Founded in 1935, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) is Buffalo’s leading cultural ambassador, presenting more than 120 classics, pops and youth concerts each year. Since 1940, the orchestra’s permanent home has been Kleinhans Music Hall. In 2022, it made its 25th appearance at Carnegie Hall, celebrating the life and works of former BPO music director Lukas Foss.

Over the decades, the BPO has matured in stature under leading conductors William Steinberg, Josef Krips, Lukas Foss, Michael Tilson Thomas, Julius Rudel, Semyon Bychkov and Maximiano Valdés.

During the tenure of JoAnn Falletta, the BPO has rekindled its distinguished history of radio broadcasts and recordings, including the release of over 60 albums of diverse repertoire on the Naxos and Beau Fleuve Records labels. The Philharmonic’s recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (Naxos 8.559331), featuring soprano Hila Plitmann, received GRAMMY Awards for Best Classical Vocal Performance and Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and its recording of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua (Naxos 8.559885–86) with the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus received a GRAMMY Award for Best Choral Performance.

www.bpo.org

Multiple GRAMMY-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) and music director laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. She has guest conducted many of the most prominent orchestras in America, Canada, Europe, Asia and South America. As music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major American ensemble.

She has a discography of over 125 titles, and is a leading recording artist for Naxos. Her GRAMMY-winning Naxos recordings include Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua (8.559885–86) and John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (8.559331), both with the BPO, and Kenneth Fuchs’ Spiritualist with the London Symphony Orchestra (8.559824).

Falletta is a member of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has served as a member of the National Council on the Arts, is the recipient of many of the most prestigious conducting awards and was named Performance Today’s Classical Woman of the Year 2019 and one of the 50 great conductors of all time by Gramophone magazine.

www.joannfalletta.com

“Buffalo Phil: Premieres Without Pain” courtesy of American Record Guide

Watch: JoAnn Falletta at Round Top – An Interview with John Clare

A composition pupil of Massenet and of Fauré at the Paris Conservatoire, Florent Schmitt, in common with a number of his contemporaries, was fascinated by the exotic; an element of orientalism appears as a feature in several of his successful compositions.

Orchestral Music
La Tragédie de Salomé (‘The Tragedy of Salome’), originally a dance piece, was revised as a symphonic poem in 1910. An element of exoticism is apparent in the film score for Flaubert’s Salammbô, with its Carthaginian setting, and in a number of subsequent orchestral works, while his gifts of orchestration are evident in his two symphonies and in a varied series of other compositions.

Choral Music
Schmitt won early success with his exotic setting of Psalm 47 in 1904. Other choral works range from settings of La Fontaine’s fables to liturgical music (settings of the Mass and other sacred texts).

Chamber and Instrumental Music
Chamber music for various combinations of instruments includes finely judged work for wind instruments, while Schmitt’s music for keyboard shows equal variety of conception.

For further reading, please visit florentschmitt.com.