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“Richly costumed and dramatically effective…Botstein, leading the American Symphony Orchestra, an impressive cast and the excellent Bard Festival Chorale, made a compelling case for the piece.”—New York Times, August 2021 “This opera is a masterwork.” OperaWire, August 2021 Premiered in 1903, this richly lyrical opera by French composer Ernest Chausson was widely considered one of the…

“When I sat down to write this string quartet, I was not trying to write something Black, I was just writing out of my experience,” said Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004) about his String Quartet No. 1, Calvary, which was performed by a string quartet of ASO musicians in September of 2020 at the Washington Lake Park Amphitheater in…

In 1946, American composer George Walker (1922-2018) wrote what would become one of his most notable works at the young age of 24: String Quartet no. 1. Walker was introduced to music at 5 years old and was quite prolific in his lifetime; his works have been performed by almost every major orchestra in the U.S, and he achieved quite…

The latest ASO Online release was performed live this past September during a socially-distanced chamber music performance at the Washington Lake Park Amphitheater in Sewell, NJ. A string quartet of ASO members performed Trevor Weston‘s Juba as part of a program of works by Black composers, curated by ASO violinist Philip Payton. The term “Juba”…

The middle movement of Samuel Barber’s String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11 (1935), later arranged by the composer for orchestra as Adagio for Strings, is “one of the most recognizable pieces of classical music in the world” (NPR). In a live socially-distanced chamber music performance, members of the ASO performed all three movements of…

A string quartet of ASO musicians performs the works of Italian-born Nino Rota (1911-1979). Born into a family of musicians, Rota was no stranger to music and was a child prodigy whose first oratorio was performed in Paris and his hometown, Milan, when he was only 12 years old. Through the remainder of his career,…

United We Play is a short film inspired by the current turbulent times, and the belief that strength comes through adversity—where there is divide, there is also community. The project combines the talents of Marcus Roberts, The Modern Jazz Generation, and the ASO’s string section in a musical, visual, and narrative digital experience that speaks…

Set in an unnamed totalitarian state, The Miracle of Heliane (Das Wunder der Heliane) features an intricate, erotic triangle between a ruthless despot, The Ruler; his beautiful and neglected wife, Heliane; and a young, messianic Stranger. An allegorical tale, about the destruction of a dictatorship by a woman, Heliane premiered to great acclaim in Hamburg in 1927, and remains…

SummerScape’s production of Anton Rubinstein’s operatic masterpiece Demon first premiered to great acclaim in 1871. Although performed frequently in Russia, the work remains something of a rarity in the West today. Conducted by Leon Botstein and directed by the renowned American director Thaddeus Strassberge. Based on the renowned fantasy poem by Mikhail Lermontov, Demon boasts…

A great nation in turmoil after the abrupt end to a ruling dynasty leaving no clear path forward. This was Russia in the Time of Troubles, the seventeenth-century period in which Antonín Dvořák set his 1882 opera Dimitrij. A stellar cast along with the Bard Festival Chorale animate this powerful production by Anne Bogart for…