The Orchestra Now Presents Siena, Wagner & Parsifal at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 8
Plus a FREE Holiday Season Concert Featuring Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite and Holst’s The Planets with the Participation of the All-City High School Orchestra at Manhattan’s Talent Unlimited High School on December 15
New York, NY, November 13, 2024 — The Orchestra Now (TŌN) presents two Manhattan performances in December, including the first of three concerts in its popular Sight & Sound series, Siena, Wagner & Parsifal, at The Metropolitan Museum of Arton Sunday, December 8 at 2 PM. The program will examine Wagner’s remarkable innovations in opera via selections from his work Parsifal, set against the background of notable painterly invention during the Italian Renaissance in Siena.
TŌN’s Sight & Sound series at the Met explores the parallels between orchestral music and the visual arts. Each performance includes an introduction by a Met curator, a discussion with conductor and music historian Leon Botstein accompanied by on-screen exhibition images and live musical excerpts, followed by a full performance of the works and an audience Q&A. Tickets include same-day museum admission.
The Orchestra’s second December performance will offer a FREE holiday concert of audience favorites by Johann Strauss II, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, and Holst, led by Leonardo Pineda and joined for some of the pieces by the All-City High School Orchestra at New York City’s Talent Unlimited High School on December 15.
Siena, Wagner & Parsifal
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Sunday, December 8, 2024, at 2 PM
The Orchestra Now
Leon Botstein, conductor
Richard Wagner: Selections from Parsifal
Act I Prelude
Act III Prelude
Good Friday Music
Artwork by Duccio, Lorenzetti, Martini, and others.
At the dawn of the Italian Renaissance, Siena was the site of remarkable artistic innovation. Sienese artists—including Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini—played a pivotal role in defining Western painting. Over 500 years later, Richard Wagner revolutionized opera composition in much the same way. Twelve years after he read Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, a poem from the Renaissance era, he began working on a libretto inspired by this tale of the quest for the Holy Grail. This eventually became his final composition, the opera Parsifal.
The exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350, will be on view at The Met Fifth Avenue until January 26, 2025.
Tickets, priced at $30–$50, include same-day museum admission. Tickets may be purchased online at metmuseum.org, by calling The Met at 212.570.3949, or at The Great Hall box office at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Nutcracker & The Planets
Sunday, December 15, 2024, at 3 PM
Talent Unlimited High School, 300 E 68th Street, New York, NY
The Orchestra Now
Leonardo Pineda, conductor
Selections performed with the All-City High School Orchestra
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a
Johann Strauss II:Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka, Op. 214
Alexander Borodin: Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor)
Gustav Holst: “Mars” and “Jupiter” from The Planets, Op. 32
The Orchestra Now and Interim Assistant Conductor Leonardo Pineda present a free holiday season concert at the Talent Unlimited High School for the performing arts on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The program of high-spirited popular works includes Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and Johann Strauss II’s Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka. TŌN is joined by NYC’s All-City High School Orchestra for Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances and two movements from Holst’s The Planets.
The Orchestra Now
Founded in 2015 by conductor and educator Leon Botstein, The Orchestra Now (TŌN) is a graduate program of Bard College that trains the next generation of music professionals to become creative ambassadors of classical music. It offers accomplished young musicians a full-tuition fellowship toward a master’s degree in Curatorial, Critical, and Performance Studies or an advanced certificate in Orchestra Studies. TŌN’s innovative curriculum combines rehearsal, performance, recording, and touring with seminars, masterclasses, professional development workshops, teaching, and more. The members of the Orchestra are graduates of the world’s leading conservatories, and hail from countries across North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Many have gone on to careers in the Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Vancouver, and National symphony orchestras; Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia; the United States military bands; and many others. In the 2024-25 season, the Orchestra welcomes 18 new members, for a total of 67 musicians from 14 countries around the globe.
TŌN performs dozens of concerts a year at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Fisher Center at Bard. Specializing in both familiar and rarely heard repertoire, the Orchestra has given numerous New York, U.S., and world premieres, and performed the work of living composers including Joan Tower and Tania León. In 2023, TŌN appeared with Bradley Cooper in the Academy Award-nominated film Maestro, and was featured on the Grammy-nominated Deutsche Grammophon soundtrack, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The Orchestra has performed with many other distinguished guest conductors and soloists, including Leonard Slatkin, Gil Shaham, Neeme Järvi, Stephanie Blythe, Fabio Luisi, Vadim Repin, Peter Serkin, Tan Dun, and JoAnn Falletta.
TŌN has released several albums on the Hyperion, Sorel Classics, and AVIE labels. May 2024’s The Lost Generation includes world-premiere recordings of works by Hugo Kauder, Hans Erich Apostel, and Adolf Busch. Other highlights include rare recordings of Othmar Schoeck’s Lebendig begraben and Bristow’s Arcadian Symphony, and the soundtrack to the motion picture Forte. Recordings of TŌN’s live concerts from the Fisher Center can be heard regularly on Classical WMHT-FM and WWFM The Classical Network, and the Orchestra has appeared over 100 times on Performance Today, broadcast nationwide.
For more details, visit ton.bard.edu.
Leon Botstein
Leon Botstein is founder and music director of The Orchestra Now (TŌN), music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), artistic co-director of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, and conductor laureate and principal guest conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (JSO), where he served as music director from 2003 to 2011. He has been guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre, Russian National Orchestra in Moscow, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Taipei Symphony, Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, and Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Venezuela, among others. In 2018, he assumed artistic directorship of Campus Grafenegg and Grafenegg Academy in Austria.
Recordings include acclaimed recordings of Othmar Schoeck’s Lebendig begraben with TŌN, Hindemith’s The Long Christmas Dinner with the ASO, a Grammy-nominated recording of Popov’s First Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra, and other various recordings with TŌN, ASO, the London Philharmonic, NDR Orchestra Hamburg, and JSO, among others. He is editor of The Musical Quarterly and author of numerous articles and books, including The Compleat Brahms (Norton), Jefferson’s Children (Doubleday), Judentum und Modernität (Bölau), and Von Beethoven zu Berg (Zsolnay). His many honors include Harvard University’s prestigious Centennial Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters award; and Cross of Honor, First Class, from the government of Austria, for his contributions to music. Other distinctions include the Bruckner Society’s Julio Kilenyi Medal of Honor for his interpretations of that composer’s music, the Leonard Bernstein Award for the Elevation of Music in Society, and Carnegie Foundation’s Academic Leadership Award. In 2011, he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.
Press Contacts
Pascal Nadon
Pascal Nadon Communications
Phone: 646.234.7088
Email: [email protected]
Mark Primoff
Associate Vice President of Communications
Bard College
Phone: 845.758.7412
Email: [email protected]
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