SPCO, Then and Now

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra turns fifty this year, but it has both a present and a past to celebrate. The orchestra is currently enjoying record audience numbers, and the people in the seats return for more than just the chestnuts of the classical era. Bruce Coppock, SPCO president, calls it a sea change. “We’ve engendered their trust,” he says. “They will come no matter what we’re playing, and they’re up for an adventure.”

This is a good indication of the orchestra’s vitality at fifty, as the health—not to mention relevance—of any art form rests on the balance between a celebration of the great works of the past and a commitment to the masterpieces of the future. The SPCO, a master of this middle ground, juices up concerts with the interests of its artistic partners, luminary musicians carefully selected for their eclectic areas of expertise ranging from Baroque to today. This season, nearly 50 percent of the SPCO’s programming reflects music of our time, including a healthy number of premieres and commissions.

The season opener (September 5–6), which will be conducted by Douglas Boyd at the Ordway Center, reflects that balance with two works for chorus and orchestra—Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day and Seven Last Words from the Cross by the living Scottish composer (and devout Catholic) James MacMillan. Choral music icon Dale Warland, who has collaborated with the SPCO on more than forty concerts since 1973, has come out of retirement to create and prepare the SPCO’s Anniversary Chorale.

The following weekend, conductor Roberto Abbado offers the first of his pairings of Haydn with twentieth-century composers, in which Haydn’s Symphony no. 103, or The Drum Roll, is balanced by Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for Strings and Movements for Piano and Orchestra and Wuorinene’s Flying to Kahani, with a solo by Peter Serkin.

The first premiere of the season is Peteris Vasks’ Meditation for Violin and String Orchestra (September 18–20, 25–26, and 28), originally written for Gidon Kremer. The American premiere is performed by violinist/conductor Nikolaj Znaider, a Danish citizen of Polish and Israeli descent whom Coppock only half-jokingly describes as the “Joshua Bell of Europe.”

Over the course of the season, artistic partner Pierre–Laurent Aimard will play four of Beethoven’s five piano concerti (nos. 1, 2, 4, and 5), completing the cycle he began last year. And finally, soprano Dawn Upshaw returns for her second season, cocurating concerts with former artistic partner Stephen Prutsman and local jazz phenom Maria Schneider, whose first foray into orchestral music will premiere October 23–25. 651-291-1144