Lansing Symphony Orchestra’s new season offers big old bangs and new echoes

Is it a mirage or the real deal? Only time will tell.

The Lansing Symphony Orchestra’s 2020-‘21 line-up is packed with new music by young American composers and major blockbusters from the likes of Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich and Richard Strauss, along with two world premieres from composer-in-residence Patrick Harlin.

Among the top-drawer soloists scheduled to perform are fiery pianist Jonathan Biss, MSU cello master Suren Bagratuni and multi-talented violinist-actress Lucia Micarelli, famous for the HBO series “Treme.”

From the near side of a pandemic summer, all that promise shimmers like an oasis. Maestro Timothy Muffitt is diving in as if it were 20 feet of cool water.

“We have no idea what things are going to be like in the fall,” Muffitt said. “I feel like, ‘Let’s be ready to put our best foot forward,’ and that’s to go full symphonic, right? Let’s be ready.”

To no one’s surprise, the orchestra’s 2019-‘20 season finale, pushed to June 26 in hopes of a reprieve from the COVID-19 virus, has been canceled.

Consolation will come, if the fates allow, Oct. 9, as the orchestra celebrates Beethoven’s 250th birthday with his Symphony No. 7 and the madly bashing “Coriolanus” Overture.

It’s the kickoff of what Muffitt called a “mini-festival” celebrating the composer who pushed the decorous formulas of Western music into a rough-and-tumble arena where passionate individual expression took over, and still rules.

“I wanted to do something that wasn’t just playing the most famous pieces,” Muffitt said. “I wanted to look at what led up to him and what was the aftershock.”

The reverberations will come from Georgia composer Carlos Simon’s magisterial “But Fate Now Conquers,” inspired by an entry in Beethoven’s notebook. Simon described the music as “a mix between Beethoven’s voice and my voice.” The pre-tremors will be provided by guest pianist Conrad Tao, playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Minor.

A major reverberation is set for the second concert of the season, Nov. 7 — “Watermark,” a piano concerto by the youngest musician ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for music, Caroline Shaw.

Among many other things, “Watermark” is a response to Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, and even dares to imagine what happens in the universe after those hammering final Beethoven chords are over. The piece was premiered in Seattle in 2017 by world-renowned pianist (and Beethoven specialist) Jonathan Biss, who followed up with the Beethoven third concerto, of course.

Muffitt asked Biss if he would bring both works to Lansing.

“It never hurts to ask,” Muffitt said. “He was available and he wanted to do it.” The concert will finish with an epic tapestry of Brahms’ First Symphony, sometimes called “Beethoven’s Tenth” because the music is the fruit of Brahms’ long and agonizing effort to follow Beethoven.

The combination promises one of the more memorable nights in the orchestra’s history.

“It’s all anyone can ask for,” Muffitt said. “Two extraordinary masterworks, a great guest artist, a beautiful piece by a living composer and a thread that runs through the whole concert. It’s just perfect.”

Muffitt grouped the first two orchestral concerts, along with the October entry in the LSO’s chamber series, a Beethoven “mini-festival.”

The chamber concert will feature string quartets by Beethoven and Mendelsohn.

“There’s not a lot of time in only three concerts to say much, but I think we’re going to say a lot,” he said.

The Jan. 9 concert, anchored by Antonin Dvorak’s Sixth Symphony, will feature MSU cello master Suren Bagratuni playing a work dear to his heart, Dmitri Shostakovich’s searing first cello concerto. The theme, implicit in much of Beethoven’s music as well, is the tug of war between the individual soul and the authoritarian state. At the same concert, LSO’s composer in residence, Patrick Harlin, will provide a world premiere work — the first of two next season.

(Muffitt plans to program “River of Doubt,” Harlin’s tropical nightmare tapestry scheduled for this month’s canceled MasterWorks concert, for some time in 2021-‘22.)

The LSO’s March 20 concert, anchored by Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony, will feature violinist Lucia Micarelli, a post-modern, multi-talented artist who also sings and acts and is known to many HBO viewers as the busker Annie Talarico in the “Treme” series. Like a few thousand other people, Muffitt was floored by Micarelli’s grand YouTube mashup of the Sibelius Violin Concerto and Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.”

The sparks Micarelli threw around in the opening cadenza gave Muffitt an irresistible urge to hear her play the whole concerto, minus the Zeppelin.

“Her classical violin playing is absolutely magnificent,” Muffitt said. “She’s a unique voice, almost without limit on the violin.” The concert will open with a bang: John Adams’ “The Chairman Dances,” which Muffitt called “one of the greatest hits of the 20th century.”

For a big finale May 20, the LSO will tackle Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” — the whole thing, not just the “2001: A Space Odyssey” part — Tchaikovsky’s throbbing First Piano Concerto, and another world premiere by Harlin.

Taken as a whole, the season promises a lush orchestral oasis, but it’s hard to keep it in focus in the haze of uncertainty gripping the world in 2020.

But Muffitt feels that even if the music sifts through his fingers for another year, just putting a slate of music is a “catalyst for thought.”

“I feel like Lansing has always had a strong sense of community, but I feel like, all across the globe, more and more, we’re going to be circling the wagons and getting an even stronger community focus,” he said.

“We, as the Lansing Symphony, want to help develop community pride and create a conversation, and what better conversation starter than to put some ideas about music out there for people to enjoy and listen and be inspired by?”

For the whole 2020-2021 line-up, visit www.lansingsymphony.org