San Sebastián (EFE).- Euskadiko Orkestra will travel to Austria and celebrate the centenary of the birth of Eduardo Chillida in its next subscription season. Juraj Valcuha, Juanjo Mena, Marie Jacquot and Riccardo Friza will be some of its guest conductors.
The 2023-2024 season will begin on September 29 in Vitoria and will end on June 7 of next year in San Sebastián. In both cases it will be with programs directed by the American Robert Treviño, who will address his seventh campaign as a starter.
Tour through Austria and I remember Chillida in the next season of Euskadiko Orkestra
Treviño, together with the general director of the orchestra, Oriol Roch, and the Basque Minister of Culture, Bingen Zupiria, have announced the most outstanding aspects of the programme, which for the first time will include an opera performed.
It is about “The First Men”, by Rudi Stephan, which has been produced in collaboration with the Arriaga Theater in Bilbao. Under the stage direction of Calixto Bieito, it will be on the bill in the Biscayan capital on April 18 and 20.
The American Robert Treviño will tackle his seventh season at the helm of the Euskadiko Orkestra. EFE/Juan Herrero
Next year they will be able to hear great titles from the classical repertoire in the three Basque capitals and in Navarra, from Mahler Symphony number 3, with which the season will begin and in which the Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Justine Gringyte will participate, to the “Domestic Symphony” by Richard Strauss, which will close the cycle and will have the San Sebastian soprano Elena Sancho Pereg as a guest.
Work for the centenary of Chillida
With “The three-cornered hat”, by Falla, the program for the month of November will conclude, the first part of which will have “Basque essence”. He will perform Ravel’s Concerto in G and the overture to “Ramuntcho” by Pierné, which will be conducted by Juanjo Mena from Vitoria, “the most international” of Basque conductors.
In addition, the Basque creation “will gain great importance” in the new proposal, especially with the world premiere in February of “Chillida-Elogios”. It is a commission from the Basque symphony to Antonio Lauzurika to commemorate the centenary of the sculptor’s birth.
The conductor Juanjo Mena in a previous collaboration with the Basque symphony. EFE/Javier Etxezarreta
They will also premiere “Oihartzun gorriak”, by Itziar Viloria, and a revision of “At the Aegean Shores”, by Saskia Venegas, and will perform “Mugarri”, by Ramon Lazkano.
The first and the last have been scheduled for May, in a single concert in Vitoria directed by Baldur Brönnimann. The second will take place in March, in performances in San Sebastián and Pamplona under the direction of Pablo González.
Exit to Mozart’s birthplace
The Bilbao Choral Society, the Orfeón Donostiarra and Vocalia Taldea are Basque choirs that will take part in this new season. The orchestra will offer three concerts in Salzburg and one in Linz in February 2024. They were scheduled for last year but were canceled due to the unexpected confinement of the population throughout Austria.
The Euskadi Orchestra in a performance in Milan in 2009. EFE/Vicenzo Paolo Gerace
Euskadiko Orkestra will also celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights with the first recitation in Basque of the texts that accompany the work that Aaron Copland composed for its first anniversary and which became the United Nations anthem.
new recordings
On the other hand, the orchestra will record works by Gabriel Erkoreka that it will undertake under the direction of Juanjo Mena and that will bring together Asier Polo (cello), Alfonso Gómez (piano) and Carlos Mena (countertenor).
He will do it again with the Finnish label Ondine, whose important distribution work has allowed the orchestra to position itself “in a market of international reference with reviews in the most prestigious specialized media”. In addition to the monograph dedicated to Erkoreka, the Basque symphony will record “Americascapes 2”.
Recordings are a fundamental pillar for the creation and dissemination of Basque culture, to “project” the work of the orchestra throughout the world, as highlighted by the Minister of Culture.