Ravinia 2023 Issue 3

ANDERS BROGAARD (MONTERO); BOLESŁAW LUTOSŁAWSKI (PELEGGI) GABRIELA MONTERO Born in Venezuela, Gabriela Montero began her piano studies at age 4 and made her con- certo debut at age 8 in her hometown of Ca- racas. On a scholarship from the government, she took up private studies in the US and was later mentored by Hamish Milne at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Recipient of the 2018 Heidelberger Frühling Music Prize, Montero has also been honored for her out- standing work in the field of human rights by the Human Rights Foundation, and in 2015 Amnesty International named her an Hon- orary Consul. She gave the Dean’s Lecture at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in 2020 and has spoken and performed twice at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Montero is in the second of a four-year appointment as Creative Partner to the National Arts Cen- tre of Canada, and her recent and upcoming concert highlights include residencies with the São Paolo, Prague Radio, and Basel Sym- phonies; debuts with the New World, New Zealand, and San Francisco Symphonies and the French National, Minnesota, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestras; and an extensive European tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony. This past year saw the launch of an artistic residency at the Prager Family Center for the Arts in Maryland as well as debuts at Paris’s Seine Musicale and at the Philharmo- nie, the latter with Marin Alsop and the Vi- enna Radio Symphony; Montero also joined Alsop at the Dallas Symphony to perform her “Latin” Concerto and brought her 2018 com- position Babel to the Oregon Symphony. She recently performed her “Latin” Concerto on tour with the Orchestra of the Americas at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Edinburgh Festi- val, Carnegie Hall, and Miami’s New World Center, also recording performances with the ensemble on film for ARTE Konzert as well as for a 2019 CD release on Orchid Classics that also featured Ravel’s G-major Concerto. Montero’s previous Orchid release featured Rachmaninoff ’s Second Concerto and her first orchestral composition, Ex Patria , win- ning her a Latin Grammy for Best Classical Album. Gabriela Montero made her Ravinia debut in 2009 and last appeared in 2013. This is her fourth season at the festival. VALENTINA PELEGGI Music director of the Richmond Symphony in Virginia since 2020, Valentina Peleggi has been revitalizing the ensemble’s artistic profile with new concert formats, national co-com- mission partnerships, resident composer and conducting master class programs, and un- derrepresented repertoire. Highlights of this past season included a groundbreaking aug- mented reality project, Mahler’s “Resurrec- tion” Symphony, and a special concert with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Remaining active as a guest conductor, over the past year Peleggi made debuts with the Rochester Philharmonic and the New World and Kansas City Symphonies, as well as at the Grant Park Music Festival, plus more abroad: with the Residentie Orkest, Liege Philharmonic, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Nuremburg Symphony, and the Opera North Orchestra. Recent seasons included engage- ments with the Colorado and Baltimore Sym- phonies, Brussels and Royal Philharmonics, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Norrkop- ing Symphony, Orchestra della Toscana, and Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano. Opera—es- pecially bel canto—is at the core of Peleggi’s activity: in May 2022 she conducted Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at Florentine Opera, and last season she returned to the Teatro Verdi di Trieste for Verdi’s Rigoletto and made her debut in a new production of Piazzolla’s Ma- ria de Buenos Aires at Opéra de Lyon. She conducted an acclaimed performance of Ros- sini’s Le Comte Ory with the Philharmonia Orchestra at Garsington Opera in 2021, and while a Mackerras Fellow at English National Opera in 2018 and 2019, she conducted Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s La bohème among a wide range of repertoire. Since 2019, Peleg- gi has been music director for Italian reper- toire at the Theatro São Pedro in São Paulo, where her production of Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri was recognized as “best opera of the year” (2019) by the main critic journal Rivista Concerto . After completing a master’s degree in conducting at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome and post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she assisted Bruno Campanella and Gianluigi Gelmetti on several opera productions and became a Taki Alsop Conducting Fellow in 2015. Valentina Peleggi is making her Ravinia and Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuts. CHICAGO SYMPHONY CHORUS The Chicago Symphony Chorus regularly performs with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Orchestra Hall and at Ravinia. The history of the CSC began in 1957, when sixth CSO music director Fritz Reiner invited Margaret Hillis to establish a chorus to equal the quality of the orchestra. Hillis accepted the challenge, and the chorus first performed in March and April 1958, in Mozart’s Requiem under Bruno Walter and Verdi’s Requiem under Reiner. Hillis served the chorus for 37 years, until her retirement in 1994; ninth CSO music director Daniel Barenboim appointed Duain Wolfe as her successor in June of that year, and he led the CSC as chorus direc- tor and conductor until his retirement in February 2022. The CSC first performed in Carnegie Hall in 1967 in Henze’s Muses of Sicily and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe under seventh CSO music director Jean Martinon, and most recently in 2015 with Riccardo Muti for Scriabin’s Prometheus and Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky . Touring internationally with the CSO, the chorus traveled to London and Salzburg in 1989 with Georg Solti for performances of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust and to Berlin in 1999 with Barenboim for Brahms’s A German Requiem and Pierre Boulez for Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron . World premieres featuring the CSC have included Ned Rorem’s Goodbye My Fancy , John Harbison’s Four Psalms, and Bernard Rands’s apókryphos . With visiting orchestras, the chorus has collaborated with the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra with Zubin Mehta, and the Staatskapelle Berlin under Barenboim. Since first recording commercially in 1959—Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky under Reiner—the CSC has amassed a discography that includes hallmarks of the choral repertoire and several complete operas. The chorus most re- cently received a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance for Verdi’s Requiem, led by Riccardo Muti on CSO Resound. The chorus has received an additional nine Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance CHERYL FRAZES HILL, associate director JENNIFER KERR BUDZIAK, assistant director ANDREW LEWIS, assistant director BENJAMIN RIVERA, assistant director The chorus was prepared for this performance by Anthony Blake Clark. Christina Adams Michele Braché Agpalo Geoffrey Agpalo Anastasia Cameron Balmer * Laura Boguslavsky Michael Brauer Evan Bravos Matthew Brennan Terry L. Bucher Anna Joy Buegel Diane Busko Bryks * Timothy Christopoulos Joseph Cloonan Magaly Cordero Sandra Cross Angela De Venuto Micah A. Dingler Katarzyna Dorula William Esch Nicholas Falco Kirsten Fyr-Searcy Mary Lutz Govertsen Nida Grigalaviciute Amy Gwinn-Becker Elizabeth Haley Kevin Michael Hall Ashlee Hardgrave Adam Lance Hendrickson Megan Hendrickson Betsy Hoats Alexandra Ioan Ingrid Israel Mikolajczyk Taylor Jacobson Garrett Johannsen * Jess Koehn Lisa Kotara Susan Krout Kristin Lelm Lee Lichamer * Amanda Compton LoPresti Bill McMurray Mark James Meier Rebecca S. Moan Keith A. Murphy Lillian Murphy Ian Murrell Kasey Nahlovsky Máire O’Brien Clarissa Parrish Short Steven Michael Patrick Cari Plachy Elvira Ponticelli Ian R. Prichard Nicholas Pulikowski Margaret Quinnette Leo Radosavljevic Liliana Schiller Cole Seaton Bridget Skaggs Joseph Smith Avery Sujkowski Samantha Thielen Paul W. Thompson * Scott Uddenberg Tetyana Vakhnovska William Vallandigham Elizabeth Vaughan Megan Wilhelm * Section leader Chorus Manager Shelley Baldridge Assistant Manager and Librarian Heather Anderson Rehearsal Pianists John Goodwin Sharon Peterson Andrew Rosenblum RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 17 – JULY 30, 2023 34 ; I I