After Kennedy Center Shakeup, a Star Conductor Perseveres – and Pursues Peace Project Overseas

When President Donald Trump fired the Kennedy Center’s longtime president and president successful February and installed himself arsenic chairman, 2 musicians who had been creator advisers to the halfway and the National Symphony Orchestra, opera prima Renée Fleming and stone pianist Ben Folds, resigned, and 1 4th of the orchestra’s subscribers canceled their subscriptions successful protest.  

But Gianandrea Noseda, the orchestra’s manager and 1 of the world’s astir sought-after conductors, stayed on, extending his declaration successful March by 4 years, and volition service arsenic euphony manager and main conductor until 2031, the orchestra’s centennial year. He says helium has much to execute with the NSO, and for the astir portion helium has received praise for providing stableness during a clip of upheaval.  

“I respect radical who deliberation differently,” says Noseda, an admirer of the late, politically progressive Leonard Bernstein, who composed the euphony for the opening of the Kennedy Center successful 1971 and was known to tribunal controversy. “But contiguous is not the clip to marque speeches. I person responsibilities.” 

Noseda is euphony manager of different orchestra, though, and 1 that is purposely governmental – or, much specifically, geopolitical. That ensemble is the Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra, oregon PCYO, made up of 80 young musicians from 3 Caucasus nations, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and 5 neighboring countries, Ukraine, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Moldova. The PCYO performs each September successful Georgia, arsenic a cardinal constituent of a euphony festival successful Tsinandali, astir 65 miles from the Georgian superior of Tbilisi. Georgia is considered a safe, hospitable country, but the portion is rife with conflict, and the accepted enmity between, say, Turkey and Armenia, seems utterly irrelevant erstwhile young radical from those countries marque euphony together. Thus, the PCYO is not simply an orchestra, but a bid project. 

The festival attracts world-class soloists and enclosure ensembles from each implicit the satellite – this year, pianists Sir András Schiff and Nikolai Lugansky, cellist Misha Maisky, and the Jerusalem Quartet were among the performers. Many of these A-list artists travel to enactment the humanitarian ngo of the festival, and are invariably impressed with the level of playing of the orchestra. Noseda has been euphony manager of the PCYO since its inception successful 2019. Because of COVID, the ensemble was suspended successful 2020 and 2021. In 5 seasons astatine the helm, Noseda has helped mold the PCYO into a professional-level orchestra, a feat each the much singular considering it is unfastened to musicians from lone a fistful of countries. 

Billboard caught up with Noseda astatine the Tsinandali Festival, held this twelvemonth betwixt Sept. 4 and 14, and spoke to him and members of the PYCO astir euphony and coexistence. 

The PYCO concerts this play featured symphonies of Shostakovich, Beethoven, Mahler and Brahms, and concertos of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven and Dvořák, with Lugansky, Maisky, violinist Marc Bouchkov, pianist Behzod Abduraimov and cellist Pablo Ferrández arsenic soloists. The Brahms symphony – No. 3 successful F large – was primitively slated to beryllium guest-conducted by Kent Nagano, but Nagano had to cancel for wellness reasons, and Noseda stepped in, precocious successful the game. He was impressed with the results. “From t...