Concert Notes

Tonight the American Symphony Orchestra, along with the Bard Festival Chorus and soloists, presents one of the most remarkable works of the early 20th century, Gurre-Lieder, a “grand cantata” scored for more than 200 musicians and voices. The connection between the ASO and this largest work by Arnold Schoenberg is important; their founding conductor, Leopold…

Bryan Gilliam, in his elegant and expert notes for this performance of Gurre-Lieder, observes that Schoenberg’s belief in the “historical obligation of musical style” has “lost all meaning” in our current century. What Schoenberg understood as the “historical obligation” was actually an ethical imperative. Any style adopted by composers of music had to match and…

As distinguished scholar Michael Beckerman—in his very fine notes to this performance—observes, there was no “specific reason” on Antonín Dvořák’s part for composing his Requiem. What Beckerman was referring to was some personal or perhaps public reason to honor the dead with a major monumental choral and orchestral work. The reason Dvořák wrote the work…

Premiere: October 9, 1891 in Birmingham, England at the Birmingham Music Festival conducted by Antonín Dvořák with soloists Anna Williams, Hilda Wilson, Iver McKay, Watkin Mills, and the Birmingham Festival Chorus Instruments for this performance: 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, 1 English horn, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 1 contrabassoon, 4 French…

Seven years after Handel’s death, one of his Coronation Anthems—possibly Zadok the Priest—was performed by a massed chorus and orchestra at the rededication of the Grand Synagogue on Duke’s Place in London on August 29, 1766. The London Chronicle reported that this event was presided over by “the Chief and other eminent Rabbis belonging to…

When tonight’s performance of one of G. F. Handel’s more famous oratorios was scheduled a year ago, the intent of the ASO was to offer a friendly and reassuring program fit for the season, but one that was not entirely conventional. Handel’s Judas Maccabeus is hardly obscure though it is not the Messiah in terms…

The period around World War I, from about 1910 to the late 1920s, was arguably the most consequential one for Western music, in general, and for the American musical scene, in particular. The belief that the dominant Romantic tradition had reached an irreversible crisis point was widely shared among many young composers. In what became…

Welcome to our season-opening concert, one that celebrates an extremely creative moment in the history of American music. The composers on this program were selected on account of their originality and their commitment to writing music that properly mirrored the American experience. Classical and concert music in America, until the first decade of the twentieth…

Richard Strauss Born June 11, 1864, in Munich, Germany Died September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany An den Baum Daphne (Epilogue from Daphne) Composed in 1943 Text by Joseph Gregor (1888-1960) Premiered on January 5, 1947 in Vienna, Austria by the Vienna State Opera Chorus with the Vienna Boys’ Choir conducted by Felix Prohaska. Performance…

The myth of Daphne has come down to us from a myriad of ancient Greek and Roman sources. The most well-known perhaps is the version in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In all its variants, however, three central issues animate the Daphne myth.  First, is beauty and its consequences. Daphne is so uncommonly beautiful and so mesmerizing that…