with Inmo Yang, violin
& Richmond Symphony Chorus
Sept. 21, Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center

In 1988, the Richmond Symphony offered a first professional chance for a young female violinist-turned-conductor who had been turned down by other ensembles. Marin Alsop went on to lead a succession of ever-more-prominent orchestras on three continents. Today, she is one of the leading US conductors of her generation.

Alsop returns to Richmond for the first time since her two-year tenure here in the opening concerts of the symphony’s 2019-20 Masterworks series, launching an eventful season in which the orchestra will audition five candidates to become its next music director and conclude by playing co-host to the 2020 Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition.

The conductor shares the spotlight with Inmo Yang, the 24-year-old Korean violinist fresh off a rapturously received recital last weekend in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Rennolds Chamber Concerts. Yang, winner of the 2015 Paganini Competition in Italy, is featured in that composer’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, a piece whose virtuoso twists and turns almost compensate for its excessive length and musical shortcomings.

In the first of two weekend performances, Yang ignited all the quick-fingered technical fireworks packed into this concerto, but was even more impressive in his ability to coax tonal warmth and genuine expression from what often comes across as a succession of dazzling fiddle tricks separated by orchestral tutti that sound like third-rate Rossini. Yang’s shaping of phrases and subtleties of timbre often brought to mind a coloratura soprano making the most of a bel canto aria, and his treatment of fast passages and virtuoso flourishes conveyed real joy.

Rewarded with a roaring ovation, the violinist offered more Paganini, the Caprice No. 14 for solo violin, as an encore.

Alsop opened the program with a rarity, Alexander von Zemlinsky’s setting for chorus and orchestra of Psalm 13 (“How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord?”). The composer, best-known as the principal teacher of Arnold Schoenberg, was a prolific composer of concert works for voices and orchestra, written in the large-scale, late-romantic style of his contemporaries Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.

His treatment of the Psalm is rather literal, beginning as a dark and thick-textured lament – a kind of chanted chord progression in its choral writing – that gradually brightens as the text reaches its hopeful conclusion (“I will sing to the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me”). Zemlinsky, oddly, breaks the textual flow with an elaborate and turbulent orchestral section leading into the finale.

The conductor maintained reasonably good balance between the Richmond Symphony Chorus and an often busy orchestration, not an easy feat as choral sound tends to be recessed as the singers are placed behind the orchestra on the Carpenter Theatre stage.

Alsop chose a seemingly odd pairing of masterpieces for the program’s second half: Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” and Stravinsky’s 1919 concert suite from “The Firebird,” the 1910 ballet score that established him as a major composer.

Conducting both works without a score, Alsop looked to be devoting much of her attention to obtaining the desired articulation and balances among string sections, at times at the expense of balances between strings and winds. Woodwinds were unusually prominent in the Brahms – not unpleasantly so, nor even inauthentically so, as Brahms’ source, the “St. Antoni Chorale” from a Feld partita (outdoor serenade) by Haydn, was originally for a wind ensemble.

Orchestral sections were better balanced in the Stravinsky, and string sound, unexpectedly, was warmer. Alsop drew out the colors and sound effects of the score quite vividly, conveying the ballet’s story line – a Russian folk tale on the culturally widespread “phoenix rising” theme – as effectively in sound as it might have been in words. The orchestra’s winds and brass played their prominent roles to the hilt.

The program repeats at 3 p.m. Sept. 22 at the Carpenter Theatre of Dominion Energy Center, Sixth and Grace streets. Tickets: $10-$100. Details: (800) 514-3849 (ETIX); http://www.richmondsymphony.com

Christopher Rouse, the prominent US composer who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1993, has died at 70. A Baltimore native and resident, Rouse was best-known for his orchestral music, often characterized as “neo-romantic” but drawing inspiration from genres as diverse as South Asian indigenous music and rock. His Sixth Symphony is due for its premiere next month by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

An obituary by The Baltimore Sun’s McKenna Oxenden:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/bs-fe-christopher-rouse-dies-20190922-gw3upiqt55d5ba7uhm6gacahfq-story.html

Tim Page, a former music critic at The New York Times and the Washington Post (winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his criticism at the Post), pens a heartfelt elegy to a now almost defunct trade. “[T]here are likely no more than 20 Americans who still make most of their living writing in newspapers about classical music,” reflecting mass media’s increasingly “minimal interest in presenting any sort of intellectual record of a given place,” Page observes in an essay for the Depauw University School of Music’s 21CM website:

http://21cm.org/magazine/state-of-the-art-form/2019/09/12/in-memory-of-the-critics-trade/

Page is recalling what in fact was a brief golden age of American music criticism.

