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DR SSO 2019 Season

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CRESCENDO, VALEDICTION... PORTAL: Sydney Symphony Orchestra 2019 Season

You could call the Sydney Symphony Orchestra 2019 Season valedictory, a crescendo or culmination, and it is all of those things for David Robertson, but it’s also a portal.  Although 2019 is his final season as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director with Sydney, he lends a willing hand to the Orchestra as it begins the search for a successor, and to the city he has fallen in love with as its beloved Sydney Opera House prepares to close for a major renewal.

“This is a transition year in certain ways so that was one of the things we thought about,” DR told Limelight, Australia’s Classical Music and Arts Magazine“How does the SSO move to the next chapter?”  For his part, “I’ll be coming back every season for the foreseeable future.”  With pleasure.

To help the SSO build bridges to its future, DR welcomes – and welcomes back – esteemed colleagues to the podium.  In recognition of his 50 year relationship with the SSO, former Principal Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy will return as Conductor Laureate,  Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles will become Principal Guest, and the Australian Simone Young will assume the title Guest Conductor.

Perhaps the most consequential of new beginnings is the first official season of Emma Dunch as the Orchestra’s CEO – and a fitting musical celebration for DR, Australian-style, is a first order of business: “Next year we celebrate the conclusion of David Robertson’s acclaimed tenure as our Chief Conductor and Artistic Director and his concert weeks will be pulling out all the stops with ten blockbuster programs,” she said, as an introduction to 2019.

DR kickstarts the festivities with the February 2019 SSO Season Opening Gala, featuring an encore performance of Nigel Westlake’s 2017 Spirit of the Wild oboe concerto, with SSO Principal Diana Doherty, and music by R. Strauss and Grainger – and ends on a November high note, with American Harmonies: the Australian premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Bassoon Concerto and John Adams’ Harmonielehre, with Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite.  That’s only a taste of the terrain DR traverses in the musical adventure of the 2019 season.  Stuart Skelton sings Britten’s Peter Grimes in concert performances; The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra joins their SSO colleagues for the Australian premiere of Wynton Marsalis’ The Jungle – Symphony No. 4; Susan Graham sings Canteloube’s ethereal Songs of the Auvergne in a Francophile’s dream, with music by Charbier and Saint-Saëns; and Lang Lang returns for a gala Mozart performance, with music by Berio and Schubert.  Varèse, Janáček, Reich, Bartók, and Shostakovich, also ignite the season – but the show stopper may be Tom Stoppard and André Previn’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour: A Play for Actors and Orchestra… it’s hard to choose!

GET THE DETAILS: David Robertson’s 2019 Sydney Symphony Orchestra Season

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