Last season, The New York Times memorably described the experience of Leon Botstein's concert of avant-garde music with the American Symphony Orchestra as "this faraway world, Botsteinburg."
The ASO's October 3 concert became the de facto opening night for Carnegie Hall, after a stagehands' strike forced the cancellation of the official opener.
The Times hailed "this mysterious land, (where) opening nights at concert halls don't feature cozy chestnuts, but rather the granitic, plangent, little-played likes of George Antheil, Carl Ruggles and Charles Griffes."
The ASO will return to "Botsteinburg" next season with a series of Carnegie concerts that explore the dark side of the 20th century, the music of George Perle, the opera Mona Lisa and Richard Strauss' marriage music--among other creative and adventurous programs.
The orchestra will also continue its "Classics Declassified" series at Peter Norton Symphony Space, giving listeners a chance to get under the skin of a single popular masterpiece through discussion and performance, starting with Schubert's "Great" C Major Symphony on October 26.
The season begins with "Marriage Actually" at Carnegie on October 15, featuring three works by Richard Strauss that were inspired by his marriage to the famous soprano Pauline de Anha, including the tone poem Symphonia Domestica.
The journey to Botsteinburg continues with "Requiem for the 20th Century" on December 10, a program of three unforgettable memorials to some of that century's most tragic events by composers who lived through them. The program includes György Ligeti's Requiem and Alfred Schnittke's Nagasaki.
The ASO will present The Long Christmas Dinner, the opera and the play, during a special holiday presentation at Alice Tully Hall on December 19. Thornton Wilder's influential one-act play The Long Christmas Dinner depicts nine decades of Christmas dinners in the lives of a family in the American Midwest. The ASO will pair it with the opera version by Paul Hindemith--with a libretto by Wilder, himself.
The ASO's Carnegie Hall "Vanguard" Series continues in 2015 with:
"Mona Lisa" on February 20, 2015
This opera by Max von Schillings is a story of love, betrayal and the secret meaning of that enigmatic smile.
"Opus Posthumous" on March 26, 2015
An entire posthumous concert (major surprise discoveries from Dvořák, Schubert and Bruckner).
"Music U." on April 19, 2015
ASO, together with the Cornell University Glee Club, will perform works by five composers associated with Ivy League universities.
"American Variations: Perle at 100" on May 29, 2015
Recognition for a great American composer on the centenary of his birth.
