Joint Choral Concert: Erwin Ortner, guest conductor

Event time: 
Sunday, February 24, 2013 - 11:00am
Event description: 

 

Erwin Ortner Conducts

Yale Camerata, Yale Schola Cantorum, and Yale Glee Club
with Tom Murray, organ, and Holly Chatham, continuo

 

Music of Brahms, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, Schein, Schoenberg, and Webern

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2013 | 4 PM

WOOLSEY HALL

Presented in collaboration with Yale Glee Club.


 

Continuing an annual tradition, three Yale choral ensembles will present a joint concert with a noted guest conductor on Sunday, February 4 at 4 PM in Woolsey Hall. The Yale Camerata, Glee Club, and Schola Cantorum will each perform a section of the program, which features music from Germany and Austria.

Erwin Ortner was born in Vienna, and had his first musical training as a member of the Vienna Boy’s Choir under Ferdinand Grossmann. He later studied at the Academy of Music in Vienna (music pedagogy, church music, conducting with Hans Swarowsky and choral conducting with Hans Gillesberger). Since 1980 he has been full professor for choral conducting and choral voice training, and, from 1996 to 2002, dean of the Academy, during which time he oversaw its transition to the University of Music and Performing Arts.

Ortner is the founder and artistic director of the Arnold Schoenberg Choir. From 1983, until its dissolution in 1995, he was also director of the Choir of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF). The Arnold Schoenberg choir has a long association with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus Wien, with which it has made numerous recordings and won a number of awards. In 2002 the Schoenberg Choir won a Grammy Award in the category “Best Choral Performance”, for a recording of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, conducted by Nicolaus Harnoncourt. In this category the conductor and the Choir director are honoured.

As a conductor, Erwin Ortner has worked in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Rome and Salzburg, where he has been involved in projects with Maurizio Pollini. He is regularly invited to work with leading orchestras, opera houses, festivals and concert halls, including the RSO-Vienna, Camerata Salzburg, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Theater an der Wien, Salzburg Festival, Mozartwoche Salzburg, Musikverein Vienna and the Vienna Konzerthaus.) His frequent appearances as a guest conductor demonstrate his manifold activities both throughout Austria and abroad.