NEW YORK, NY.- The Latino experience will be a focus of Carnegie Halls coming season, the presenters leadership announced Wednesday, with a festival inside and beyond the halls walls called Nuestros Sonidos (Our Sounds) and a slate of concerts featuring artists with ties to Latin America.
Clive Gillinson, Carnegies executive and artistic director, said in an interview that the festival was meant to respond to the underrepresentation of Latino people and Hispanic culture in American classical music.
We thought, he said, we ought to make sure we address that balance.
Gustavo Dudamel, the superstar conductor who was born in Venezuela, will open both the 2024-25 season and the festival in October, by leading his Los Angeles Philharmonic in three concerts. He will have a growing presence in New York next season: Aside from his Carnegie appearances, he will lead several weeks of programming with the New York Philharmonic, where he takes over as music and artistic director in 2026.
Mexican-born composer Gabriela Ortiz will be in residence at Carnegie all season. Five of her works, including a concerto she wrote for cellist Alisa Weilerstein, will have their New York premieres.
Carnegies season lineup about 170 performances will also feature pianists Lang Lang and Mitsuko Uchida, violinist Maxim Vengerov and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, who will each organize a series of Perspectives concerts.
Here are 12 highlights from the season, chosen by critics for The New York Times. JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ
Mitsuko Uchida and Musicians From Marlboro, Nov. 12
Peerlessly subtle pianist Mitsuko Uchida is a Carnegie favorite, and this season is the last in her three-year Perspectives series. Among solo and orchestral appearances, shell perform with young musicians from Marlboro Music, where she is an artistic director. With them at Zankel Hall, shell glory in Romanticism (Robert Schumanns Piano Quartet) and Beethovens Piano Trio in E flat (Op. 70, No. 2). Shell also revel in some of the mercurial modernism of Gyorgy Kurtag, a composer she has long championed. SETH COLTER WALLS
Berlin Philharmonic, Nov. 17-19
This orchestra and its chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, offer a master class in stupefying technique and passion. After giving Korngolds only symphony a rare outing at Carnegie in 2022, theyll play his better known Violin Concerto with Hilary Hahn, as well as Sergei Rachmaninoffs brooding Isle of the Dead, Antonín Dvoraks Seventh Symphony and, for Anton Bruckners 200th birthday, his grandly sprawling Fifth, a rare foray into his music for Petrenko. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Nov. 22-23
Klaus Mäkelä doesnt officially take the podium of this storied ensemble until 2027, but he has already appeared with it frequently over the past two seasons as its artistic partner. These dates will be their first New York appearance together since his appointment, with other enticements in the local premiere of a new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid and excellent violinist Lisa Batiashvili as the soloist in Sergei Prokofievs Second Violin Concerto. JOSHUA BARONE
Czech Philharmonic, Dec. 3-5
Its a dubious belief that being from a specific country makes an orchestra particularly well-suited to play that nations music. But recently, that has been the case with the Czech Philharmonic under its chief conductor, Semyon Bychkov. Featuring star soloists in Yo-Yo Ma, Daniil Trifonov and more, this series offers an opportunity to hear great Czech music by Dvorak, Bedrich Smetana and Leos Janacek who will be represented by a rare performance of his Glagolitic Mass. JOSHUA BARONE
Janine Jansen and Denis Kozhukhin, Dec. 10
Janine Jansen, an elegant and radiantly modest Dutch violinist, has long been troubled by injuries and her career centers on Europe, so her New York appearances should be treasured including this recital, her first at Carnegie since 2018. Joined by pianist Denis Kozhukhin, she will play works by Johannes Brahms and Clara and Robert Schumann. On March 5, she will also join the London Symphony Orchestra and Antonio Pappano for Leonard Bernsteins Serenade (After Platos Symposium). ZACHARY WOOLFE
Orchestra of St. Lukes, Jan. 23
French conductor Raphaël Pichon creates highly imaginative programs for concerts and recordings, shaping them into emotive, musically cogent performances. For his Carnegie Hall debut, he leads the Orchestra of St. Lukes in a recreation of his spellbinding album Mein Traum, which sustains an atmosphere of caliginous beauty in a loosely plotted drama fashioned from works by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Carl Maria von Weber. Baritone Christian Gerhaher and soprano Ying Fang are the vocal soloists. OUSSAMA ZAHR
International Contemporary Ensemble, Jan. 30
The program Boulez Rebooted looks to be the highlight of Carnegies centennial celebration of Pierre Boulez, the firebrand composer, conductor and pioneer of computer music. The International Contemporary Ensemble will present Anthèmes 2, a sizzling work for violin and live electronics, as well as pieces by Kaija Saariaho and Tyshawn Sorey and a new work inspired by Pierre Boulez, IRCAM Variations, named after the experimental music institution he founded in the 1970s. SETH COLTER WALLS
Yuja Wang and Vikingur Olafsson, Feb. 19
For a lover of piano music, this pairing of two keyboard virtuosos in their prime is dreamy, intriguing and, actually, completely logical. Each has a brand of cool perfection Wangs playing burns with a cold fire, and Olafssons is elegantly intellectual that suits the precision required for four-hands repertoire. They will perform Schuberts soulful Fantasie in F minor (D. 940) and Rachmaninoffs arrangement of his Symphonic Dances. OUSSAMA ZAHR
Cleveland Orchestra, March 18
Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian possesses a voice of black steel that can withstand the intense lyricism of her singing. She performs Richard Strauss exquisite Four Last Songs and the final scene from Giacomo Puccinis Suor Angelica with the Cleveland Orchestra, under its music director, Franz Welser-Möst. She will also appear at Zankel Hall with pianist Lukas Geniusas on Dec. 17, delving into Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff songs, more intoxicating works in a late-Romantic vein. OUSSAMA ZAHR
Attacca Quartet, May 1
Next season will be a good time for fans of and newcomers to Gabriela Ortiz, whose works dot the Carnegie calendar from beginning to end. There will be a mixture of old and new in the Attacca Quartets appearance at Zankel Hall, which includes Ortizs immense Altar de Muertos (1997) and a to-be-titled world premiere, as well as cellist-composer Paul Wianckos Lift (2016), sure to be thrilling in these players lively hands. JOSHUA BARONE
Nina Stemme and Roland Pontinen, May 2
Nina Stemme, who has reigned for years among the worlds leading dramatic sopranos, was a memorably powerful Salome at Carnegie in 2012 but has never had a solo recital there. She and pianist Roland Pontinen are stuffing her debut with memorable repertoire: Edward Elgars Sea Pictures, Wagners Wesendonck Lieder and the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde as well as, perhaps most intriguing, songs by Kurt Weill. Immolation Scene encore, anyone? ZACHARY WOOLFE
Cécile McLorin Salvant: Ogresse, May 21
The synopsis for Ogresse is spare: She falls in love. She eats the guy. She dies. Yet Cécile McLorin Salvants skill as a composer and singer is anything but compact. Her jazz-meets-chamber-music song cycle premiered in 2018, and for anyone who missed it, sweet relief comes with this revival on the closing night of Salvants Perspectives series. Darcy James Argue, an arranger on the project and a regular collaborator of Salvants, conducts. SETH COLTER WALLS
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.