FOLLOWUP AND LINK: A second look at the 2011 Hollywood Bowl season

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

After my original post (HERE), a second look at the upcoming Hollywood Bowl season reveals some notes of interest:
• Although Bramwell Tovey will conduct in the last two weeks of the Bowl season — including the annual “Tchaikovsky Spectacular,” which comes late this year (Sept. 9-10) — he’s no longer the Phil’s Principal Guest Conductor at Hollywood Bowl. The position may have been rendered superfluous by Gustavo Dudamel’s increased commitment to conducting in the Bowl — two weeks (five concerts) next summer.
• The Friday and Saturday concerts are now hyperbolically named “Weekend Spectacular.” Four of the 10 weekends include fireworks.
• Many of the programs remain tried-and-true. The Grease and Sound of Music sing-alongs return, as do two movie nights and the annual John Williams “Music at the Movies” programs. The annual semi-staged Broadway production this year is Hairspray.
• Two of the 10 classical weeks have the Tuesday and Thursday programs duplicating each other. One is the initial classical series week, when Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition along with Lang Lang as soloist in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The other is Aug. 9 and 11 when Perry So, one of this season’s Dudamel Conducting Fellows, will conduct Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings while Joshua Bell will be soloist and conductor in Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
• The Phil’s assistant conductor, Lionel Bringuier, takes the podium on Aug., 2, while his predecessor, Joana Carniero (now music director of the Berkeley Symphony), comes in two nights later.
• Itzhak Perlman shows up on Sept. 6, playing and conducting Beethoven’s two Romances and then conducting that composer’s fifth and eighth symphonies.

Click HERE for the Hollywood Bowl Web site.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.