The Orchestra Now Presents NEW VOICES OF THE 1930s At Carnegie And A Free Concert At Symphony Space

The Orchestra Now performs the final concert in its Carnegie Hall season on Thursday, May 12 at 7 pm, offering seldom-heard masterpieces from the late 1930s. These include pianist Frank Corliss, director of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, in Dismal Swamp, William Grant Still's 1935 portrait of enslaved people's flight to freedom through Kentucky's bluegrass landscape; and Swiss soloist and Bard Conservatory faculty member Gilles Vonsattel, called an "immensely talented" and "quietly powerful pianist" (The New York Times) in Carlos Chávez's dazzling Piano Concerto. The evening also presents Witold Lutosławski's Symphonic Variations and Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Symphony No. 1 featuring mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel, who appears courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera, and performs the role of Alisa in Lucia di Lammermoor at the opera house this season.

This program will also be performed at the Fisher Center at Bard on May 7-8 and livestreamed for free on both dates. RSVP on the event pages to receive a direct link to the livestream on the day of the concert.

The next TŌN performance in NYC will be a FREE concert of works by Hungarian composers Franz Liszt, Béla Bartók, Emmerich Kálmán, and Zoltán Kodály at Peter Norton Symphony Space on May 22. The program will be led by TŌN resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman, also assistant conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, previously music director of the Blue Hill Troupe and assistant conductor for Deutsche Oper Berlin and Glimmerglass Opera.

New Voices from the 1930s

Thursday, May 12, 2022 at 7 PM
Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage)
Leon Botstein, conductor
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
Deborah Nansteel, mezzo-soprano
Frank Corliss, piano
William Grant Still: Dismal Swamp
Carlos Chávez: Piano Concerto
Witold Lutosławski: Symphonic Variations
Karl Amadeus Hartmann: Symphony No. 1, Essay for a Requiem

The performance will present William Grant Still's moving portrayal of captive peoples seeking freedom, with pianist Frank Corliss; and Karl Amadeus Hartmann's commentary on conditions under the Nazi regime, with Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel. The program also features pianist Gilles Vonsattel performing Mexican Symphonic Orchestra music director and composer Carlos Chávez's virtuosic Piano Concerto, called "imaginatively scored" and praised for its "elemental strength" and the "originality of its orchestral coloring" by The New York Times at its 1941 premiere. Leading progressive Polish music composer Witold Lutosławski's adventurous Symphonic Variations was written while he was still a student at Warsaw University. His first substantial orchestral work, the Variations contain many folk-like themes.

Tickets priced at $25-$60 are available online at carnegiehall.org, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212.247.7800, or at the Carnegie Hall box office at 57th & Seventh Avenue. Ticket holders will need to comply with the venue's health and safety requirements, which can be found here.

Liszt & Bartók

Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 4 PM
Peter Norton Symphony Space
Zachary Schwartzman, conductor
Emmerich Kálmán: Gräfin Mariza Overture
Franz Liszt: Les Préludes
Zoltán Kodály: Dances of Galánta
Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra

The Orchestra returns to Symphony Space with a free concert offering the works of four Hungarian composers. The performance opens with the overture to Emmerich Kálmán's 1924 three-act operetta about the tangled love plot of two couples, Gräfin Mariza (Countess Mariza). Next on the program is the best known of Liszt's 13 symphonic poems, Les Préludes, followed by Kodály's Dances of Galánta, written to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra in 1933, and full of themes representing the folk songs and heritage of Hungary. The afternoon closes with Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, the composer's last and most popular work for orchestra, commissioned by conductor Serge Koussevitzky in 1943.

Tickets for this concert are FREE, advance RSVP suggested at symphonyspace.org. Concertgoers will need to comply with the venue's health and safety requirements, which can be found here.