The Southbank Centre has announced details of its 2015-16 classical music programme, which celebrates a notable first, and if not a notable last, then several notable anniversaries. The venue will be hosting its first ever Ring cycle when Opera North’s acclaimed semi-staging comes to the Festival Hall for a week in summer 2016. Meanwhile, regular visitor Daniel Barenboim will be marking the 60th anniversary of his London debut, when as a 13-year-old in January 1956 he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major K 488 with conductor Josef Krips and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In January 2016, aged 73 and now one of the world’s most celebrated pianists and conductors, Barenboim will return to the venue to perform Brahms’ two piano concertos with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra.
Opera North’s Ring cycle has been staged in annual instalments between 2011 and 2014 to sell-out audiences in the midlands and north of England, conducted by the company’s music director Richard Farnes and directed by Peter Mumford. Created specifically for concert halls, with minimal costumes and lighting and a triptych of giant video screens featuring both the text and a visual commentary, the cycle has been praised for its intelligence and accessibility. It realises the Arts Council mantra, “great art for everyone”, said the Southbank Centre’s artistic director, Jude Kelly, who added that it’s been a longheld ambition to present Wagner’s epic cycle: “a work that is so intrinsic to the idea of what art is.” Prior to performances in London, the cycle will return to Leeds Town Hall, the Lowry Salford and Sage Gateshead; Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall will also host the complete cycle with a cast that includes Susan Bickley, James Creswell, Alwyn Mellor and Mati Turi.
With the Ring cycle in its culmination, opera in concert is a key strand of next season. Zurich Opera and their music director Fabio Luisi will perform Berg’s Wozzeck with Christian Gerhaher in the title role, star-soprano Karita Mattila makes her UK role debut as the Kostelnicka in Janáček’s Jenufa with the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek, and Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra perform Mozart’s Magic Flute. Wozzeck and Wagner’s Ring will be two of the eight works highlighted across the season in a new initiative called What You Need to Know, a series of one-day courses led by broadcasters, academics and writers that look at the music and its context. The courses build on the success of a similar contextual approach that illuminated 2013’s Rest is Noise festival. “Our aim in this, and all we do, is to show that classical music is part of contemporary culture and thinking,” said Kelly.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra marks 2016’s highest profile anniversary with seven concerts that celebrate the legacy of Shakespeare, 400 years since his death. On 23 April a gala concert curated by Simon Callow will feature soloists including Iestyn Davies, Simon Keelyside, and Kate Royal, who will perform scenes from Shakespearean operas, from Verdi’s Otello to Adès’s The Tempest.
Festivals continue to form the backbone of the Southbank Centre’s programming, and the 2015-16 season sees two new ones. Altered Minds: art, health and mental will explore the links between creativity and mental health, and Deep Minimalism will focus on contemplative music – music that takes its time. Its name is inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s coinage “deep listening”, and she will be one of several female composers whose music features prominently, alongside Galina Ustvolskaya, Meredith Monk and Eliane Radigue.
Women performers are also to the fore of the Darbar festival - Europe’s biggest celebration of Indian classical music, which celebrates its 10th anniversary with the addition of a dance strand, while among the season’s 19 new commissions and premieres are works by Sally Beamish and Unsuk Chin. Conductors Marin Alsop, Alondra de la Parra and Susanna Mälkki will be working, variously, with the OAE, LPO and London Sinfonietta.
The centenary of violinist Yehudi Menuhin is marked by the return to London - for the first time in 12 years - of the biennial violin competition named after him, and an 11-day festival of concerts and events celebrating what would have been the legendary musician’s 100th birthday. The Philharmonia Orchestra will give the closing concert with 1995’s competition winner Julia Fischer performing Bartók’s First Violin Concerto.
The temporary closure of the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room brings a new partnership with St John’s Smith Square concert hall. A £24m repair and maintenance project for the two concert halls and the Hayward Gallery is due to begin in September 2015; much of the Southbank Centre’s chamber music and international piano series concerts will relocate to the Westminster venue for the next two years.
Priority booking opens on 26 January; general booking on 16 February.
