Leon Botstein News

American Symphony Orchestra will pay tribute to the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth with a concert that investigates how his music inspired others on Friday January 31, 8 pm at Carnegie Hall. From Liszt's fantasia on the 'Turkish March' to Spohr's Beethovenesque scherzo and Reger's variations on a bagatelle theme by Beethoven, the program also celebrates the 100th anniversary of an often-overlooked 20th-century master, Galina Ustvolskaya. Her Piano Concerto is considered her first composition and demands the listener's ear with a pounding rhythmic motif that is repeated by the piano until the closing chord.

The US-China Music Institute presents its first annual Chinese New Year Concert featuring Bard College's The Orchestra Now performing a lively collection of Chinese symphonic works. Conductor and director of the US-China Music Institute Jindong Cai will share the stage with guest conductor Chen Bing and Chinese instrument masters from the world-renowned faculty of the Central Conservatory of Music, China. The concert will be performed on Sunday, January 26 at 3 p.m. at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, New York, NY. Tickets are $25; to purchase tickets go to ticketing.jazz.org/10417/10418. Visit barduschinamusic.org/new-year-2020 for more details.

The US-China Music Institute will present its first annual Chinese New Year Concert featuring Bard College's The Orchestra Now performing a lively collection of Chinese symphonic works. Conductor and director of the US-China Music Institute Jindong Cai will share the stage with guest conductor Chen Bing and Chinese instrument masters from the world-renowned faculty of the Central Conservatory of Music, China. The concert will be performed on Sunday, January 26 at 3 p.m. at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, New York, NY. Tickets are $25; to purchase tickets go to ticketing.jazz.org/10417/10418. Visit barduschinamusic.org/new-year-2020 for more details.

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) gave a stunning performance of works by Stravinsky, Debussy, Bartok, and Tan Dun on Sunday, December 15th 2019.

American Symphony Orchestra comes to Alice Tully Hall for the holiday season with a concert titled Sons of Bach on Thursday, December 19 at 8 PM. The program will offer rarely-performed works by four of J.S. Bach's sons, showcasing the compositional mastery the young men learned from their father, and also revealing how each was able to develop his own unique style.

Tan Dun, world-renowned composer, conductor, and Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, will take the podium for the opening concert of The Orchestra Now's Rose Theater series at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Dec. 15, 2019. The program will be highlighted by the U.S. premiere of Dun's 2018 Violin Concerto: Rhapsody and Fantasia featuring the award-winning Norwegian violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing, who recently premiered Dun's Fire Ritual a?" A Musical Ritual for Victims of War with the Oslo Philharmonic. Hemsing is also the subject of the upcoming documentary Forte directed by David Donnelly, focusing on women in the arts. Other works on the concert include Stravinsky's Fireworks, Debussy's Rhapsody for Clarinet with Hungarian soloist and TŌN musician Viktor Tóth; and Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin Suite.

New Amsterdam Singers, led by Music Director Clara Longstreth, will launch its 2019a?"20 season with A Century of A Cappella Gems, anchored by a major work, the Mass for a cappella double chorus by the Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974). The two concerts will be performed Friday, December 13, 2019, at 8:00 p.m., and Saturday, December 14, 2019, at 4:00 p.m. at Broadway Presbyterian Church, 114th Street and Broadway.

The 58th season of American Symphony Orchestra's Vanguard series at Carnegie Hall will open on October 31 with Music Director Leon Botstein leading the ASO in a performance of Edward Elgar's great choral work, The Kingdom, the second of Elgar's incomplete trilogy of oratorios.

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) will open its 2019 fall season in New York City on Oct. 27 with Strauss' Don Quixote & The Last Knight, the first of three programs in its popular Sight & Sound series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Emperor Maximilian I of Austria, often referred to as “the last knight,” was passionate about the exploration of chivalry and armor. There is no more influential tale of knighthood than Cervantes' Don Quixote, which inspired Strauss' “Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character,” the composer's moving musical realization of Quixote's chivalric journey. Both soloists at this performance are talented young TŌN musicians: cellist Lucas Button, a Syracuse native, and Peruvian violist Leonardo Vásquez Chacón.

