American Symphony Orchestra to Perform TRIUMPH OF ART at Alice Tully Hall

Leon Botstein will lead the American Symphony Orchestra in Triumph of Art, the second installment in the ASO's four-concert Vanguard series on Thursday, December 7, at 8 PM at Alice Tully Hall.

The program continues the season's political focus by examining the music composers have created under various types of leadership.

Maestro Botstein provides the essential musical context for each of the series' presentations in lively, 30-minute Conductor's Notes Q&A sessions. These discussions, popular learning opportunities for concert-goers and music connoisseurs alike, begin one hour before each concert and are free for all ticket holders.

The works on this program were all influenced by conflict with authoritarian regimes, both fascist and communist. The concert reveals the compositional responses to resistance, emigration, and exile expressed by leading 20th-century composers of three different countries: Alfred Schnittke from Russia; the child prodigy violinist and composer Grazyna Bacewicz from Poland; and Czechoslovakia's Bohuslav Martinu, who fled his homeland in 1940 and was unable to return after the Communists seized power. The guest soloist is multi-award-winning young Russian violinist and recording artist Alena Baeva, who performs on the Stradivarius that belonged to Polish virtuoso Henryk Wieniawski.

PROGRAM:

TRIUMPH OF ART

Leon Botstein Conductor

Alena Baeva Violin

Grazyna Bacewicz: Music for Strings, Trumpets, and Percussion

Bohuslav Martinu: Symphony No. 6, Fantaisies symphoniques

Grazyna Bacewicz: Violin Concerto No. 7

Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 5

Tickets, priced a t$25 / $40, available at lincolncenter.org, CenterCharge at 212.721.6500 or the Alice Tully Hall box office at Broadway and 65th St.

The next concert in the Vanguard series is Hollow Victory: Jews in Soviet Russia after the World War, a survey of works by Jewish composers under Stalin on January 28, 2018 at Carnegie Hall.

The American Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1962 by Leopold Stokowski with a mission of making orchestral music accessible and affordable for everyone. Music Director Leon Botstein expanded that mission when he joined the ASO in 1992, creating thematic concerts that explore music from the perspective of the visual arts, literature, religion, and history, and reviving rarely-performed works audiences would otherwise seldom hear performed live.

The Orchestra has made several tours of Asia and Europe, and performed in countless benefits for organizations including the Jerusalem Foundation and PBS. Many of the world's most accomplished soloists have performed with the ASO, including Yo-Yo Ma, Deborah Voigt, and Sarah Chang. The Orchestra has released several recordings on the Telarc, New World, Bridge, Koch, and Vanguard labels, and numerous live performances are also available for digital download. In many cases, these are the only recordings of some of the rare works that have been rediscovered in ASO performances.

The ASO's recent online-only issue of Weber's Euryanthe, recorded at the 2014 Bard Music Festival, was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal as "Musically rich, lyrical and expansive."

Leon Botstein has been music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992. He is also music director of The Orchestra Now, an innovative training orchestra composed of top musicians from around the world. He is co-artistic director of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, which take place at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, where he has been president since 1975. He is also conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director from 2003-11. In 2018 he will assume artistic directorship of Austria's Grafenegg Academy and Campus. Mr. Botstein also has an active career as a guest conductor with orchestras around the globe, and has made numerous recordings, as well as being a prolific author and music historian. He is the recipient of numerous honors for his contributions to the music industry.

For more information, visit americansymphonyorchestra.org.