Outside Washington, the classical music industry suffers the usual ups and downs, shocks and bumps, with layoffs at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and a reduced season ahead. Inside the Beltway, the chaos is more than just cyclic.
It’s all about the Kennedy Center and the ongoing fallout from Donald Trump’s takeover of the performing arts center last February, and his attempt to change its name in December. Audiences and artists have fled, a boycott has apparently crippled the institution’s finances, and, in February, the president summarily announced that it would shut down for two years, ostensibly for renovation.
Still, the National Symphony Orchestra thrives artistically, the now-itinerant Washington National Opera is hewing to its announced season in other halls, and presenting organizations such as Washington Performing Arts are soldiering on in new venues. It’s chaos and loss everywhere, and all so unnecessary, which only makes the music more essential. People don’t just want art, they need it, and that makes listening all the more vital.
‘Tristan und Isolde,’ by Richard Wagner
Lise Davidsen is the most exciting dramatic soprano in the world today, with a voice of seemingly limitless power and expressive range. In January, she sang Wagner’s Isolde from “Tristan and Isolde” for the first time, in Barcelona, and the reviews were spectacular (“There can be no doubt that we are witnessing the emergence of the great Isolde of the coming decade,” according to one critic). Next month, she undertakes the role at the Metropolitan Opera in a new production by the acclaimed director Yuval Sharon. Michael Spyres sings Tristan, and the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conducts. This is the biggest event of the opera season. March 9-April 20, Lincoln Center, New York. metopera.org
‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated,’ by Frederic Rzewski
One of the great contemporary classics of keyboard music was premiered half a century ago at the Kennedy Center. Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” is a set of dense, virtuosic, brilliant variations on a Chilean protest song that became popular in the early 1970s, around the time a U.S.-backed coup overthrew a popularly elected government in Chile and installed the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet. Since then, Rzewski’s variations have challenged pianists, rewarded audiences and taken their place on recordings and programs next to classic works by Bach (“The Goldberg Variations”) and Beethoven (“The Diabelli Variations”). The New York Philharmonic commissioned an orchestration (by several composers) of the piano work, which will be premiered by the orchestra’s incoming artistic director, Gustavo Dudamel. New York has high hopes that Dudamel can keep the Philharmonic relevant, and appealing to new and existing audiences alike. March 12-17, Lincoln Center, New York. nyphil.org
‘The Crucible,’ opera by Robert Ward
Shortly after Trump announced his takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year, the creative team behind a contemporary opera called “Fellow Travelers” pulled their work from the Washington National Opera’s spring season. The opera, composed by Gregory Spears with a libretto by Greg Pierce, is based on a Thomas Mallon novel about two gay men in love during the McCarthy-era “lavender scares” of the 1950s.
The creative team issued a statement saying the opera’s themes of inclusion and acceptance were incompatible with Trump’s divisive and anti-LGBT politics. The WNO replaced it with Robert Ward’s “The Crucible,” an American classic from the middle of the last century, based on Arthur Miller’s play of the same name that uses the Salem witch trials as a parable of McCarthyism.
The opera is lyrical, accessible and dramatically incisive, and it will give audiences a chance to experience the WNO in Lisner Auditorium, where the company is likely to perform some part of its upcoming seasons now that it, like so many other artists and organizations, has fled Trump’s Kennedy Center. March 21-29, Lisner Auditorium, Washington. washnatopera.org
‘Innocence,’ by Kaija Saariaho
Since its 2021 premiere at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Kaija Saariaho’s opera “Innocence” has been seen in major theaters in Europe and San Francisco. Few contemporary operas generate this kind of buzz and acclaim. The subject is difficult: the aftermath of a school shooting. And the music is eclectic, with Scandinavian folk mashed up with contemporary opera idioms.
The Metropolitan Opera is presenting the work in a production that includes the revered American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the Finnish ethno-pop singer Vilma Jää. April 6-29, Lincoln Center, New York. metopera.org
Bruckner, Symphony No. 7
An indifferently performed or badly conducted performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 is worse than soporific. Sleep would be a blessed escape from its geological slabs of tedium. But when it is performed with discipline and passion, Bruckner’s symphony is spiritually shattering, and restorative.