Fifty years ago, there probably weren’t many more than 20 full-time classical critics at US newspapers, most of them working in the same large cities whose papers still employ critics. Added to them were what we’d now call “gig-economy” critics, a smallish coterie of writers who could sustain reasonable incomes by contributing to music magazines and writing program notes for concert presenters, liner notes for recordings and guidebooks for non-specialist readers to this highly specialized field.

There were very few full-time newspaper staffers covering arts and entertainment, either as reporters or critics. Papers outside major cities, circa 1960, typically had one or two general-assignment writers, mostly concentrating on movies and other popular entertainment, and a cast of free-lance stringers writing critiques of “high” art. Typically, they were academics or people schooled in an art form but making their livings in non-artistic fields. They were not expert in reporting and news-writing; the factual quality and readability of their work, and the depth of knowledge behind their work, were, to put it charitably, variable.

In Richmond and similarly sized cities – especially those on main railroad routes when rail was the dominant mode of travel – the only published documentation of the tour engagements of major musicians, actors and other artists were reviews by free-lancers, whose compensation was little more than a free ticket and the satisfaction of seeing their names in print. These are the writers who tell you how it was to hear the likes of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arturo Toscanini, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington performing in places like Richmond.

For professional critics, the journalistic dam broke around 1970. Rock and other pop-music concerts drew ever-larger crowds to newly built arenas and a proliferation of nightclubs. At the same time, orchestras, opera companies, theater and dance troupes in smaller cities evolved from amateur to semi-professional to professional status, assuming more prominent roles in communities’ social and economic self-perceptions.

As cities began to promote themselves as cultural destinations, and their businesses began to use cultural amenities to recruit talent and draw clients, their newspapers naturally devoted more space and staff to cultural coverage. Full-timers were hired to cover arts and pop music, and those formerly covering movies and television part-time became full-timers.

It lasted for about a generation. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, newspapers’ revenues began to be squeezed by competition from digital media and the decline of classified and retail advertising, and reductions of newspapers’ staffs reflected the old employment practice of last-in, first-out. Critics were among the first to go. Those of us who could retired; those who couldn’t were reassigned to more traditional news beats or laid off.

Today, print coverage of arts and entertainment is pretty much like what it was 50 or 60 years ago – except that there are far fewer arts magazines and most major papers devote less staff and space to fine arts and more to pop culture. Digital coverage of the arts is considerable, but most writers in this medium work for little or no money. This, too, will diminish when people like me, former full-time newspaper critics now running blogs or doing podcasts, finally call it quits.

I’m not looking to pack it in any time soon; but when I eventually, inevitably do, I wonder how or whether classical music in Richmond and cities like it will be documented. Maybe as it was in most places before the rise of mass media, in personal diaries and published reminiscences.

Sept. 15, Perkinson Recital Hall, University of Richmond

The Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia’s 2019-20 season programming hinges on contrasts between the musical past and present. Such contrasts can be unexpectedly revealing – remember the surprising kinship between Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet and Osvaldo Golijov’s “Dreams of Prayers of Isaac the Blind” in a 2018 program? Or they can be jarring exercises in “and now for something completely different.”

This program tended toward the latter. A pairing of Satie’s “Gnoisienne” No. 1 for solo piano and Debussy’s “Syrinx” for solo flute, followed by John Adams’ “Road Movies” for violin and piano, followed in turn by Brian Raphael Nabors’ “Énergie” for flute and electronics, was then-to-now chronological but lacked any perceptible thread of stylistic or expressive evolution.

An intermission mercifully separated those pieces from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, an epic-length high-romantic work that has nothing at all in common with what preceded it.

While the parts added up to no coherent sum musically, the program was nonetheless satisfying in its displays of virtuosity and/or musicianship.

