Exodus: Kaufmann • Rubin • Tal The Orchestra Now & Leon Botstein

• Josef Tal (1910 - 2008): Exodus:
• 1 Tal: Exodus: I. Introduction — Servitude – 09:00
• 2 Tal: Exodus: II. Prayer 04:56
• 3 Tal: Exodus: III. Exodus 02:15
• 4 Tal: Exodus: IV. The Passage of the Red Sea 02:56
• 5 Tal: Exodus: V. Miriam's Dance – VI. Andante 03:59
• Walter Kaufmann (1924 - 2021): Indian Symphony:
• 6 Kaufmann: Indian Symphony: I. First Movement 06:55
• 7 Kaufmann: Indian Symphony: II. Second Movement 05:29
• 8 Kaufmann: Indian Symphony: III. Third Movement 05:14
• Marcel Rubin (1905 - 1995): Symphony No. 4 'Dies Irae':
• 9 Rubin: Symphony No. 4 'Dies Irae': I. Kinderkreuzzug 15:16
• 10 Rubin: Symphony No. 4 'Dies Irae': II. Dies irae - Allegro deciso 12:39
• 11 Rubin: Symphony No. 4 'Dies Irae': III. Pastorale - Andante 06:32
• Total Runtime 01:15:11

Info for Exodus: Kaufmann • Rubin • Tal

"Exodus" Jewish Composers in Exile, the second AVIE release by New York-based The Orchestra Now and their founder-director Leon Botstein, brings together three German-speaking Jewish composers born within a few years of one another in the first decade of the 20th century. Joseph Tal, Walter Kaufmann and Marcel Rubin all escaped the Holocaust and embarked on new lives and careers, though with very different trajectories. The works on Exodus were all written during the 1940s by these three young composers striving to find their own voices whilst also adapting to their new environments.

The Orchestra Now
Leon Botstein, conductor

The Orchestra Now (TŌN)
is a group of vibrant young musicians from across the globe who are making orchestral music relevant to 21st-century audiences by sharing their unique personal insights in a welcoming environment. Hand-picked from the world’s leading conservatories—including the Yale School of Music, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Royal Academy of Music, and the Eastman School of Music—the members of TŌN are enlightening curious minds by giving on-stage introductions and demonstrations, writing concert notes from the musicians’ perspective, and having one-on-one discussions with patrons during intermissions.

Conductor, educator, and music historian Leon Botstein, whom The New York Times said “draws rich, expressive playing from the orchestra,” founded TŌN in 2015 as a graduate program at Bard College, where he is also president. TŌN offers both a three-year master’s degree in Curatorial, Critical, and Performance Studies and a two-year advanced certificate in Orchestra Studies. The orchestra’s home base is the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center at Bard, where it performs multiple concerts each season and takes part in the annual Bard Music Festival. It also performs regularly at the finest venues in New York, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and others across NYC and beyond. HuffPost, who has called TŌN’s performances “dramatic and intense,” praises these concerts as “an opportunity to see talented musicians early in their careers.”

The orchestra has performed with many distinguished guest conductors and soloists, including Leonard Slatkin, Neeme Järvi, Gil Shaham, Fabio Luisi, Joan Tower, Vadim Repin, Hans Graf, Peter Serkin, Naomi Woo, Gerard Schwarz, Tan Dun, and JoAnn Falletta. Among TŌN’s many recordings are albums featuring pianists Piers Lane, Anna Shelest, and Orion Weiss; Buried Alive with baritone Michael Nagy, which includes the first recording in almost 60 years—and only the second recording ever—of Othmar Schoeck’s song-cycle Lebendig begraben; Classics of American Romanticism, featuring the first-ever complete recording of 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 on Classical WMHT-FM and WWFM The Classical Network, and are featured regularly on Performance Today, broadcast nationwide.

Leon Botstein
is founder and music director of The Orchestra Now (TŌN), music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), artistic codirector 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). 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.

Booklet for Exodus: Kaufmann • Rubin • Tal