Reflections on our 2024/25 Orchestra Series
By Samantha Pollack, Director of Programming
Two of the world’s best orchestras in the span of nine days? Yes, please!
Touring orchestras are a programmatic hallmark of Washington Performing Arts’s near 60-year history. While our region offers robust orchestral programming from excellent local ensembles, visiting orchestras also provide unique repertoire viewpoints, sonorities, conductor and soloists, community engagement possibilities, and simply, a view into another culture’s manifestation of a top professional orchestra.
Over two years ago, discussions began in earnest with the two orchestras on Washington Performing Arts’s 2024/25 season: The Berliner Philharmoniker and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. As it became clear their tour periods were quite close together, while we would usually try to space our orchestras out amongst the season, there was no way we could say no to either orchestra if everything else fell into place. We knew our devoted orchestral lovers would savor the opportunity to hear both of these world-class “bands” in almost an embarrassment of riches.
The machinations of these tours are no small logistic nor financial feat from both the artist and the presenter side. Just a few of the hurdles presenting include:
• fitting specific tour dates apart from their home performance calendar (and in our case, acquiring a specific date from the venue)
• offering a program and soloist to best represent each orchestra’s ethos
• applying for and obtaining complicated visas for 100+ musicians and staff
• arranging flights, hotels, and local travel in each city for 100+ musicians and staff, carefully packing and transporting very valuable instruments
• seeking resources to help pay for it all, as neither artist fees nor ticket sales alone can begin to cover these costs.
Our dedication to presenting visiting orchestras could not happen without you: as ticket buyer, a Friend supporter, and as our cheerleader!
Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko, chief conductor
Benjamin Beilman, violin
Friday, November 15, 2024 / 7:00 p.m.
Kennedy Center Concert Hall
The Berliner returned to D.C. after a more than 20-year absence, and we loved their exciting program of Rachmaninov’s “Isle of the Dead,” Korngold’s vibrant violin concerto, and the lesser-heard seventh symphony from Dvořák. While sadly, original soloist, Hilary Hahn, was not able to perform due to injury, the rising American violinist Benjamin Beilman confidently and successfully took her place on only a few days notice.
One of the most exciting parts of the Berliner visit arose from our shared deep commitment to arts education and community engagement. Washington Performing Arts, celebrating the 50th anniversary of our Embassy Adoption Program in 2024, knew of the multi-nationality of the musicians in the Berliner Philharmoniker. We worked closely with the orchestra’s education team and developed an opportunity for 10 musicians from a specific country to match their affiliated Embassy Adoption school for a site visit, including those ones studying Germany, Italy, Poland, and Slovenia. The students participating in the program are in fifth- or sixth-grade, usually tied to a social studies class.
The musicians each talked about what it was like growing up in the country the classroom is studying, how they got into music, what it’s like being a professional musician (even what they ate at school lunch when they were a kid), and of course, sharing some musical interludes. Additionally, a string quintet from the orchestra performed Anton Brückner’s String Quintet and held a Q&A session for more than 100 middle school and high school-aged music students at the Columbia Heights Educational Campus. The residency truly lived up to a Washington Performing Arts slogan “The City is Our Stage!”
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä, chief conductor designate
Lisa Batiashvili, violin
Sunday, November 24, 2024 / 7:30 p.m.
Kennedy Center Concert Hall
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (RCO), returning for the first time in five years to the Washington Performing Arts’s orchestral series, offered an immersive program including a new commission from RCO’s composer-in-residence Ellen Reid, Prokofiev’s angular Violin Sonata No. 2 performed by the luminous Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili, and Rachmaninov’s intense, melodic, and massive Symphony No. 2. Led by Finnish cellist-turned-conductor Klaus Mäkelä, who at the age of 28 is the orchestra’s chief conductor designate, anticipation was sky-high for his Washington, D.C., debut, for our orchestra lovers to experience his artistry (and hype!) in person. We’re thrilled to report: the hype is real!
Planning for next year’s Orchestra Series has now begun. Stay tuned in late spring 2025 for more!
These performances were external rentals presented in coordination with the Kennedy Center Campus Rentals Office and not produced by the Kennedy Center.