Pianist Roman Rabinovich, returning after memorable performances of two Brahms piano quartets last season, delivered sensitive, stylish readings of the Satie and the radically different Adams. Violinist Diana Cohen met Adams’ formidable demands of technique and stamina – all the more impressive as she is at an advanced stage of pregnancy – and with Rabinovich realized the work’s cinematic quality and pop-culture evocations. Flutist Mary Boodell was a fluent voice for Debussy’s moody atmospherics and Nabors’ combination of lyricism and animation.

Nabors, a 28-year-old composer from Alabama, speaking by phone with James Wilson, the Chamber Music Society’s artistic director in a pre-concert conversation, suggested that “Énergie” speaks to today’s concerns about environmental degradation; his translation of energy into French is an indirect reference to the Paris climate accords.

His brief tone poem, however, does not explicitly evoke the natural world or humanity’s effect on it. The electronic track, which accompanies a live flutist, begins with massive, atonal effects not unlike the sound of a glacier “calving” and gradually evolves into a vaguely Caribbean-sounding rhythm track, while the flute develops a tune that, in this context, sounds a hopeful, positive note.

Pianist Rabinovich, violinist Cohen and cellist Wilson were impassioned advocates for the Tchaikovsky, a lengthy elegy to and biography-in-sound of his friend and mentor Nikolai Rubinstein. The heart of the piece is a theme-and-variations set with each variation representing a stage in Rubinstein’s life, from youth to death. A somber main theme, developed in the trio’s first movement, returns to be treated with obsessively accumulating passion in the finale.

This arrangement of materials requires performers to take great care in creating and maintaining a musical-narrative arc, a task this threesome of musicians accomplished impressively. Rabinovich’s apportioning of volume and intensity was especially effective in punctuating the story line. The string players enhanced that with characterful gradations of nostalgic and mournful lyricism.

Notably in the Tchaikovsky, and at times in other selections, the musicians found themselves coping with an unsympathetic sonic environment. Since its renovation several years ago, Perkinson Recital Hall’s formerly warm, mellow acoustic has turned hard-edged and rather cold, tending to project instrumental sound in clinical detail. In this performance, piano sound louder than forte gave off distracting sympathetic tones, while higher registers of violin and flute often turned glassy or grating.

noon-3 p.m. EDT
1700-2000 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.net

John Adams: “Short Ride in a Fast Machine”
Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal/Kent Nagano
(Decca)

Bartók: Piano Quintet in C major
Alexander Lonquich, piano
Barnabás Kelemen, violin
Lawrence Power, viola
Nicolas Altstaedt, cello
(Alpha)

Brahms: Scherzo in E flat minor, Op. 4
Jonathan Plowright, piano
(BIS)

Nielsen: “Maskarade” –
Overture
Act 2 Prelude
“Dance of the Cockerels”
Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Ulf Schirmer
(Decca)

Janáček: “Jenůfa” Suite
(arrangement by Manfred Honeck & Tomáš Ille)
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck
(Reference Recordings)

Past Masters:
Richard Strauss: “Der Rosenkavalier” waltzes
(arrangement by Rudolf Kempe)
Staatskapelle Dresden/Rudolf Kempe
(Warner Classics)
(recorded 1973)

Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major
Christian Tetzlaff, violin
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Robin Ticciati
(Ondine)

Debussy: “Jeux”
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Jonathan Nott
(Pentatone)

In recent days, we get closer looks at and performance critiques of two of the most remarked-upon conductors in recent years, Teodor Currentzis and Kirill Petrenko.

The New York Times’ Michael Cooper profiles Currentzis, whose alt-classical persona “looks more CBGB than Carnegie Hall,” as he leads performances and after-hours musical happenings in Perm, the city in the foothills of the Russian Ural mountains where he has been artistic director of the state opera company, while also leading his period-instruments orchestra MusicAeterna:

The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, meanwhile, recounts early hearings of Petrenko as he takes over direction of the Berlin Philharmonic, hearing in the conductor’s work “a straight-ahead rightness” in interpretation while worrying that his choices of repertory to date represent a “retrenchment” from the commitment to contemporary music shown by his predecessor, Simon Rattle:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/kirill-petrenkos-unadventurous-debut-at-the-berlin-philharmonic

