The Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO) will open its 31st Concert Season on Sept. 6 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
It will have eight concerts and will close in April next year. (Call CCP Marketing, tel. 8321125.)
At the press launch, PPO music director Olivier Ochanine said that the new concert season “will be a season of difference!” It will be highlighted with “what the audience really wants.”
PPO’s growing audience has resorted to online media to make suggestions, says the conductor. Social networking has also become a “powerful means of getting feedback and soliciting public patronage.”
The opening season concert in September features a flute soloist. It has been a long while, Ochanine says, that a flute soloist is playing in tandem with the PPO.
In response to many requests, the PPO will perform Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” in its Jan. 17, 2014 concert. Soloists will be PPO assistant concertmaster Joanne Ruth Livioco and her brother, violinist Jonathan David Livioco, concertmaster of ABS-CBN Philharmonic Orchestra.
Completing the program is Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 2, sometimes called “The Four Temperaments.”
Livioco’s appointment as assistant concertmaster is another highlight, Ochanine says.
A composition contest will be held, the rules to be announced after the season opener next month.
Last year, the PPO held an audition for pianists, and the winner was featured in one of its concerts.
The winning piece in the PPO composition contest will be featured in its closing concert in April next year.
The closing concert is another highlight, as it features popular classics from the movies and will have no featured soloist.
Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” highlights the program. It was used as the theme in the classic Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The 150th birth anniversary of the composer is next year.
Another notable development in the new season is the holding of PPO concerts outside the CCP Main Theater.
Billed “Out of the Box,” the outreach program will see the PPO “going the extra mile to help popularize symphonic music,” CCP artistic director Chris Millado says.
Ochanine adds that the PPO will collaborate with Manila schools to present a new “Classics Season” at the Rizal Park.
Ochanine calls on the public to support the PPO.
“Energy that comes from the listening public is so important,” he says. “The PPO needs the public’s support.”
He expresses optimism that through the Out of the Box program, social networking, and its performances, the PPO will continue to engage its audience and win public patronage.