Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

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The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Buffalo , New York . The main venue of the orchestra is the Kleinhans Music Hall , a cultural monument (National Historic Landmark) named after the owner of a large men's clothing store, according to whose will the building was built in the 1930s. The orchestra's repertoire is broadly diversified during the normal season, with gala concerts, classical works, pop concerts, youth and family concerts. During the summer months, it also plays in parks and venues in western New York State.

Cameron Baird, Frederick Slee and Samuel P. Capen founded the orchestra in 1934. Two buildings at the University at Buffalo , where music is taught, are named after the names Bairds and Slees, respectively, while the main building with the administration of the university is named Capens . The orchestra made its first appearance in the 1935–1936 season under music director Lajos Shuk , but it was not until 1940 that the completed Kleinhans Music Hall was the main venue. On October 12, 1940 the hall was opened with a gala concert.

Former music directors of the BPO were William Steinberg , Josef Krips , Lukas Foss , Michael Tilson Thomas , Semyon Bychkov and Maximiano Valdés . With the performance of classical works of the twentieth century, the orchestra led by Foss as music director worldwide. Since 1999 JoAnn Falletta has been music director, Stefan Sanders first conductor and John Morris Russell , who succeeded Doc Severinsen in this position, first conductor of the pop and musical division. Other notable guest conductors in the history of the BPO include Leonard Bernstein , Igor Stravinsky , Ralph Vaughan Williams , Sir Neville Marriner and Henry Mancini . Other guest conductors in the Pop section were Marvin Hamlisch , winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the musical A Chorus Line , and Sorrell Booke .

The orchestra played on a considerable number of sound carriers. Particularly noteworthy is the first commercial recording of Dmitri Shostakovich's 7th Symphony under Steinberg and the recordings of American compositions such as Frederick Converse and Charles Tomlinson Griffes for Naxos under Falletta. But also John Corigliano's Mr Tambourine Man , with which Falletta and the BPO won two Grammys in 2009 . Falletta also founded an in-house label called Beau Fleuve , with which she released CDs such as Built For Buffalo , in-house pieces as well as Carnivals and Fairy Tales and Robby Takac of the Goo Goo Dolls , two orchestral works for children. The orchestra also contributed the soundtrack to Woody Allen's Manhattan .

history

Foundation and early years

Efforts were made during the late 1920s and early 1930s to create a professional orchestra for Buffalo and the surrounding area. In 1934 Cameron Baird, Frederick Slee and Samuel Capen succeeded in winning Lajos Shuk , a cellist and music director of the New York Civic Symphony , trained in Europe , as conductors in Buffalo. A short time later Shuk formed an orchestral ensemble from young musicians and was able to go public with several classical concert appearances in the 1935 to 1936 season.

During the presidential Edgar F. Wendt's on the tip of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Society , the orchestra has developed thanks to the support and financial contributions by the Federal EPA Projects to 1937 to a respectable orchestra with additional experienced musicians and previously served as conductor of the Dallas Symphony active Franco Autori .

During the following two years the orchestra consolidated itself despite some administrative difficulties and financial problems, but during this period extended its performances to the area around Buffalo, for example Niagara Falls , and was able to attract well-known soloists for its concerts. In the 1939–1940 season the orchestra was enlarged and the performance of pop music was added to its program. What the orchestra still lacked was a suitable venue in Buffalo.

Kleinhans Music Hall

Kleinhans Music Hall , main venue for the orchestra

The Kleinhans Music Hall , which opened in October 1940, is an internationally recognized jewel as a concert hall with excellent acoustics and 2,400 seats. The Kleinhans Music Hall is still the main venue of the BPO, largely built with the money from a will-based foundation of the couple Edward L. Kleinhans and Mary Seaton Kleinhans , owners of a large clothing store in Buffalo. Due to several structural changes since the 1940s, the appearance of the hall changed a little during this time, but was still awarded the title of National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior in 1989 .

Now that the orchestra had a suitable venue, there were changes internally with the enlargement of the orchestra and externally with the expansion of guest performances outside Buffalo, an increase in the repertoire, the engagement of well-known soloists and a series of direct radio broadcasts. With the premiere of Copland's Lincoln Portrait and Carl Sandburg as the narrator , Franco Autori said goodbye as music director of the orchestra in the spring of 1945.

William Steinberg era

A coup landed in 1945 the President of the Music Department of the University at Buffalo Cameron Baird , with the engagement of William Steinberg as music director on the recommendation of Arturo Toscanini , whose assistant conductor Steinberg was at the NBC Symphony .

The Steinberg era particularly marked the personnel changes with the engagement of many European musicians who , like Steinberg himself, were looking for a new home in the USA after the end of the Second World War . In the late 1940s and 1950s, the orchestra owed a certain European sound direction to the violinists in particular, who had enjoyed their training in Europe, which was particularly evident on the first commercial record with Shostakovich's 7th Symphony , which the BPO for the Musicraft label Recorded in 1947, came into its own. Many other recordings followed for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which are kept in the archives of the orchestra and the Library of Congress .

