In Boston

I am spending a week in Boston rehearsing with the Kalistos Chamber Orchestra. I will be conducting Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht on Sunday May 21.
It has been raning for the last 10 days, so many streets are flooded.

Berlin Philharmonic Forges New Links to the Young

Educational efforts by the Berlin Philharmoniker.
It is my hope that on our tour to Berlin, we can learn from this amazing orchestra.
Photo by Dietmar Gust for The New York Times
article by Daniel J. Wakin

Oliver Knussen Wins $100,000 Composition Prize

One of my favorites is honored for his work.

Chamber Orchestra will expand its renown by making radio archive available online

This is a very interesting trend.
Perhaps we should make our archive of live concert recordings available on out website.
Thomas?

Orchestra picks one of its own as principal violist

The former principal Roberto Diaz is now at the head of Curtis instiute.
He also happens to be our guest artist for the Chamber Orchestra concert on April 2007.
He and his sister Gabriela Diaz will be performing Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante.
This article talks about the viola principal post in the Phildelphia orchestra.

Violists, start working on your masterclass material.

The best chamber orchestra in the world

opinions of course.

Phila. names first female lead hornist

Orchestra has been a male dominated entity, but that is fast changing. Even the Veinna Philharmonic has new members who are not male. The brass section which had been dominated by men are also changing. A good musician is a good musician.

CSO taps 2 conductors to fill in for Barenboim

Another article on the Chicago conductor post

Chicago Symphony Names Haitink And Boulez to Conducting Posts

Here is this week's orchestra news from around the world.

more concerts this weekend in Ithaca

Finals are continuing and spring rain has arrived in Ithaca.
Here are more concerts this weekend.

Friday 12 8:00 pm Sage Chapel D.M.A. recital: Fang Man, composer. "7 Flowers and 5 Colors" features University organist Annette Richards and players of the OSSIA ensemble from the Eastman School of Music.

Saturday 13 3:00 pm Barnes Hall Senior recital: Katherine Skovira, soprano, and Graeme Bailey, piano, with soprano Jacqueline Conti and tenor James Patrick Miller.

Saturday 13 8:00 pm Barnes Hall Heather Miller Lardin and guest Brent Wissick, viols; guest Deborah Fox, theorbo; and Shane Levesque, harpsichord and organ. Sponsored by the Cornell Collegium and funded by GPSAFC and the Bar Dee Stirland Fund for Early Music.

Sunday 14 3:00 pm Barnes Hall Student recital: Alexander Tsiatas, flute, with Graeme Bailey, piano. Features works by Bach, Bloch, Griffes, Karg-Elert, and Karel Husa.

Sunday 14 8:00 pm Barnes Hall Emily Green, piano. Features works by Bach, Mozart, and Conlon Nancarrow.

Cornell enters final exam period

Cornell has entered final exam period for Spring semester. There is a blanket of tension across the campus with muted streets and hallways.
There is one last student recital on Sunday May 14. Our own orchestra Librarian and flutist Alex Tsiatas will give a recital on Sunday afternoon in Barnes. Here is the info.

I am having a flute recital this Sunday, May 14th, at 3:00pm in Barnes
Hall. I'll be playing works by Bach, Bloch, Griffes, Karg-Elert, and
Karel Husa, and I'll be accompanied by Graeme Bailey on piano. The
concert is free, and I would love for all of you to come see me perform.
Hope to see you there!
Alex

Chamber Music concert

The last orchestra concert is done, but there are more performances this week.
Tonight in Barnes Hall at 8 pm is the last Student chamber music concert of the semester.
Support your fellow orchestra members;

1.Haydn- String quartet in B Flat Major Op.76 No.4 ("sunrise")
-Allegro con spirito
Homan Lee- violin, Yin Tong.-violin, Stephen Liu- viola, Alexandra
Pavel.-cello

2.Brahms- Zwei Gesänge Op. 91
1) Gestillte Sehnsucht
2) Geistliches Wiegenlied
Dara Taylor, mezzo-sooprano, Tanya Lee- piano, Joel Ong- viola

3. Barber- "Despite and Still" op.41
A last song
My lizzard
In the Wilderness
Solitary Hotel
Despite and Still

Samantha Landau- soprano, Bernie Hsu- piano
4.Schumann- Piano quartet in E Flat Major, Op.47
-Sostenuto assai- Allegro ma non troppo
-Scherzo- molto vivace
-Andante cantabile
-Finale: Vivace
Benjamin Dorfan- piano, Brightin Schlumpf- violin, Kimberly Wong- viola,
Stephen Palmer- cello

5.Beethoven- Piano trio op.97 in B Flat Major ("Archduke")
-Allegro moderato
Stefania Neonato- piano, Esther Kim- violin, Sarah Rice- cello

6. Rebecca Clark- Sonata for viola and piano
-Impetuosso- ma non troppo Allegro
Kathryn Kimble- viola, Blaise Bryski- piano

7. Brahms- Sonata for cello and piano op.99 in F Major
-Allegro vivace
-Adagio affettuoso
Theresa Tan- cello, Tanya Lee- piano

8.Beethoven- Piano trio Op.1 No.1 in E Flat Major
-Allegro
-Adagio cantabile
-Scherzo: Allegro assai- Trio
-Presto
Stefania Neonato- piano, Esther Kim- violin, Sarah Rice- cello

Our own Sean Shepherd's tales in Minnesota

Our very own former Orchestra TA and Grad student/bassonist is featured in the American Music center to blog his experience with the Minnesota Orchestra reading.
Check it out.

