American Symphony Orchestra’s 2009-10 season

American Symphony Orchestra Announces 2009-10 Season – its 17th – as Part of “Lincoln Center Presents Great Performers”

ASO’s Six-Concert Season Opens October 14 with D’Indy’s Grand Opera Fervaal; Themes of Subsequent Concerts Link to Previous Programs

The American Symphony Orchestra announces its 2009-10 Lincoln Center season of six concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, opening October 14 with the latest in a series of Romantic French operas-in-concert – Vincent d’Indy’s rarely-heard Fervaal. Before the season closes, Leon Botstein, in his 17th season as ASO music director, will also conduct concerts devoted to a single composer – America’s unique and infrequently performed Henry Cowell; Robert Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust, the third in the orchestra’s trilogy of his grand oratorios; a concert of Soviet music written after the thaw caused by Stalin’s death; a concert demonstrating the continued life of Romanticism after the 20th century’s modernism failed to kill it off; and a concert of 20th-century European music illustrating the contrast between reason and sensual pleasure, or Apollo and Dionysus. Complete program details follow.

In this 47th season since Leopold Stokowski founded the ASO, the orchestra presents, as before, enlightening pre-concert lectures in the auditorium of Avery Fisher Hall, free to ticket holders. Leon Botstein began giving these lectures himself during the 2008-09 season, and will continue doing so next season.

Celebrated for what the New York Times has called “justly acclaimed thematic programming,” the ASO presents concerts covering a wide range of undeservedly neglected repertoire, including many U.S. premieres, and featuring works both short and long, some challenging and others accessible, by composers sometimes familiar and at other times virtually unknown. New York magazine has called the ASO’s Lincoln Center season “one of the best-programmed series in the city,” adding, “Trust Botstein to tweak every American Symphony Orchestra concert program with some intriguing discoveries from the past, all thematically related.”

Violinist Daniel Hope, who performed the U.S. premiere of Hermann Suter’s 1924 Violin Concerto with the ASO earlier this season, said in an interview:

“Leon Botstein has made a name for himself and the ASO, championing works that – with a little help, a little encouragement, a little exploration, and a dedicated performance – can be presented to the public as unheard masterpieces. Putting such music in the context of a story – as the ASO has done with its thematic titles, pre-concert lectures, chats with the audience, and extensive program notes – is the best way to engage the audience. And, in a sense, when the orchestra’s playing something for the first time and the audience is hearing it for the first time, we’re getting another, unique story: we’re witnessing the birth of an interpretation.”

Program highlights for ASO’s 2009-10 Lincoln Center season:

Vincent d’Indy’s Fervaal (Oct 14, 2009), composed in 1893, is a rare masterpiece from the golden age of French Romantic opera. Fervaal continues ASO’s remarkable series of such operas in recent seasons, which have included Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-bleue, Chausson’s Le roi Arthus, and Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys. Like his contemporary French composers, d’Indy was inspired by Wagner, but both Debussy and Dukas considered Fervaal even better than Wagner’s epics. After ASO’s performance in 2008-09 of Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys, Opera News wrote: “Leon Botstein once again enriched New York’s concert-opera scene.”

“The Remains of Romanticism” (Nov 15, 2009) will present proof positive that the presumed death of Romantic music through the advent of modernism at the turn of the 20th century was a myth. Although it seemed in danger of becoming obsolete, music by many serious and successful composers saved it from extinction. Some of the greatest of the age tried to revive Romanticism through formal innovation, others by connecting it to a narrative or programmatic scheme. Hear the unexpected results of their efforts in these great works by composers like Robert Fuchs and Richard Strauss, some of which have never been heard before in the United States.

“An American Biography: The Music of Henry Cowell” (Jan 29, 2010) paints a portrait of the spiky and unique west-coast master (1897-1965), whose prodigious and eclectic output mirrors the energy and optimism of America in his day, and the countless traditions, customs, and conventions that make up the nation’s rich culture. Cowell experimented with everything from Japanese instruments to electronic music, and was a legendary influence on American composers from George Gershwin to John Cage and even many of today’s most adventurous composers. Virgil Thomson, Cowell’s contemporary, noted, “His experiments begun three decades ago in rhythm, in harmony, and in instrumental sonorities were considered then by many to be wild. Today they are the Bible of the young and still, to the conservatives, ‘advanced.’”

