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: The Bleeding Hearts and Artists

The American Symphony Orchestra stands up for what's right.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland back in the day.
Photo from the estate of Leonard Bernstein.

A peculiar sense of existential dread hung over Wednesday night’s concert at Carnegie Hall, the first of the young season featuring the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its long time music director Dr. Leon Botstein. For this concert, titled “The Sounds of Democracy”,Dr. Botstein chose 20th century music by Leonard Bernstein, Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland, leading lights of American music in the last century but now largely ignored by the fast-food reality-television culture of the 21st.

Opera Preview: Dimitrij

Superconductor delves into "The Time of Troubles" and Dvořák's opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The incident that started it all: Ivan the Terrible (top) holds his dying son Ivanovich.
Painting by Vadim Repin. 

The biggest opera premiere of the summer is this Friday evening, when Bard SummerScape unveils the rarely performed Dmitrij by Antonín Dvořák. Dmitrij is a Czech opera that delves into a bloody and to historians, fascinating period: the Time of Troubles. With the premiere scheduled for Friday night, I thought it would be a good idea to delve into the history of Dmitrij, and its more famous "prequel": Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.

Summer Festival Preview: Bard SummerScape

False Tsars and Polish piano mastery mark this year's festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Murder of the False Dmitry by Konstantin Makovsky
gives some idea of the mayhem to come at this summer's Bard Festival.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

The rolling greens of Bard College, located just off the Hudson River in the quaint but practical little town of Annandale-on-Hudson, welcome music lovers once more. The attraction: Bard SummerScape, offering six weeks of classical music, academic programming and as always, a unique opera that you probably won't hear anywhere else anytime soon.

Concert Review: The Power and the Passion

Leon Botstein wrestles Elgar's The Apostles.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Leon Botstein. Photo by Kallaher for Bard College.

It is never a good idea to follow in the footsteps of Richard Wagner. That truism could easily be applied to Edward Elgar's long-neglected oratorio The Apostles. Elgar conceived The Apostles as the first part of a planned trilogy of stage works based on the New Testament, following a visit to Bayreuth in 1902. However, this piece, played at Carnegie Hall on Friday night by Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra, is problematic at best.

Opera Review: Smoke Gets in His Eyes

The Orchestra Now plays Respighi and Wolf-Ferrari.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Don't say we didn't warn you.

In his capacity as a musical archeologist, Leon Botstein unearths little-heard compositions, and leads them before the discerning ears of those who attend his orchestral concerts. In his other job, he is the president of Bard College, that bastion of liberal arts learning on the Hudson River near Peekskill. Starting last season, Dr. Botstein combined these jobs, emerging as the leader of The Orchestra Now, comprised of Bard's masters' candidates setting forth upon the concert stage. This ensemble played Carnegie Hall Friday night as part of its spring concert season, with Dr. Botstein on the podium.

Opera Review: Truth And Consequences

Le Villi and La Navarraise at the Bard Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sean Pannikar (left) and Talise Trevigne in a tense moment from Puccini's Le Villi.
Photo by Cory Weaver © 2016 Bard Music Festival.

This summer's Bard Music Festival is focused almost entirely on the music of Giacomo Puccini, the Italian opera composer who stands at the end of a four hundred-year tradition of opera as that country's dominant art form. From his early competition pieces to the unfinished wonders of his final opera Turandot, Puccini was the climax of a long line of composers and somehow the end of the road.

Opera Review: Her Daddy Said: "A Whore"

Bard SummerScape plucks Mascagni's rare Iris.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Pimp daddy: Kyoto (Douglas Williams) menaces Iris (Talise Trevigne) in Mascagni's opera.
Photo by Cory Weaver © 2016 Bard SummerScape.

Composer Pietro Mascagni once famously said that of all his operas he regretted writing Cavalleria Rusticana first. This month, his Iris is the centerpiece of the annual Bard SummerScape festival,  held at the shiny Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center (on the verdant grounds of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson New York.) At Sunday's matinee performance, conductor, artistic director and Bard president Leon Botstein made a forceful case for Iris as a lost Mascagni masterwork.

Superconductor 2016 Summer Festival Preview III: Bard Festival

Up the Hudson, the Bard Festival revisits Puccini.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Just a settin' on the lawn. No, that statue of Puccini isn't really there.
Original photo of the Fisher Center © A. Zahner and Co.

The third part of our Summer Festival Preview features the Bard Festival, that celebration of the forgotten and the unusual in symphonic and operatic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. Held on the sprawling verdant campus of Bard College and fcused around the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center For the Performing Arts, Bard has a reputation as one of the elite summer festivals, a grand day out at the opera that is worth the long trip.

Concert Review: When Dinosaurs Attack

The American Symphony Orchestra plays Max Reger.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Please keep your arms and legs inside the blog at all times.
Photo alteration by the author, a parody of Jurassic Park © 1994 Amblin Entertainment.

Max Reger belongs to a shadowy period at the turn of the 20th century, a sort of missing link between the Romantic harmonic complexity of Brahms and the atonal revolution led by Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. Yet his major works stand largely ignored, dismissed as difficult dinosaurs that are ignored by most pianists and orchestras. They're long. They're complicated. And they translate 18th century ideas of polyphony and counterpoint to the modern orchestra, offering solid musicianship that, in the wrong hands can be sober and heavy-handed.

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.

Opera Review: Love on the Rocks

Ethyl Smyth's The Wreckers rises from the vasty deep.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
(This article is presented in collaboration with our friends at OperaPulse.)

Wrecking crew: (L-r) Katharine Goeldner, Sky Ingram, Michael Mayes, Neal Cooper and Kendra Broom 
in rehearsal for Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers.
Photo by Stephanie Berger © 2015 Bard SummerScape.