2006-2007 season plan

Here is a tentative schedule for the 06-07 season.
The rehearsal times for the orchestras are as follows;
Cornell Symphony Orchestra
Monday 630-815 pm in Bailey Hall
Wednesday 700-900 pm in B20 of Lincoln Hall

Cornell Chamber Orchestra
Tuesday 445-615 pm in Barnes Hall
Thursday 445-645 pm in Barnes Hall

The concert dates for 2006-2007 season are
Cornell Symphony Orchestra
Sunday 3 pm, October 1, 2006 in Bailey Hall [joint concert with CCO]
Saturday 8 pm, October 21, 2006 First Family Weekend concert in Bailey Hall
Thursday 8 pm, October 26, 2006 Inauguration concert for Bailey Hall
Sunday 3 pm, December 3, 2006 in Bailey Hall
January 9-16, 2007 Tour to Berlin Germany
Sunday 3 pm, March 4, 2007 in Bailey Hall, with Cornell Concerto Winner
Sunday 3 pm, April 29, 2007 in Bailey Hall

Cornell Chamber Orchestra
Sunday 3 pm, October 1, 2006 in Bailey Hall [joint concert with CSO]
Thursday 1230 pm, October 19, 2006 Midday concert in B20
Saturday 8 pm, November 11, 2006 in Barnes Hall
Sunday 3 pm, November 12, 2006 concert at Smith College with Malcolm Bilson
Friday 8 pm, December 1, 2006 concert in Rochester, NY
Sunday 3 pm, February 25, 2007 in Barnes Hall, with Annette Richards and David Yearsley and Richard Faria
Monday 8 pm, March 12, 2007 in Barnes Hall, Music of Gideon Klein with Brave New Works and guests
Sunday 3 pm, April 22, 2007 in Barnes Hall, with Gabriela and Roberto Diaz

Dates and venues are subject to change. For the latest info please visit our websites;
CSO
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/orchestra
CCO
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/orchestra/ccohome.htm
Orchestra Blog
http://www.cornell-orchestra.blogspot.com/

Kristin Kuster gets a NYtimes review

Kristin Kuster was a guest composer of Ensemble X during last year's season.
She received a favorable review from NY times regarding her recent performance with the ACO.

"Kristin Kuster's "Myrrha" (2006), for orchestra and chamber chorus (the ACO Singers) drew on Ovid's story of a woman who lusted after her father (the result of being cursed by Aphrodite) and was transformed by the gods into a tree. Stravinsky's shadow is caught hovering over more than a few passages, both in savage, bright-edged chords in the "Sacre" style, and in the ritualistic accent he used in works like "Oedipus Rex." But Ms. Kuster's choral writing has an invitingly tart edge, and she writes commandingly for the orchestra." Allan Kozinn of the New York times.

639 year long performance

The concert CSO will present on Sunday will be the longest this year, with Johannes Brahms' Nanie and Mahler's Symphony No. 1. However, it will be a blink of an eye compared to a performance that is in progress currently and will continue for the next 639 years of a piece by John Cage.
"In fact, you have about six more centuries to hear developments in the work being performed, a version of a composition by John Cage called "As Slow as Possible." A group of musicians and town boosters has given the title a ridiculously extreme interpretation, by stretching the performance to 639 years."

out of the ordinary harpist

I ran across this on of all places Apple.com

notes on Brahms by Kristin

Here are program notes on Brahms by Orchestra TA, Kristin Kane.
In July 1880 Brahms wrote to his friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg:

"I am quite willing to write motets are anything else for chorus (I am heartily sick of anything else!); but won't you try to find me some words? One can't have them made to order unless one begins before good reading has spoilt one. They are not heathenish enough for me in the Bible. I have bought the Koran but can find nothing there either."

Later that year he settled on an appropriately 'heathenish' text by Schiller – a meditation on the transience of life, which even the beautiful can not escape. As is often the case in Brahms' meditations on death, a glimmer of hope is offered – in the case of Nänie it is not in divine comfort (as in the German Requiem), but in the glory of memory, that consolation is found.

Brahms dedicated his Nänie (Threnody) to Henriette Feuerbach, the mother of the late painter Anselm Feuerbach, whose work Brahms had much admired. But the choice of text was surely suggested to him by the setting of Schiller's poem by Hermann Goetz, which had been premiered in Vienna earlier that year. Scholars have since noted a number of similarities between Brahms' setting and Goetz's, suggesting that the musical allusions Brahms' Nänie may have been conceived in homage to the recently deceased composer. Malcolm MacDonald has suggested that Brahms' Threnody might thus be heard as a 'double-memorial' for his two esteemed colleagues.

Kristin Kane