Manfred Honeck devoted to his mission of bringing opera to the concert hall

Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck has held several operatic posts, including general music director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart in 2007-11 and has appeared as a guest conductor with some of the world’s top companies such as New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

Because of the demands of his position as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and his guest conducting schedule, Honeck has little time to helm opera productions, which can take six weeks or more.

“I love opera very much. It simply does not fit into my schedule,” said Honeck, who will return to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a set of concerts March 13-15 that includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 and Haydn’s Mass in Time of War.

But such time constraints do not mean he has completely abandoned opera. To the contrary. Instead of taking his baton to the opera house, Honeck has found a way to bring opera to the concert hall.

He has arranged a series of suites (working with orchestrator Thomas [or Tomás] Ille), drawn from such operas as Janáček’s Jenůfa, Richard Strauss’ Elektra and Dvořák’s Rusalka, many of which Honeck has recorded with the Pittsburgh Symphony and conducted with other orchestras.

Orchestras are constantly looking for fresh repertoire beyond the tried-and-true classics. “These operas are so musically great,” Honeck said. “Why not offer the concert audience this music of these fantastic operas?”

He pointed to Strauss’ Elektra (1909), calling it one of the composer’s “most orchestral operas.” He remembers asking himself: “Why is there no suite of that?” So he decided to create one himself, completing it in 2016.

In the span of 30 minutes or so, Honeck tries to tell the opera’s story in much the same way as Strauss did in his tone poems like Don Juan. “There might be some people who hear this wonderful music in the concert hall as a suite, and they might go to the opera house and hear the whole opera,” he said.

Continuing to produce his operatic suites, he is putting the finishing touches on his instrumental version of Strauss’ 1933 opera, Arabella. During a set of concerts Feb. 27-28 and March 2 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, he will lead his Suite from Turandot.

“For me as a musician,“ he said, ”the music is too good not to present in a concert hall.”