JoAnn Falletta’s newest recording of works by the extraordinary French composer Florent Schmitt with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is now available as a Naxos Key Release for November, just as the music world marks the composer’s 150th birthday. The album Schmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé – Musique sur l’eau (Naxos 8.574138) features the GRAMMY® Award-winning team performing the symphonic poem La Tragédie de Salomé, Oriane et le Prince d’Amour Suite, Op. 83 and world premiere recordings of the exquisite Musique sur l’eau featuring mezzo-soprano Susan Platts, and Légende in its version for violin and orchestra, marking BPO concertmaster Nikki Chooi’s Naxos recording debut.

Falletta, who has a world-wide reputation for exploring untrodden musical paths and bringing unknown or little-known works to life, calls Schmitt “The most important French composer you might never have heard of” and praises his style as “startlingly beautiful – passionate, brooding, extravagant and wild!” A student of Massenet and Fauré, and winner of the coveted Prix de Rome, Schmitt’s impressionistic style blends influences ranging from Debussy to Wagner, with reference to Stravinsky and other contemporaries.

In describing the music on this recording, Falletta says “Florent Schmitt seemed fascinated by strong women of questionable virtue, and his The Tragedy of Salome is a masterful retelling of the exotic beauty who dances for Herod and demands the head of John the Baptist as her reward. A stunning moment in the piece which was conceived as a ballet but revised as a symphonic poem is the wordless singing of Salome and her young handmaidens, beautifully realized by mezzo-soprano Susan Platts and the Women’s Choir of Buffalo.

This is passionate and seductive music at its best, and Schmitt creates a landscape that is both sensuous and dangerous. He takes a similar approach with the insatiable Oriane, and the alternation of gorgeous love music and wild orgiastic dances is absolutely thrilling. Susan Platts is also featured in one of the most beautiful orchestral songs ever composed – Musique sur l’eau, a jewel of a composition that rivals the greatest works in that genre. Violinist Nikki Chooi is the radiant soloist in Légende, a brooding and ecstatic rhapsody never before heard in Schmitt’s version for violin and orchestra.”

This is the second album of music of Schmitt by Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic. The first, Schmitt: Antoine et Cléopâtre Suites Nos. 1 and 2 / Le Palais Hanté (Naxos 8.573521) received 5 stars from Pizzicato and Classical Music Magazine, was a Music Web International Recording of the Month, and was hailed by Fanfare Magazine saying “Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic prove to be a winning combination. She paces the music perfectly… and the orchestral textures are warmly and clearly reproduced.”

Grammy-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Connie and Marc Jacobson Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center and Artistic Adviser to the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. As Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major America ensemble. Her recent and upcoming North American guest conducting includes the National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, and Milwaukee Symphony; and further north, the Toronto Symphony and Orchestre Métropolitain. Internationally, she has conducted many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia and South America. With a discography of almost 120 titles, Falletta is a leading recording artist for Naxos. In 2019, she won her first individual Grammy Award as conductor of the London Symphony in the Best Classical Compendium category for Spiritualist, her fifth world premiere recording of the music of Kenneth Fuchs. Her Naxos recording of Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan received two Grammys in 2008. Recent releases by the BPO for Naxos include the highly acclaimed world premiere recording of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua. Gramophone praised the recording saying “JoAnn Falletta is a forceful champion of the score, which she shapes with sensitive and potent authority” and Records International calls it a “work of glowing spirituality.”

Susan Platts brings a uniquely rich and wide-ranging voice to the concert and recital repertoire and is particularly esteemed for her performances of Mahler’s works. Her previous Naxos recordings include a disc with JoAnn Falletta and the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players of Mahler songs arranged by Schoenberg. She is a Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative Fellow, which gave her the opportunity to study with Jessye Norman. Platts has performed with, among others, The Philadelphia, Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, Orchestre de Paris and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Canadian violinist Nikki Chooi has established himself as an artist of rare versatility. Described as “vigorous, colorful” by the New York Times, he has appeared at Chicago’s Harris Theatre, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, New York’s Carnegie Hall, as well as on nationwide tours with Musicians from Marlboro. He has performed as soloist with orchestras including the Montréal Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the St. Petersburg State Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, Malaysian Philharmonic and Hong Kong Philharmonic. Chooi is concertmaster of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and previously served as concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

To purchase this and other BPO recordings, click here.

