Lincoln Center announced an expanded edition of the 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival to partially fill the void left by the canceled Lincoln Center Festival. Now in its 52nd year, the Mostly Mozart Festival runs July 12 to August 12 and features a mix of North American and world premieres of classical and contemporary performances.
The festival opens with the return to New York—after 33 years—of Available Light, a dance collaboration between choreographer Lucinda Childs, composer John Adams, and architect Frank Gehry. The Catalonian theater group La Fura dels Baus presents the North American premiere of its spectacular production of Haydn’s oratorio, The Creation, joining forces with the esteemed period ensemble Insula Orchestra and accentus choir. Theater is represented with Yukio Ninagawa’s now-iconic production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth performed in Japanese translation with a score of Buddhist chant and western classical music.
The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, led by conductor Louis Langrée, underpins the entire festival with a wide range of repertoire. The orchestra opens with Leonard Bernstein’s Mass in a new staging by Elkhanah Pulitzer, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bernstein’s birth. As ever, Mozart remains central to the programming; highlights include Requiem, and the Jupiter and Prague symphonies. Star soloists include pianists Paul Lewis, Stephen Hough, Emanuel Ax, the violinist Joshua Bell, and the New York debut of 16-year-old prodigy Daniel Lozakovich.
The International Contemporary Ensemble—now in their eighth year as festival artists-in-residence—performs Ashley Fure’s The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects, at the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center in Brooklyn. There will be a free performance of a new John Luther Adams choral work for 800 amateur and professional singers in Central Park, building on a recent tradition of outdoor world premieres. The festival ends August 12 with the Mark Morris Dance Group performing, among other works, a premiere set to Schubert’s Trout Quintet. The complete schedule of music, dance, theater and film is fully described at the Festival website.
Tickets to Mostly Mozart go on sale to the general public beginning April 16. They can be purchased online at MostlyMozartFestival.org, by phone via CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, or by visiting the David Geffen Hall or Alice Tully Hall box offices.
