Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Opens Season at Carnegie Hall Tonight

Tonight, October 23 at 8 p.m., Orpheus Chamber Orchestra opens its 2014-15 concert series at Carnegie Hall with a program that includes Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, featuring Jonathan Biss, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's 1983 work Prologue and Variations in honor of her 75th birthday season. Written the same year Ms. Zwilich became the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, Prologue and Variations has been described by The New York Times as "splendidly crafted and shot through with a distinctly original utterance." The Carnegie program opens with the overture to Rossini's first opera, La cambiale di matrimonio, and closes with Poulenc's Sinfonietta.

Subscriptions for two or more concerts in the 2014-15 Carnegie series are available through Orpheus at (212) 896-1704 or www.orpheusnyc.org. Single tickets priced from $14.50 to $110 may be purchased from Carnegie Hall by phone at (212) 247-7800, online at www.carnegiehall.org, or in person at the box office. Prior to the concert, Orpheus hosts its Opening Night Celebration, a fundraiser honoring Marc O. Mayer for his outstanding commitment and leadership at Orpheus as Board Chairman. More information on the Opening Night Celebration, which includes cocktails and dinner, is available at www.orpheusnyc.org/support/OpeningNight2014.

"Performing with Jonathan Biss is a return to an old friend," said Orpheus Executive Director Krishna Thiagarajan. "We worked with him extensively at the beginning of his career, playing and recording two Mozart piano concerti together; he is the perfect musician for opening our season. We're also excited to perform Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, not only to celebrate her 75th birthday season, but because we've wanted to bring back her works to the stage for a long time." Mr. Biss made his Orpheus debut in 2005 and Orpheus commissioned and premiered works by Ms. Zwilich in 1993 and 1997.

The performance of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto in this concert follows the release of Orpheus's first self-produced album in February 2014, featuring live performances of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. The recording was called "astonishingly successful" by Fanfare,and Gramophone wrote that "the Seventh in particular shows the creativity-through-collaboration model working at full blend and firing on all cylinders." During an interview onstage at Carnegie Hall in 2012, an Orpheus musician stated that in the orchestra's first decades, there was disagreement about whether its chamber-music approach would work for Beethoven. This past January, after Orpheus performed an all-Beethoven program at a sold-out Carnegie concert, The New York Times responded, "It doesn't only work, it's delightful ... Orpheus had snap in the Coriolan Overture."

Prior to the Carnegie concert, Orpheus tours with Mr. Biss to his home state of Indiana. Mr. Biss spent his formative years there, taking private lessons at Indiana University Bloomington where his parents, Miriam Fried and Paul Biss, taught as professors for over twenty years. Orpheus performs with Mr. Biss at the Palladium at the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, outside Indianapolis, on October 18 and at the Goshen College Music Center on October 19.