Juilliard Orchestra’s February Concerts Will Be Conducted by Ruth Reinhardt and Louis Langrée | Playbill

Classic Arts News Juilliard Orchestra’s February Concerts Will Be Conducted by Ruth Reinhardt and Louis Langrée

Both Juilliard alums will oversee concerts where the program will include Maurice Ravel, Brahms, and more.

The Juilliard orchestra Rachel Papo

Over the past several decades, the Juilliard Orchestra—the school’s largest and most visible student performing ensemble—has toured the U.S., Europe, South America, and Asia, the latter as the first Western conservatory ensemble allowed to visit and perform following the opening of the People’s Republic of China in 1987. The orchestra returned there two decades later, in 2008. Five years ago, the orchestra traveled to London, performing alongside the Royal Academy of Music in Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms. 

But the orchestra’s home base is right here, at Alice Tully Hall, where this season, the ensemble has already given performances of works spanning the repertoire, from Barber, Beethoven, Britten, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, and Strauss to Grażyna Bacewicz, Salina Fisher, George Gershwin, Ruth Gipps, Zhou Tian, and a commission by Juilliard alum Katie Jenkins. In February, the Juilliard Orchestra again displays its versatility and virtuosity with a pair of enticing programs on the Tully stage.

On February 10, the orchestra will perform works by contemporary South Korean composer Unsuk Chin, Czech master Bohuslav Martinů, and Johannes Brahms, led by Ruth Reinhardt, who earned her master’s degree at Juilliard in 2015, studying with Alan Gilbert. Just over a week later, on February 20, the orchestra returns to Tully for a concert comprising a pair of works by Maurice Ravel, led by Louis Langrée in his Juilliard concert debut.

The February 10 performance begins with a short work by Chin, the propulsive subito con forza, an homage to Beethoven. This is followed by Martinů’s lyrical Cello Concerto No. 1—the soloist will be a Juilliard student who wins the concerto competition held a few weeks prior to the concert—and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, a work that also owes much to Beethoven, specifically the cycle of nine symphonies.

"I really love doing Brahms,” Reinhardt says. “(The first symphony) basically took him 14 or 15 years to write, to rewrite, and to revise. But it’s still very much the work of a young composer—and I feel that student musicians can relate to this."

Martinů’s First Cello Concerto continues the orchestra’s string of programming works for student soloists that are not necessarily the most famous in the repertoire, including Gipps’ Oboe Concerto and Walton’s Violin Concerto, which is something that Reinhardt appreciates. “I also love that piece!” she explains. “Martinů is a composer almost nobody plays, he is very underappreciated. It’s a piece that was written at the beginning of a period when he burrowed into baroque and classical techniques, and it’s very interesting how he uses toccata elements but in his musical voice.”

Martinů’s concerto also ties into Chin’s subito con forza, according to Reinhardt. “Both composers are looking back in time to more classical or baroque elements but that are used very clearly in their own voices.

It’s good to work with the students on contrasting skill sets like Brahms’ sound or Chin’s exhilarating, fast piece or Martinů’s subtly shifting time signatures.

The Ravel double bill on February 20 pairs the ballet Ma mère l’Oye with the one-act opera L’enfant et les sortilèges. Langrée sees them as mirror images: “Ma mère immerses you in your childhood, while L’enfant is an opera for adults about childhood, not simply an opera for children,” he says. L’enfant will include soloists from Juilliard’s Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts. Langrée’s appearance on the podium will be his first concert with the orchestra—in 2019, he worked with Juilliard’s Lab Orchestra, in which orchestral instrumental students participate in weekly sessions to collaborate with student conductors in rehearsing orchestral repertoire.

Best known for his long tenure as the music director of the beloved Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Langrée is also at home in French repertoire: In 2021, French president Emmanuel Macron named Langrée the director of the Paris-based Théâtre national de l’Opéra Comique.

In the spring, the Juilliard Orchestra performs several more concerts in Tully. On March 29, the orchestra collaborates with the school’s historical performance ensemble, Juilliard415, for the Beethoven Project, led by Jakob Lehmann. On March 31, Jeffrey Milarsky leads the orchestra in the annual Composer’s Concert, which features world premieres by four Juilliard student composers. The season closes on May 22, as Earl Lee conducts works by Ravel and Saint-Saëns as well as a world-premiere commission by Juilliard composition alum Molly Joyce.

Visit Juilliard.edu.

 
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