San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
S.A. Symphony plans to return in February.
The San Antonio Symphony, which last played for a live audience inMarch, plans to return to the stage in February.
All nine classical performances of its abbreviated season will be given in the H-E-B Performance Hall of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, the symphony’s home base since the building opened in 2014. A Pops season will be announced in early December, said Corey Cowart, the symphony’s executive director.
The symphony was forced to cancel the spring concerts of its 2019-20 season in March because of shutdowns put in place to stemthe spread of the coronavirus. A full lineup for 2020-21 was announced in May in hopes
that the virus would be vanquished or better controlled by the fall. In July, when itwas clear that was extremely unlikely, the
symphony announced it would not return until next year.
“Being in a holding pattern is difficult,” Cowart said. “It’s good to be talking about concerts.”
Safety procedures are being nailed down by a committee of musicians and management. The basics are familiar: None of the concerts will feature the full, 72-musician orchestra, allowing the musicians to spread out onstage. String musicians will be 6 feet apart; thosewho playwoodwinds and brass instruments will be a little farther apart.
The San Antonio Mastersingers, the symphony’s choral ensemble, will be sidelined for the time being because of safety concerns associated with singing. Cowart is hoping the group will be back in the mix by the second half of the 2021-22 season.
In addition, musicians won’t be sharingmusic stands, as they
normally do. And they will be tested for the virus that causes COVID-19, though the specifics are still being worked out.
As far as the audience goes, the Tobin Center,
which began presenting ticketed performances again in September, has a list of protocols in place. Temperature screenings are required to gain entry, and everyone has to wear masks when they're out of their seats.
Seating capacity is limited, too, to create socially distanced bubbles for audience members. The number of tickets available for each concert will range between about 600 and 750, depending on howpatrons are buying them — whether, for example, they're purchasing two or four tickets.
Mary Ellen Goree, principal second violin and chairwoman of the orchestra committee, said she is eager for the start of the season.
“I am looking forward to being onstage with my colleagues, seeing our audiences in the hall, even though, obviously, the concerts that we play in February will have some pretty important differences from the concerts we played last February,” Goree said. “But it's a step in the right direction.”
In the next week or so, Cowart hopes to make an announcement about streaming options for concerts
The season will include the return of Music Director Emeritus Sebastian Lang-Lessing, who is slated to conduct a program of Beethoven and
Wagner May 28-29. The concerts he had planned to conduct this past spring were designed to celebrate the end of his decade-long stint as music director. Some of those elements may be folded into theMay concerts, depending on where things stand with the virus, Cowart said.
“There's a lot of hope around being able to gather in an appropriate way by the time we get to May,” he said.
The search for Lang-Lessing's successor is ongoing.
Here's the schedule for the rest of the season:
Feb. 5-6: The season opens with a program including Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto played by guest artist Stephen Hough. David Danzmayr will conduct.
Feb. 19-20: Mozart's “Prague” Symphony is the centerpiece, spotlighting violinist and acting associate concertmaster Sarah Silver Manzke. It will be conducted by Michael
Christie.
March 5-6: Concerts hold works by Rossini and Dvorak and will feature guest percussionist Colin Currie. Jonathan Heyward will conduct.
March 12-13: Jeffrey Kahane will conduct and play Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4.
April 2-3: Guest conductor Carlos Izcaray will lead the symphony as it plays one of his compositions, “Geometric Unity,” as well as works by Mozart and Beethoven. The concerts also will spotlight violinist Eric Gratz, the symphony's concertmaster.
April 9-10: Aaron Copland's “Appalachian Spring” will be conducted by Garrett Keast and feature soprano Lyubov Petrova.
May 14-15: Guest violinist Benjamin Beilman will play Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto on a program also featuring works by Schubert and Gabriela Lena Frank to be led by conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados.
June 5-6: The season will conclude with concerts featuring works by Mozart and Stravinsky conducted by Brett Mitchell.
Subscribers will be notified about how the abbreviated season will impact their subscriptions. Symphony staffers also will reach out to patrons who have not yet renewed to see what they want to do. Single concert tickets are not available, and it's possible that few, if any, will be sold because of the limited seating capacity, Cowart said.
“Our first priority is to our subscribers because, across the country, arts subscribers have saved organizations over these past eight or nine months,” he said. “We want to make sure we can deliver for them.”