Tributes Will Flow Next Season at Philharmonic

The 82nd Los Angeles Philharmonic winter season--acknowledged as 50% the product of the orchestra’s new managing director, Deborah Borda, and her team, and 50% arranged before her arrival in January--was announced Thursday.

The 2000-2001 season will mark the return of music director Esa-Pekka Salonen from his yearlong conducting sabbatical, in January, when he will lead the orchestra in a Stravinsky festival before taking it on tour to New York and New Jersey, San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago. Salonen will interrupt his sabbatical earlier in the season to conduct the orchestra’s gala opening-night program Oct. 5 and two weeks of concerts after that, with Schoenberg’s “A Survivor From Warsaw” and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony scheduled for Oct. 6-8, and an all-French program Oct. 12-14.

The 2000-2001 programming, according to a statement by Salonen, is meant to reflect the past and look forward to the future--”with works that stretch from the Baroque era to the late 20th century.”

The orchestra plans celebrations of the centenaries of Aaron Copland and Kurt Weill, and the 75th birthday of composer Hans Werner Henze, and it will commemorate the 10th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s death and the 250th year since the death of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach’s “St. Matthew” Passion will be performed April 13-14, 2001 (Easter weekend), with Helmuth Rilling conducting and baritone Matthias Goerne making his Philharmonic debut. Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” Symphony will be heard Oct. 27-29. Philharmonic associate conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya will lead the all-Copland program Nov. 2-5, with mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne as the soloist; and Audra McDonald will make her debut with the orchestra singing Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins,” Nov. 30 to Dec. 3.

Podium guests in the fall include Antonio Pappano, Christoph Eschenbach, Zubin Mehta, Mark Minkowski (debut), Andras Schiff (conducting debut) and Franz Welser-Most.

In 2001, and after the return of Salonen, the guest conductors include Emmanuel Krivine, John Adams (leading a program of his own music Feb. 2-4), Paavo Jarvi, Yakov Kreizberg, Roberto Abbado, Junichi Hirokami and Heinrich Schiff.

Among the premiere performances on the schedule are a work commissioned by the orchestra from Italian composer (and onetime composition teacher of Salonen) Franco Donatoni in its world premiere Feb. 16-18; Peter Lieberson’s Piano Concerto No. 2, “Red Garuda,” written for pianist Peter Serkin and being given its West Coast premiere by Serkin on Dec. 7-10; and the first U.S. hearing of Estonian Eduard Tubin’s Symphony No. 11 on Feb. 9-11.

Eight events make up the Philharmonic Assn.’s Celebrity Recital series, which will offer performances by Gidon Kremer’s ensemble, Kremerata Baltica, on Oct. 25; the Los Angeles recital debut of Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos on Nov. 3; and recitals by violinist Pinchas Zukerman with pianist Marc Neikrug on Dec. 6, pianist Emanuel Ax on Feb. 5, violinist Kyung-Wha Chung on March 8, pianist Richard Goode on March 29, pianist Stephen Kovacevich on May 1, and mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina on May 8.