Press Release | Camerata Notturna

THE CAMERATA NOTTURNA AND GILBERT KALISH
PRESENT A PROGRAM OF BEETHOVEN AND PREMIERES

The world premiere of a work by Huang Ruo and the United States premiere of a string symphony by Kurt Atterberg highlight the season’s opening concert by Camerata Notturna. The program, to be conducted by the orchestra’s Music Director, Jonathan Yates, also features internationally celebrated pianist Gilbert Kalish as soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3.

The program, which is to be given on Saturday, December 1, at 8 PM at the Church of the Good Shepherd (152 W. 66th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam), features the world premiere of Huang Ruo's Leaving Sao for Chinese folk voice and string orchestra (2006) featuring soprano Fang Tao Jiang, as well as the United States premiere of Kurt Magnus Atterberg's Sinfonia per archi (1960). The concert is the first of three scheduled for the 2007-2008 season of Camerata Notturna, an emerging New York chamber orchestra with an ongoing interest in new and neglected works.

Thirty-one year old composer Huang Ruo is one of the leading composers of his generation. His music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In February 2007, Naxos released Mr. Ruo's Chamber Concerto Cycle on its acclaimed American Classics Series. Winner of multiple ASCAP music awards and noted author, he has been featured on National Public Radio and is currently on the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase.

A native New Yorker, pianist Gilbert Kalish leads a musical life of unusual variety and breadth. His profound influence on the musical community as educator and as pianist in myriad performances and recordings has established him as a major figure in American music-making. A frequent collaborator with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, as well as the Emerson, Fine Arts, and Juilliard string quartets, Mr. Kalish has also enjoyed celebrated collaborations with the cellist Joel Krosnick, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and the late mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani.

The music of Swedish composer Kurt Magnus Atterberg (1887-1974), once championed and recorded by Toscanini and Beecham, has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years in Europe. The lushly neo-Romantic Sinfonia per archi evokes the characteristic Nordic melancholy of Sibelius and Grieg, while drawing inspiration from the chromatic harmonic language of Liszt and Wagner. It has been described by critic David Hurwitz as "luscious, tuneful, evocative, but never decadent or devoid of energy and purpose."

Music Director Jonathan Yates made his professional orchestral conducting debut at 23, leading the National Symphony Orchestra in a Millennium Stages Concert. The following year he made his Carnegie Hall debut as a pianist in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Concerts. A graduate of The Juilliard School's conducting program, he has conducted on several occasions at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, and currently serves as conductor of the Sarah Lawrence College Orchestra. He has also been heard as a chamber musician at many major New York City venues, including Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Miller Theater, Bargemusic, and Merkin Hall, as well as at the Caramoor Festival and on the Ravinia Festival Rising Stars Series.

The Camerata Notturna is a forty-member community orchestra of the highest caliber, comprised of young professional musicians and accomplished amateur players. Its members have won prizes in international and national competitions including NFAA Arts, Seventeen Magazine-GM, Irving M. Klein, Concert Artists Guild, and Fischoff; appeared as soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the Jupiter Symphony, and the orchestras of Juilliard and Curtis; and have served as leaders of the university orchestras of Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, and Yale. The members also enjoy success in such diverse fields as medicine, law, finance, software, marketing, and arts administration, with such organizations as Google, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Accenture, Columbia University Medical Center, Calvin Klein, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall. Their shared bond is their commitment to music and their impassioned zeal for the chamber orchestra repertoire, both traditional and contemporary. In its short history, the group has already performed or committed to perform world or regional premieres of works by composers such as Augusta Read Thomas, Chen Yi, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Chester Biscardi.

Tickets may be purchased at the door or online at www.camerata-notturna.org. General Admission: $20; Students/Seniors: $10.