Ottawa’s NAC Orchestra reveals 2016/17 season line-up including three new Ballets, an opera, a Beethoven and Schumann Festival, and a special visit by Tafelmusik.
Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra has revealed the full 2016/17 season details late Friday afternoon, which at a first glance looks fairly conventional, but after at a closer look, a few surprises are in store.
The main revelation is three new one-act Ballets by Canadian composers Nicole Lizée, Kevin Lau and Andrew Staniland with choreographers Emily Molnar, Jean Grand-Maître, Guillaume Côté. “Encount3rs” will combine NAC Dance and the NAC Orchestra with Ballet BC, Alberta Ballet, and the National Ballet of Canada in Ottawa for April 2017.
Other commissions include new works by Canadian composers Derek Charke and Gary Kulesha, as well as a new work by Oscar-winning Canadian composer Howard Shore. Shore will write a new guitar concerto for classical guitarist Miloš premiering in February 2017. NAC Orchestra’s principal double bass Joel Quarrington will also be front and centre for a concerto by NAC Award Composer Peter Paul Koprowski, on November 16th.
As part of the Canada’s 150th celebrations, the NAC Orchestra and the Canadian Opera Company will present Harry Somers’ 1967 opera “Louis Riel,” with baritone Russell Braun in the title role.
2016 marks NAC Orchestra conductor Alexander Shelley’s second season, and by now Ottawa has gotten to know him a little better. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and established him as an enthusiastic and youthful figurehead for an orchestra with a reputation for being set in its ways.
“It will be a spectacular season for first-time symphony-goers and lifelong subscribers alike,” Shelley said in a press release statement.
The season opens in October with violinist Joshua Bell, who returns to the NACO after 20 years to perform Brahms’s violin concerto.
There will be a Beethoven and Schumann Festival, which Shelley stated will reflect the diversity of music our audiences have come to expect. While I admire the enthusiasm, one would question it Beethoven warrants a festival at all, considering every day of the year seems to be one long an ongoing Beethoven festival.
The “festival” includes some heavy hitter performers, including Ottawa’s Angela Hewitt, American Jonathan Biss and German Rudolf Buchbinder.
The NACO will bring international soloists such as Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and esteemed American pianist Yefim Bronfman performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
Other notables include the NAC debut of Russia’s St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Yuri Temirkanov in February.
Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra will stop by the NAC to perform a Bach by memory concert as part of the signature multimedia program.
Principal guest conductor John Storgårds will conduct Mozart’s Requiem, in May 2017 with soprano Karina Gauvin, mezzo-soprano Allyson McHardy, tenor Andrew Haji (who made his NAC debut in Messiah as a last-minute replacement last December), and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn.
For the complete season line-up, see nac-cna.ca.
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