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Spoleto Festival regulars the Westminster Choir return for a performance of Howells’s requiem

ChiCago Chicago Symphony Orchestra Beethoven: Symphony No 7 (May 15 & 17) The tuba is the unlikely soloist in these concerts, with CSO brass ringleader Gene Pokorny playing the meat of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Concerto in F minor. Despite the minor key, it’s actually a very wide-ranging and enlivened work worthy of every performance it can get. Dallas Symphony Orchestra maestro Jaap van Zweden also conducts the orchestra in Haydn’s Oxford Symphony (No 92) and Beethoven’s Symphony No 7. cso.org toroNto Toronto Symphony Orchestra Kissin plays Grieg (May 17 & 19) Brahms & Shostakovich (May 24 & 26) Noted interpreter of the Romantic repertoire Yevgeny Kissin performs Grieg’s Piano Concerto under Andrew Davis. The programme is complemented by Nielsen’s Overture to Maskarade and two works by Richard Strauss: Don Juan and the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier. The following week, recent MacArthur 'Genius' Fellow Alisa Weilerstein continues her tour of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1, playing it here under Thomas Dausgaard. Paired with that is Brahms’s Symphony No 2. tso.ca kaNsas CitY Kansas City Symphony Bach, Mendelssohn & Haydn (May 18–20) Bernard Labadie conducts JC Bach’s Symphony in G minor and Haydn’s Clock Symphony. A rare treat will be the Symphony in F major of 'Swedish Mozart' Joseph Martin Kraus. In contrast with Mozart, however, many of Kraus’s symphonies are lost or attributed to another composer, and this is one of only a dozen (one of which is dedicated to Haydn) that remain. Brazilian-born pianist Arnaldo Cohen plays Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No 1. kcsymphony.org

MoNtreaL Montreal Opera Gounod: Faust (May 19, 22, 24 & 26) Father-and-son tenor team Guy and Antoine Bélanger are Faust the elder and the younger in this take on Gounod’s opera. Soprano Mary

Dunleavy presumably pairs with the younger as Marguerite, while bass Alexander Vinogradov rounds out the devil’s love triangle as Méphistophélès. Baritone and Montreal Opera regular Etienne Dupuis sings Valentin, and young mezzo Emma Parkinson is the boyish Siébel. Emmanuel Plasson conducts a new production directed by Alain Gauthier. operademontreal.com

MoNtreaL Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Deborah Voigt (May 22 & 23) The vast majority of the OSM’s May concerts are already sold out, all of them conducted by Kent Nagano, including a centennial celebration of the premiere of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire featuring soloists from the Bavarian State Orchestra (May 7), a daring partnership with Cirque Éloize for Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé to fete the ballet’s own 100th birthday (28), and Dvořák's New World Symphony (3, 5 and 6; mostly sold out); also a recital by Lang Lang of Bach, Schubert and Chopin is sold out (15). What non-ticketholders still have a prayer of catching this month is Deborah Voigt, fresh off the Met’s new Ring cycle and singing arias by Wagner, Beethoven and Strauss under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, who also conducts the Overture to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade. osm.ca atLaNta Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Bruch & Mendelssohn (May 24–26) Young Polish violinist Stefan Jackiw can stun audiences with his energetic performance style. Here he plays Bruch’s ebullient Scottish Fantasy. In addition, Baroque expert Nicholas McGegan leads the orchestra in a programme that includes Mendelssohn’s equally boisterous Italian Symphony No 4, the more refined 'Dance of the Blessed Spirits' from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Handel’s Concerto Grosso in G. atlantasymphony.org

CharLestoN Spoleto Festival USA Glass: Kepler (May 26, 28 & 31, June 2) Wenjing: Feng Yi Ting (May 27 & 29, June 1, 4 & 7) Howells: Requiem (May 30) Director Sam Helfrich and conductor John Kennedy give the first American staged production of Philip Glass’s Kepler, based on the life and moral conflicts of 17th-century astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler. A libretto comprised mainly of Kepler’s own writings is sung in Latin and English. Another American premiere comes from composer Guo Wenjing, and it's also based on a true-life story – about the Han Dynasty’s dangerous beauty Diao Chan. Armenian-Canadian film director Atom Egoyan directs a production that includes costumes by noted fashion designer Han Feng and video by Tsang Kin-wah. Finally, the Westminster Choir sings Herbert Howells’s 1936 Requiem, written in response to the death of the composer’s only son. Joe Miller leads his singers, who also perform Tarik O’Regan’s The Ecstasies Above. spoletousa.org

Previews by Olivia Giovetti

VI GRAMOPHONE may 2012

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