The annual Lakes Area Music Festival returned to Brainerd for a concert series filled with chamber music, orchestra and opera performances.
Under the theme “Worlds Connect,” this year’s Lakes Area Music Festival featured Richard Strauss’ comedic opera-within-an-opera Ariadne auf Naxos, as well as an explosive passion of music by Gustav Mahler, Dmitri Shostakovich and Franz Joseph Haydn. This year also featured the festival’s first composer-in-residence, Elizabeth Ogonek. In addition to the premiere of a new work, co-commissioned with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Tanglewood, she led a Young Composer Fellowship for emerging classical voices.
Although the festival brought performances to communities across central Minnesota as part of its Prelude Series, Brainerd’s Gichi-ziibi Center for the Arts served as center stage. German conductor Christian Reif returned as music director of the festival alongside artistic directors Scott Lykins and John Taylor Ward.
The season has ended, but you can catch up now by watching concerts you might have missed.
Lakes Area Music Festival 2022 season
This season of the Lakes Area Music Festival took place in the Gichi-ziibi Center, with a few concerts in special locations such as the Brainerd Public Library, Roundhouse Brewery, Gregory Park Bandstand, Tornstrom Auditorium and Grand View Lodge. For more details on the music and performers, visit the festival’s official website.
July 29 - Gala: Forbidden Love
Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
July 30-31 - Tribute to the Earth
Featuring preconcert interviews by YourClassical MPR host Steve Staruch
Bedřich Smetana: The Moldau from Má vlast (My Fatherland)
Jimmy López Bellido: Pago a la Tierra [world premiere]
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 2
Aug. 3 - Three Statues
Francis Poulenc: Sextet for Winds and Piano
Reena Esmail: Teen Murti for Cello and String Quartet
Maurice Ravel: Piano Trio
Aug. 6-7 - Us & Them
George Frederic Handel: Concerto Grosso in G major
Errollyn Wallen: Concerto Grosso
Pietro Locatelli: Concerto Grosso in C minor
Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto Grosso in D major
Samuel Carl Adams: Movements (for us and them)
Georg Muffat: Concerto Grosso No. 2 in G minor
Aug. 10 - Rain & Red Clay
Johannes Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major (Rain)
Valerie Coleman: Red Clay and Mississippi Delta for Wind Quintet
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Clarinet Quintet
Aug. 12 and 14 - Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Richard Strauss, composer; Hugo von Hofmannsthal, libretto
Aug. 17 - Santos & Haydn
Isaac Santos: New Work [world premiere]
Dmitri Shostakovich: Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra (Natasha Paremski, piano)
Franz Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 104 (London)
Aug. 20-21 - Ogonek & Mahler
Elizabeth Ogonek: Starling Variations* [regional premiere]
*Co-commissioned with the Boston Symphony for Tanglewood
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5
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