Click below to listen to a sound sample of La Tragédie de Salomé – Symphonic Poem, Op. 50 – Track 1 excerpt.

Click here to watch JoAnn Falletta discuss the orchestral music of Schmitt.

Click here to watch JoAnn Falletta discuss the 150th birthday of Schmitt.

By Patrick O’Herron, BPO marketing director

If you’ve been tuning in to our BPOnDemand video-streamed performance series, you’ll notice that things are just a littttttle bit different around here! This article is intended to help answer some of your questions about changes you’ve noticed this 2020-21 concert season.

Hey, where’d everybody go?

The first thing you’ve probably noticed is that there are far less people on stage. The BPO employs 73 full-time musicians, and thanks to your incredible support, we have been able to keep all of our musicians employed during these difficult times. While rehearsing for and recording our BPOnDemand concerts, we are adhering to strict social distancing guidelines, which means that there must be at least 6 feet between all musicians, except those that produce aerosol (the winds), which have a wider 12-foot berth surrounding them. This means that only so many musicians can fit on the stage at one time. Just as they would in a regular concert, all of our principal string players keep the same seats, but the section strings rotate, sometimes in and out of performances depending on the instrumentation that each work calls for. This helps to ensure that all of our musicians have an opportunity to perform.

Standing alone 

Maintaining social distancing means that our string players, who are accustomed to sharing music stands, now each have their own individual stand. While this may sound like a privilege, it comes with its challenges. During a regular concert, you’ll notice that the musician in the innermost seat (the player to the left in the first and second violins, and the player to the right in the violas, cellos and basses) is assigned to turn the page when the work calls for it. The musicians in the outermost seats continue playing so that the sound is never disrupted. With each individual musician now receiving his/her own stand, we’ve had to get clever regarding page turns. Some of our musicians use Bluetooth page turners like these for hands-free page turning. (What’ll they think of next!)

If it ain’t Baroque…

Our reduced capacity for musicians onstage means that repertoire changes have been necessary. Toward the latter part of the 19^th century, the orchestra grew to the large size we are accustomed to seeing today, with upwards of 70 to 100 or even more musicians on stage. But during the Baroque era in the 1600s and early 1700s, the orchestras were much smaller, topping out at 20 to 30 musicians, mostly strings and keyboard. You’ll see a lot of Baroque repertoire programmed this season for that reason, as adhering to social distancing means we can only fit a limited number of musicians on the Kleinhans stage. It’s an exciting time for the BPO, as we would not normally have the opportunity to play so much repertoire from these Baroque masters. The reduced number of musicians means that you can really hear each individual player and the unique musical conversations that happen within and between sections.

Not the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’

Another thing you’ll probably notice is that all musicians that can do so – our strings and percussionists – are wearing masks while they play. Even our conductors are wearing masks! Masks can be incredibly challenging, because even though these musicians don’t need to produce air to play their instruments, breathing is still an incredibly important part of making music. Proper breathing technique helps a musician to maintain good form while they play, and breathing helps a musician to shape a musical line. As we all know, masks can make breathing challenging under normal circumstances, but wearing masks is an essential safety precaution for our musicians, and indeed everyone, to help prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Play it, don’t spray it!

Since our wind players can’t wear masks while they play, in addition to wider spacing, sheets of plexiglass have been added to the stage to help separate them. These plexiglass shields are intended to help to prevent the spread of the aerosol that their instruments produce.

