NEW YORK, NY.- After scaling back its current season as it grappled with disruptions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, Carnegie Hall announced Tuesday that it would return to full programming next season with a slate of more than 150 concerts.
The 2022-23 season, which is scheduled to run from September to June, will feature the presenter’s typical variety of soloists and ensembles, but with an earnest focus on female musicians and composers.
“We wanted to show that in every area of music, whether it’s jazz, classical or world music, there are truly extraordinary women who are recognized as such on the world platform,” said Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director.
The season’s lineup includes the eminent pianist Mitsuko Uchida and singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens, who each will organize a series of Perspectives concerts; flutist Claire Chase, as artist in residence; and appearances by conductors including Marin Alsop, who will lead the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in its Carnegie debut, and Susanna Mälkki, who will lead the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, which is traveling to Carnegie for the first time in more than a half-century.
Programming has also been inspired by the war in Ukraine. In February, the hall will host the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, whose performance will include Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, featuring Ukrainian American pianist Stanislav Khristenko.
“This is a turning point in history,” Gillinson said. “It’s really, really important that a dictator does not win. We felt we needed to very overtly support Ukraine.”
Carnegie had originally planned to open the season with a three-concert engagement by Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, Gillinson said. But the hall abandoned those plans after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, when Gergiev, a longtime friend and supporter of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, became the target of widespread condemnation.
Instead, the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will take the stage on opening night, Sept. 29, performing Ravel’s “La Valse”; Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Chasqui” from “Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout”; Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8; and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. (The Philadelphians rescheduled their own opening night to accommodate Carnegie, in one of multiple appearances at the hall next season; it’s not the first time during the war in Ukraine that Nézet-Séguin has come to the hall’s rescue.)
Gillinson said that he was optimistic about audiences turning out. Attendance since the hall reopened in October has been relatively strong, around 88%, compared with 91% before the pandemic, though there have been fewer concerts overall.
Among the offerings, here are 15 highlights chosen by New York Times critics and writers.
Maurizio Pollini, Oct. 16
Pollini turned 80 this year, so take what opportunity you can to hear this most stimulating of pianists, especially in the repertoire that he has made distinctive across the six decades of his career. He plays Schumann’s “Arabeske” and the Fantasy in C, before a second half of Chopin, including the Ballade No. 4 and the Scherzo No. 1. — DAVID ALLEN
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Oct. 22
While this ensemble’s outgoing music director, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, doesn’t plan to take up the podium of another orchestra any time soon, she is at least taking up the baton for this tour stop that features Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with the charismatic Sheku Kanneh-Mason; Debussy’s “La Mer”; and, most notably, the New York premiere of Thomas Adès’ “The Exterminating Angel” Symphony. — JOSHUA BARONE
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Oct. 25-26
Absent from Carnegie for more than three decades, the Philharmonic has instead been more likely to perform at Lincoln Center. Now, the orchestra will give the New York premieres of Gabriela Ortiz’s “Kauyumari” and Violin Concerto, with María Dueñas as soloist, as well as Arturo Márquez’s “Fandango for Violin and Orchestra,” featuring Anne Akiko Meyers. — JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ
Jean Rondeau, Oct. 27
This harpsichordist’s recent recording of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations is meditative, sensuous even when sprightly, and, at an hour and 45 minutes, long. The variations become worlds to lose oneself in, less taut dramas than engulfing studies in texture and sound, an effect that may well be amplified when he plays the work in the intimate Weill Recital Hall. — ZACHARY WOOLFE
Beatrice Rana, Oct. 28
Praise be to Beatrice Rana, a sensitive, perceptive pianist who is starting to do the hard work of challenging the biases of the inherited repertoire. She will play Clara Schumann’s youthful Piano Concerto with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Rana returns for a comparatively traditional recital of Bach, Debussy and Beethoven on April 20. — ALLEN
Davóne Tines, Nov. 3
His voice and presence both serene yet simmering, this bass-baritone, a creative programmer as well as a gifted singer, has been touring with his reinvention of the traditional Mass, which incorporates music past and present, including works by Caroline Shaw, Bach, Margaret Bonds and Julius Eastman, and spirituals reimagined by Moses Hogan and Tyshawn Sorey. — WOOLFE
Berlin Philharmonic, Nov. 10-12
When this eminent orchestra last appeared at Carnegie, in 2016, it played Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Performing there for the first time under its current chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, it brings back the Seventh, then does it again two nights later. In between is a program of Andrew Norman, Mozart and Korngold — the grand Symphony in F sharp, which Petrenko has lately championed. — WOOLFE
Cleveland Orchestra, Jan. 18
America’s finest orchestra makes just a single appearance next season, but with a program that draws fascinating parallels between the two favorite composers of its music director, Franz Welser-Möst. Berg’s “Lyric Suite” weaves its way around Schubert’s darkly unfinished Symphony No. 8, before a rare performance of Schubert’s late, reflective Mass in E flat. — ALLEN
Third Coast Percussion, Jan. 20
In a collaboration with the dance organization Movement Art Is, this reliably innovative percussion quartet will continue to refresh its repertory. Already adept at works by John Cage, Steve Reich and Dev Hynes, at Carnegie the group will perform Tyondai Braxton’s “Sunny X,” Jlin’s “Perspective” and its own arrangements of selections from Philip Glass’ “Aguas da Amazonia.” — SETH COLTER WALLS
Philadelphia Orchestra, Jan. 28
One Rachmaninoff piano concerto is daunting. But all four of them in a single evening, and his “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini”? That herculean task has never been attempted at Carnegie, but Yuja Wang will take it up the keyboard, with Nézet-Séguin conducting, in a program to celebrate the composer’s 150th birthday. — HERNÁNDEZ
Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, Feb. 15
Since the Russian invasion, many members of the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine have been separated — some staying in the country, others fleeing as refugees. At Carnegie, they will be united to play Brahms’ “Tragic Overture,” the Tchaikovsky concerto with Khristenko and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, as part of a tour led by Ukrainian American conductor Theodore Kuchar. — HERNÁNDEZ
Mitsuko Uchida, Feb. 24
The most recent Carnegie appearances by Uchida, one of our reigning and most sensitive pianists, have been in works by Schubert and Mozart, two composers on which she built her reputation. More underrated, but no less accomplished, are her Beethoven interpretations, a sampling of which comes in a program of his cosmic final piano sonatas. — BARONE
Ensemble Intercontemporain, March 25
This group’s music director, Matthias Pintscher, will lead Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, Op. 16, and Pintscher’s “Sonic Eclipse.” But the real succulent on offer is “Derive 2,” a grand (and long-revised) work by Pierre Boulez, the avant-gardist who founded Ensemble Intercontemporain. — WALLS
Philadelphia Orchestra, March 31
As in recent months, Nézet-Séguin and this ensemble — one of the three he leads, including the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, another Carnegie fixture — are virtually in residency next season. Their most intriguing program is this contrast between John Luther Adams’ climate meditation “The Vespers of the Blessed Earth,” featuring the choral group the Crossing, and Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” — WALLS
Claire Chase, May 25
Chase’s “Density 2036” — a multi-decade initiative to commission a new flute repertory leading to the centennial of Varèse’s “Density 21.5” — has thus far not been fare for the Carnegie crowd. But the project is moving uptown from the Kitchen, with Parts I and II on May 18, followed a week later by Part X: a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. — BARONE
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
