Emily D’Angelo and the TSO at the Maison Symphonique

May 4, 2024

April 5, 2024

Marketing Blurb

Brahms's monumental First Symphony is a grandiose gesture of emotion embroidered with rich woodwind harmonies, thundering timpani, and raucous brass, plus Spotlight Artist Emily D'Angelo sings a suite of stunning vocal works by centuries of composers with enargeia.

Program

Beethoven, Coriolan, Overture, op. 62
Jarkko Riihimäki, enargeia, Suite based on themes by von Bingen, Guðnadóttir, Mazzoli and Kirkland Snider
Intermission
Brahms, Symphony no. 1 in C minor, op. 68

Artist Bios

Gustavo Gimeno, conductor

Gustavo Gimeno’s tenure as the tenth Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra began in 2020/21. Since his appointment, he has reinvigorated the artistic profile of the Orchestra, engaged with musicians and audiences alike, and brought performances of familiar works as well as some of today’s freshest sounds. Further, he has overseen renewed community engagement and sown the seeds for an ambitious program of commissioning new works from emerging and established composers.

During the 2023/24 season, Gimeno and the TSO usher in a bold new beginning for the Orchestra in its 101st year, with major symphonic works—including Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, Brahms’s Symphony No. 1, Respighi’s Pines of Rome, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Pulcinella—presented alongside an unprecedented number of pieces never before performed by the TSO. Gimeno will share the stage with, among other soloists, Daniil Trifonov, James Ehnes, Emily D’Angelo, Frank Peter Zimmermann, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

February 2024 will see the release of the first commercial recording Gimeno and the TSO made together, in May 2023, memorializing Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie under the Harmonia Mundi label. This builds on Gimeno’s relationship with the label, for which he has recorded Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Puccini’s Messa di Gloria, and Stravinsky’s ballets The Firebird and Apollon musagète with Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg.

Gimeno has held the position of Music Director with Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg since 2015, and will become Music Director of Teatro Real in Madrid in 2025/26—he currently serves as their Music Director Designate. As an opera conductor, he has appeared at renowned houses such as the Liceu Opera Barcelona; Opernhaus Zürich; Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia; and Teatro Real, Madrid. He is also much sought-after as a symphonic guest conductor worldwide: in 2023/24 he returns to orchestras such as London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouworkest, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, NSO Washington, Dallas and Cincinnati symphony orchestras.

Emily D'Angelo, mezzo-soprano

Hailed by The New York Times as “one of the world’s special young singers,” Emily D’Angelo has continued her meteoric rise and firmly established herself as one of the most exciting and critically acclaimed artists of her generation. Called “wondrous and powerful” by The New York Times for her recent US recital début, the mezzo-soprano is the first and only vocalist to have been presented with the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Festival. A 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist, one of CBC’s “Top 30 Under 30” Canadian classical musicians, and among WQXR NYC Public Radio’s “40 Under 40” singers to watch, D’Angelo made her stage début, at only 21 years of age, as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro at Spoleto’s Festival dei Due Mondi, where she was awarded the 2016 Monini Prize.

In past seasons, Emily D’Angelo made a string of widely acclaimed role and house débuts, further cementing her status as one of today’s most sought-after performers. As a Deutsche Grammophon exclusive recording artist, her début album, enargeia, was named one of the 50 best albums of 2021 by NPR, the best Canadian classical album of 2021 by the CBC, and received JUNO and Gramophone Awards in 2022.

Full biography here: Emily D’Angelo