Concert Review: The Undiscovered Countries

Leon Botstein and the ASO explore music of the Eastern bloc.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The violinist Alena Baeva played the Concerto No. 7 by Grazyna Bacewicz at Alice Tully Hall
with the American Symphony Orchestra. Photo by International Classical Artists. 

One of the biggest problems facing the classical music world in the 21st century is repetition. There are only so many times you can hear the Fifth Symphonies of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler before interest dries up and ticket sales dwindle. Luckily for New Yorkers, the compulsively curious academic Dr. Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra have forged an artistic legacy exploring music that is off the beaten path. Their efforts often lead to neglected works being heard, and sometimes even programmed elsewhere.

Concert Review: No Country for Forgotten Men

The ASO explores Russia's lost Jewish composers.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Big stick: the composer Anton Rubinstein on the podium. His work was played
Thursday night by the American Symphony Orchestra.
Painting by Ilya Repin.

The concert hall music of Russia has a shorter history than most, as no major composers emerged in that land until the 19th century. And yet, there are as many forgotten and neglected composers from Russia as there are trees in its vast taiga forests. On Thursday night, Leon Botstein chose four Jewish composers from Russia as the focus of a Carnegie Hall concert by the American Symphony Orchestra: Aleksandr Krein, Anton Rubinstein, Mikhail Gnesin and Maximillian Steinberg.

Recordings Review: Famous Last Words?

On Sibelius, silence and the "death" of classical music.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sage advice from your favorite blog.

As the Internet erupted in a swirl of argument following the announcement of the "Death of Classical Music" in a recent issue of Slate, things have been a little bit more subdued here at the Brooklyn apartment headquarters of Superconductor. Frankly, I've been down for the count with a persistent head cold, acquired (ironically) during Act I of last Wednesday's La Bohème.

Concert Review: The Thunder of Invention

The American Symphony Orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

American Symphony Orchestra music director Leon Botstein.
Image from Orchestra in Exile © 2013 Aronson Film Associates.

A Carnegie Hall concert by Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra demands commitment. The ASO's yearly Vanguard Series offers works from dark corners of the orchestral repertory, often presented in an unyielding marathon of music that packs as many as five compositions into a single musical evening.

On Thursday night, the ASO's first Carnegie concert of the season (and, due to an Oct. 2 strike by Carnegie Hall stagehands, that venue's de facto opening night) featured five musical behemoths, enormous works for orchestra from the 20th century. The common thread: all of these works were by American composers (the last, Edgard Varèse, lived here for 50 years) and all broke new ground in terms of changing how audiences listen to music. A program note (by Dr.  Botstein) tied all five pieces to the Armory Show, a seminal art exhibition from 1913 that introduced new concepts (like cubism) to American eyes.

Concert Review: The Shame of a Nation

The American Symphony Orchestra presents Hungary Torn
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The damage done to Hungary by the right-wing "Arrow Cross" movement and the Nazis
has forever scarred the country's cultural heritage. Photoshop by the author.

The horrors inflicted on Europe by the rise of fascism in the 1930s were not confined to Germany and Italy. On Thursday night, Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra used the work of five relatively obscure composers to explore the detriment of that political movement and the following Second World War on the development of music and arts in Hungary. Their goal: to shed much-needed light on these brilliant voices, silenced all too early.

Concert Review: Death by Chocolate

The ASO presents an apocalypse of...whipped cream?
by Paul J. Pelkonen

What a dessert apocalypse might look like. Image of actor William Atherton as "Walter Peck"
in the last reel of Ghostbusters. Film still © 1984 Columbia Pictures/Sony Entertainment.

On Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall, the always adventurous Dr. Leon Botstein led the American Symphony Orchestra in a concert marketed as Truth or Truffles. The program juxtaposed two works that stood at absolute polar opposites on the wide spectrum of 20th century musical achievement. The featured composers were Germans: Karl Amadeus Hartmann, a symphonist who defied the Nazis only to sink into obscurity, and Richard Strauss, whose two years as president of Hitler's Reichsmusikkammer remains an indelible blight on his legacy.

The program opened with the United States premiere of the 1961 composition Gesangsszene, the last (and unfinished) work by Hartmann. This is a setting for baritone and orchestra of the Jean Girodoux poem Sodom and Gomorrah, which recreates the fall of those two Biblical cities through the filter of World War II and the age of atomic anxiety.

Hartmann wrote a grim final testament. Jagged stabs of woodwind and violin filled the space between slab-like brass chords. Hartmann, who wrote eight (mostly) forgotten symphonies, was a conservative modernist, following in the orchestral tradition of Mahler and Berg. His music recalls the heavier passages of Shostakovich without the Russian composer's wit.

Lockout Looms at Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Musicians, management throw down over budget cuts.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Labor issues are heating up in Atlanta.
Image from Gone With the Wind © 1939 MGM.

The plague of cutbacks and labor unrest that has visited orchestras across North America has now made its way south. At the Woodruff Center for the Arts in Atlanta, GA, an ugly confrontation is brewing between the Board of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the musicians of that ensemble.

In an August 9 letter to the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, members of the orchestra's Players' Association outline a proposed 26% cut in total musicians' expenses, a pay cut of $20,000 per musician, and a reduction in orchestra size from 95 members to 89.

The letter furthermore delineates the Board's threat to "lock out the orchestra and cancel our health and dental insurance" if the above conditions are not agreed to. It is added that the Board's decision comes in conjunction with the decision to start the 2012-2013 season in October, (which is apparently weeks later than usual), after the expiration of the players' current contract.