Yale School of Music Presents 'Penderecki Conducts Penderecki', 4/30

On Friday, April 30 at 8:00 p.m., the Yale School of Music concludes its third annual Yale in New York series with Penderecki Conducts Penderecki. Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the most influential and prolific composers of our time, makes an eagerly awaited New York appearance conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale and faculty soloists in a program featuring four of the composer's most important orchestral works.

The Yale Philharmonia was last heard at Carnegie in a brilliant concert of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphonie, led by Reinbert de Leeuw. The New York Times raved, "The performance was sensational: well prepared, solidly and precisely executed, and rippling with high-energy percussion and brass playing and a fluid interplay of polished strings as well as winds."

With a career that spans nearly five decades, Penderecki is one of the pioneering composers of the modern day. He was an iconic figure of the 1960s avant-garde and remains a vibrantly vital voice in contemporary music. He has received numerous awards, including the UNESCO Award for Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and the Grawemeyer Award for Symphony No. 4. Highly acclaimed as a conductor, Penderecki will lead both of these award-winning works in the April 30th concert.

Penderecki has had a longstanding relationship with Yale and served on the faculty of the School of Music from 1973 to 1979. He has made a number of memorable appearances conducting his music with the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale. His 1977 New York conducting debut featured the Yale Philharmonia in a Carnegie Hall program that included The Awakening of Jacob, the Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra (also to be heard on April 30th), and the North American premiere of Magnificat.

The "acute ear for orchestral sound" that so struck Bernard Holland will be showcased in a program that spans nearly a half century of composition. In addition to the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960) and Symphony No. 4 (1989), Penderecki and the orchestra will be joined by two noteworthy Yale faculty members: violinist Syoko Aki and French hornist William Purvis. Aki will be reunited with Penderecki and the orchestra in the Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra (1967), which they performed at Yale in 1977. Purvis will be the soloist in the Concerto for Horn and Orchestra, "Winterreise" (2008), a work premiered in the United States in February.

Yale in New York is the acclaimed series in which distinguished faculty members-many of them famous soloists-share the limelight with exceptional alumni and students on Carnegie Hall's stages, capturing the intense collaboration found on every level at the Yale School of Music. The 2009-10 season has showcased the classical legacy of Benny Goodman, premiered undiscovered Prokofiev works, and will pay tribute to the Oral History of American Music project at Yale on April 8. The series is curated by David Shifrin.

Music and Performers
Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale
Krzysztof Penderecki, conductor

Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960)
Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra (1967)
Syoko Aki, violin (Yale faculty)
Concerto for Horn and Orchestra, "Winterreise" (2008)
William Purvis, horn (Yale faculty)
Symphony No. 4, "Adagio" (1989)

THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA OF YALE
The Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale is one of America's foremost music school ensembles. The largest performing group at the Yale School of Music, the Philharmonia offers superb training in orchestral playing and repertoire. Performances include an annual series of concerts in Woolsey Hall, as well as Yale Opera productions in the Schubert Performing Arts Center. In addition to its season of six Woolsey Hall concerts, the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale has performed on numerous occasions in Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York City and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The Philharmonia undertook its first tour of Asia in 2008, with acclaimed performances in the Seoul Arts Center, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and Beijing's Forbidden City Concert Hall and National Center for the Performing Arts.

SYOKO AKI
Syoko Aki is Professor in the Practice of Violin. Aki studied in Japan at the Toho Academy of Music and in the United States at Hartt College and the Yale School of Music. She has taught at the Eastman School and the State University of New York at Purchase. She has appeared as soloist with leading conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, Gerard Schwartz, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Kenneth Schermerhorn. Miss Aki has been concertmaster and soloist with the New York Chamber Symphony, the New Japan Philharmonic, Waterloo Festival Orchestra and the New Haven and Syracuse Symphonies and has appeared in concerto and chamber music performances with Syzmon Goldberg, Henryck Szeryng, Broadus Erle, Leon Fleisher, Jaime Laredo, Joan Panetti and many others. A member of the Yale faculty since 1968, Miss Aki appears regularly in New Haven and at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

 

WILLIAM PURVIS

William Purvis is Lecturer in French Horn. A native of Western Pennylvania, Mr Purvis pursues a multifaceted career both in the U.S. and abroad as horn soloist, chamber musician, conductor, and educator. A passionate advocate of new music, Mr. Purvis has participated in numerous premieres as hornist and conductor, including horn concerti by Peter Lieberson and Bayan Northcott, trios for violin, horn, and piano by Poul Ruders and Paul Lansky, and Steven Stuckey's Sonate en Forme de Préludes with Emanuel Ax in Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Purvis is a member of the New York Woodwind Quintet, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Yale Brass Trio, the Triton Horn Trio and is an emeritus member of Orpheus. A frequent guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he has also collaborated with the Tokyo, Juilliard, Orion, Brentano, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, and Fine Arts string quartets.

His extensive list of recordings spans an unusually broad range from original instrument performance to standard solo and chamber music repertoire to contemporary solo and chamber music works as well as numerous recordings of contemporary music as conductor. Recent recordings include the Horn Concerto of Peter Lieberson on Bridge (which received a Grammy and a WQXR Gramophone Award), works of Schumann, Paul Lansky, and the soon-to-be-released Quintet for Horn and Strings by Richard Wernick with the Juilliard Quartet.

Since 1999, Mr. Purvis has been a faculty member at the Yale School of Music, where he is coordinator of winds and brass. He is also on the faculties of the Juilliard School and SUNY Stony Brook. In 2008 he was appointed as Interim Director of the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments.

THE YALE SCHOOL OF MUSIC
The Yale School of Music, established in 1894 and one of four graduate schools in the arts at the University, has a long tradition of leadership in the training of performers and composers. It is a graduate-professional school and the only school of music in the Ivy League. The school is highly selective, with approximately 200 students who come from the finest American and international conservatories and universities to study with a distinguished faculty. The school's alumni are found in major positions in virtually every sphere of music making and administration. Yale graduates perform in most of the major American symphony orchestras, and voice alumni have enjoyed great success in joining professional opera companies throughout the world, with over a dozen Yale graduates on the artist roster of the Metropolitan Opera. The list of composition alumni, faculty, and guest professors is a virtual Who's Who of the creators of new music of the past century. Along with artistic accomplishment, Yale School of Music graduates have demonstrated strong leadership in guiding the course of numerous academic and cultural institutions. The Yale School of Music engages in cooperative partnerships with several leading international conservatories and schools, including: the Central Conservatory of Music (Beijing, China), Korean National University of the Arts-School of Music and Seoul National University-College of Music (Seoul, Korea), Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Russia), Royal Academy of Music (London), and the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music (Budapest, Hungary). The Yale School of Music offers the Doctor of Musical Arts, Master of Musical Arts, and Master of Music degrees, as well as the Artist Diploma and the Certificate in Performance. In Fall 2005, the Yale School of Music received an unprecedented gift of $100 million, allowing the school to solidify its international position of leadership by expanding programs, renovating facilities, and offering full-tuition scholarships to all students.