Orchestra Of St. Luke's Winter-Spring To Include Pianists Paul Lewis And Hélène Grimaud At Carnegie Hall

Orchestra of St. Luke's (OSL) 2019 winter-spring season will run from February through the end of May, bringing music to all five boroughs of New York City. The season includes two Carnegie Hall subscription series concerts led respectively by Principal Conductor Bernard Labadie and Conductor Laureate Pablo Heras-Casado, OSL's signature Chamber Music series, a collaboration with New York's MasterVoices in Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's 1941 Lady in the Dark at New York City Center, as well as Music in Color: Gabriela Lena Frank. Music in Color is OSL's annual five-borough, multi-disciplinary concert tour highlighting the works and lives of classical composers of color.

Carnegie Hall SUBSCRIPTION SERIES

Maestro Bernard Labadie and OSL return to Carnegie Hall for a February 28 program featuringHaydn's Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp Minor, "Farewell" in all its theatricality, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 19 with soloist Paul Lewis ("the leading Beethoven pianist of his generation," The Chicago Tribune) in his concerto debut in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium, and a Mozart concert aria taken from a revised scena and rondo from Idomeneo sung by rising soprano Ying Fang.

On April 18, the Orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall with Conductor Laureate Pablo Heras-Casadofor a program highlighted by Ravel's exuberant Piano Concerto in G Major performed by Hélène Grimaud. The program also pairs Haydn's Symphony No. 103 in E-flat Major, "Drumroll" with Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 which the composer himself designated "Classical" and for which he cited Haydn as his inspiration, completing therefore Labadie's Haydn theme for his inaugural season as Principal Conductor.

CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

OSL's signature Chamber Music Series continues with a winter program which pairs a late work ofMozart, his Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581, with the rarely-heard Grande sestetto concertante, an anonymous 1808 string sextet setting of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, K. 364. St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble will perform on February 5, at Merkin Hall,February 6 at The Morgan Library & Museum, and February 10 at Brooklyn Museum. The spring program, Mendelssohn the Prodigy, Sunday, April 28 at the Brooklyn Museum, April 30 atMerkin Concert Hall, and May 1 at The Morgan Library, showcases the composer's youthful genius with his Violin Concerto in D Minor, and Octet for Strings, Op. 20, both composed when he was still a teenager.

Kurt Weill AND Ira Gershwin'S LADY IN THE DARK

On April 25 and 26 as part of New York City Center's 75th Anniversary Season, Orchestra of St. Luke's and MasterVoices will join artistic forces for Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's 1941 Broadway musical, Lady in the Dark, last performed in New York in 1994. Four-time Tony Award nomineeVictoria Clark stars as Liza, a successful magazine editor who turns to psychoanalysis to uncover the source of her unhappiness.

MUSIC IN COLOR: CELEBRATING THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Every season, OSL presents free concerts throughout New York City to engage new audiences with classical music through dynamic concerts and multidisciplinary programs designed to be as entertaining as they are educational. Now entering its third year, the signature Music in Color five-borough Free Community Concert tour and Free School Concerts focus its 2019 program on the music of Gabriela Lena Frank, an American composer of Peruvian, Chinese, and Lithuanian Jewish descent. Having been commissioned to write a piece for OSL in 2015, Frank returns to help curate this program, which includes selections from her own string quartets, as well as a piece by one of Frank's inspirations, Chou Wen-chung. In addition, OSL will premiere five new works co-commissioned by OSL and composed by Fellows of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, with the composers present for the performances. Through a narration written and performed by actor and playwright Kirya Traber, the program highlights Frank's belief in the power of music as a tool for civic engagement. The 2019 Music in Color Free Community Concerts are included as festival partners in Carnegie Hall's 2018-2019 festival, Migrations: The Making of America.