Currentzis, born in Greece, was educated and has so far pursued his career in Russia. Petrenko, born in Russia, emigrated to Austria in teenage and has risen professionally in Germany. This kind of border-hopping resonates locally: Of the five candidates to become the Richmond Symphony’s next music director, one, Valentina Peleggi, is an Italian currently working in Brazil; another, Farkhad Khudyev, is a native of Turkmenistan who has worked in Britain and the US. A sixth candidate, Paolo Bortolameolli, who withdrew over the summer, is the Chilean-born associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

9/11: a musical contemplation of a tragic anniversary.

noon-3 p.m. EDT
1700-2000 UTC/GMT
WDCE, University of Richmond
90.1 FM
http://wdce.net

Michael Torke: “Corner in Manhattan”
Ying Quartet
(Quartz)

Martino Traversa: “Manhattan Bridge, 4:30 am”
Algoritmo Ensemble/Marco Angius
(Neos)

Siegfried Matthus: “Manhattan Concerto”
Wurttembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen/Ola Rudner
(Genuin)

Stravinsky: Elegy for solo violin
Ilya Gringolts, violin
(BIS)

Hindemith: “Trauermusik”
Antoine Tamestit, viola
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Järvi
(Naïve)

Mozart: Requiem in D minor, K. 626
(completion by Robert D. Levin)
Karina Gauvin, soprano
Marie-Nicole Lemieux, contralto
John Tessier, tenor
Nathan Berg, bass-baritone
La Chapelle de Québec
Les Violons du Roy/Bernard Labadie
(Dorian)

Kevin Puts: “Dark Vigil”
Ying Quartet
(Quartz)

John Adams: “On the Transmigration of Souls”
New York Choral Artists
Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Philip Smith, trumpet
New York Philharmonic/Lorin Maazel
(Nonesuch)

Gershwin: Lullaby
Alexander String Quartet
(Foghorn Classics)

It’s violin season, and they’re not all kids. That’s the top line on 2019-20 classical events in Richmond.

The season’s highlight is the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition, a biennial event for violinists 21 and younger, running from May 14 to 24 at venues throughout the Richmond area.

The opening and closing concerts of the Richmond Symphony’s Masterworks series feature Menuhin winners past and present. Virginia Commonwealth University’s Rennolds Chamber Concerts series opens with a Menuhin alumnus, violinist Inmo Yang (also performing in the symphony opener) and closes with a concert by the competition’s judges, violinists Pamela Frank and Noah Bendix-Balgley, violist Joji Hattori, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum and pianists Anton Nel and Gordon Back.

Also performing in Menuhin concerts are classical violinists Ray Chen, Elena Urioste, Ning Feng, Christian Li and Chloe Chua (the last two are the competition’s most recent winners); jazz violinist Regina Carter and her quartet; and the folk fiddle-and-guitar duo Mark and Maggie O’Connor.

One of Yehudi Menuhin’s most stellar protégés, violinist Daniel Hope, is joined by the Zurich Chamber Orchestra in a tribute to his old master in the classical series of the University of Richmond’s Modlin Arts Center.

The season’s string-centricity extends well beyond Menuhin-related events. Cellist Julian Schwarz is featured in the symphony’s Masterworks series, and its Metro Collection series spotlights the orchestra’s concertmaster, Daisuke Yamamoto, principal violist Molly Sharp and principal cellist Neal Cary among other symphony principals performing as soloists or duo partners.

Modlin Center concerts feature violinist Soovin Kim, performing with the Shanghai Quartet and pianist Orion Weiss, and cellist Matt Haimovitz in a duo concert with pianist Simone Dinnerstein. Cellist Paul Watkins joins pianist Alessio Bax in a Rennolds concert at VCU. Among the highlights of the Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia’s season are Bach programs featuring violinist Johnny Gandlesman and viola da gamba player Anna Steinhof. And violinist Amram Ganz, a noted solo and chamber musician on the European circuit, joins pianist Alexander Paley in his fall festival.

String-quartet performances, in addition to the Shanghai’s, include the Dover and Catalyst quartets at VCU, and the Takács Quartet in a return engagement at UR.

Amid all this fiddling, the symphony will welcome one of its most prominent conducting alumni, Marin Alsop, for its season-opening concert, followed by five candidates – Roderick Cox, Ankush Kumar Bahl, Laura Jackson, Valentina Peleggi and Farkhad Khudyev – seeking to become the orchestra’s next music director.