Party in the back

In addition to all of the precautions taken onstage, backstage safety is equally paramount during these times. Under normal circumstances, fitting 73 (or more!) musicians and all of our guest artists, staff, technical crew, security, and volunteers backstage is no easy feat. Space is incredibly tight. For our BPOnDemand rehearsals and performances, our tireless operations team has developed a backstage safety plan that includes extra spaces devoted to the musicians’ warm-up and the storage of their cases and equipment, regular testing and temperature checks, increased hand sanitizing stations, and a rigorous cleaning and disinfecting schedule for Kleinhans Music Hall prior to and following each rehearsal and performance, on top of many other safety measures.

Wish you were here!

While we cannot welcome audiences in Kleinhans at this time, plans are in development for the BPO to host intimate, socially distanced audiences as soon as state guidelines allow. A new socially-distanced seating chart giving at least a 6-foot berth around pairs of seats would reduce Kleinhans’ 2,400 seats to little more than 500 per performance, but increased performance instances would help to offset the reduced capacity. These plans remain on hold until New York Forward reopening guidelines for large indoor concert venues are made available and will be announced at a later time.

Things may be a little bit different this season, but our mission to present beautiful symphonic music for the Western New York region and beyond never changes. We are so grateful to you, our cherished patrons, for your unwavering support.

Click here to view our upcoming BPOnDemand performance schedule. These performances are FREE to 2020-21 season subscribers, who can register by calling the Box Office at (716) 885-5000. Individual tickets are available for just $10 for those patrons near and far who wish to tune in on a concert by concert basis. Each concert is available to stream as many times as you’d like following its premiere. Enjoy your BPO anytime, anywhere with BPOnDemand!

Questions? Check our our 2020-21 season FAQs, or feel free to reach out to us at bpomarketing@bpo.org.

Written by Megan Smith, BPO Event Manager

As the city slowly reopens and we are able to have a taste of apprehensive normalcy, it is nostalgic to look back at our organization’s previous summer programming as a comparison of how things were then versus how they are now. For this #ThrowbackThursday, the BPO is revisiting a time when our city could come together to celebrate the culture, architecture, artists, businesses, and vibrant music that is the heart of our tight-knit WNY community.

The East Side Festival was an event that engaged the BPO staff for an entire year. Originating from an aspirational grant proposal and taking off from there like wildfire, this one-day festival is an event our organization and city will never forget. Celebrating the 90th anniversary of the opening of the Buffalo Central Terminal, the festival brought together more than 5,000 people in a day of music, dancing, and food, representing the rich history and culture of Buffalo’s East Side, culminating in a performance by your BPO.

Looking back, this event allows a motivational glimpse at how the world used to be and what it will be again. Living in such uncertain times can be difficult, to say the least, and can also make one feel as though things will never be the same. Reminiscing events such as these not only bring back good feelings but also provide encouragement that our city and the world will be able to come together again.

Click the image below to view a recap of this incredible event!

Watch the timelapse video below of the daylong festival at Central Terminal:

Written by Jaman E. Dunn, Assistant Conductor, Community Engagement

Hello Friends,

I decided to write this post in the form of a letter. The orchestral world as we know it is one that is dominated by the music of Western Europe. Over time, the entries into the genre diversify, but only to a point. Here in the United States, our orchestral offerings are most clearly dominated by the music of Western Europe, or composers that write in the musical style of Western Europe (i.e. Tchaikovsky).

A composer many of us are familiar with, Dvořák, came to the United States and was asked to help America discover its own musical identity. Dvořák and Smetana were two Czech composers that were known for their music directly reflecting the experience of Bohemia, their home country. Dvořák searched far and wide while here in the United States, and even wrote an American series in his music including an orchestral suite, a quartet, a quintet, and the Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” When asked for his answer to the Americans’ question, Dvořák’s answer was; “The future music in this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.” He even then further states “These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are American. These are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.”

Needless to say, this didn’t happen. Not only did most white composers shun his advice, the African American composers that began writing in the next few decades were suppressed wholesale. Of course, some of their works were premiered, such as Still’s first symphony and Florence Price’s first symphony, but they then fell deep into obscurity and out of the canon. Only in the last twenty years or so have pieces made their way back into season programs. It is unfortunate that these works are less-performed and therefore lesser-known, as they have just as much merit as many of the canon works we perform without end.

