Next year is set to be a big one for milestones. During the Colorado Music Festival’s 50th anniversary at Chautauqua Auditorium in the summer of 2026, the U.S. will celebrate its 250th birthday and Colorado its 150th. Music director Peter Oundjian says the landmark season of the annual five-week classical music concert series at Chautauqua Auditorium is mostly planned out — and the path leading there begins this summer.
He sees the upcoming festival beginning July 3 as a launching point. That’s particularly true when it comes to the conclusion the first weekend of August with two immortal ninth symphonies, both the last completed by their composers Ludwig van Beethoven and Gustav Mahler.
“Knowing the 50th anniversary was coming up, I wanted to make the 49th seem significant,” Oundjian says. “Doing these two symphonies on the closing weekend felt like a massive celebration and a big statement, and the contrast is fantastic.”
Beethoven’s Ninth ends with a grand choral finale, the first in the symphonic literature, and Mahler’s fades into eternity, an illustration of death in music. “The symphonies are both farewells to many things,” Oundjian says.
The Beethoven piece will be heard July 31 and Aug. 1, with Mahler following Aug. 3. Mahler’s work stands on its own, but the Beethoven concerts will have a brief opening half. With Denver’s St. Martin’s Festival Singers on hand, Oundjian is having them present Beethoven’s short Elegiac Song, and the orchestra will play a commissioned world premiere, Amplify by composer Michael Abels.
Not ‘a normal concert’
Oundjian likes to open the festival with a major guest artist playing a major concerto, a role filled this year by French pianist Hélène Grimaud. Considered “an extraordinary pianist and person” by Oundjian, she has been on the world’s biggest stages for more than 30 years. She plays the tremendous and dramatic First Piano Concerto by Johannes Brahms, whose first movement alone is of titanic scope.
The concert also celebrates the 150th birthday of French composer Maurice Ravel, with Oundjian directing the second ballet suite from Daphnis et Chloé and the extremely familiar Boléro.
“You don’t really program Boléro in a normal concert,” Oundjian says, noting its place in popular culture ranging from The Three Stooges to Futurama. “With the anniversary, it is appropriate, and the Brahms gives the concert its substance.”
Stravinsky’s orchestral fantasy Feu d’artifice (Fireworks) opens the program and the festival. Another Brahms First anchors the following orchestral program July 10 and 11. The First Symphony was written much later than the concerto.
“Hearing these very different ‘Firsts’ of the same composer from very different stages of his career in consecutive weeks will be fascinating,” Oundjian says.
The program includes another world premiere, a saxophone concerto by renowned composer Joan Tower. “Joan is becoming a face of the festival at this point, and seems almost like my older sister,” Oundjian says. An entire program of her music including a world premiere — an unusual feat for a living composer — was presented by the festival in 2021.
Saxophonist Steven Banks also amazed the audience in 2021, so Oundjian brought them together. “They hit it off so well, and I asked her to compose a concerto for his instrument,” Oundjian says.
The new work is titled Love Returns. The concert opens with An Outdoor Overture by Aaron Copland, another composer with a significant birth anniversary, his 125th.
‘Part of the community’
Ravel appears again on the program for July 17 and 18, with guest violinist Anne Akiko Meyers playing his virtuoso work Tzigane.
“She plays one of the greatest violins ever made,” Oundjian says of Meyers, who also plays the second performance of Eric Whitacre’s The Pacific Has No Memory, which he wrote for her. “The piece became a memorial to the January fires in Los Angeles, where Whitacre has spent much of his life.”
This concert opens with Copland’s ubiquitous Appalachian Spring. For the second half, Oundjian conducts two overtures with a Shakespeare theme, Tchaikovsky’s very well known Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture and Berlioz’s lesser known overture to his opera Béatrice et Bénédict.
Besides the closing Mahler concert, Oundjian directs one other Sunday event July 27 featuring guitarist Xuefei Yang playing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.
“We don’t do guitar concertos very often, and that’s kind of a shame,” Oundjian says. The Rodrigo piece works well with Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galánta, which opens the program, he says. “They both have a rustic quality and come from different parts of Europe, Hungary and Spain.”
The program closes with Franz Schubert’s delightful Fifth Symphony, which Oundjian calls “one of the most perfect pieces ever written.”
With this program on the near horizon and a major milestone around the corner, Oundjian is now a solid fixture in Colorado. This year he was officially named music director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in Denver after serving as principal conductor.
“I really feel part of the community now,” he says. “I’m extremely excited for this summer, and I have all the scores spread out on my floor. I really want every festival to seem like my favorite.”
ON THE BILL: The Colorado Music Festival 2025 season opener feat. pianist Hélène Grimaud. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 3 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 6, Chautauqua Auditorium, 900 Baseline Road, Boulder. $23-$100.50
Be our guest
Outside conductors taking the podium at Colorado Music Festival 2025
Ryan Bancroft, principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducts Dmitri Shostakovich’s epic Tenth Symphony and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem for a repeated concert, July 24-25. Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son plays Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.
Chloé van Soeterstède of England’s Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, whom Oundjian describes as “very sensitive and gifted, with beautiful hand motions,” directs an all-Mozart program with violinist Benjamin Beilman on July 13.
Maurice Cohn, director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, conducts Beethoven’s First Symphony and Ottorino Respighi’s Gli uccelli (The Birds) on July 20. He will be joined by cellist Hayoung Choi, who plays Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme.
“I really think it’s nice to bring in younger and up-and-coming conductors for the Sunday concerts,” Oundjian says.
Tuesday chamber music programs
The four concerts on the Robert Mann Chamber Music Series on Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. include two guest string quartets and two programs with CMF musicians. The Brentano Quartet appears July 15 playing Schubert, Webern and Brahms, while the Dover Quartet plays Janáček, Schumann and Tchaikovsky July 29. The CMF players are heard July 8 (Schubert, Prokofiev and Brahms) and July 22 (Mozart and Dvořák).
“I’m pleased that the Tuesday nights are being better attended,” Oudjian says. “Using our own players allows lesser known works such as quintets and trios and pieces with wind instruments to be played, music for mixed groups that you might hear at chamber music festivals.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story used a former title for Eric Whitacre’s 'The Pacific Has No Memory.'