Several of the season’s most stellar visiting artists are not string players. The British tenor Ian Bostridge performs with pianist-composer Brad Mehldau at UR. Anthony McGill, principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic, will be featured with the symphony. Two eminent pianists present solo concerts: Jon Nakamatsu at VCU and Yefim Bronfman at UR.

The Richmond Symphony Chorus sings in two rarely heard works, Alexander Zemlinsky’s setting of Psalm 23 and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “The Bells,” a cantata based on the Edgar Allan Poe poem, and will be led by George Manahan, the former symphony music director, in the orchestra’s annual performance of Handel’s “Messiah.”

Another major choral event is a performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor by the Cathedral Schola Cantorum and Three Notch’d Road Baroque Ensemble at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.

Virginia Opera stages two repertory staples, Puccini’s “Tosca” and Verdi’s “Aïda,” along with Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” (“Cinderella”) and Daniel Catán’s “Il Postino,” a 2010 work based in part on the 1997 film “The Postman.”

As it often does, eighth blackbird, UR’s resident new-music sextet, offers the season’s wild-card entry: Joined by the percussion ensemble beyond this point and composer Matthew Burtner, the ’birds will present “Transient Landscapes,” described as an “interactive performance installation” on the theme of environmental change and its consequences, on sites around the UR campus.

As for conflicting concert dates, the season starts with one, on Sept. 15, when the opening of VCU’s Rennolds series, with violinist Inmo Yang and pianist Sahun Hong, and the first ticketed concert by the Chamber Music Society at UR’s Perkinson Hall occur on the same afternoon. Events from those same presenters butt up against each other on Feb. 23, as cellist Paul Watkins and pianist Alessio Bax perform at VCU and the Chamber Music Society stages a concert at UR.

Another conflict, on Oct. 11, pits organist Daryl Robinson, performing in the American Guild of Organists’ Repertoire Recital Series at River Road Presbyterian Church, against the Atlantic Chamber Ensemble, playing at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.

On Oct. 20, attending an afternoon symphony concert at Randolph-Macon College and an evening program by Bostridge and Mehldau at UR would require a quick dinner and long commute.

For ensembles and presenters looking to stay out of the way of previously announced concerts, their best bet is January, whose calendar is empty except for symphony events (one of them a morning LolliPops family concert) on three weekends.

Here’s a thumbnail calendar of 2019-20 events by Richmond’s major classical presenters. (* Indicates a free concert or one open by donation; admission arrangements for some Menuhin Festival events have yet to be announced.) The calendar will be updated as other events are announced. For program and ticket details, click on the links following the calendar.

SEPTEMBER
*14 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Mary Boodell, flute; Diana Cohen, violin; James Wilson, cello; Roman Rabinovich, piano; Chioke l’Anson, speaker (Gellman Room, Richmond Public Library)
15 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Mary Boodell, flute; Diana Cohen, violin; James Wilson, cello; Roman Rabinovich, piano (Perkinson Recital Hall, University of Richmond)
15 – Inmo Yang, violin; Sahun Hong, piano (Singleton Arts Center, Virginia Commonwealth University)
21-22 – Richmond Symphony, Marin Alsop conducting; Inmo Yang, violin; Richmond Symphony Chorus (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
*27 – Alexander Paley, piano (St. Luke Lutheran Church)
*28 – Alexander Paley, piano; Amiram Ganz, violin (St. Luke Lutheran Church)
*29 – Alexander Paley & Pei-wen Chen, piano duo (St. Luke Lutheran Church)

OCTOBER
2 – Shanghai Quartet; Soovin Kim, violin; Orion Weiss, piano (UR Modlin Center)
5 – Richmond Symphony Pops, Chia-Hsuan Lin conducting; Michael Cavanaugh, guest star: “The Music of Elton John” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
6 – Dover Quartet (VCU Singleton Arts Center)
*11 – American Guild of Organists: Daryl Robinson, organ (River Road Presbyterian Church)
*11 – Atlantic Chamber Ensemble (Cathedral of the Sacred Heart)
12 – Chanticleer (River Road Church, Baptist)
16 – Simone Dinnerstein, piano; Matt Haimovitz, cello (UR Modlin Center)
*18 – Ingrid Keller, piano; Jonathan Ruck, cello (UR Perkinson Recital Hall)
18/20 – Virginia Opera: “Tosca” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
20 – Ian Bostridge, tenor; Brad Mehldau, piano (UR Modlin Center)
20 – Richmond Symphony, Roderick Cox conducting; David Lemelin, clarinet (Randolph-Macon College Blackwell Auditorium)
26 – Richmond Symphony, Roderick Cox conducting; Brandie Sutton, soprano (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
27 – Richmond Philharmonic, Peter Wilson conducting; Charles Staples, piano (Henrico High School)