I am not here to tell you what you should like or dislike; I am here simply to make you aware of what is out there, in addition to what you may already know. The following list is to allow you to dip your toe into the water of music by persons of African descent. Most of them are American, but a few are not. It is my sincere hope that you will come to realize that this music is also of merit, and also deserves to be played. It is also my hope that you do not stop at this list, and take it upon yourself to explore works that have fallen through the cracks.

Please enjoy the music.

Sincerely,
Jaman E. Dunn

Click here to listen to the full playlist on YouTube.

*Links provided below for works not available on YouTube.

Symphony, Op. 11 No. 2
Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745 – 1799)

Ballade in A minor
Samuel Coleridge – Taylor (1875 – 1912)

The Ordering of Moses
R. Nathaniel Dett (1882 – 1943)

Symphony No. 3
Florence B. Price (1887 – 1953)

Symphony No. 4 “Autochthonous”
William Grant Still, Jr. (1895 – 1978)

Six Dances for String Orchestra
Ulysses S. Kay (1917 – 1995)

Lyric for Strings
George T. Walker, Jr. (1922 – 2018)

Shango Memory
Olly Woodrow Wilson, Jr. (1937 – 2018)

Stories from Home (2017)
Jonathan Bailey Holland (b. 1974)
*Click here to listen

Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula
James Lee III (b. 1975)
*Click here to listen

Strum
Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)

Click to purchase tickets to A Virtual Summer Solstice Celebration on June 20 featuring your BPO musicians

100% of the proceeds go toward the continuing restoration and operations of Graycliff

Written by Wendy Diina, Director of Special Projects and Associate Director of Development

It is a truly a difficult and challenging time in our history, one that has caused me — as it has all of us — unrest. Anxiety. Sadness. Unease.

When the pandemic hit and we all began working from home, attending Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting, caring less and less about whether you brushed your hair or put lipstick on for the call, feelings of apathy and boredom started to take over. The remaining BPO concerts of the season were cancelled and as a person who loves to visit with our amazing patrons over a glass of wine, collaborate with community partners, and interactively engage with my colleagues and our musicians, it has been challenging to be so isolated.

So when Anna Kaplan, the Executive Director of Graycliff, contacted the BPO to partner on a virtual event that celebrates the summer solstice, I leapt at the opportunity to be creative and engaged. The idea for BPO musicians to perform in the house with the sun setting behind them was greeted with enthusiasm by the four participating musicians: Amy Glidden (violin), Eva Herer (cello), Kate Holzemer (viola) and Henry Ward (oboe). They hadn’t performed together in person for over 3 months and it was apparent (from another Zoom call meeting of course) that they were looking forward to being together again doing what they do best — play beautiful music.

The excitement only grew upon conducting our site survey. When I pulled into the driveway of Graycliff — so glad to be out my house — I felt as though I’d traveled back in time. One can envision Isabelle Martin enjoying the summer home that family friend Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built nearly 100 years ago. The house and grounds are breathtaking and inspiring.

Today is the first day of the shoot with only a 3-person video and audio crew, musicians, and a handful of staff from Graycliff and BPO in attendance. Earlier when we arrived all donned in masks and having answered the now standard COVID health screening questions before entering the house, there was a slight nervousness in the air. To be honest, even for an extrovert like me, it’s suddenly overwhelming to be around even a few other people that you haven’t seen or worked with in so many weeks.

Yet as the musicians picked up their instruments and began tuning, tensions eased. When they launched into the first movement, the language of music transcended the spoken word and the laughter over errors broke any lingering tension.

As of this writing, I’m sitting outside the house while the recording goes on inside. I hear the sounds of Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F Major carrying like a balm to the soul through the open windows. I take a deep breath as a slight breeze comes off the (blue!) water of Lake Erie. I see the sun setting on one the longest days of the year. And I feel something I haven’t felt in a very long time. Hope.

Photos and video courtesy of Connor Schloop.

