TŌN, The Orchestra Now comes to New York City with two Sunday concerts at Symphony Space on February 16, 2020 at 4pm and at The Metropolitan Museum of Arts on February 23, 2020 at 2 pm
Following last January’s sold-out concert, TŌN’s resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman returns to Symphony Space with more audience favorites by Ravel, Debussy, Messiaen, and Stravinsky on February 16. The Orchestra’s outstanding and enthusiastic young artists will highlight this free performance with brief remarks about each of the works.
On February 23, TŌN will give the final installment this season of its top-selling Sight & Soundseries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Haydn’s The Clock: The Intersection of Art & Technology. The program will explore how musicians, like their contemporaries in art and science, were mesmerized by advancements and pseudo-advancements in science and technology during the second half of the 18th century. While Mozart poked fun at this fascination in Così fan tutte, Haydn drew inspiration from the advances in horology in Vienna and London.
Each presentation in the Sight & Sound series offers a discussion accompanied by musical excerpts performed by The Orchestra Now along with on-screen artworks, followed by a full performance and audience Q&A with conductor Leon Botstein.
Tickets priced at $30–$50; Bring the Kids for $1. All tickets include same-day museum admission. Tickets may be purchased online at metmuseum.org/sightandsound, by calling The Met at 212.570.3949, or at The Great Hall box office at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mostly Mozart Festival Finale with Mozart à la Haydn program performed by pianist Steven Osborne and Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra with Louis Langrée conducting on Friday, August 9, 2019 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, August 10, 2019 at 7:30 pm at David Geffen Hall
The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra’s 2019 season ends on a lighthearted note, with four works that are more connected than they may seem at first glance. Pianist Steven Osborne performs the cheerful piano concerto Shostakovich composed for his son Maxim’s 19th birthday. Maxim, then a budding pianist, is said to have been the inspiration for the tongue-in-cheek inclusion of the Hanon piano exercises in the final movement, a musical joke. Schnittke displays a similar sense of humor in his Moz-Art à la Haydn, in which every note in the piece has been repurposed from either Haydn or Mozart. Beginning with dimmed lights, it quotes Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, incorporating stage-play among the musicians, and, like the Farewell, leaving the conductor alone at the end. Mozart’s beloved “Haffner” Symphony, one of the composer’s most challenging, yet fun, works, is a joyous conclusion to the summer.