Fortunately, all the stars are in alignment for the National Symphony Orchestra’s performance under music director Gianandrea Noseda to be a monumental evening. The NSO strings are sounding better than they ever have, and the wind and brass sections are full of some of the finest players in the world.
This April performance, which also features the orchestra’s principal trumpet, William Gerlach, in a concerto by Haydn, comes as the orchestra begins its final weeks at the Kennedy Center, before the two-year shutdown begins in July. It will be an emotional event, and audiences who have reluctantly boycotted the orchestra to send a signal to the Trump administration can show their loyalty to the hometown band as it departs for a new chapter, independent of the now-fraught and failing performing arts venue. April 10-11, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org.
Debussy Préludes for Piano, Books I and II
The definition of a “prelude” would seem simple: something that comes before the main event. But by the time Debussy wrote his two books of preludes for the piano between 1909 and 1913, the musical form was beyond definition.
At best we can say that what is true of preludes generally is true of Debussy’s magnificent exercise in the form: They are vignettes, stand-alone morsels that sound like miniature epics or monumental haiku. The eminent French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet grew up with these pieces and has said he always wanted to program them as an evening-length event. And now Washington Performing Arts is bringing Thibaudet to play them at Strathmore Music Center.
It should be a fully immersive, mesmerizing evening that explores the limits of the piano’s powers of sonority, nuance and color. April 23, Strathmore Music Center, Bethesda. washingtonperformingarts.org.
Mass in B Minor by Bach
The website for the Washington Bach Consort says that Bach’s 1749 Mass in B Minor is “arguably among the greatest musical compositions in any tradition.” Two small corrections: Remove “arguably” and “among.”
The season finale of the beloved baroque music ensemble, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, is devoted to its namesake’s most monumental achievement, a setting of the Latin Mass texts that sprawls into a colossus of musical invention.
It’s almost as if Bach, a Lutheran, wanted to honor, memorialize and lay to rest forever the Catholic Mass by writing a version that could never be surpassed. April 25-26, National Presbyterian Church, Washington. bachconsort.org.
‘Il trittico’ by Puccini
In recent years, music director Noseda has made opera in concert a staple of National Symphony Orchestra programming. Last year’s performance of Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa” was a highlight of the season, resurrecting a drama that often falls flat onstage as a magnificent oratorio of self-delusion and suffering.
This year, he has programmed Puccini’s “Il trittico,” which translates as “The Triptych,” a collection of three one-act operas written late in the composer’s career. This is some of Puccini’s most complex and affecting music, at turns brooding and violent, ecstatic and resigned, and deliriously insouciant and engaging.
The orchestra will take the program to Carnegie Hall in New York (May 3), where it should earn the group the reputation it now deserves, as a top-tier orchestra playing on the world stage. April 29 and May 1, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org.
‘Idomeneo’ by Mozart
Perhaps the easiest summary of Mozart’s 1781 opera “Idomeneo” is: IYKYK. If you know Mozart, you know it is with this serious, sober, powerfully affecting work that he began to produce the greatest operas of the 18th century. If you know opera, you know there is an extraordinarily high return on investment for any time spent with “Idomeneo.”
The Washington Concert Opera’s spring season includes both Mozart’s masterpiece (May 9) and Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers” (March 14), as if to cover the two poles of Apollonian and Dionysian entertainment. After last November’s splendid performance of Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride,” another 18th-century work based on grim mythological material, there’s every reason to hope this foray into “opera seria” will be equally moving. March 14 and May 9, Lisner Auditorium, Washington. concertopera.org.
Orpheus: The Magic of the Arts
The PostClassical Ensemble, a consistently innovative and adventurous group, devotes this program to the Orpheus myth, a perennial inspiration to composers. Angel Gil-Ordóñez’s orchestra collaborates with Dorothy Kosinski, director emerita of the Phillips Collection, to look at parallels between myth, music and the visual arts. It’s an eclectic program, from a cancan by Offenbach to music by Philip Glass and Igor Stravinsky.
No surprise that composers would envy Orpheus, a musician who could enchant animals, nature and the spirits of the underworld, and even — almost — bring back the dead. May 20, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org.
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