Palm Beach Symphony Announces 2022-23 Season Featuring Two World Premieres

Palm Beach Symphony has announced its 2022-2023 Masterworks Season featuring an expanded schedule of six concerts that will feature legendary guest artists drawn from the world's great stages - violinists Joshua Bell and Sarah Chang, pianists Garrick Ohlsson, Misha Dichter and Maria João Pires and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham - who join Music Director Gerard Schwarz in programs that will include two world premieres, including a commission by the Symphony, and six additional works that are new to the Symphony's repertoire.

"We are thrilled Palm Beach Symphony has become a collaborative home for today's leading artists and that we have added a sixth concert to the season," said Maestro Schwarz. "Great orchestras not only bring acclaimed soloists to their audiences, they also introduce new composers and works to them. I'm proud that the Symphony has commissioned five new works to mark its 50th anniversary which we will celebrate in the 2023-2024 season. But, audiences won't have to wait that long to get a taste - we will premiere the first of these commissions in the coming season with a work by Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph Schwantner."

Schwantner, known for his dramatic and unique style and as a gifted orchestral colorist, is one of the most prominent American composers today. His compositional career has been marked by many awards, grants and fellowships, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for his orchestral composition Aftertones of Infinity and several GRAMMY® nominations. Among his many commissions is his Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, commissioned for the 150th anniversary season of the New York Philharmonic, and one of the most performed concert works of the past several decades. Christopher Lamb, soloist in the recent Naxos recording of Schwantner's music by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, received a 2012 GRAMMY Award for "Best Classical Instrumental Solo" with Schwantner's Percussion Concerto.

The 2022-2023 season will also unveil the world premiere of the orchestral version of Adolphus Hailstork's Monuments for solo trombone and string orchestra which will feature Palm Beach Symphony Principal Trombone and Latin GRAMMY winner Domingo Pagliuca.

"Palm Beach Symphony has just concluded the most successful season in our history with record breaking attendance and critical acclaim," said Palm Beach Symphony CEO David McClymont. "How do we top that? With an additional concert, world premieres and a few surprises that we will announce in the coming months. This season will be a rousing overture to our 50th anniversary and the decades ahead."

Internationally recognized for his moving performances, innovative programming and extensive catalogue of recordings, Maestro Schwarz is a leader both in the southeast region and globally. Locally, he is also the Music Director of the Frost Symphony Orchestra and the Distinguished Professor of Music, Conducting and Orchestral Studies at University of Miami's Frost School of Music. Nationally, he is the Music Director of the All-Star Orchestra, Eastern Music Festival and Mozart Orchestra of New York as well as Conductor Laureate of the Seattle Symphony and Conductor Emeritus of the Mostly Mozart Festival. A prolific recording artist with 14 GRAMMY nominations, he recently released a recording of Schubert's Symphony No. 9 "The Great" with the New York Chamber Symphony, and his extensive catalogue of more than 350 recordings on 11 labels includes The Gerard Schwarz Collection, a 30-CD box set. In his nearly five decades as a respected classical musician and conductor, Maestro Schwarz has received hundreds of honors and accolades including nine Emmy® Awards, eight ASCAP Awards and numerous Stereo Review and Ovation Awards. He holds the Ditson Conductor's Award from Columbia University, was the first American named Conductor of the Year by Musical America and has received numerous honorary doctorates. His book, Behind the Baton, was released by Amadeus Press in March 2017.

Subscription packages begin at $120 for the six-concert Masterworks Series performed at The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts located at 701 Okeechobee Blvd. in West Palm Beach. Current subscribers may renew beginning April 18 with new subscriptions available on May 16. Tickets to individual concerts will go on sale October 3. Subscriptions will be available online at PalmBeachSymphony.org; by phone at (561) 281-0145; or by visiting the Palm Beach Symphony Box Office weekdays from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. at 400 Hibiscus Street, Suite 100, West Palm Beach.

Masterworks Series #1

Sunday, November 6 at 3 p.m.
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd, West Palm Beach, FL

Guest Artist:
Sarah Chang, violin

Program:

Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26

Copland: Billy the Kid Suite (Palm Beach Symphony Premiere)

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 (Palm Beach Symphony Premiere)

One of the foremost violinists of our time, Sarah Chang, will open the season performing the virtuoso passages and rich melodies of Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26. In reviewing her EMI Classics recording of Brahms and Bruch violin concertos with Kurt Masur and the Dresdner Philharmonie, Gramophone magazine reported, "To listen to Sarah Chang is to be bathed in the sheer beauty of her sound. It can yield some sublime moments: the way the violin line emerges out of the orchestra in the first movement of the Bruch, or the sheer finesse of every phrase in both works, virtuosity worn lightly but unmistakable none the less." Palm Beach Symphony continues the dazzling season opener by adding two works to its repertoire as it delivers an ode to the romance and realities of the American frontier in Copland's Billy the Kid Suite and closes the concert with the lush harmonies and melodies of Brahms' Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73.