Written by Connor Schloop, BPO operations coordinator

It is hard to imagine Kleinhans Music Hall without the reflecting pool wrapping around the exterior of the Mary Seaton Room. It is such an important and recognizable staple of Buffalo’s architecture that completes the work of art that is Kleinhans. I moved to Buffalo in 2014 and began working for Kleinhans in the summer of 2016. To me, it seemed like the pool had always been there, exactly the way it is today. Come to find out, the pool has seen several evolutions in its near 80-year history.

The construction of Kleinhans was completed in 1940, very shortly before its grand opening on October 12. At the time, the reflecting pool was about three feet deep, making it a magnet for recreation. Neighborhood kids would often swim in the pool during the warmer months and use it as an ice rink in the winter. (It was also used as a convenient outlet to discharge garbage or unwanted furniture.)  In 1941, shortly after Kleinhans opened, a two and a half year old boy fell into the 3-foot deep pool and died shortly after the incident. This terrible accident coupled with the burden of maintaining the pool from vandals led the City of Buffalo to pour 800 cubic yards of gravel into it, reducing the depth to only one foot.

Photo showing an empty reflecting pool at its originally intended depth during construction.

Unfortunately, the gravel still did not resolve its problems. Insurance records detail rocks being thrown through the large windows of the Mary Seaton room, the rocks presumably coming from the gravel-filled pool. The gravel also made cleaning the pool much more difficult. In 1946, the pool was resurfaced, maintaining the depth of one foot.

Fun Fact: 14^th Street used connect directly to Wadsworth Street in Allentown. It cut straight through the reflecting pool’s current location.

The reflecting pool being used for winter recreation.

Many people see the reflecting pool as a beautiful accent to the building. It was as important to Finnish-American father and son architect duo Eliel and Eero Saarinen’s design of Kleinhans as the building itself. The exterior curve of the pool connects with the exterior lobby doors on either side of Kleinhans. When viewed from above, the pool completes the overall shape of the building’s exterior, completing the Saarinen’s design as seen below:

An early drawing of Kleinhans from directly above. The reflecting pool is at the bottom, surrounding the smaller curve of the Mary Seaton Room.

Eliel Saarinen wrote about his design, published in a 1945 commemorative ‘Kleinhans Music Hall’ booklet:

The Pool

It seems to be a rather frequent question, why a pool has been designed in connection with the Kleinhans Music Hall.

Well, doesn’t water have a rather commonly felt attraction? Really, there is something enigmatic in this attraction, for all people, young and old, and animals alike, like to linger near water and to look into its waving and reflecting mirror. There is life underneath this mirror, life that seems strange to our eyes when looking down there and from there discerning other eyes looking at us- wondering. And there is reflection on this mirror, reflection of life that surrounds us, there is glimmer and glitter of our own life, there is sparking of color and sunlight. Hence we are eager to erect our house near water, near lakes, rivers and brooks. Hence we like to decorate our gardens with pools and sprinkling fountains.

Lighting for the pool and exterior of the Mary Seaton room was much different than we see today. Stanley McCandless, lighting consultant for Kleinhans, created lights that stood along the exterior of the pool and beamed light across the water onto the exterior of the Mary Seaton Room. Stanley described that the purpose of these lights was “to take advantage of the interesting shape and the movement in the water. The projectors provide carefully shaped beams of light with delicately tinted filter to enhance the night time appearance of the shape and texture of the building.” ‘Surprise pink’ and ‘midnight blue’ colored filters were chosen, supposedly because of their effectiveness in producing other colors in combination with each other while revealing the curves and texture of the building. Unfortunately, the structure that housed the lights was not an elegant design, as seen in the photo below from a newspaper clipping expressing the public’s distain for these lights, describing the structures as ‘chicken coops.’

In 1956, the decision was made to completely fill in the reflecting pool, turning it into a lawn. The absence of the pool significantly changed the entire appearance of the music hall. Ted Lownie, the lead restoration architect for Kleinhans with the firm Hamilton Houston Lownie, said:

“Whoever made the decision to convert the space to a lawn ignored the pool’s important place in Eliel Saarinen’s grand 1940 design.  It completed the great ellipse that this building is.  It not only finished the entire composition but made the transition between the actual building and the natural lawn.”

