the audience to accept "joyously the gifts of high art."

Guest conductor Edward Gardner returns to lead the Festival Orchestra in a riveting program pairing Beethoven and Schubert. Under Gardner's baton, pianist Jeremy Denk performs Beethoven's poetic Piano Concerto No. 4, followed by Schubert's Symphony No. 5 (July 28–29). On August 4–5, in her New York debut, Beatrice Rana will join the Festival Orchestra to perform Beethoven's First Piano Concerto.

On August 1 and 2, the Festival Orchestra program takes a colorful journey from Istanbul to Paris as Mozart's Turkish-tinged Overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail paves the way to the debut of David Lang's virtuosic percussion concerto man made, performed by the inventive ensemble Sō Percussion. "Mozart's music was contemporary in his time," Langrée points out. "Enlightening juxtapositionswith music from the Baroque to a 21st-century piece by David Lang refresh the way we hear Mozart."

In that spirit, the pioneering musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble will present How Forests Think, a program of nature-themed works by Pauline Oliveros, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Liza Lim that revisit the Romantic aesthetics of Schubert and his contemporaries (August 14).

Photo by Richard King

Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis

On August 8 and 9, star soloists Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis unearth the musical riches of Brahms's Concerto for Violin and Cello before British maestro Andrew Manze leads the Festival Orchestra in Mendelssohn's reverential and majestic "Reformation" Symphony. Manze returns on August 11 and 12 to lead Beethoven's Violin Concerto with soloist Thomas Zehetmair and Mozart's Symphony No. 40.

Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis

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