Chang has performed with the most esteemed orchestras, conductors and accompanists in an international career spanning more than two decades. Highlights from recent and upcoming seasons include performances with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Houston Symphony, Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, San Diego Symphony and New Jersey Symphony. Her European engagements have taken her to Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and her engagements in Asia have brought her to audiences in China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. In 2011, Chang was named an official Artistic Ambassador by the United States Department of State, and her numerous honors include receiving the Harvard University Leadership Award, Yale University dedicating a chair in Sprague Hall in her name, being the youngest person ever to receive the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame award and the Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana Prize in Siena, Italy.

Masterworks Series #2

Thursday, December 1 at 8 p.m.
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd, West Palm Beach, FL

Guest Artist:
Garrick Ohlsson, piano

Program:

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 73 "Emperor"

Sibelius: Night Ride and Sunrise, Op. 55 (Palm Beach Symphony Premiere)

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 78 "Organ Symphony" (Palm Beach Symphony Premiere)

Garrick Ohlsson joins the Palm Beach Symphony to perform Beethoven's last piano concerto, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 73, known as "Emperor," featuring the trademark grandeur of the composer's heroic period. Palm Beach Symphony opens the program with Sibelius' atmospheric Night Ride and Sunrise, Op. 55 and closes it as it revels in the popular orchestral showcase of Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 78 popularly known as the "Organ Symphony."

Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition (where he remains the single American to have won the Gold Medal), Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. With the reopening of concert activity in the U.S. in summer 2021 he appeared with the Indianapolis and Cleveland orchestras, in a recital in San Francisco, in the Brevard Festival and four Brahms recitals at Chicago's Ravinia Festival. The 21-22 season began with the KBS, in Seoul followed by Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle symphonies, BBC Glasgow and European orchestras in Prague, Hamburg, Lyon and St. Petersburg. In recital he can be heard in Los Angeles, Houston, Kansas City as well as Poland, Germany and England. A GRAMMY winner, Ohlsson has also been honored with the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music and in August 2018 the Polish Deputy Culture Minister awarded him with the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for cultural merit. The Seattle Times reported, "What a sound! Ohlsson is famous for that great sonority, though he never seems to be working very hard to produce it. There are no histrionics, no flailing or thumping or grand standing, just an incredible technique with razor-sharp accuracy, producing a sound so lush it almost glistens."

Masterworks Series #3

Monday, January 30 at 8 p.m.
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd, West Palm Beach, FL

Guest Artist:
Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano

Program:

Mozart: "Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio" and "Voi, che sapete" from Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)

Mozart: "Deh per questo istante solo" from La Clemenza di Tito

Lehár: "Vilja" from The Merry Widow

Berlioz: "Ah! Ah! je vais mourir...Adieu, fière cité" from Les Troyens

Plus selections from The Great American Songbook

Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 in E Minor, Op. 93

Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham performs various arias and songs in a program that includes the Symphony performing Debussy's sensual and evocative Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) and Shostakovich's dramatic and powerful Symphony No. 10 in E Minor, Op. 93 after Stalin's death by the great composer whose career the Russian leader had nearly ended.

Graham rose to the highest echelon of international performers within just a few years of her professional debut, mastering an astonishing range of repertoire and genres along the way. Her operatic roles span four centuries from Monteverdi's Poppea to Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, which was written especially for her. A familiar face at New York's Metropolitan Opera, she also maintains a strong international presence at such key venues as Paris's Théâtre du Châtelet, Santa Fe Opera and the Hollywood Bowl. Her extensive concert and recital career includes collaborations with the world's leading orchestras, and she makes regular appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Orchestre de Paris and London Symphony Orchestra. Among her honors are a GRAMMY Award for her collection of Ives songs, Musical America's Vocalist of the Year and an Opera News Award. The Boston Globe reviewed one of her concert performances noting, "Friday's main draw was mezzo-soprano Susan Graham...Graham was in splendid voice and brought the music across with a luxurious, well-focused tone and plenty of dramatic conviction."

Masterworks Series #4

Tuesday, March 14 at 8 p.m.
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd, West Palm Beach, FL

Guest Artist:
Misha Dichter, piano

Program:

Gershwin: Piano Concerto in F

Schwantner: (As yet untitled world premiere commissioned work by Palm Beach Symphony)

Stravinsky: The Firebird (1910) (Palm Beach Symphony Premiere)

Pianist Misha Dichter, one of America's most popular artists, performs a beloved work by one of America's greatest composers with Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F Major and its uplifting fusion of jazz and dance rhythms. In a highlight of the season, the Symphony presents the world premiere of a work it commissioned from Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Schwantner, one of the most prominent American composers today. The program also features Stravinsky's beloved celebration of Russian folklore with The Firebird.