NOVEMBER
2 – Richmond Symphony LolliPops, Chia-Hsuan Lin conducting: “Wild Wild West” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
3 – Catalyst Quartet (VCU Singleton Arts Center)
4 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Carsten Schmidt, harpsichord; Anna Steinhof, viola da gamba; Meg Owens, oboe (Branch House)
*8-9 – Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival: eighth blackbird, other artists TBA (UR, various venues)
10 – Richmond Symphony, conductor TBA; Neal Cary, cello (Blackwell Auditorium, Randolph-Macon College)
15 – Daniel Hope, violin; Zurich Chamber Orchestra (UR Modlin Center)
16-17 – Richmond Symphony, Chia-Hsuan Lin conducting; Eduardo Rojas, piano (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
*17 – American Guild of Organists: Aaron Tan, organ (First Presbyterian Church)
22/24 – Virginia Opera: “Il Postino” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
30 – Richmond Symphony LolliPops, Chia-Hsuan Lin conducting: “The Snowman” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)

DECEMBER
2 – Commonwealth Catholic Charities benefit: Richmond Symphony, et al. (Cathedral of the Sacred Heart)
6 – Richmond Symphony, George Manahan conducting; Richmond Symphony Chorus; soloists TBA: Handel: “Messiah” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
7-8 – Richmond Symphony Pops, Chia-Hsuan Lin conducting; Richmond Symphony Chorus: “Let It Snow!” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
*8 – UR Schola Cantorum & Women’s Chorale, Jeffrey Riehl & David Pedersen directing: Festival of Lessons and Carols (UR Cannon Memorial Chapel)
*9 – Forgotten Clefs (Cathedral of the Sacred Heart)
*13 – Musicians of Cathedral of the Sacred Heart: Festival of Lessons and Carols (Cathedral of the Sacred Heart)
*14 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Christina Day Martinson & Johnny Gandelsman, violins; Jason Amos, viola; James Wilson, cello; Mary Boodell, traverso flute; Tricia van Oers, recorder; Carsten Schmidt, harpsichord (Gellman Room, Richmond Public Library)
15 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Johnny Gandelsman, violin (Wilton House Museum)
16 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Christina Day Martison, Johnny Gandelsman & Jessie Montgomery, violins; Jason Amos, viola; James Wilson, cello; Jessica Powell Eig, double-bass; Mary Boodell, traverso flute; Tricia van Oers, recorder; Sara Huebsch, oboe & recorder; Mary Bowden, trumpet; Carsten Schmidt, harpsichord (Holy Comforter Episcopal Church)
18 – Vienna Choir Boys (First Baptist Church)

JANUARY
11 – Richmond Symphony, Ankush Kumar Bahl conducting; Anthony McGill, clarinet (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
18 – Richmond Symphony Pops, Ankush Kumar Bahl conducting: “Journey into the Cosmos” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
25 – Richmond Symphony LolliPops, Chia-Hsuan Lin conducting: “It’s a Symphony Sing-along!” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)

FEBRUARY
1 – Richmond Symphony, Laura Jackson conducting; Julian Schwarz, cello (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
7 – National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Volodymyr Sirenko conducting; Volodymyr Vynnyetsky, piano (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
9 – Richmond Symphony, Laura Jackson conducting; Daisuke Yamamoto, violin; Molly Sharp, viola (Blackwell Auditorium, Randolph-Macon College)
21/23 – Virginia Opera: “La Cenerentola” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
*22 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Nurit Pacht & Suliman Takelli, violins; Drew Alexander Forde & Dana Kelley, violas; James Wilson, cello (Gellman Room, Richmond Public Library)
23 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Nurit Pacht & Suliman Takelli, violins; Drew Alexander Forde & Dana Kelley, violas; James Wilson, cello (UR Perkinson Recital Hall)
23 – Paul Watkins, cello; Alessio Bax, piano (VCU Singleton Arts Center)
28 – Takács Quartet (UR Modlin Arts Center)
29 – Richmond Symphony Pops, Chia-Hsuan Lin conducting; Jeans ’n Classics, guest stars: “The Apollo Hall of Fame” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)

