Orchestra Recreation

A new season full of love stories

The Graz-based orchestra Recreation has planned a year full of "Love Stories" for the coming season. A total of 13 projects full of love are on the program from October.

At the start of the program presentation, Artistic Director Mathis Huber looks back on a successful Recreation season: they have "overcome the Covid dip" and also learned during this difficult time that audiences have changed their needs: "More compact concerts and greater variability in starting times have made our work very successful in recent times," he says. And so the orchestra will remain true to this concept in the coming season - the fourth under chief conductor Mei-Ann Chen.

Many love stories
This 2024/25 season is all about "love stories": the concert series begins in October with "Cosi fan tutte", an evening of music by Mozart, Haydn and Schubert. The young Graz native Hyazintha Andrej will play Haydn's cello concerto, Tobias Wögerer will conduct. There will be a reunion with pianist Bernd Glemser in "Beethoven con forza", which will focus on the composer's 5th piano concerto. A special feature will be a new interpretation of Beethoven's "Coriolan" overture by Korean composer Unsuk Chin, with Mei-Ann Chen conducting the concert.

The chief conductor also wields the baton for the "Butterfly Lovers" program. This evening will not only feature Offenbach's overture to "Orpheus in the Underworld", but also the Chinese composition "The Butterfly Lovers". The violin concerto tells the love story of two people who can only come together as butterflies. Violin soloist Melissa White will provide colorful accents with a dress designed for the occasion.

Michael Hofstetter returns
The classic lovers par excellence take center stage in "Romeo and Juliet". Under the direction of the chief conductor, not only will the suite of the same name by Sergei Prokofiev be performed, but also "West Side Story", the modern version by Leonard Bernstein. A great couple in music history were Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann, each of whom will perform a piano concerto with Claire Huangci, who will also conduct the orchestra. Conductor Michael Hofstetter, long-time director of the orchestra, returns to his former place of work for a Mozart program.

There are two atmospheric concerts for Christmas: "Hansel and Gretel" features a suite from the opera of the same name with Italian conductor Vanessa Benelli Mosell, while Alfredo Bernardini contributes his usual baroque sounds with his oboe. In March 2025, the orchestra will commemorate Johann Strauss' 200th birthday with a program that not only features music, but also texts read by Ursula Strauss.