HOUSTON (Sept. 11, 2019) – Houston Symphony Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada launches the 2019–20 Classical Season with an all-Stravinsky program, Stravinsky’s Firebird at 8 p.m., Sept. 19 and 21, and 2:30 p.m., Sept. 22 in Jones Hall. The Houston Symphony is livestreaming the Sunday matinee performance of the classical subscription concert—marking its first online video broadcast of a concert from Houston.
Celebrating his sixth season as Music Director, Orozco-Estrada opens the program with Stravinsky’s Scherzo fantastique, an inventive work inspired by the buzzing lifecycle of bees. Renowned for his superb musicianship and the integrity of his playing, violin virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos then takes center stage in Stravinsky’s playful and invigorating Violin Concerto.
The concert’s zenith comes as Orozco-Estrada leads the orchestra in Stravinsky’s full ballet score of the vibrant and fiery orchestral masterpiece, The Firebird. “I wanted to perform the whole thing so that we can enjoy the whole story, even without a ballet, through the colors,” Orozco-Estrada told the Houston Chronicle. “It’s like painting with music.”
Stravinsky’s Firebird, part of the Frost Bank Gold Classics series with additional support from the General and Mrs. Maurice Hirsh Memorial Concert Fund, takes place at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, 615 Louisiana Street, in Houston’s Theater District. For tickets and information, please call 713.224.7575 or visit houstonsymphony.org. Tickets may also be purchased at the Houston Symphony Patron Services Center in Jones Hall (Monday–Saturday, 12–6 p.m.). All programs and artists are subject to change.
STRAVINSKY’S FIREBIRD
Thursday, Sept. 19, 8 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 21, 2019, 8 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 22, 2:30 p.m.
Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Music Director
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Stravinsky: Scherzo fantastique
Stravinsky: Violin Concerto
Stravinsky: The Firebird (full ballet score)
About Andrés Orozco-Estrada
Energy, elegance and spirit—these are the qualities that distinguish Andrés Orozco-Estrada as a musician. Since the 2014–15 season, he has been music director of the Houston Symphony and principal conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Beginning in the 2020–21 season, he will be chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony.
Andrés conducts many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Orchestre National de France, and American orchestras in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago. He has also directed successful concerts and opera performances at the Glyndebourne and Salzburg festivals.
Highlights of the 2019–20 season include performances with the Vienna Philharmonic at the BBC Proms and the Lucerne Festival, as well as tours to China, South Korea, and Japan. In the spring, Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts his debut concert with the New York Philharmonic and returns as a guest to the rostrum of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In May 2020, the Dutch National Opera Amsterdam premieres a new production of Carmen under his direction. With the Houston Symphony, he presents a new two-week Schumann Festival in February featuring the composer’s symphonies, concertos, choral works, and chamber music. The same month, he conducts three concerts at the Wiener Musikverein, leading the Vienna Symphony as principal conductor designate.
Andrés is particularly committed to new concert formats in which spoken commentary and visual elements complement the music as he rediscovers known repertoire together with the audience—be it a Spotlight concert with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra or a Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra family concert.
His CD releases at Pentatone have attracted critical praise. His Dvořák cycle with the Houston Symphony was praised by Pizzicato as a “vital Dvořák with warm colors.” With the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, recordings of Stravinsky’s Firebird and The Rite of Spring were hailed as “beguiling” by Gramophone, and the same publication recently described him as “a fine Straussian” in a review of their recent recording of the Alpine Symphony from his Richard Strauss cycle. In addition, his interpretations of all the Brahms and Mendelssohn symphonies are available on recordings.
Born in Medellín, Colombia, Andrés began his musical education with the violin. He received his first conducting lessons at 15 and began study in Vienna in 1997, where he was accepted at the prestigious University of Music and Performing Arts in the conducting class of Uroš Lajovic, a student of the legendary Hans Swarowsky. Andrés has since lived in Vienna.
About Leonidas Kavakos
Leonidas Kavakos is a violinist of rare quality, known for his virtuosity, superb musicianship, and the integrity of his playing. By age 21, Leonidas had won three major competitions: the Sibelius (1985), Paganini, and Naumburg (1988). This success led to his recording the original Sibelius Violin Concerto (1903-04), the first recording of this work, which won the 1991 Gramophone Concerto Recording of the Year Award. Leonidas was awarded the 2014 Gramophone Artist of the Year, and was the 2017 winner of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark’s most prestigious musical honor.
Highlights of his 2019–20 season include the Sony release of his recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto play-conducting with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a U.S. tour performing Beethoven trios with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma that concludes with three concerts at Carnegie Hall. In North America this season, in addition to these concerts, he performs with the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Montréal, as well as with the Munich Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in Boston. In Europe, he performs with the Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariinsky Orchestra, and Orchestre de Paris, among others. He performs in Asia with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and Taiwan Philharmonic. He also gives recitals in Shanghai and Xinghai.
Leonidas has developed close relationships with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, and more recently, he has also built a strong profile as a conductor. This season, he conducts the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Czech Philharmonic, and RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Torino.
He has an exclusive contract with Sony Classical, for whom he has previously recorded the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Mozart’s Violin Concertos play-conducting with the Camerata Salzburg. In 2017, he joined Ma and Ax for a recording of the Brahms Trios. Upcoming recording projects include the complete Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas. Leonidas’s other recordings include Virtuoso, Brahms’ Violin Sonatas with Yuja Wang, Brahms’ Violin Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas with Enrico Pace, all on the Decca label.
Leonidas plays the “Willemotte” Stradivarius violin of 1734.
About the Houston Symphony
During the 2019–20 season, the Houston Symphony celebrates its sixth season with Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada and continues its second century as one of America’s leading orchestras with a full complement of concert, community, education, touring, and recording activities. The Houston Symphony, one of the oldest performing arts organizations in Texas, held its inaugural performance at The Majestic Theater in downtown Houston June 21, 1913. Today, with an annual operating budget of $35.2 million, the full-time ensemble of 88 professional musicians presents nearly 170 concerts annually, making it the largest performing arts organization in Houston. Additionally, musicians of the orchestra and the Symphony’s four Community-Embedded Musicians offer over 1,000 community-based performances each year at various schools, community centers, hospitals, and churches reaching nearly 200,000 people in Greater Houston annually.
The Grammy Award-winning Houston Symphony has recorded under various prestigious labels, including Naxos, Koch International Classics, Telarc, RCA Red Seal, Virgin Classics and, most recently, Dutch recording label Pentatone. In 2017, the Houston Symphony was awarded an ECHO Klassik award for the live recording of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck under the direction of former Music Director Hans Graf. The orchestra earned its first Grammy nomination and Grammy Award at the 60th annual ceremony for the same recording in the Best Opera Recording category.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Eric Skelly: 713.337.8560, eric.skelly@houstonsymphony.org
Mireya Reyna: 713.337.8557, mireya.reyna@houstonsymphony.org
###