The concert theme “After the Thaw” (Feb 24, 2010) refers not to the weather but rather the thaw in the Soviet Union’s artistic scene after Josef Stalin’s death in 1953. It resulted in a blossoming of new musical life in the Soviet Union, and a flow of compositions full of ideas and innovations that only a short while before would have caused a one-way ticket to Siberia for the “offender”. ASO’s 2008 program of Russian Futurists presented composers who thrived briefly just before Stalin rose to power, and this season’s “After the Thaw” will demonstrate – with works by Alexander Lokshin, Boris Tchaikovsky, and Boris Tishchenko – what went on in the Soviet music scene after “Uncle Joe’s” iron grip on the USSR was finally released.

With “Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” (April 9, 2010), ASO completes Robert Schumann’s great trilogy of oratorios (after Manfred and Das Paradies und die Peri). The greatest poetic retelling of the enduring story of a man selling his soul to the devil – Goethe’s Faust – is set to music by a Romantic composer who knew all too well what it was like to be haunted by demons. For the bicentennial of Robert Schumann’s birth, ASO performs the third of Schumann’s great dramatic oratorios, composed on selections from Goethe’s two-part Faust.

The theme of “Apollo and Dionysus” (May 9, 2010) contrasts the rational with the emotional. Philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche used these eternally opposed mythological figures to represent human nature at war with itself. It’s the struggle of those torn between reason, discipline, and formal beauty on the one hand, and sensuality, earthly pleasure, and desire on the other. Find out which side you’re on with this concert of music inspired by the Greek gods of enlightenment and wine. Compositions by four European talents of the 20th century – England’s Arthur Bliss, Italy’s Luigi Dallapiccola, Germany’s Hans Werner Henze, and France’s Albert Roussel – make up the program.

A complete list of works featured in the ASO’s 2009-10 season at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, and additional information, follows.

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Botstein conducts the American Symphony Orchestra:
2009-10 Lincoln Center season

Wednesday, October 14, 2009, 8 pm
Opera in concert: Vincent d’Indy: Fervaal, Op. 40 (1893)

Sunday, November 15, 2009, 3 pm
“The Remains of Romanticism”
Robert Fuchs: Serenade No. 1, Op. 9 (1874)
Siegmund von Hausegger: Wieland der Schmied, symphonic poem (1904)
Hermann Goetz: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 22 (1868/80)
Ludwig Thuille: Romantic Overture, Op. 16 (1899)
Richard Strauss: Symphony in F minor, Op. 12 (1884)

Friday, January 29, 2010, 8 pm
“An American Biography: The Music of Henry Cowell”
Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 3 (1944)
Atlantis (1926)
Variations for Orchestra (1956/59)
Symphony No. 2, “Anthropos” (1941)
Concerto for Harmonica and Orchestra (1962)
Symphony No. 11, “Seven Rituals of Music” (1953)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 8 pm
“After the Thaw”
Alexander Lokshin: Symphony No. 4 (1968)
Boris Tchaikovsky: Concerto for Cello and Symphonic Orchestra (1964)
Boris Tishchenko: Symphony No. 5, Op. 67 (1976)
Boris Tchaikovsky: Music for Orchestra (1987)

Friday, April 9, 2010, 8 pm
Robert Schumann: Scenes from Goethe’s Faust (1858)

Sunday, May 9, 2010, 3 pm
“Apollo and Dionysus”
Arthur Bliss: Hymn to Apollo (1926/65)
Luigi Dallapiccola: Symphonic fragments from the ballet Marsia (1947)
Hans Werner Henze: Symphony No. 3 (1950)
Albert Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane, Op. 43, Suites 1 & 2 (1931)

Subscribers to all six ASO concerts at Lincoln Center not only receive a substantial discount, but also have access to program notes in advance of each performance.

In addition to the above schedule, the orchestra will continue its popular “Classics Declassified” series, now at Symphony Space and expanded to six concerts in the new season, on Sundays at 4 pm and Tuesdays at 7 pm. The concerts, preceded by illuminating lectures, will include five Beethoven Symphonies and provide a definitive look at these key works of the symphonic canon. “Classics Declassified” kicks off on October 18, and full details will be announced separately. Up at the Richard B. Fisher Center, the ASO can also be seen performing in the venue’s Winter Series.

The American Symphony Orchestra’s 2009-010 season and programs are made possible, in part, through support from National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer. Additional support is provided by the Winston Foundation, the Faith Golding Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Fan Fox and Leslie Samuels Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Bay and Paul Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, DuBose & Dorothy Heyward Memorial Trust, the Edith C. Blum Foundation, and Solon E. Summerfield Foundation.

www.americansymphony.org

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– January 21, 2009