Orchestra Now is giving the last concert in its Carnegie Hall season Thursday, May 12 at 7 p.m., featuring rarely heard masterpieces from the late 1930s. These include pianist Frank Corliss, director of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, at Dismal Swamp, William Grant Still’s 1935 portrayal of slaves’ flight to freedom through Kentucky’s bluegrass landscape; and Swiss soloist and Bard Conservatory faculty member Gilles Vonsattel, described as an “extremely talented pianist” and “quietly powerful pianist” (The New York Times) in Carlos Chávez’s dazzling Piano Concerto. The evening also features Symphonic Variations by Witold Lutosławski and Symphony No. 1 by Karl Amadeus Hartmann with mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteelwho appears courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera, and performs the role of Alisa in Lucia di Lammermoor at the opera this season.

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

TŌN’s next performance in New York will be a FREE concert of works by Hungarian composers Francois LisztBéla Bartók, Emmerich Kálmán and Zoltán Kodály at Peter Norton Symphony space May 22. The program will be conducted by TŌN resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman, also assistant conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, formerly music director of the Blue Hill Troupe and assistant conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Glimmerglass Opera.

New Voices of the 1930s

Thursday, May 12, 2022 at 7:00 PM
Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage)
Leon Botsteinconductor
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
Deborah Nansteelmezzo-soprano
Frank Corliss, piano
William Grant Again: Lamentable Swamp
Carlos Chávez: Piano Concerto
Witold Lutosławski: Symphonic Variations
Karl Amadeus Hartmann: Symphony No. 1, Essay for a Requiem

The show will feature William Grant Still’s moving portrait of captive peoples in search of freedom, with pianist Frank Corliss; and Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s commentary on conditions under the Nazi regime, with the Metropolitan Opera’s mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel. The program also includes pianist Gilles Vonsattel performing the virtuoso piano concerto by musical director and composer of the Mexican Symphony Orchestra Carlos Chávez, described as an “imaginative score” and praised for its “elemental force” and “the originality of its coloring orchestral” by the New York Times when it premiered in 1941. Polish progressive music composer Witold Lutosławski’s audacious Symphonic Variations were written while he was still a student at the University of Warsaw. His first substantial orchestral work, the Variations contains many folk themes.

Tickets priced from $25 to $60 are available online at carnegiehall.orgby calling CarnegieCharge at 212.247.7800, or Carnegie Hall 57th and 7th Avenue ticket office. Ticket holders will be required to comply with the venue’s health and safety requirements, which can be found here.

Liszt & Bartok

Sunday May 22, 2022 at 4:00 PM
Peter Norton Symphony space
Zachary Schwartzman, conductor
Emmerich Kálmán: Gräfin Mariza Overture
Francois Liszt: The Preludes
Zoltán Kodály: Dances of Galanta
Béla Bartok: Concerto for orchestra

The Orchestra returns to Symphony space with a free concert offering the works of four Hungarian composers. The show opens with the overture to Emmerich Kálmán’s 1924 three-act operetta about the tangled love affair of two couples, Gräfin Mariza (Countess Mariza). Next comes the best-known program of Liszt’s 13 symphonic poems, The Preludes, 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 folksongs and the heritage of Hungary. . The afternoon ends with Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, the composer’s last and most popular orchestral work, commissioned by conductor Serge Koussevitzky in 1943.

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