By RONALD BLUM
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Carnegie Hall will reach its pre-pandemic level of 170 concerts during a 2023-24 season that includes a focus on the fall of the Weimar Republic.
The hall said Tuesday the season will open Oct. 4 with the Riccardo Muti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
Carnegie was closed by the coronavirus pandemic from March 2020 until early October the following year. It presented about 115 events during the 2021-22 season and has about 150 this season. The 170 next season approximately matches its total in 2018-19.
Carnegie has averaged 89% capacity this season, down from 93% in 2018-19 but slightly above 88% in the first season back from the pandemic.
“Last season, we were slightly conservative about the number of concerts we programmed because we thought maybe people wouldn’t be coming to concerts,” Carnegie Hall executive director Clive Gillinson said at a news conference. “And then when we saw people were desperate to get back to live entertainment, not just music, we added quite a lot of concerts.”
The Weimar programs will run from January until May and include jazz, cabaret and art song in addition to classical and opera. Concerts include Franz Welser-Möst conducting the Cleveland Orchestra (Jan. 20-21) and Vienna Philharmonic (March 1-3), Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (Feb. 1), Gianandrea Noseda leading the National Symphony Orchestra (Feb. 3), Simon Rattle leading the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (May 2-3).
“Weimer demonstrates many lessons about the fragility of democracy that are as relevant today as they were then and it makes it so clear that democracy is a very fragile flower that has to be nurtured and protected all the time,” Gillinson said.
Scheduled performances include Daniel Barenboim with the Staatskapelle Berlin in the four Brahms symphonies (Nov. 30 and Dec. 1); Zubin Mehta leading the Munich Philharmonic (Feb. 3-4); Klaus Mäkelä’s Carnegie Hall debut with the Orchestre de Paris (March 16); and Jakub Hrůša’s Carnegie Hall debut with the Bamberg Symphony (April 24).
Tania León will hold next season’s composer’s chair and the Boston Symphony Orchestra with music director Andris Nelsons will present the New York premiere of a new work. Nelsons will lead a concert version of Shotakovich’s “Macbeth of Mtsenk” on Jan. 30 with a cast that includes his ex-wife, soprano Kristine Opolais, and John Williams will combine with cellist Yo-Yo Ma for a concert on Feb. 22.
Pianist Mitsuko Uchida will play in four concerts in the second installment of her three-season Perspectives series.
Recitals include bass-baritone Bryn Terfel (Nov. 14), tenor Juan Diego Flórez (Nov. 29), soprano Diana Damrau (Feb. 6) and Igor Levit playing transcriptions of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Mahler’s 10th and Hindemith’s “1922” suite (March 7).
