Two essential dates to get to know Stephanie Childress
The guest conductor of the OBC performs compositions by Tchaikovsky and Poulenc, among others.
Young, gifted and very talented. This is Stephanie Childress (pictured. Photo: Karolina Heller), one of the many conductors who, in recent times, have begun to occupy the role that corresponds to them at the head of orchestras all over the world. Would you like to meet her? You have two dates coming up on 14 and 15 and 22 and 23 February, at L'Auditori, focusing on works by Piotr Ilitx Tchaikovsky and Francis Poulenc.
You may have already seen Stephanie Childress, a French and British conductor in her thirties, perform, because in fact she has been the principal guest conductor of the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC) since the 2024-2025 season (when she took over from Marta Gardolińska) and will continue to do so throughout the current season.
Versatile and with a great ability to communicate with the orchestra and the public, the artist has had a meteoric career in recent years (she had previously been assistant conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra). Those who know her say that she manages to realise the best potential of the orchestral ensemble she conducts.
You will be able to see if what they say is true in two upcoming double dates. One is on Thursday 14th and Saturday 15th, when Childress and the OBC, together with Yamen Saadi on violin (Wednesday) and Albert Cano Smit on piano (Saturday), will perform a repertoire of Tchaikovsky's Winter Dreams (or Symphony No. 1 in G minor, op. 13, as you prefer), a symphony dedicated by the composer to the musician Nikolai Rubinstein, lasting 44 minutes. The conception was long, it underwent modifications and the composer himself considered it imperfect. Yet it was one of the compositions he most appreciated.
Along with the aforementioned symphony, Xavier Montsalvatge's Symphonic Kaleidoscope, op. 61 (1955) and a different composition depending on the day will also be performed: on Thursday, the Concert for violin in D, op. 35 (1945) by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (one of Hollywood's great composers!) and, on Saturday, Sergei Prokofiev's Concert for Piano No. 1 in Db, op. 10 (1911-1912).
Come again to L'Auditori on Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd February, and this time you will see conductor Stephanie Childress, this time conducting the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, but also the Cor Jove de l'Orfeó Català and the Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana and soprano Alexandra Lowe.
The voice is the main protagonist in this concert, as demonstrated by the main trio piece, a Stabat Mater by Francis Poulenc that you may have heard less often than Pergolei's more popular Stabat Mater, but which expresses in a particularly moving way the pain caused by the death of a loved one.
The same concert will also feature Manuel de Falla's Siete canciones populares españolas (1914), the Four Sea Interludes (1945) from Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes and, finally, The lamb (1982), an enigmatic composition by John Tavener based on a poem by William Blake, which may ring a bell if you have seen Paolo Sorrentino's film La grande bellezza (2023).
If you want to know what the OBC conducted by Stephanie Childress sounds like, come to L'Auditori, but first check this link and this one for all the information about the concerts.