Maestro Goes Home for Tour

(first published in The Cincinnati Post Jan. 26, 2001)

Coming full circle.

That's how music director Jesús López-Cobos describes the Cincinnati Symphony's upcoming European tour.

The CSO, which leaves Cincinnati Saturday, will visit three countries and eight cities on the two-week tour. Stops include Bilbao, Barcelona and Madrid (Spain), Munich, Rosenheim, Mannheim and Berlin (Germany) and Warsaw (Poland).

"There are two cities that, with Cincinnati, are the most special for me," said López-Cobos, "Madrid and Berlin. Going with the orchestra to these two cities is like you close a circle."

A native of Toro, Spain, López-Cobos led the National Orchestra of Spain from 1984-88. In his Music Hall office hangs a photograph of the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid. López-Cobos saw the hall to completion and opened it in 1988. He has only returned once. He leads the CSO there next Friday.

As for Berlin, López-Cobos, 60, served as general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 1980-89, a distinguished career that he relinquished to devote his time to the CSO. The Feb. 8 concert comes nearly 30 years to the day after his first performance in Berlin in 1971.

The final concert on the tour, Feb. 10 in Warsaw, is the CSO's first in Poland. The orchestra returns to Cincinnati Feb. 11.

This season, López-Cobos' last as CSO music director, marks his third international tour with the orchestra. In 1990, they visited Taiwan and Japan, the CSO's first Asian jaunt since a 1966 world tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. During the CSO centennial in 1995, he led a tour of the Canary Islands, Switzerland, Germany and Austria, the CSO's first trip to Europe since 1969.

Those trips garnished enthusiastic reviews and enhanced the CSO's international reputation, benefits the orchestra hopes to reap anew this year.

Guest artist on the tour will be cellist Han-Na Chang, who will perform Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 and the Haydn Cello Concerto in C Major. Other repertoire includes Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, Falla's "Three-Cornered Hat" Suites 1 and 2, Barber's Overture to "The School for Scandal" and Chapi's Prelude to "La Revoltosa." Tour sponsors are CFM International, Cinergy, Ernst & Young LLP, Lufthansa, Credit Suisse/First Boston and the Andreas Stihl Stiftung Foundation.

The Spanish portion comprises the orchestra's first visit to the mainland (the Canary Islands are a part of Spain). First stop will be Bilbao, site of architect Frank Gehry's ultra-modern Guggenheim Museum. The CSO will perform in a new hall adjacent to the museum.

By contrast, the concert in Barcelona will take place in the Palau de Catalana, a 1908 "Modernista" landmark. Built for a chorus, it's not the best acoustically, López-Cobos said, but with its stained glass and mosaic tile, "is very beautiful."

The Auditorio Nacional in Madrid is his "ideal," he said. "I wish we had this kind of hall in Cincinnati - 2,200 seats and acoustically wonderful."

Though he has no close family in Spain (his parents and older brother are no longer living), López-Cobos will greet many friends there, he said. He has already renewed ties in Spain through increased guest conducting, with more than a dozen bookings through August 2002.

"I was missing going to my country," he said. "It has changed so dramatically in the past 15 years, with many new halls."

Home will continue to be Lausanne, Switzerland, after he leaves the CSO in May. Son Manuel, an aspiring lawyer in his first year of college in Fribourg, comes home every weekend. "He has had so much change in all these years that I would love really to stay there."

Meanwhile, older son Jesús - a close family member he WILL see in Spain - is enjoying an expanding conducting career of his own. In fact, the younger Jesús will conduct a chamber concert at the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid Saturday, just days before the CSO concert.

He makes his father very proud.

"He conducted the Radio Orchestra (Madrid) this year, and they invited him three times more, so I am very, very pleased."

CSO European tour

Saturday: Depart Cincinnati for Bilbao, Spain.

Tuesday: Concert, Bilbao.

Wednesday. Concert, Barcelona.

Next Friday. Concert, Madrid.

Feb. 5. Concert, Munich, Germany.

Feb. 6. Concert, Rosenheim.

Feb. 7. Concert, Mannheim.

Feb. 8. Concert, Berlin.

Feb. 10. Concert, Warsaw, Poland.

Feb. 11. Return to Cincinnati.

Join the CSO on tour via the Internet at its "Virtual Tour" Web site, prepared in collaboration with WCPO-TV, Channel 9. Log on to www.cincinow.com/cso or www.cincinnatisymphony.org beginning Saturday.