The Score | Cross-Country Treks

There are orchestras that return year after year to perform at Carnegie Hall. And then there are those special occasions when orchestras that have never performed in the hall make debuts there—or return there for the first time in many years. This winter and spring, there were three such events. In February, the Louisiana Philharmonic made its Carnegie debut, led by Music Director Carlos Miguel Prieto. It was the orchestra’s first return to New York City since 2005, when it performed a joint concert with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center to benefit LPO musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina. This February’s concert featured Philip Glass’s Days and Nights in Rocinha and Silvestre Rivueltas’s La noche de los Mayas Suite. The orchestra also performed Glass’s Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra, showcasing soloists Jim Atwood and Paul Yancich, who played nine timpani between them. On the same weekend in April, Michigan’s Grand Rapids Symphony returned to perform in Carnegie Hall for the first time in nearly thirteen years, followed the next night by California’s Pacific Symphony, making its debut in the hall. Marcelo Lehninger, in his second season as Grand Rapids Symphony’s music director, conducted Villa-Lobos’s Chôros No. 10, performed with the Grand Rapids Symphony Chorus; Ravel’s Bolero; Villa-Lobos’s Momoprecoce and De Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, both with piano soloist Nelson Freire; and Fauré’s Pavane in F-sharp minor. The Pacific Symphony, continuing Carnegie Hall’s season-long focus on Philip Glass, featured Music Director Carl St.Clair conducting Glass’s The Passion of Ramakrishna, together with the Pacific Chorale. Also on the Pacific Symphony program were “Meetings Along the Edge” from Passages, a collaborative work by Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar; and Shankar’s Third Sitar Concerto, featuring Anoushka Shankar, the composer’s daughter, as soloist.