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 Stokowski, conducted the US premiere on April 8, 1932 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and recorded…

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 confront the distinct circumstances and unique challenges of the contemporary historical moment. Music was not…

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 was a commission from the Birmingham Festival in England. Although 19th-century England was often derided…

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 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, percussion (tam-tam, bells), 1 harp, organ, 18…

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 the Portuguese Jewish nation” and prayers in English were offered for the Royal Family. One…

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 of the frequency of performances. We, as citizens and residents of the greater New York…

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 the most turbulent time in music history – stylistically and aesthetically – this quest for…

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 century, was largely dominated by European models, particularly German, Russian, and French. A younger generation…

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 Time: Approximately 16 minutes Daphne: Bukolische Tragödie in einem Aufzug (Bucolic Tragedy in One Act),…

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 she becomes Apollo’s obsession and his object of pursuit. Of the Olympians, Apollo was himself…

It is a pleasure to welcome the audience to this concert of the American Symphony Orchestra at St. Bartholomew’s. St. Bartholomew’s has a rich and noble history as a venue for concerts, particularly concerts that utilize its spectacular and legendary Aeolian-Skinner organ. Although the present organ dates from 1918, it incorporates much of the previous organ by Hutchings and Odell. The organ has been meticulously maintained. Its current configuration dates…

Camille Saint-Saëns Born October 9, 1835, in Paris, France Died December 16, 1921, in Algiers, Algeria Symphony No. 3, Op. 78, 1886 Composed 1886 Premiered on May 19, 1886, in London, U.K., Conducted by Camille Saint-Saëns Performance Time: Approximately 36 minutes In 1878, Camille Saint-Saëns endured a double tragedy. On May 28, his young son André died when he fell from the window of the family apartment onto the courtyard…

This concert celebrates the role New York City has played, and continues to play as a center of national musical culture in the 20th century. At the same time, tonight’s concert marks the 60th anniversary of the American Symphony Orchestra.  The ASO was founded by Leopold Stokowski in the early sixties. Lincoln Center—the not altogether wise (in terms of the character of cities) dream of bringing the major performing arts…

Aaron Copland  Born November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York Died December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York Quiet City Composed 1939-1941 Orchestra version premiered on January 28, 1941 in New YORK, Conducted by Daniel Saidenberg Performance Time: Approximately 10 minutes “My career in the theatre has been a flop,” wrote Aaron Copland to his friend and fellow composer-critic Virgil Thomson in 1939. Copland meant live spoken theatre rather…

This first United States performance of Taneyev’s masterpiece At the Reading of a Psalm is not only part of the American Symphony Orchestra’s longstanding mission to revive neglected or unknown works of music that merit public performance and rediscovery, but it is taking place several weeks before the opening of the 2022 Bard Music Festival, which this year is dedicated to the life and career of Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of…

Sergei Taneyev Born November 25, 1856, in Vladimir, Russia Died June 19, 1915 in Zvenigorod, Russia At the Reading of a Psalm Composed in 1915 Premiered on March 11, 1915 in Saint Petersburg, Russia conducted by Serge Koussevitzky Performance Time: Approximately 70 minutes The cantata is not a genre often associated with Russian composers, who are perhaps most famous – at least in the West – for their operas, symphonies,…

I first read Jorge Luis Borges’ short story El Aleph when I was a student at the University of Puerto Rico. The paradox of a point of light where one could see the totality of everything simultaneously was a moment of revelation to me. In El Aleph what seems empirically impossible is possible. In this first movement I composed dissimilar sections and gestures that only when the movement concludes they…

Tonight’s concert features four works by distinguished American composers with long and sustained careers. Each has been recognized and been the recipient of numerous awards; two of the pieces on the program, by Shulamit Ran and Melinda Wagner, won the coveted Pulitzer Prize in the 1990s. The viola concerto by Richard Wernick was written in the late 1980s, a decade after he won the Pulitzer. Roberto Sierra’s work is a…

Melinda Wagner Born February 25, 1957, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion Composed in 1998 Premiered on May 30, 1998 in Purchase, New York New York at the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College by Westchester Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mark Mandarano with soloist Paul Lustig Dunkel, flute. Performance Time: Approximately 23 Instruments for this performance: timpani, percussion (glockenspiel, crotales, xylophone, triangle, finger cymbal, castanets, vibraphone, chimes,…

Mahler spent a total of about a year and a half in New York, in the course of four extended sojourns between 1907 and 1911. He conducted at the Met and gave numerous concerts with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall; he also visited a dozen American cities on tour. He conducted a wide range of operatic and symphonic repertoire that also included three of his own symphonies as…