A busy summer for Rossen Milanov will see him conducting in six cities in five countries on four continents. On July 16, he leads the Symphonieorchester der Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität at the Attergauer Kultursommer festival in Austria, conducting Beethoven’s joyful Symphony No. 9 with soloists Ileana Tonca, Stefanie Iranyi, Michael Baba, and Luca Pisaroni.
From there, Rossen travels to Chautauqua, New York, for two concerts at the upstate city’s famed Institute with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. July 23’s program features Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suites Nos. 1 and 2, as well as Franck’s Le Chasseur maudit and Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung. Two days later, Rossen conducts an organ-centric program to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the reconstruction of the Massey Memorial Organ, comprised of Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D Minor (as orchestrated by Stokowksi), Poulenc’s Organ Concerto in G Minor, and Saint-Saëns’s “Organ” Symphony No. 3.
In August, Rossen travels to Bogotá, Colombia, for a mini-residency with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia, conducting three programs that focus on French repertoire by Satie and Saint-Saëns (August 9), American masterworks by Copland, Gershwin, and Bernstein (August 16), and Holst’s The Planets (August 23).
He then heads to Durban, South Africa, in September to conduct Korngold and Shostakovich (September 5) as well as Beethoven (September 12) with the Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra before returning to the United States to lead the season-opening concert for Symphony in C in New Jersey (for which Rossen serves as Music Director) on September 21. His other music directorial duties resume on September 28 when he leads the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias in Verdi’s towering Requiem, featuring soloists Michelle Johnson, Vesselina Kasarova, Mario Zeffiri, and Yuri Vorobiev.