The Orchestra Now (TŌN), the visionary orchestra and master's degree program founded by Bard College president, conductor, educator, and music historian Leon Botstein, begins its fifth season on September 14, 2019. Five different series and three special events will offer 19 diverse programs and 31 performances presenting novel combinations of both time-honored and lesser-known repertoire through May 17, 2020. Since the Orchestra's launch in 2015, the young members of TŌN have performed 261 works by 137 composers for more than 50,000 people in 23 venues, with 158 soloists and 15 conductors.

Each summer, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association (OGCMA) presents its annual Sacred Masterwork concert and this year is no exception.

The 30th anniversary season of the Bard Music Festival a?" an exploration of a?oeKorngold and His Worlda?? a?" opens this Friday, August 9, with Weekend One: Korngold and Vienna. The first of the weekend's six themed concerts, Program One: a?oeErich Wolfgang Korngold: From Viennese Prodigy to Hollywood Master,a?? offers a broad overview of the composer's multi-faceted career.

Opening on Friday, July 26, Bard SummerScape presents the long overdue American premiere of The Miracle of Heliane ('Das Wunder der Heliane,' 1927). An original staging by German director Christian Räth of the grand opera that Erich Wolfgang Korngold considered his masterpiece, 'this show promises everything: symbolism, eroticism, political intrigue and gorgeous orchestration, all done up in the composer's signature 'more is more' musical style' (New York Observer). Featuring Ausrine Stundyte, Daniel Brenna, Alfred Walker and the American Symphony Orchestra under the leadership of festival co-founder and co-artistic director Leon Botstein, The Miracle of Heliane will be sung in German with English supertitles and will run for five performances between July 26 and August 4, with an Opera Talk, free and open to the public, before the matinee on July 28. SummerScape 2019 also provides the chance to sample some of the operettas written and arranged by Korngold and his contemporaries in 'Operetta's America' (August 11) and to see a semi-staged production of his best-loved opera, Die tote Stadt ('The Dead City'; August 18), during the 30th anniversary season of the Bard Music Festival.

American Symphony Orchestra announced the 58th season of its three-concert Vanguard series at Carnegie Hall, now expanded to include an additional performance at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. The season also marks the return of the Orchestra's popular series to New York City's Symphony Space-which originally took place between 1998 and 2015-with a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in conjunction with the ASO's celebration of the great composer's 250th birthday. This series combines complete concerts of well-known, major orchestral works with interactive educational demonstrations. The full 2019-20 season runs from October 31, 2019 through March 12, 2020.

The Actors Fund announced today that, in partnership with the Jacob Burns Film Center's series Life on Stage, tickets are now on sale for a special evening celebrating the smash hit, reimagined production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! - the recent recipient of two Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical.

Producer Eva Price announced today that the reimagined revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! will launch its North American tour at the Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in the Fall of 2020. The 2020 tour will mark the first time a First Class Equity production of Oklahoma! has toured North America in 40 years.

The Orchestra Now (TON) will perform the final performance this season of its frequently sold-out Sight & Sound series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, May 19 at 2 pm. The concert features the New York premiere of one of Morton Feldman's lesser-known early works, Orchestra, along with Anton Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra, in a program titled Abstraction in Music & Art.

The hit reimagined revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! has announced an extension due to popular demand at Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre (1633 Broadway). Oklahoma!, which opened April 7th as a limited engagement, will now have tickets available through January 19th, 2020. Tickets are available at the box office, www.telecharge.com or by calling (212) 239-6200.

Polish-Canadian pianist Daniel Wnukowski (vnoo-koff'-skee) makes his New York solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall performing Handel's Keyboard Suite Vol. 1, No. 7 in G minor, HWV 432; Chopin's 24 Preludes, Op. 28; and Karol Rathaus's Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20 on Friday, May 3 at 8:00 p.m.

Committed since its inception to reviving important but neglected operas, Bard SummerScape has long proven itself 'an indispensable part of the summer operatic landscape' (Musical America).