Hartford Symphony Orchestra is amping up its classical output for the end of the year, with offerings ranging from a new live-to-video performance series set on local stages, to musings on Felix Mendelssohn, to a documentary on Doc Severinsen.
Top among the offerings is the first ticketed concert series Hartford Symphony has produced since the COVID shutdown in March. The online “Spotlight” concerts feature HSO musicians but for obvious reasons not a full orchestra. They will happen in a variety of small spaces rather than the symphony’s accustomed Bushnell. Tickets are $15. Each concert will be posted for four weeks, at which point the next concert will be posted.
“We’re trying to be creative. This allows our audience to access Hartford Symphony Orchestra from their homes. We hope to even be able to have small audiences at the filming of the concerts themselves in the future,” says symphony director Steve Collins, who helped program the series with HSO music director Carolyn Kuan and the symphony’s manager of artistic operations Colette Hall.
The shows feature HSO musicians in small ensembles, and are recorded live at venues throughout Hartford.
The November concert features five musicians and was performed in the recently renovated lobby of TheaterWorks on Pearl Street. The performers include violinists Leonid Sigal and Lisa Rautenberg, violists Aekyung Kim and Jeffrey Krieger and pianist Stephen Scarlato. They’re playing a range of classical works from the 18th, 19th and 21st centuries: Joseph Haydn’s “Trio for Strings in B-flat Major,” Antonín Dvorák – Piano Quintet in A (his “Allegro ma non troppo,” not the Beethoven one), William Bolcolm’s playful tribute “Haydn Go Seek” from 2009 and the contemporary African American female composer Jessie Montgomery’s popular 2016 strings piece “Strum.”
“It’s a nice variant program,” Collins says. “The piece that really captured my imagination was ‘Haydn Go Seek.’ It’s nice to feature such a range of composers.”
The December concert, titled “Spotlight: Music for Strings & Organ” and airing December 11 through January 10, will have nearly twice as many musicians — nine, a double string quartet plus piano — and happen in a larger space, Asylum Hill Congregational Church. Due to COVID concerns, the symphony is not using wind or brass instruments at these concerts. . Tickets for “Music for Strings & Organ” will go on sale Nov. 30.
Another of the new series is a true “making the best of a bad situation” concept. “Masterworks In-Depth” is a discussion series where by Carolyn Kuan and special guests talk about classical pieces the symphony would’ve been playing had it not had to cancel its 2020-21 season due to the coronavirus. The season, announced back in March, was meant to mark a decade since Kuan became the HSO’s music director.
In the third installment in the “In-Depth” series, airing Dec. 4-9, Kuan chats about Grieg’s Piano Concerto (Op. 16) with the internationally renowned pianist who’d originally been planning to play it live in Hartford this month, Allessio Bax. She also talks the seasonal staple “The Nutcracker” and other Tchaikovsky works with a choreographer, Miro Magloire of New Chamber Ballet. The symphony had intended to do the finale from “The Nutcracker” as well as Tchaikovsky’s “Fantasy Overture” from “The Tempest” alongside the Grieg.
“In the summer of 2018, Doc Severinsen played our Talcott Mountain summer music series,” Collins explains. “He was just amazing. It was a magical night. The audience was delighted. Everyone left with a glow. There was electricity in the air.”
Portions of that memorable performance anchor the film. “This documentary was two and a half years in the making,” Collins says. “It opens with footage of Talcott Mountain. Then, three quarters of the way in, the high point of the film involves great footage of that concert.”
Tickets are $20 and, once purchased, can be used anything through Friday night to watch the film. There’s a special added event on Nov. 24 at 7:30 p.m.: a live Q&A session. moderated by Collins, with the “Never Too Late” filmmakers and Doc Severinsen himself.
“Never Too Late” is the second online film screening the symphony has hosted since the shutdown, following “The Bowmakers” in October.
The symphony offers other discussion and performance series as well as special events and a “HSO to Go” page of performance clips and links on its website. Collins makes clear that online programming was already an integral part of HSO activities before the shutdown, and that the offerings are now becoming more diverse and distinctive, as with the filmed-live venue-shifting “Spotlight” concerts.
“We are in the process of exploration,” Collins says. “It’s been a really interesting journey, and the journey continues,”
Information on Hartford Symphony programming is at hartfordsymphony.org, including dedicated pages for the “In Depth” and “Spotlight” series, the Severinsen film and the “To Go” menu.
Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.
