STORY AND LINK: Pasadena Symphony announces 2012-2013 season

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

 

As the Pasadena Symphony heads into its third season following the 25-year-tenure of former Music Director Jorge Mester, the orchestra continues to find a new rhythm as evidenced by its 85^th season that was announced yesterday.

 

Although there still seems to be no successor to Mester on the horizon, three of the six guest conductors for the 2012-2013 season will have led the PSO during the past and current seasons. James DePreist continues in his role as music advisor but is not on next season's maestro list after leading a concert last season and conducting the final programs on this year's schedule. Russian repertoire will be very much in evidence throughout next season, and newly named Composer-in-Residence Peter Boyer will have not one but three of his works performed during the season.

 

As has been the case during the past couple of years, the upcoming season will have five classical concerts with two performances each at Ambassador Auditorium (2 p.m. and 8 p.m.). Next year will also see a reprise on Dec. 1 of last year's sold-out holiday candlelight concert at All Saints Church, Pasadena. Grant Cooper will again conduct and soprano Lisa Vroman will return as soloist.

 

The classical season will open on Oct. 6 when Mei-Ann Chen, who was a dynamo leading the PSO in this season's opening concerts, returns to open next season, as well. Now music director of the Chicago Sinfionetta and the Memphis Symphony, Chen's PSO program will be Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9, and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, with 16-ytear-old George Li, recipient of the 2012 Gilmore Young Artist Award, as soloist.

 

Other programs on the schedule are:

 

• Nov. 3 -- Edwin Outwater, conductor; Rueibin Chin, piano

A native of Santa Monica, Outwater has been music director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in Ontario, Canada for five years. Now 41, Outwater was resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony for four years and recently made his professional opera debut conducting Verdi's La Traviata at San Francisco Opera.

 

His PSO program will include Huang Li's Spring Festival Overture, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with Chin as soloist.

 

• Jan. 12 -- Tito Muñoz, conductor; Carolyn Goulding, violin

Muñoz -- music director of the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique de Nancy in France -- made an impressive PSO debut last season. He returns to lead Brahms' Symphony No. 1 and Sibelius' Violin Concerto, with Carolyn Goulding as soloist. The program will open with Boyer's "Apollo" from Three Olympians.

 

• Feb. 9 -- Nicholas McGegan, conductor; Yulia Van Doren, soprano; Donald Foster, clarinet

McGegan is known primarily as a Baroque music specialist but his program next month concludes with Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) and his concerts next season will finish with Mahler's Symphony No. 4. For contrast, the PSO's principal clarinet, Donald Foster, will step out from the ranks as soloist in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

 

• April 27, 2013 -- Jose Luis Gomez, conductor; Peter Boyer, conductor; Chee-Yun, violin

Gomez is another of the young conductors to come out of Venezuela's "El Sistema" music program, following in the footsteps of Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. In 2010, Gomez won the fifth International Georg Solti Conductor's Competition in Frankfurt by unanimous decision of the jury. Gomez will conclude the PSO season by leading Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. Meanwhile, Boyer's composition Festivities is on the agenda and the composer will conduct the inaugural performance of his Symphony No. 1 to conclude the season.

 

Read the complete media release HERE.

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.