The Royal Philharmonic became the first international orchestra to tour the U.S. since February 2020, completing a 14-concert, nine-city U.S. tour at Carnegie Hall.
After enduring repeated COVID-19 testing and a flight from London to become the first international symphony to tour the United States in 23 months, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra arrived in California to discover some brass had not. Our trumpet section had to borrow trumpets from Yamaha and do the first concert on those and then rent or buy tails, because all their tails were in the box.
With their own instruments and evening clothes in hand, the Royal Philharmonic completed a 14-concert, nine-city U.S. tour on Monday night, the first international orchestra to play Carnegie since Feb. 24, 2020, a gap caused by the pandemic. The tour shows that such events can be done as the pandemic continues.
With their own instruments and evening clothes in hand, the Royal Philharmonic completed a 14-concert, nine-city U.S. tour on Monday night, the first international orchestra to play Carnegie since Feb. 24, 2020, a gap caused by the pandemic. The tour shows that such events can be done as the pandemic continues.
New music director Vasily Petrenko and cellist Kian Soltani received long and loud ovations for an all-British program of Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Elgar’s cello concerto and Holst’s The Planets. The program was broadcast on radio and streamed online.
Before the opening notes, Petrenko took the unusual step of using a wireless microphone to address the nearly full house. It had been 708 days since conductor John Eliot Gardiner led the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in Beethoven’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies at Carnegie, which was shuttered from March 13, 2020, until last Oct. 6.
The hall reopened with mostly soloists and smaller ensembles, delaying a steadier schedule of larger-scale performances until 2022.
The Vienna Philharmonic is the next European orchestra scheduled to arrive in the U.S., its first American appearances in three years. Valery Gergiev leads performances at Carnegie from Feb. 25-27 and Hayes Hall in Naples, Florida, on March 1-2, though the orchestra canceled late-February concerts with him in Germany and France because of positive COVID-19 results within the orchestra.
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