The ASO’s 2023-24 season will feature Nathalie Stutzmann signature works

The second Atlanta Symphony Orchestra season under the baton of Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann will include several of the conductor’s signature works, including Dvořák, Bruckner, Strauss, Brahms, Verdi and Tchaikovsky. 

The orchestra announced its 2023-24 season today, which will include appearances by violin star Joshua Bell, the ASO debut of acclaimed pianist Maria João Pires and soprano Renée Fleming singing an all-Strauss program.

Stutzmann will conduct two weekends of music by Anton Bruckner to celebrate the Austrian composer’s 200th birthday.

“The artistic partnership between Nathalie Stutzmann and the musicians of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus is nothing short of transformative,” Jennifer Barlament, the ASO’s executive director, said in a press release. “Around the world and here in Atlanta, critics note Stutzmann’s fresh, searching, intriguing interpretations that allow listeners to hear long-beloved works as though they were world premieres. This is one of our most diverse and exciting seasons to date, with artists of great range and gravitas side by side with fresh voices and tremendous variety.” 

ASO officials said that concert attendance has rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, with an overage 80 percent of the hall full for each classical concert in the 2022-23 season. 

The ASO’s 79th season will kick off October 5 with the ASO debut of French harpist Xavier de Maistre performing a concerto by Alexander Mosolov on a program with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

Robert Spano, the orchestra’s music director for 20 years and now music director laureate, will return to Symphony Hall in May 2024 for a world premiere piece by Adam Schoenberg and a program that features pianist Garrick Ohlsson. The following week, Spano returns to conduct Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and a new commissioned work with the ASO Chorus by Jonathan Leshnoff.

In addition Grammy Award-nominated composer Carlos Simon, an Atlanta native, will curate a program in February of 2024 celebration of Black History Month. The program will include the glee clubs of Morehouse and Spelman colleges, as well as poet and spoken-word performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Simon’s brea(d)th and Motherboxx Connection will be performed, as well as Uzee Brown’s arrangement of We Shall Overcome. Jonathan Taylor Rush will conduct the program. 

Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä is perhaps the most celebrated among the six guest conductors making their ASO debut during the 2023-24 season. The others include Anthony Parnther, Alpesh Chauhan, Lina Gonzales-Granados and Krzysztof Urbański.

There also will be 13 guest artists making their ASO debut, including Josef Špaček, violin; Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, soprano; Ekaterina Gubanova, mezzo-soprano; Issachah Savage, tenor; Joseph Lattanzi, baritone; Yeol Eum Son, piano; and Cedric Tiberghien, piano.

Joshua Bell will perform October 25, playing the Bruch Violin Concerto and excerpts from The Elements, a suite for violin commissioned by the artist. Peter Oundjian will conduct.

The orchestra will perform a program in October that spotlights the sarod, the stringed instrument from India. Lidiya Yankovskaya will make her ASO debut as conductor for that concert, and it will feature compositions and a performance by Amjad Ali Khan, a master of the sarod, along with his sons Ayaan and Amaan Ali Bangash.

The season will also dedicate a program in November to film composers, including John Williams and Chanda Dancy, plus Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3. Former ASO Principal Bassoon Andrew Brady, now with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, will return to Symphony Hall as a guest artist for that program, and veteran Hollywood bassoonist Anthony Parnther will conduct.

The orchestra’s own musicians will take center stage in Symphony Hall multiple times next season. Concertmaster David Coucheron will direct the orchestra in a concert that features Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons in January 2024. In April of that same year, Coucheron will be joined by Principal Viola Zhenwei Shi to play Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante. Principal Percussionist Joseph Petrasek plays Adam Schoenberg’s Losing Earth in February of 2024.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus performs several weekends with Stutzmann, herself a highly regarded contralto and a proponent of the great choral works. Stutzmann will conduct the ASO Chorus in an evening of Brahms rarities and Rachmaninov’s The Isle of the Dead in November, and Verdi’s Requiem in February of 2024. 

The Chorus, under the baton of Krzysztof Urbański, will perform Carmina Burana for four performances in March of 2024 with soloists that include Janai Brugger, soprano; Miles Mykkanen, tenor; and Anthony Clark Evans, baritone; and the Georgia Boy Choir.

Tickets are now on sale for the upcoming season. For the complete season listing, go HERE.