Krips and Foss

After Steinberg switched to the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1952 , Izler Solomon temporarily led the orchestra, which had meanwhile gained quite a reputation , for a year . In 1954 the board of directors of the BPO succeeded in poaching Josef Krips , who was active as music director at the London Symphony Orchestra and who held the same position at the Vienna State Opera before the war . Under Krips, the season of season and the number of members of the ensemble increased, and there were increased tours of the eastern states of the United States and Canada. The tradition of European music culture, which was already cultivated under Steinberg, also continued Krips to perfection.

In 1963, Krips' path led on to the San Francisco Symphony and with the commitment of the composer, conductor and piano virtuoso Lukas Foss as the new head of the BPO, a breath of fresh air blew through the orchestra of the Buffalo Philharmonic and the American-style sound came into its own again . For the opening concert in the Kleinhans Hall, Foss conducted Charles Ives ' Unanswered Question and then Igor Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps with great success. After the BPO under Foss caused more and more attention with its skills, it was invited to give a performance for the first time in Carnegie Hall and was then a permanent guest at this prestigious venue. The first well-known sound recordings for the label Nonesuch unter Foss were works by Sibelius , Cage , Penderecki , Xenakis , Ruggles and compositions by Foss himself. The BPO had its first national television appearance at the PBS with Stockhausen's Moments and Mussorgski's Pictures at an exhibition and a major one that followed Tour through the United States with Arthur Fiedler and his pop repertoire. In 1970, Foss agreed with the then Governor of New York State Nelson Rockefeller to make the Ground Breaking Artpark the permanent venue for the orchestra during the summer season.

1971 - present

Foss, who had accepted the offer to become music director of the Jerusalem Symphony in 1971 , was followed by Michael Tilson Thomas , who was only 24 years old . During the next few years with Thomas, the orchestra recorded several records for the Columbia label , including impressive implementations of some of Gershwin's compositions , which were later also heard as the soundtrack for Woody Allen's film Manhattan . The BPO was welcomed guests at the Boston Symphony Hall , in Washington at the Kennedy Center and at Carnegie Hall, where a remarkable gala with jazz singer Sarah Vaughan was also performed.

In 1979 the baton of Thomas, who had gone to the Los Angeles Philharmonic , changed to Julius Rudel of the New York City Opera . Despite some financial bottlenecks, Rudel's focus was on expanding the classical repertoire, which also included gala concerts with Beverly Sills and Plácido Domingo . A tour to the US West Coast earned the orchestra rave reviews in the San Francisco and Los Angeles press .

After Rudel's farewell in the spring of 1984, Semyon Bychkov , a young Russian émigré who had been a guest conductor at the BPO three years earlier, took over the scepter. Bychkov was anything but an emergency solution, because the European press had been speculating for a long time about which well-known orchestra on the "Old Continent" would hire him. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the orchestra's founding in 1988, the BPO recorded an anniversary record with the coloratura soprano Roberta Peters from the Metropolitan Opera and also made its first tour of Europe. Two concerts in the Wiener Musikverein were sold out, as were the concerts in Geneva , Zurich , Milan , Frankfurt and other venues in Germany and Switzerland.

After Bytschkow moved to the Orchester de Paris in 1989 , the Chilean conductor Maximiano Valdés took over the "command" in Buffalo. Despite serious financial bottlenecks, the orchestra under Valdés returned to the tried and tested works of classical and contemporary music.

Despite ongoing administrative and fiscal challenges, the management of the Buffalo Philharmonic set new standards in 1998 with the engagement of JoAnn Falletta as Valdés' successor in the position of music director. She was the first woman to lead one of the great US symphony orchestras. In addition to her solid knowledge of classical works, Falletta has the ability to keep an eye on the musical works of international and American composers and, if necessary, to integrate them into the orchestra's repertoire. Under her leadership, an old tradition of the orchestra was revived with a series of radio broadcasts. She also performed with the ensemble again after a long absence at Carnegie Hall, made three tours through Florida, recorded more than 40 CDs for the Naxos label and conducted the orchestra at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in 2012 . Well-known soloists such as Van Cliburn , Renée Fleming and André Watts also gave their business cards to Falletta and the BPO.

Music directors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Lajos stuck. In: Family Search. Retrieved February 24, 2017 .
  2. About Kleinhans Hall (official website)
  3. Stefan Sanders. Website, accessed February 25, 2017 .
  4. ^ Classical Music News: 2009 Grammy Award-winning Titles from Naxos . Retrieved January 24, 2010.
  5. ^ WPA Federal Art Project. Retrieved February 28, 2017 (English).
  6. a b c History of the BPO . Archived from the original on November 2, 2011. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
  7. ^ David C. MacKenzie: Franco Autori, Philharmonic Conductor Laureate, Dies. Tulso World, October 17, 1990, accessed March 1, 2017 .
  8. BPO archive: Artpark Groundbreaking. Retrieved March 2, 2017 (English).
  9. Website: Art Park groundbreaking. Retrieved March 2, 2017 (English).