Now in the sixth decade of a distinguished global career, Dichter has performed and recorded with some of the most illustrious conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, among them Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Lawrence Foster, Valery Gergiev, Carlo Maria Guilini, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Kiril Kondrashin, Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti, Eugene Ormandy, Carlos Prieto, André Previn, Simon Rattle, Gerard Schwarz, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, William Steinberg, Michael Tilson Thomas, Hans Vonk, Edo de Waart, David Zinman and Pinchas Zukerman, while notable chamber music collaborations have included violinists Itzhak Perlman, Mark Peskanov and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, cellists Lynn Harrell and Yo-Yo Ma and the American, Argus, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Harlem, St. Petersburg and Tokyo string quartets. Misha Dichter's discography on the Philips, RCA, MusicMasters and Koch Classics labels are legendary, iconic and musically omnivorous, encompassing the major scores of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Gershwin, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Schubert, Schumann, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. The Los Angeles Times reported, "The pianist commands a wide dynamic and emotional range, finds nuances as well as new insights in all the music he plays, and places his details carefully. Dichter's tremendous authority at the keyboard is the result of a comprehensive technique combined with an astute musicality."

Masterworks Series #5

Sunday, April 16 at 8 p.m.
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd, West Palm Beach, FL

Guest Artist:
Joshua Bell, violin

Program:

Violin concerto - Work to be announced

Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor

Joshua Bell, one of the most celebrated violinists of his era, joins Palm Beach Symphony in a program that will include the Symphony performing Mahler's bold Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor, containing some of that composer's best-known music from pivotal years in his life, including his declaration of love to his future wife and fellow composer, Alma, in the emotionally gripping Adagietto (4th movement).

With a career spanning four decades, Bell has performed with virtually every major orchestra in the world and continues to maintain engagements as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, conductor and Music Director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Bell's highlights in the 2021-22 season include leading the Academy of St Martin in the Fields at the 2021 BBC Proms, throughout Europe and the U.S. on tour; returning with the Philadelphia Orchestra for a play/conduct program, to the Verbier Festival, the Minnesota Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic; and tours with the Israel Philharmonic and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra as soloist. As an exclusive Sony Classical artist, Bell has recorded more than 40 albums garnering GRAMMY®, Mercury®, Gramophone and OPUS KLASSIK awards. Bell has been named 2010 "Instrumentalist of the Year" by Musical America, a 2007 "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum, nominated for six GRAMMY® awards in addition to his win for "Best Classical Instrumental Solo" and received the 2007 Avery Fisher Prize. He has also received the 2003 Indiana Governor's Arts Award and a 1991 Distinguished Alumni Service Award from the Jacobs School of Music. In 2000, he was named an "Indiana Living Legend."

Masterworks Series #6

Monday, May 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd, West Palm Beach, FL

Guest Artist:
Maria João Pires, piano

Piano concerto - Work to be announced

Hailstork: Monuments (World premiere of orchestral version)

Franck: Symphony in D Minor (Palm Beach Symphony Premiere)

Acclaimed piano virtuoso Maria Joao Pires makes a rare American appearance in the season finale.

The program opens with the world premiere of the orchestral version of Adolphus Hailstork's Monuments for solo trombone and string orchestra featuring Palm Beach Symphony Principal Trombone and Latin GRAMMY winner Domingo Pagliuca. The season culminates with the Symphony performing for the first time Franck's Symphony in D Minor, which was once such a beloved staple of concert seasons that it appeared in programs at Carnegie Hall six times is less than two months in 1927.

A three-time GRAMMY nominee, Pires has made recordings for Erato for 15 years and Deutsche Grammophon for 20 years. Since the 1970s, she has devoted herself to reflecting the influence of art in life, community and education, trying to discover new ways of establishing this way of thinking in society. In 1999, Pires created the Belgais Centre for the Study of the Arts in Portugal and, in 2012, she initiated two complementary projects in Belgium: the Partitura Choirs, a project which creates and develops choirs for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the Partitura Workshops. All of the Partitura projects have the aim to create an altruistic dynamic between artists of different generations by proposing an alternative in a world too often focused on competitiveness.

The Lachman Family Foundation, Patrick and Milly Park, Felicia Taylor/The Mary Hilem Taylor Foundation, DeLuca Foundation, Leonard and Norma Klorfine Foundation, Charles and Ann Johnson/The C and A Johnson Family Foundation, Patricia Lambrecht, Dodie and Manley Thaler and the Thaler/Howell Foundation, NetJets, Lugano Diamonds, Findlay Galleries, HSS Florida, PNC Private Bank, The Colony Hotel, Related Companies, Provident Jewelry, IYC, Palm Beach Design Masters, Braman Motorcars, CIBC Private Wealth, and Gent Row LLC are proud sponsors of Palm Beach Symphony. Programs are also sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.

ABOUT Palm Beach SYMPHONY

Palm Beach Symphony is South Florida's premier orchestra known for its diverse repertoire and commitment to community. Founded in 1974, this 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization adheres to a mission of engaging, educating, and entertaining the greater community of the Palm Beaches through live performances of inspiring orchestral music. The orchestra is celebrated for delivering spirited performances by first-rate musicians and distinguished guest artists. Recognized by The Cultural Council for Palm Beach County with a 2020 Muse Award for Outstanding Community Engagement, Palm Beach Symphony continues to expand its education and community outreach programs with children's concerts, student coaching sessions and master classes, instrument donations and free public concerts that have reached more than 56,000 students in recent years. For more information, visit www.palmbeachsymphony.org.

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