Tucson Symphony Orchestra is joining the worldwide celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday next year as it also brings in opera’s biggest superstar as part of the 2020 Tucson Desert Song Festival.
“This is probably the biggest name of any singer who has ever played with the orchestra,” TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez said of the Feb. 6, 2020, concert with Renée Fleming.
Fleming’s concert is one of two that the orchestra is presenting in conjunction with the song festival. On Jan. 24, Gomez’s fiancé, the Italian soprano Federica Lombardi, will perform works by Rossini with the TSO Chorus. Lombardi is fast making a name for herself on international stages, and her debut this season with the New York Metropolitan Opera was critically acclaimed.
But the orchestra’s focus next season, its 91st, will be squarely on Beethoven, a composer that Gomez said continues to be revolutionary nearly 200 years after his death.
“Beethoven means so much to the core of classical music,” Gomez said. “It is one of those opportunities to bring back the great music of Beethoven, the great symphonic music of Beethoven. And in my case, of course, it is repertoire that hasn’t been done quite often in Tucson. It’s a great opportunity to bring back some of those lesser known symphonies like No. 2, No. 4 and No. 8.”
Throughout the season, the orchestra will perform all of Beethoven’s symphonies except his Ninth; the orchestra performed that big choral masterpiece symphony to end its 2017-18 season last April.
The 2019-20 season opens with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, a work that the orchestra performed for its first concert in 1929. Gomez has programmed the symphonies on both the Classics and MasterWorks series including double-dipping on a pair of concerts — the orchestra will perform Nos. 8 and 2 on Jan. 11-12, and Nos. 1 and 6 on Feb. 14 and 16, 2020.
“He is so revolutionary, so ahead of his time, so Beethoven,” Gomez said. “There is nothing else of any composer that sounds like him. For me, his symphonies are examples of how revolutionary he was (compared to) other composers.”
Other highlights of the 2019-20 season:
- Hey, hey it’s the Monkees: OK, it’s one of them, original lead singer Micky Dolenz, and he’s singing his old band’s biggest hits on Feb. 8-9 in the SuperPops series.
- ET’s phoning the Old Pueblo: The orchestra will perform a cineconcert to the film “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” over Thanksgiving weekend Nov. 30-Dec. 1.
- Guest artists galore: Multiple Grammy-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin makes her first TSO appearance in nearly 20 years on Nov. 15, 17; Cliburn gold medal winner Yekwon Sunwoo plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 Sept. 20, 22; fiddler Tessa Lark plays the TSO premiere of “The Sky Concerto” for violin, a work the orchestra co-commissioned for her with several other orchestras; and conductor Mei-Ann Chen, who has become a favorite of TSO audiences, returns to conduct “Tubalicious” featuring TSO principal tuba player David Morgan on Feb. 1-2.
The TSO will close the season next April with the TSO Chorus and Mahler’s behemoth Symphony No. 2 in C minor, “Resurrection.”
