(first published in Express Cincinnati, November, 2012)
Louis Langrée, music director-designate of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, calls the CSO “a new page in the book of my life. I’m thrilled to start and to meet more deeply the musicians, the audience, the patrons, the community and the staff, everyone with whom I will share on different levels.”
French-born Langrée, 51, leads his first concerts as
CSO music director designate this month (Nov. 9, 10, 15, 17 and 18 at Music
Hall). Preceding him will be Beethoven, lots
of it, on the radio, on video and at “listening parties” moderated by CSO
musicians. It’s all part of the CSO’s
new “One City, One Symphony” initiative.
Inaugurated this fall (and likely to be repeated in other contexts in
the future), the program is designed to bring the community together through
music.
Focus of the
initiative is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which Langrée will conduct in a pairing
with Schoenberg’s powerful “A Survivor from Warsaw” Nov. 15, 17 and 18 at Music
Hall with the May Festival Chorus and soloists Twyla Robinson (soprano), Kelley
O’Connor (mezzo-soprano), tenor Dimitri Pittas (tenor) and Morris Robinson
(bass). It is a comprehensive
undertaking. WGUC FM 90.9 is programming
different recordings of the Symphony, including Leonard Bernstein’s historic
concert at the Berlin Wall in 1989 (hear it Nov. 14 at 7 p.m.). WCET and the CSO have co-produced a video of
Cincinnatians chiming in on the “Ode to Joy” (from the final movement) all over
town. (View it at http://cincinnatisymphony.org/Content.php?id=29)
“Listening parties” have been going on since October, and you can check out a “Beethoven bag” containing CDs and listening guides at the Public Library. WCET will simulcast the Nov. 17 concert to several locations (to be announced), and the CSO will offer a free digital download on its web site at a later date.
For information about “One City One Symphony,” including a schedule of CSO “listening parties,” broadcasts and other events, visit www.cincinnatisymphony.org/onecity
Speaking from São Paulo, Brazil, where he led the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra in October, Langrée praised “One City One Symphony.” “The reason to have an orchestra in a city is not only to make nice sounds, but to go deeper in your relation with people and with yourself. What does this music tell you? It gives people the opportunity to feel that art is more than just entertainment.”
To begin the series with Beethoven’s Ninth is “emblematic,” he said. “Beethoven was a composer who wanted art to elevate people, to take care of their well-being, and art is so important to that. It’s also a piece that everybody knows. The last movement (Ode to Joy”) is part of us, though I’m sure there are people who know it and don’t know exactly who composed it.”
The November concerts are the only ones Langrée will conduct with the CSO this season. He makes his official debut as music director in September, 2013. He is constantly in touch, however, and will attend the CSO’s season preview luncheon next spring. Members of the CSO staff are in regular communication with him, “no matter where he is,” said CSO director of communications Christopher Pinelo. “We communicate with him via phone, email and Skype. He is fully and actively engaged in the CSO’s artistic planning and any matters related to musician vacancies.”
Langrée’s plate is full, with conducting engagements made years in advance. He conducts regularly at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna State Opera, he is chief conductor of the Camerata Salzburg in Austria and music director of the annual “Mostly Mozart” Festival in New York. “When I came to Cincinnati last spring (when his CSO appointment was announced), “I just wanted to start immediately, but that’s life. We have to be patient and impatient.”
The November concerts will be “a great two weeks” he said, “because the two programs say something completely different.” Nov. 9 and 10 are all-French, with the Symphony in D Minor by Cesar Franck, Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 (with young French pianist Cédric Tibergien in his CSO debut) and Olivier Messiaen’s “Forgotten Offerings.” “All three of them were organists (as is Langrée’s father) and I think by itself, they had therefore sort of a spiritual vision of the music. The Franck Symphony is really like a sacred service, going from the dark of the beginning to the joy at the end, which finishes in D Major.”
Langrée chose Franck’s Symphony after having conducted Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 with the CSO in March, 2011. “The density of the sound, combined with the clarity of the sound, was shocking, fantastic. I remember well why I said we should do the Franck Symphony. It’s French music, but at the same time, so influenced by the great German composers and sound.”
While not a German orchestra, “one can feel this great identity from its musical roots. Now more and more, I think orchestras lose their identity. What impressed me so much is that with all the diversity of music directors and everything they added to the orchestra, those musicians have a style, a sound. I don’t want to make it my sound or force something. I want to cultivate that, to make it grow, because I love it. It is so precious. Of course, it will be different, because we will have to cultivate our own identity, but I want to preserve and magnify their specificity.”
Tickets to CSO concerts begin at $10, available at (513) 381-3300 and online at www.cincinnatisymphony.org