Sarah Kirkland Snider, composer
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s opera HILDEGARD premiered on November 5th in a production by the Los Angeles Opera, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. The production appeared in LA Opera’s Off Grand series that showcases new works. It ran through November 9 at The Wallis in Beverly Hills. Snider writes that she “wanted to write an opera that was not only about Hildegard but about female relationships, collaborative, empowering relationships … I wanted this to be an opera about what it means to be yourself when being yourself comes into conflict with socially conditioned notions of right and wrong.” The plot turns on a conflict of the individual versus an entrenched power structure and status quo. When Hildegard was in her early fifties, she cared for a nun with epilepsy named Sister Richardis von Stade. The prescribed course of treatment for epilepsy at the time was severe beatings, as epileptics were thought to be possessed by malignant spirits. Instead of following this prescription, In return for her kindness, Richardis transcribed Hildegard’s spiritually transcendent visions for presentation to the pope; if they were not accepted, Hildegard could have faced excommunication.
Snider’s works have been commissioned and/or performed by a who’s-who of orchestras in North America, Australia, and the UK, including: the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Philharmonia Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Residentie Orkest; the Birmingham Royal Ballet and Miami City Ballet. She is also regularly sought out by chamber ensembles and contemporary music performers. In addition to the premiere of HILDEGARD, the New York Philharmonic recently commissioned Forward into Light inspired by the US women’s suffrage movement and Shara Nova with A Far Cry string orchestra will present The Blue Hour, a collaborative song cycle setting of poetry by Carolyn Forché.
LA Phil – YOLA Day 2
Photo by Craig T. Mathew/Mathew Imaging
On Thursday Nov. 13th and Friday Nov. 14th, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will perform the premiere of Tanio León’s Time to Time. Her music joins a program that includes music by Roberto Sierra and Johannes Brahms. León is a black Cuban-American composer of both large-scale and chamber works, as well as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations. She won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her orchestral tone poem Stride, which was commissioned by the Oregon Symphony and the New York Philharmonic as part of a series of commissions celebrating the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
On Wed November 12th and Thursday November 13th, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal performs a program of French music at the Maison symphonique in Montreal. The concert includes two pieces for orchestra by Augusta Holmés: Andromède (symphonic poem) and La Nuit et l’amour. (The program will also include works by Berlioz, Fauré, Massenet, Dukas, and Hahn.) Holmés’s pieces have the distinction of being some of the larger works programmed.
Below is a recording of the Virago Symphony Orchestra performing Andromedé in 2020, directed by Pascale Van Os.
On Wednesday November 12th the Real Filharmonía de Galicia performs at the Centro Cultural Afundación in Galicia, Spain. The program will include a world premiere commissioned by the RFG by Leticia Goás (title TBA) and Gabriela Ortiz‘s Clara, as well as Robert Schumann’s Third Symphony. The theme of their program is the Schumann family. Clara is a meditation in five continuous movements about Ortiz’s relationship with the legacy of Clara Schumann and how her audience might experience and explore that through music.
Goás, a Spanish composer and pianist based in Zürich, has studied composition at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Castilla y León, the Folkwang Universität der Künste (Essen, Germany) and the Züricher Universität der Künste. Her works have been premiered in Spain, Germany, and Switzerland, both live and on film. Ortiz is a Grammy Award-winning composer and one of the foremost Mexican artists in her discipline. Her work has been performed by many orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra. Below is a recording of Ortiz’s Clara, performed in 2023 by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Domingo Hindoyan.
Finally, Dame Ethel Smyth’s opera “The Wreckers” was named “Rediscovery of the Year” by Opernwelt Magazin following three performances in German Theatres: Badischen Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Staatstheater Meiningen, and Mecklenburgischen Staatstheater Schwerin. Opernwelt itself is behind a paywall, but Operawire reports the announcement.
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