In October, HaÇm leads Le Concert d'Astr_e in Handel's oratorio Theodora, featuring Geraldine McGreevy, Stephen Wallace and Paul Agnew; in November, Gergiev leads the Mariinsky orchestra in a series of concerts focusing on Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. Also in November, violinist Gil Shaham and his sister, pianist Orli Shaham, perform works by Bach and Prokofiev.
The following month the Emerson String Quartet begins a series of Beethoven concerts which continue in March. December will also see a concert by cellist Natalia Gutman and pianist Eliso Virsaladze playing Beethoven and Brahms.
In early 2007 Andrew Litton guest-conducts the Orquesta de Valencia and pianist Stephen Hough in Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto and Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. Come February, Yaron Traub leads the orchestra in a concert version of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde with Waltraud Meier and Christian Franz. That same month Daniel Barenboim will conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in works by Schumann and Wagner.
In May violinist Hilary Hahn and pianist Natalie Zhu perform duos by Mozart and Ysaêe; later in the month Yaron Traub leads the Orquesta de Valencia and pianist Radu Lupu in Schumann's Piano Concerto and orchestral works by Rossini and Bart‹k. In June violinists Christian Tetzlaff and Antje Weithaas will perform a duo recital.
The Palau de la M‹sica is not to be confused with the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, the opera house/concert hall designed by Santiago Calatrava as the final building in his Ciutat de les Arts i las Ciencias complex. That venue was inaugurated last October but has suffered some operational problems since; its first full season of performances is supposed to begin this fall, though no programming information is available on the Ciutat website (www.cac.es).
Designed by prizewinning architect Jos_ Mar‹a de Paredes, Valencia's Palau de la M‹sica was inaugurated in 1987; according to the hall's website (www.palaudevalencia.com), soprano Montserrat Caball_ called it "a fantastic hall [with] a marvelous acoustic ... the most beautiful I have ever heard" and Plšcido Domingo has said, "The Palau is a Stradivarius."
