Stuart Malina
The Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra is looking forward to another season of playing glorious music, and its enthusiastic audiences are looking forward to hearing it.
Yet, the emphasis in 2022-23 is more than musical.
“It’s a very exciting season,” said Matthew Herren, HSO’s executive director. “But what comes to mind as the most exciting event is the return to HSO’s home, the spacious and majestic Forum Auditorium, after two years. This will be an exciting reunion.”
The 75-musician-strong symphony is the first tenant to return to the under-restoration Forum, which technically remains an active construction site through early 2024.
“We’re offering to open doors early and are encouraging audience members to arrive early because of the site,” Herren said.
As always, the orchestra will present 12 weekends of live performances with “world-renowned guest artists and our own extraordinary Harrisburg Symphony musicians,” he added.
The symphony is noted for blending known and possibly unknown works of music.
“The upcoming season is brimming with variety, which will stretch your ears and touch your heart,” said Maestro Stuart Malina, HSO’s longtime music director. “From classical favorites to works by living composers—and more female artists and artists of color than ever before.”
A typical season includes seven pairs of Masterworks concerts, five pairs of concerts in the Capital Blue Cross Pops Series, two Young Person’s Concerts that reach thousands of school-aged children, and free outdoor concerts over the July 4 weekend.
The dates of Oct. 1 to 2 launch the Masterworks concerts. Sharing the program are Richard Strauss’s swashbuckling tone poem “Don Juan,” Johannes Brahms’s triumphant “Symphony No. 1,” and a mid-20th-century work, the uplifting “Poem for Orchestra” by William Grant Still.
On Jan. 7 to 8, Felix Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto”—one of the most beloved works in the classical repertory—will be played by violinist Jennifer Frautshi. The piece shares the stage with contemporary composer Mieczystaw Weinberg’s “Symphony No. 3” and the “Suite from Cold Mountain,” a lyrical opera by Jennifer Higdon commissioned in part by the HSO.
“Jennifer is more than a colleague,” Malina said. “She is a friend. We went to school together.”
Paired concerts are on Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m.
Originally scheduled for April 2020 was Beethoven’s “Violin Concerto,” as performed by Peter Sirotin, HSO concertmaster. But he preferred to wait for the return to the symphony’s home turf for the April 15 to 16 concert. The program opens with “Black Iris,” a personal new work by Reena Esmail inspired by the “Me Too” movement, and concludes with Jean Sibelius’s epic “Symphony No. 5.”
The Pops Series differs in that it goes “purely beyond entertainment,” Malina said.
“The Great Ladies of Jazz” opens the series on Nov. 5 to 6 as vocalists Capathia Jenkins and Aisha de Haas pay tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland and other stars of the uniquely American art form of jazz.
“It’s a fantastic show with fabulous singers,” Malina said.
That’s followed by an evening of the greatest hits of the legendary Paul Simon (Dec. 10 to 11), a show that includes songs like “Bridge over Troubled Water” and “The Sound of Silence.”
Next, the modern master of film music, John Williams, will be honored (Jan. 21 to 22) in a show called “A Night at the Movies,” which will include his scores from such movies as “Close Encounters,” “Harry Potter” and “Jurassic Park.” To some degree the show was patron-driven.
“When we did a tribute to John Williams before, audiences complained it didn’t include this or that,” Malina explained.
So, he obliged by offering a second tribute that included additional orchestral pieces.
Operating under the umbrella of the Harrisburg Symphony is the Harrisburg Symphony Youth Orchestra, founded in 1953. There are three ensembles in the program, each of which performs twice at the Forum and Strawberry Square.
As it returns to the Forum, the HSO, at this time, isn’t planning to reinstate COVID-era policies.
“We’re proud how the orchestra has navigated the past two seasons,” Herren said. “We’re proud how we all worked together. We’ve shown strength and resilience, patience. Audiences have been cognizant that the last two seasons have been challenging. There’s no roadmap for the past two years.”
The Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra performs at the Forum, 500 Walnut St., Harrisburg. For more information, including subscriptions and tickets, visit www.harrisburgsymphony.org.
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