Some local residents may remember what Kleinhans looked like without the pool. I find it is almost impossible to imagine. What would Kleinhans be without it? Photos of the music hall during this time are rare and hard to come by, maybe for good reason. Below are the only two pieces of documentation that I could find.

In 2001, the pool was redesigned and recreated as part of a larger $12 million dollar restoration project to Kleinhans Music Hall. This is the reflecting pool we all know and love today. The largest difference between this redesigned pool and the original pool from 1940 is, again, the depth. The current pool is even more shallow, at a total depth of 3 inches with a concave floor that gives the appearance of a much greater depth. The water, which is drained in the fall and filled in the spring to avoid freezing and cracking of the foundation, is also dyed black to make the pool appear even deeper, and increases the reflectivity of the building.

The reflecting pool drained for the winter showing the 3-inch depth.

The other noticeable design change from the original pool is the exterior lighting on the façade of the Mary Seaton Room. Instead of the ‘chicken coop’ design, lights were installed within the base of the walkway between the pool and the Mary Seaton Room walls. These lights beam up onto the building, which then are reflected into the pool revealing a stunning sight. Some time after they were first installed, the lights fell into disrepair leaving the majestic hall and its reflecting pool in darkness. However, in March of this year, the lights were once again restored, providing a nightly picture of elegance that can now be experienced from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.

The walkway lights along the Mary Seaton Room exterior.

Exterior shots of the Mary Seaton Room at night.

The reflecting pool at Kleinhans is a magnificent feature of the building’s exterior design. It is often used as a photo backdrop for the many high school and college graduations that Kleinhans hosts every year, as well as a hotspot for wedding party photos. In the spring, summer, and fall months, people from the neighborhood are always picnicking, gathering, and relaxing by the pool’s edge. It serves as an important feature for the architectural beauty and integrity of the building, but also as a place of refuge for the community.

My favorite feature of the pool? It’s amazingly photogenic! I feel so lucky that this place is my work environment, and I never take it for granted. Through the years, in beautiful and quiet moments, I’ve been lucky enough to snap some great photos. I think the best time of day to take photographs is early in the morning, usually before 10 a.m. in the summer months when the sun is directly hitting the east face of the building (the curved Mary Seaton Room exterior). I used to work for the graduation ceremonies at Kleinhans for a few years, and had to arrive by 6 a.m. most days to prep the building and grounds. The following are some great shots of the pool between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. in May-June:

My favorite location from which to take photos photos is usually in the absolute center of the pool. When standing on the outer perimeter sidewalk, stand directly in front of the center door and take a few steps back. This works great for panoramic and standard photos. Another location I really like is to stand at the flat base of the pool, by the stairs on either side and put my phone (yes, all photos here are from my iPhone!) on the sidewalk just at the edge of the pool. Pan it up to the building and take a photo like this:

The position of the sun is a huge factor when taking photos of the pool. It amazes me how different the pool and building can look at different times of day. Here’s an image taken in the mid-evening hours. The sun shines on the north side of the Mary Seaton Room:

I’d like to give a ‘shout out’ to the wildlife that visits the reflecting pool regularly. Every spring and throughout the summer, ducks flock to Kleinhans and are often seen sleeping at the edge or wading in the pool in pairs or small groups. In the fall of 2017 when the pool was almost completely drained for the winter, a school of large goldfish were found in the remaining puddles. A miraculous accident of nature? …Probably not.

My hope is that everyone who visits Kleinhans understand just how important the reflecting pool is. If it wasn’t for the restoration efforts by Ted Lownie and others, we might not have this remarkable and beautiful piece of architectural treasure today.

Special thanks to Lauren Becker and Christopher N. Brown for their incredible assistance with collecting historical information for this piece.

Photo Credit: All photos in this blog were taken by the author, Connor Schloop.