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insert-name-here festival?

David Stabler has the ticket sales info for last week’s Beethoven Festival, which was quite successful, with just over 71 percent capacity audiences.  He suggests a few possibilities for future festivals, such as Gershwin, Bernstein, or Latin.  That got me to thinking, too.

  • Viennese Festival – works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Berg, Webern, Schoenberg – with lectures on the First and Second Viennese Schools, the Vienna Seccessionist movement, Blaue Reiter school, etc.
  • Beethoven Festival II – all the symphonies, or a selection of symphonies with the violin concerto, excerpts from Fidelio, etc., perhaps with OSO players doing chamber works across the street in the PCPA facility.
  • All-American Festival – Ives, Chadwick, Copland, Bernstein, Ruggles, Rorem, Adams, Corigliano – the possibilities are endless, as is the variety.
  • Keyboard Legends Festival – great pianists playing the great piano concertos: Bronfman, Ax, Hough, Wang, Lang or whoever we can afford for a destination weekend of concerts.
  • Mostly Mozart – we play Mozart better than almost any other American orchestra, why not show off with symphonies, opera arias, overtures, and religious music.

What ideas do you have for the next Oregon Symphony Festival event?

8 replies on “insert-name-here festival?”

Liszt Festival, honoring his 200th anniversary: Missa Solemnis (Graner Mass) + the 2 piano concertos + totentanz + tone poems.

Didn’t the OSO have an annual Mozart weekend in the early 1990s? Or was it a 24 hour Mozart marathon? I remember attending one of these concerts very, very late one evening. And the Schnitzer was quite full. Perhaps a next step could be to celebrate all of Mozart’s works by adding in:
1. Solo recitals. Chamber music (Arnica quartet!).
2. Unstaged operas with chamber ensemble (such as Portland Opera’s studio).
3. Restage the Mozart vs Clementi piano duel now with…
Angela Hewitt vs Mitsuko Uchida, or
Jeremy Denk vs Lang Lang
4. Stage a Latin American conductor’s hair duel.
In this corner, Carlos Kalmar. In this corner, Gustavo Dudamel.
Or, a Mozart & Haydn festival. Or a Bach & Handel festival?

Suggestions…
A Brass Festival in late Fall (the OR Symphony horns are so wonderful)
A Solstice Festival with Vivaldi and other “seasons” pieces to bring more light to winter
A New Year’s Festival with Viennese Waltzes and the traditional Radeztky March
Beethoven II with the symphonies (I second the suggestion above)

In a fantasy world, I see us doing a 21st-century music weekend in a style similar to a film festival, highlighted (and partially funded) by a composition contest gala concert including audience (and orchestra) awards. More realistically, but still unlikely: Ravel, Prokofiev, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Adams, Copland, 20th/21st century opera…

excellent ideas, charles.

i particularly love the vienna & usa projects.

btw, i’m going through a HUGE kandinsky phase right now. his book “point & line to plane” is my numero uno read. it makes a superb book on music composition.

keep the great ideas a-comin’, maestro!

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