Each summer, it is the business of the Bard SummerScape Festival to present an opera that for whatever reason has fallen far from the fringes of the standard repertory. On Friday night, artistic director and Bard College president) Leon Botstein led the first fully staged performance of The Wreckers the 1907 opera by Dame Ethyl Smyth. (The work was first performed in the U.S. by the American Symphony Orchestra under Dr. Botstein at Carnegie Hall in 2007.) This was the first of five scheduled performances this month at the Fisher Center, the Frank Gehry-designed concert hall on the Bard campus that is SummerScape's headquarters.

Concert Review: Beginning at the Beginning

The American Symphony Orchestra plays early works by major Romantics.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor and college president Leon Botstein.
Photo © American Symphony Orchestra/Bard College.

The annual concert series by the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall continued last Thursday with Opus Posthumous, a concert curated by music director (and Bard College president) Leon Botstein and featuring rarities unearthed from the early catalogues of Schubert, Bruckner and Dvořák. Although the works on this program (particularly the Symphony No. 00 by Bruckner and the Symphony No. 1 by Dvořák) have been recorded and are part of each composer's catalogue of work, performances of these pieces are a rare occasion indeed.

Opera Review: The Da Vinci Coda

The American Symphony Orchestra presents Max von Schillings' Mona Lisa.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

American Symphony Orchestra music director Leon Botstein visits the Louvre.
With apologies to Leonoardo Da Vinci. Original photo by Ric Kelleher.
Photo alteration by the author.

Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in history, featuring in bad suspense novels, Hollywood adaptations of same, and countless Internet memes. On Friday night at Carnegie Hall, the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor and scholar Leon Botstein, unearthed the 1915 opera of the same name by the long-forgotten composer Max von Schillings. This was the first New York performance of Mona Lisa since 1923, when it was mounted at the Metropolitan Opera.

Concert Review: The Easy Life in Garmisch

Leon Botstein explores the home life of Richard Strauss.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Symphonia Domestica: the Strauss family (Richard, Pauline, Franz) in the year 1910.
Photo © 1910 the Estate of Richard Strauss.

The American Symphony Orchestra's yearly Vanguard series is an opportunity for music director Leon Botstein to shine a flashlight into the dark corners of the repertory, unearthing rare (or in some cases, unheard) treasures for the pleasure of its Carnegie Hall audience. Wednesday night was Dr. Botstein's yearly excursion into the lesser-known repertory of Richard Strauss, the composer of tone poems and operas whose 150th birthday was celebrated earlier this year.

Opera Review: A Girl with a Bad Reputation

Bard SummerScape presents Euryanthe.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Hand jive: Euryanthe (Ellie Dehn) and Eglantine (Wendy Bryn Harmer) face off in
a scene from Weber's romantic opera Euryanthe. Photo by Cory Weaver © 2014 Bard SummerScape.

Carl Maria von Weber's Euryanthe has finally beaten the odds.

The opera, which is running at the Bard Festival as part of that institution's SummerScape series, has overcome a bad libretto, a hard-to-pronounce title (it's "Oy-ree-an-theh") and consignment to the yawning void reserved for German romantic operas that were written before the rise of Richard Wagner. These performances, conducted by Bard president Leon Botstein at the helm of the American Symphony Orchestra mark the first fully staged performances of the opera in the U.S. since a brief run at the Met in the 1914-15 season.

Concert Review: Slaughter-House Four

The American Symphony Orchestra offers Forged in Fire.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The trenches of France in World War I.

The First World War (known as the "Great War" in the years between its ending and World War II) was one of the key events of the 20th century. Starting on June 28, 1914, this five-year conflagration destroyed much of France, severely damaged Germany and cost the lives of an entire generation of young men, slaughtered in the battlefield trenches by the mechanized weaponry of the early 20th century. However, observance of this tragic event has been largely muted, even as the centennial of the war approaches this year.

Concert Review: He Supposes, Erroneously

The American Symphony Orchestra exhumes Max Bruch's Moses.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sssh: American Symphony Orchestra music director Leon Botstein
Photo by Jito Lee © 2011 The Melos Ethos Festival.

Since assuming the directorship of the American Symphony Orchestra in 1991, Dr. Leon Botstein has made it his mission to expose audiences to long-forgotten works of the 19th and 20th centuries. His latest discovery is Moses, a two-hour oratorio by Max Bruch, written in 1895 when the Romantic tradition was breathing its last. On Thursday night, Dr. Botstein led the ASO in this work, joined by the Collegiate Chorale and a trio of up-and-coming opera singers at Carnegie Hall.

Opera Review: Re-light My Fire

The American Symphony Orchestra presents Feuersnot.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

It's either a virgin...or this as Feuersnot by Richard Strauss gets a rare hearing.

The early operas of Richard Strauss (that is, the two he wrote before the whirlwind success de scandale of Salome) are incorrectly dismissed as juvenalia. Take Feuersnot the one-act comedy that the composer wrote (right after Ein Heldenleben) as a riposte to his home city of Munich and its notably conservative musical establishment. On Sunday afternoon, New Yorkers were able to judge Feuersnot for themselves, as the opera received a much-neeeded airing from Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra.

Concert Review: Getting Carter

The American Symphony Orchestra pays tribute to Elliott Carter.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The composer Elliott Carter in his New York apartment in 1983.
Photo by Nancy Crampton courtesy Boosey & Hawkes.

New York's own Elliott Carter was the dean of modern music in this country, an artist whose vast output spanned orchestral works, songs and even opera. His music always looked relentlessly forward, breaking new ground even in his last works. On Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra celebrated the memory of this great composer, who died on November 5 of last year at the age of 103. The carefully curated program offered six of Carter's pieces, spanning eight decades of his output and giving a glimpse at the wide variety of styles and music created over a long compositional career.