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By Vivien Schweitzer
15 Mar 2007

Highlights of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s 2007-08 season include world premieres by Robert O. Johnson and Krzysztof Penderecki, contemporary works by John Adams and Arvo Pärt, a Stravinsky festival, and appearances by pianist Boris Berezovsky and trumpeter Håken Hardenberger.

Music Hall, home of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Paavo Järvi opens his seventh season as music director of the CSO on September 14 at Cincinnati's Music Hall with Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and his seldom-performed choral ode Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, alongside three Wagner opera excerpts. Joining Järvi and the orchestra will be pianist Awadagin Pratt and the May Festival Chorus.

The CSO will celebrate the 125th anniversary of Stravinsky’s birth (June 17, 2007) with a two-weekend Stravinsky Festival that includes The Rite of Spring, the Symphony in Three Movements, the Symphony of Psalms and the Chorale-Variations.

The roster of eight guest conductors includes John Adams, who will lead the Cincinnati debuts of his own electric violin concerto The Dharma at Big Sur and On the Transmigration of Souls.

Polish composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki will conduct his own Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima and his piano concerto Resurrection. This will be the world premiere of the 2007 revision of the latter piece, which was originally written in 2001.

Also leading the CSO will be Finnish conductors Pietari Inkinen and Susanna Mälkki, the latter in a program of Strauss works. The guest soloist lineup includes violinists Pinchas Zukerman, Janine Jansen and Vadim Repin, and pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Alexander Toradze, Ingrid Fliter and Nikolai Lugansky. Trumpeter Håken Hardenberger will perform Eino Tamberg’s Concerto for Trumpet.

Järvi and the CSO continue their relationship with Telarc in 2007-08 with two new recordings. One will be a Mussorgsky disc featuring Pictures at an Exhibition, Dawn Over the Moskva River and Night on Bald Mountain. The orchestra will also record Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, paired with Veljo Tormis's Overture No. 2.

Telarc will also issue an all-Tchaikovsky recording in October and an all-Prokofiev disc (the label's 13th release with Järvi and the CSO since 2001) later in the season.

In addition to a contemporary lineup that includes works by nine living composers, Järvi’s programming for the upcoming season also emphasizes Classical-era repertoire, with four major Beethoven works, music for flute by Mozart, two Haydn symphonies plus the Cello Concerto, and Schubert's Symphony No. 9 ("The Great”).

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