Announcing Kirklees Concert Season 2022-23

Conducted by Opera North’s Music Director Garry Walker, a transatlantic programme of symphonic jazz provides a swinging, syncopated curtain-up for orchestral concerts at Huddersfield. Julian Bliss joins the Orchestra of Opera North as soloist in Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, followed by another showcase for the instrument by Artie Shaw. Gershwin’s An American in Paris, HK Gruber’s Manhattan Broadcasts and Duke Ellington’s bona fide, blues-drenched Harlem complete a thrilling account of the exchange between club and concert stage.

On 20 October the Orchestra follows its celebrated summer concert performances of Wagner’s epic Parsifal with a similar treatment for Gluck’s 1774 opera Orfeo ed Euridice: a stripped-back opportunity to glory in the music, with the ensemble centre-stage and singers in their midst. Fflur Wyn (Euridice) and Daisy Brown (Amor) reprise their roles from Opera North’s filmed lockdown concert staging, with Alice Coote as Orfeo and the Company’s Principal Guest Conductor Antony Hermus on the podium.

December brings Opera North debuts from extraordinary young pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, soloist in Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Tune, and Music Director of the Richmond Symphony Valentina Peleggi, conducting a programme completed by Puccini’s Preludio Sinfonico and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.

For Christmas, there’s a double helping of festive enchantment with a screening of The Snowman with a live soundtrack from the Orchestra, and the story of The Nutcracker told through Tchaikovsky‘s twinkling music, live narration and captivating illustrations.

Dewsbury Town Hall is the venue for the Orchestra and Chorus of Opera North’s traditional Christmas Gala, with another debut from Music Director of the Salzburg Landestheater Leslie Suganandarajah, conducting the ensemble in a selection of carols and Christmas favourites.

The Radetzky March and other Strauss essentials herald the New Year under the baton of Christoph Altstaedt in Viennese Whirl, complemented by more waltzes, polkas and galops from Vienna and beyond, with guest soprano Jennifer France.

Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg follows his triumphant Huddersfield performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto as soloist in Prokofiev’s brilliantly inventive Third, with Antony Hermus back on the podium and Shostakovich’s gripping Tenth Symphony closing the evening.

Picking up from last season’s magnificent Enigma Variations, Garry Walker conducts another of Elgar’s enduring mysteries, his haunting Violin Concerto, famous for its incomplete dedication. Mexican-American violinist Elena Urioste returns to Huddersfield as soloist; Sally Beamish’s 1999 The Day Dawn opens the evening, and Nielsen’s Second Symphony, ‘The Four Temperaments’, concludes.

Canadian conductor Jordan de Souza, former First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin, makes his Kirklees Concert Season debut alongside remarkable Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth in Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto. Another pivotal early-career work, Strauss’ tone poem Don Juan captures the mythic libertine’s hot-blooded lust for life – and his submission to a melancholy end. Brahms’ First Symphony draws the orchestral season to an elegant close.

Successful entries to our Minute Masterpieces competition will continue to receive their premieres at each of the orchestral concerts. Open to emerging composers from all backgrounds and traditions, Minute Masterpieces offers the chance to write 60-second works for full symphony orchestra, which are performed and recorded by the ensemble.

Monday organ concerts continue in Huddersfield, with David Pipe curating a lively series of guest appearances on the historic Father Willis organ. Town Hall debuts include Francesca Massey (Rochester) and Ourania Gassiou (Megaron, Athens), and much-loved Borough Organist Emeritus Gordon Stewart returns on 13 February 2023. David’s own concerts include a dramatic programme for Halloween, and a joyously eclectic season-closer bringing together works by Alfred Hollins, Florence Price, Gershwin and more.