PRSO’s classical concert season features worldwide masters to locally trained prodigies

Maximiliano Valdés returns for his 19th year as music director of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. (www.prso.gov)

By PEGGY ANN BLISS

Special to The STAR

Puerto Rico concertgoers will have the chance of their lives to critique the island’s classical music soloists beginning Saturday with a precedent-shattering parade of local superstars, seven in one concert season. 

Concerts of viola, clarinet, sopranos, bassoon, violin, harp, and cuatro; members past or present of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (PRSO) or the Puerto Rico Conservatory will show their stuff in the upcoming 68th season that starts Sept. 5. With music director Maximiliano Valdés back at the helm for his 19th year, two outstanding women will also occupy the guest podium. 

The Chilean native will wield the baton three times during the 11-concert classical series, which ends May 8, 2027. The season includes four pops concerts together with other special concerts. 

“This year’s classical season includes something for everyone, from the masters to the innovators, from soloists from all over the world to our own Puerto Rican-trained prodigies,” officials said. 

Meanwhile, the search for a new ship captain continues. Charismatic Associate Conductor Rafael Enrique Irizarry will team up with a harp soloist for one concert. Italian guest conductor Enrico Fagone will return for the third time, and Spanish guest conductor José María Moreno Valiente, together with Puerto Rican soprano Natalia Santaliz, will lead a program dedicated to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gustav Mahler.

Former PRSO violist Jaime Amador, who launched his career with the local symphony, opens the season with a William Walton composition. The orchestra will open with a symphonic poem “Don Juan” by Richard Strauss and close with the beloved “Enigma and Variations” by Edward Elgar.

As has been the case in recent years, the orchestra, formed in 1950 with the help of famed Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, will lead a parade of 30 composers, from Antonio Vivaldi to Roberto Sierra, over the nine-month classical span. 

Johannes Brahms, Elgar, Mahler and Strauss will each make two appearances in the repertoire, while everyone’s favorite composer, Mozart, will be the flower of the year with three separate compositions.

Island and Latin American composers are taking center stage this year under Valdes’ tutelage. Among them are Latin Grammy winner Sierra, with the brief, happy opening piece “Alegría,” written in 1996.

Also on the docket are classical compositions from Mexican and Argentinian favorite composers, Carlos Chávez and Alberto Ginastera, respectively. The visiting conductors, some being considered to replace Valdés, hail from Italy (Fagone) and Spain (Francois López Ferrer, son of the late Spanish conductor Jesús López Cobos) and Moreno Valiente. 

The two “maestras” to be featured during the upcoming season are Jeannette Sorrell, from the United States, who will be paired with PRSO principal bassoonist Adam Havrilla, who will play works from Händel, Bach, Vivaldi, Schubert and Mozart.

Havrilla, a New York State native, will perform  one of Sorrell’s own compositions under her baton on Jan. 16, 2027. This collaboration with Sorrell, founder and conductor of Apollo’s Fire, a Baroque orchestra based in Cleveland, will highlight the sixth concert.

Maestra Michelle di Russo, a guest conductor from Argentina of Italian parentage, will conduct Classic Concert 10 on April 17, 2027, with Puerto Rican cuatro player Luis Sanz, who will perform Ernesto Cordero’s “Concierto Criollo para Cuatro,” which combines native rhythms with classical elements, on the island’s native string instrument. Also on her program, the public will hear the “Four Dances from Estancia, Op. 8a,” a celebrated orchestral suite composed by Ginastera in 1941. The late American 20th century composer Leonard Bernstein will step up with “Symphonic Dances” from West Side Story. 

In a tribute to England, Associate Conductor Irizarry will handle John Rutter’s “Suite Lyrique,” a work in six movements of harp and strings with PRSO principal harpist Eliza Torres on April 3, 2027.  

The orchestra will also play works by British composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Elgar. 

The season’s second concert will be held Sept. 26 with Fagone on the podium conducting two symphonies, the “29th A Major” by Mozart and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 5.” There will be no soloist. 

The concert series continues on Nov. 7 with “Valse” by Maurice Ravel followed by PRSO principal clarinetist Andrés Maldonado’s solo “Contrastes Caribeños” from Puerto Rican composer Ema Quiñones Núñez. Brahms’ “First Symphony in C Major, Op. 28” will close the concert.

López Ferrer, one of a handful of candidates being considered to replace Valdés on the island podium, is directing.

For the fifth concert of the series, on Nov. 21, Spanish maestro Moreno Valiente will conduct a doubleheader: Mozart’s “Symphony No. 39th in E-flat” and Mahler’s “A Minor,” interpreted by soprano Santaliz in her third appearance on the same stage in six months. She will interpret “The Heavenly Life” from the Mahler work.

Another highly anticipated soloist will be PRSO concertmaster Omar Velázquez, who will premiere a concerto by Sierra, “To the Memory of a Brave Little Girl.” The program opens with Claude Debussy’s evocative tribute to Andalucia, Spain, “Iberia,” and culminates with Beethoven’s rousing “Eroica,” a heroic path to revolution.

The 10th concert, on April 17, 2027, will pair Di Russo with cuatrista Sanz in island composer Cordero’s “Concerto Criollo,” a criticism of racial discrimination. The program opens with “Kauyumari,” by Gabriela Ortiz, a highly recognized Mexican composer and Quiñones Núñez, who traces her hip hop roots to upstate New York.

Valdés will wind up the season on May 8, 2027 with Debussy’s brilliant “La Mar” and Brahms’ beloved “Fourth Symphony Op. 98.”

Rounding out this varied and eclectic season are two soloists from abroad, Russian pianist Dmitry Shishkin, who will perform a local premiere of his compatriot Vasily Kalinnikov’s “First Symphony in G Minor,” on Oct. 10 of this year. Gioachino Rossini’s jaunty “Thieving Magpie” overture from the opera of the same name opens the program. 

Violinist Aubree Oliverson will perform Max Bruch’s “First Violin Concerto” on Feb. 13, 2027. She will present Felix Mendelssohn’s favorite “Violin Concerto No. 2.”

All concerts will begin at 7 p.m. at the Pablo Casals Symphony Hall at Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center in Santurce.