MARCH
7-8 – Richmond Symphony, Valentina Peleggi conducting; Angela Cheng, piano (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
14 – Richmond Symphony LolliPops, Valentina Peleggi conducting; School of the Richmond Ballet: “Appalachian Spring” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
15 – Richmond Philharmonic, Peter Wilson conducting; Aaron Clay, double-bass (venue TBA)
*22 – Doris Wylee-Becker, piano (UR Modlin Center)
27/29 – Virginia Opera: “Aïda” (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
*30 – Bruce Stevens, organ (UR Cannon Memorial Chapel)
31 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Mary Boodell, flute; Sivan Magen, harp; Melissa Reardon, viola (UR Perkinson Recital Hall)

APRIL
4 – Jon Nakamtsu, piano (VCU Singleton Arts Center)
16 – Yefim Bronfman, piano (UR Modlin Center)
18-19 – Richmond Symphony, Farkhad Khudyev conducting; Richmond Symphony Chorus; soloists TBA (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
*18 – eighth blackbird; beyond this point; Matthew Burtner, composer & ecoacoustician (UR, venues TBA)
*24 – American Guild of Organists: Clara Gerdes, organ (St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church)
26 – Richmond Symphony, Farkhad Khudyev conducting; Mary Boodell, flute; Lynette Wardle, harp (Blackwell Auditorium, Randolph-Macon College)

MAY
*1 – Cathedral Schola Cantorum; Three Notch’d Road Baroque Ensemble: J.S. Bach: Mass in B minor (Cathedral of the Sacred Heart)
3 – Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia: Diane Pascal, violin; James Wilson, cello; Carsten Schmidt, piano (UR Perkinson Recital Hall)
6 – Richmond Symphony members: “Voices of Hope – Instruments that Survived the Holocaust” (Cathedral of the Sacred Heart)
14 – Menuhin Competition: Richmond Symphony, Jahja Ling conducting; Christian Li, Chloe Chua & Soyoung Yoon, violins (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Arts Center)
15 – Menuhin Competition: Chloe Chua & Christian Li, violins; Gordon Back, piano (Thomas Dale High School)
16 – Menuhin Competition: Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra, Daniel Myssyk conducting; Ning Feng, violin (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Arts Center)
17 – Pamela Frank & Noah Bendix-Balgley, violins; Joji Hattori, viola; Ralph Kirshbaum, cello; Gordon Back & Anton Nel, piano (VCU Singleton Arts Center)
18 – Menuhin Competition: Regina Carter Quartet (November Theater, Virginia Repertory Center)
19 – Menuhin Competition: Ning Feng, violin; Anton Nel, piano (UR Perkinson Recital Hall)
20 – Menuhin Competition: Mark & Maggie O’Connor, fiddles/violins & guitar (Byrd Theatre)
21 – Menuhin Competition: Sphinx Virtuosi; Elena Urioste & Joji Hattori, violins (UR Modlin Center)
22 – Menuhin Competition: Sphinx Virtuosi; junior competition finalists, violins (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Arts Center)
23 – Menuhin Competition: Richmond Symphony, Andrew Litton conducting; senior competition finalists, violins (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)
24 – Menuhin Competition: Richmond Symphony, Andrew Litton conducting; Sphinx Virtuosi; Ray Chen, violin; junior & senior competition winners, violins (Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center)

* * *

Richmond Symphony 2019-20 season:
http://wordpress.com/post/letterv.blog/4167

Virginia Opera 2019-20 season:
http://wordpress.com/post/letterv.blog/4249

UR Modlin Center 2019-20 season:
http://wordpress.com/post/letterv.blog/4813

VCU Rennolds Chamber Concerts 2019-20 season:
http://wordpress.com/post/letterv.blog/4825

Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia 2019-20 season:
http://wordpress.com/post/letterv.blog/4828

Alexander Paley Music Festival 2019:
http://wordpress.com/post/letterv.blog/5047

Menuhin Competition 2020 public events schedule:
http://wordpress.com/post/letterv.blog/4687