While a heat dome settled over the Ohio Valley in June, Eckart Preu was in Spokane, Washington. He’d just closed out his seasons with California’s Long Beach Symphony and the Portland Symphony in Maine – he’s music director of both.
“I just have a few weeks before all hell breaks loose in Cincinnati,” Preu joked by telephone.
By “all hell,” Preu means Summermusik, the annual August festival featuring performances by the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra in various guises and sizes. This year marks Preu’s eighth as the CCO’s music director.
(Photo by Phillip Groshong)
Squeezed into the month (starting July 31) are 11 programs encompassing a dizzying array of musical styles and traditions. More than that, this is a big-round-number year for the orchestra – the 50th anniversary of its founding – a perfect time to look back and forward with the help of some special guests and repertoire.
This is also the 10th year of the Summermusik model, which has allowed the ensemble to claim what had been a relatively slow month in the city’s musical calendar and to make August its own. It’s proven to be a winning formula.
Chalk Summermusik’s success up to three factors:
Flipping the dynamic
Summermusik takes music to its audiences. In addition to a series of whole-ensemble programs at the School for Creative and Performing Arts’ Corbett Theater, you’ll find Summermusik programs in less-traditional venues like a Camp Washington museum, churches from Westwood to West Chester, a converted art deco neighborhood cinema and a Key West-inspired bar and grill beside the Ohio River.
Focus on people
“We focus on the orchestra and relationships,” Preu said. That means connecting with the orchestra’s players, other organizations in the region and potential audiences that may not have thought of orchestral performances as appealing. This year, for example, features performances with the Canadian Brass.
The group’s appearance is tied to Ashley Hall-Tighe, the CCO’s principal trumpet, who spent a year as a Canadian Brass member. Concertmaster Celeste Golden Andrews is in the spotlight as a soloist, and orchestra members curate the programs of Summermusik’s Chamber Crawl series. There are collaborations with the Cincinnati Brass Band and innovative Indian cross-cultural events.
Living music
The CCO has never backed away from newer music, and Preu has continued that tradition. The orchestra’s first concert in March 1974 included “Octandre” by Edgar Varèse; Preu’s first concert – his audition – included Miguel di Aguila’s “Conga Line in Hell.”
Preu said the orchestra has maintained not just an interest in new music, but an interesting approach to its choices. That can mean brand-new music – like commissions or other premieres – or “rediscovered” works that have fallen from favor or never gotten their due.
The Aug. 10 program features a bittersweet world premiere, John Henry Kreitler’s Symphony No. 2, “Voices of God.” Kreitler, a 10-time Emmy winner for music heard in shows like “Law & Order,” “Homicide” and “Saturday Night Live,” lived in Northern Kentucky. He served on Summermusik’s board and was a champion for young composers.
“He wanted to compose a piece for us for the (50th) anniversary,” Preu said. That turned out to be the symphony. It proved to be his last work: He died Jan. 28.
Kreitler’s legacy continues through the Kreitler Commission Competition, an annual composition competition organized by a consortium of United States chamber orchestras led by Summermusik. The first winner, Matt Browne, was announced in May. The CCO will premiere his new work during Summermusik 2025.
That’s a strong commitment, Preu said, for an organization of Summermusik’s size. “We have this competition established, we have a commission running for next year and solid plans for 2026. If we have one new commission a year, for an organization that does basically four (full orchestra) concerts a year, that’s not bad.”
In the “rediscovery” category are works like the “Much Ado About Nothing” Suite by the Austrian wunderkind and later Hollywood legend Erich Korngold. “There are so many aspects to it,” Preu said. “It’s a very early piece for small orchestra that sounds like a thousand players.”
Perhaps the 2024 festival’s most exciting programs put Indian music in the spotlight. Under the artistic guidance of Kanniks Kannikeswaran, Aug. 17’s “Many Colors of India” traces the interconnection of Western and Indian music, starting with turn-of-the-19th-century composer Muthuswami Dikshitar (roughly Beethoven’s contemporary). There’s also Edward Elgar (if you don’t know “The Crown of India,” go listen!), Philip Glass (the “Evening Song” from “Satyagraha”), the contemporary crossover composer Reena Esmail and Kanniks himself.
On Aug. 18, Kanniks and his daughter, CCM grad Vidita Kanniks, co-curate “Bach Meets Bollywood,” an afternoon of Bach, Beethoven, and arrangements of ragas and Indian film music. (You might recognize some of the excerpts, like the theme to “Monsoon Wedding” and “Jai-Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire.”)
The tour of the subcontinent wraps up with an Aug. 20 screening of “Lion” at the Esquire Theatre. Preu will speak before the showing.
“Film is such an important cultural aspect to India, you cannot ignore this enormous industry of Bollywood,” he said. “Before we screen the movie, I’ll talk for five or six minutes about musical aspects of the movie. Are there differences between how Bollywood and Hollywood use music, things like that.”
The festival wraps up with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. “You know, this is the perfect piece to celebrate the anniversary,” Preu said. It’s an orchestra showpiece, even for a smaller ensemble like the CCO.
One inspiration for his approach is the transparent texture of performances led by the French conductor Emmanuel Krivine. Still, he said, “If everyone really digs in, you can create a quite energetic and powerful sound.”
Expect a chorus of about 35 and reinforced string sections of about 30 players.
In the March 20, 1974, edition of the Cincinnati Post, CCO founding conductor Paul Nadler said, “Cincinnati has needed a chamber orchestra for some time now. We organized the group … in order to perform works that ordinarily wouldn’t be played by larger symphony orchestras.”
Preu said Summermusik’s success shows there’s still a need for a chamber orchestra in Cincinnati. “For a city to be rich it needs different ensembles, different programming. The CCO, in all modesty, has pioneered in many ways the programming that is so built on relationships. It has been a model to other organizations.”
Looking forward, he continued, “Niche groups are a crucial, vibrant part of securing the future of music.”
“What I always loved about Cincinnati,” he said, “is how rich the cultural offerings are, whether it’s chamber music or chorus music. Which means there’s an audience, there’s money. We’re part of the texture.”
Go to summermusik.org for the full lineup.
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