Season of change

With a new executive director, the Florida Orchestra has a full schedule and many issues to settle in the next year.

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 17, 2000

The Florida Orchestra's 2000-01 season gets under way this week when the musicians convene for their first rehearsals since May. The season starts out with a pops program next weekend, then the masterworks series opens Sept. 28-Oct. 1, with music director Jahja Ling conducting rhapsodies of Alfven, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Gershwin and Liszt.

In many ways, it's a pivotal time for the orchestra. This is Ling's second-to-last season as music director, and the focus will increasingly be on the search for his successor, with several guest conductors receiving special attention. This is also the first full season under executive director Leonard Stone, who is expected to make significant changes in the orchestra's management, marketing and fundraising.

The orchestra continues to have a venue problem in Tampa. It is losing out in competition for dates in Carol Morsani Hall, the largest hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, which is frequently given over to long-running Broadway tours. As a result, many concerts will be played in TBPAC's smaller Ferguson Hall, which is acoustically and logistically inadequate for symphonic concerts.

On the plus side, the orchestra will play for two productions of TBPAC's opera company, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and the premiere of Anton Coppola's Sacco & Vanzetti.

The orchestra is on the lookout for a successor to Skitch Henderson, who stepped down as pops music director after 15 years in the post. Likely candidates Peter Nero, Bill Conti, Marvin Hamlisch and Doc Severinsen are all conducting programs this season. Henderson also returns as guest conductor twice.

Musical highlights include a special non-subscription concert with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and piano soloist Lang Lang, the Chinese teenager who gave a sensational performance of Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto with the orchestra last January. This time around, he's playing the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1.

Also on the agenda, violinist Joshua Bell is featured in the premiere of William D. Brohn's arrangement of a suite from Bernstein's West Side Story. Other soloists of note are Anne Akiko Meyers in Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5, pianist Eduardus Halim playing Liszt and Shostakovich, and cellist Alisa Weilerstein in Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations.

This is a Copland year, marking the 100th anniversary of his birth, and guest conductor Michael Christie leads a program of Rodeo, Quiet City, Orchestral Variations and other works by the great American composer.

On consecutive masterworks programs in April are a pair of large-scale masterpieces: the Berlioz Requiem and Mahler's Symphony No. 7.

For the most part, the orchestra sticks to the tried and true. The season includes performances of the third symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms, excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Grieg's Piano Concerto, Ravel's Bolero and much else from the standard repertoire.

But a few less familiar works made it onto the calendar, including Bernard Rands' Le Tambourin Suite No. 2 and Berg's Violin Concerto with soloist Cho-Liang Lin. Orchestra member Lewis Sligh will be featured in a Piccolo Concerto by Vivaldi.

Here are the masterworks and pops schedules. For ticket information, call (813) 286-2403 or (800) 662-7286.

Masterworks

SEPT. 28-OCT 1: Alfven: Swedish Rhapsody No. 1; Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; Ravel: Rhapsodie Espagnol; Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue; Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Jahja Ling, conductor; Jeffrey Siegel, piano.

OCT. 13-16: Mozart: Symphony No. 33; Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto; Elgar: Enigma Variations. Joseph Silverstein, conductor; Amy Schwartz, violin.

OCT. 27-29: Special concert: Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No. 1; Beethoven: Symphony No. 9. Jahja Ling, conductor; Lang Lang, piano; Master Chorale.

NOV. 9-12: Copland: El Salon Mexico, Quiet City, Orchestral Variations, Rodeo, Lincoln Portrait. Michael Christie, conductor; James Tokley, speaker.

NOV. 30-DEC. 3: Rands: Le Tambourin Suite No. 2; Bernstein/Brohn: West Side Story Suite; Dvorak: Symphony No. 8. Jahja Ling, conductor; Joshua Bell, violin.

JAN. 5-7: Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1; Shostakovich: Concerto No. 1 for piano, trumpet and strings; Swan Lake excerpts. Jahja Ling, conductor; Eduardus Halim, piano; Robert Smith, trumpet.

JAN. 18-21: Handel: Concerto Grosso; Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5; Beethoven: Symphony No. 3. Nicholas McGegan, conductor; Anne Akiko Meyers, violin.

FEB. 2-4: Grieg: Lyric Suite; Vivaldi: Piccolo Concerto; Chaminade: Concertino for flute; Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2. Thomas Wilkins, conductor; Lewis Sligh, piccolo and flute.

FEB. 16-19: Mendelssohn: Midsummer Night's Dream Overture; Berg: Violin Concerto; Brahms: Symphony No. 3. Jahja Ling, conductor; Cho-Liang Lin, violin.

FEB. 23-25: Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture; Schumann: Piano Concerto; Debussy: Iberia; Ravel: Bolero. Maximiano Valdes, conductor; Orli Shaham, piano.

MARCH 22-25: Stravinsky: Four Norwegian Moods; Grieg: Piano Concerto; Nielsen: Symphony No. 4. Thomas Wilkins, conductor; Awadagin Pratt, piano.

APRIL 6-8: Berlioz: Requiem. Jahja Ling, conductor; Master Chorale.

APRIL 27-29: Mahler: Symphony No. 7. Jahja Ling, conductor.

MAY 11-13: Ravel: Mother Goose Suite; Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23; Barber: First Essay, School for Scandal Overture, Adagio for strings, Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance. Jeffrey Kahane, conductor and piano.

MAY 18-20: Haydn: Symphony No. 88; Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations; Strauss: Ein Heldenleben. Jahja Ling, conductor; Alisa Weilerstein, cello.

Pops

SEPT. 22-24: Swing, Baby, Swing; Jeff Tyzik, conductor; Dee Daniels, vocalist.

NOV. 2-5: Voyage Into Space; Peter Nero, conductor and piano; astronaut George "Pinky" Nelson, narrator.

JAN. 12-14: Salute to the Oscars; Bill Conti, conductor.

FEB. 9-12: Broadway Showstoppers; Skitch Henderson; Jeanne Lehman, vocalist.

MARCH 11: Special Concert: Broadway Nights; Thomas Wilkins, conductor; Craig Schulman, Kim Crosby and Chris Groendaal, vocalists.

MARCH 29-APRIL 1: An Evening With Marvin Hamlisch.

APRIL 19-22: Gershwin, Ellington, Vienna & More; Doc Severinsen, conductor and trumpet.

MAY 4-6: The Best of Skitch Henderson.

MAY 24-26: Radio Days; Thomas Wilkins, conductor; Five by Design, vocal group.

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