Pablo González, Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser to the Orchestra and Choir, and the Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra (RTVE) have announced their thrilling 2020/21 season. The season explores revolutionary moments throughout musical history. Works by Gluck, Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy and Stravinsky stand with music by composers who are noted for their originality and ground-breaking vision (Berlioz, Richard Strauss, Scriabin, Mahler, Bartók and Berg).
The Orchestra will also take a journey from suffering to redemption through the transportative and healing power of music. This is an invitation to reflect upon the past few months – through music by Beethoven, Purcell, Berlioz and Brahms – and to look to the future with optimism and vitality.
RTVE will also perform Robert Schumann’s symphony cycle. These works have often received unequal responses between critics and the public. This represents a great challenge for those who interpret them. Their impulsiveness and spontaneity, transparency and delicacy, the subtle palette of orchestral colours must come to life in each performance without losing sight of the formal proportions of a music that brims with imagination and love of life. They are an embrace between the desire for romantic freedom and the search for perfection inherited from classicism.
The season also sees the championing of the great Polish composer Szymanowski. For two intense weeks, the Orchestra visits his key works accompanied by composers who had a great influence on his language (Debussy, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Scriabin and Stravinsky). Szymanowski embodies a different way of approaching genius: he is a composer of synthesis which when combined with his talent and creativity gave rise to a very particular and personal musical expression.
The season will also feature a continuation of the celebration of Beethoven 250 with performances of his 3rd, 5th and 7th symphonies; and a look at the past through the prism of modernism and an exploration of time through works by Stravinsky, Haydn, Ibert, Prokofiev, Mendelssohn and Franz Schubert.
Artists to perform during the season include: conductors Guillermo García Calvo, Jan Willem de Vriend, Pablo Heras-Casado, François López Ferrer, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Christoph König, Antonio Méndez, George Pehlivanian, Pinchas Steinberg and Anu Tali; pianists Judith Jáuregui, Alexander Malofeev and Yeol Eum Son; violinists Leticia Moreno, Sarah Chang and Roman Simovic; cellists Pablo Ferrández and Steven Isserlis; hornist José Chanzá; flautist Clara Andrada; trumpeter Christian Ibáñez and the world’s leading recorder player Maurice Steger.
For more information and to purchase subscriptions and tickets, please visit rtve.es, or click here to read the season brochure (en español).