NEW YORK – Carnegie Hall’s 2024-25 season will feature a festival celebrating Latin music titled “Nuestros Sonidos (Our Sounds).”
Gustavo Dudamel opens the season and the festival on Oct. 8, leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Lang Lang and Ginastera’s ballet “Estancia” with baritone Gustavo Castillo. Dudamel's three concerts highlight a new work by Gabriela Ortiz written for cellist Alisa Weilerstein, Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” narrated by Spanish actress María Valverde and a performance that includes Mexican singer/songwriter Natalia Lafourcade.
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A dozen festival concerts were announced Wednesday and more will be added, with events throughout New York City.
Past festivals focused on “Honor: A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy," “Ubuntu: Music and Arts of South Africa" and “Afrofuturism.” Carnegie's 2011-12 season presented “Voices from Latin America.”
“We've put Black music at the center really since I arrived in 2005,” Carnegie executive director Clive Gillinson said. “Latin music, even though it's such a big part of American culture and American music, maybe hasn’t had enough spotlight put on it in recent years.”
Carnegie returned this season to its full pre-pandemic schedule of about 170 events, a level that will be maintained next season, and has had average attendance of 93%.
“What’s important is not that one tries to be fashionable or follow the sort of the things of the day, but that you just continue to do what you think is important,” Gillinson said.
Among season highlights, the Berlin Philharmonic will give three concerts with chief conductor Kirill Petrenko starting Nov. 17 and Riccardo Muti leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Jan. 21 and the Vienna Philharmonic in three concerts beginning Feb. 28.
The London Symphony Orchestra, in its first season with chief conductor Antonio Pappano, plays at Carnegie Hall for the first time since 2005 when it performs on March 5, 2025.
Pianist Igor Levit gives a Jan. 12 recital in which he performs Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
Soprano Asmik Grigorian has a recital on Dec. 17, then returns March 18 for Strauss’ “Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs)” with the Cleveland Orchestra and music director Franz Welser-Möst.