Leon Botstein
Conductor Leon Botstein has a long record of championing neglected repertory with the American Symphony Orchestra and many other groups he has led over his career. He is also a noted author and an educator who has created innovative music education programs at Bard College, of which he is president.
Botstein was born on December 14, 1946, in Zurich, Switzerland. His parents were both Polish physicians of Jewish background, and they moved to New York when Botstein was two. He studied violin at New York's High School of Music and Art and over summers in Mexico City. Botstein earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago, majoring in history and philosophy but also serving as concertmaster and assistant conductor of the university orchestra, and he founded a new university chamber orchestra. He took courses with composer Richard Wernick and musicologists H. Colin Slim and Howard Mayer Brown. Botstein moved on to Harvard for graduate studies, taking a history degree but also conducting the Doctors' Orchestra of Boston and the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra. In 1970, he was appointed president of New Hampshire's Franconia College; at 23, he was the youngest college president in history. There, he founded the White Mountain Music Festival, which continues today in modified form.
In 1975, Botstein assumed the presidency of Bard College in New York's Hudson River Valley; he remains in that position as of 2021. There, he founded the Bard Music Festival, which focuses each year on the works of a single composer and entails the publication of musicological research in addition to performances. For a time, his work had a broad academic orientation, but after the death of his young daughter, he returned to music. He took conducting lessons with Harold Farberman and became the principal conductor of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and in 1992, the American Symphony Orchestra in Washington. The same year, he was named the editor of The Musical Quarterly, one of the leading musicology periodicals in the U.S. At Bard, he founded The Orchestra Now, which he has often conducted. In 2003, he became the music director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he led on tours of the U.S. and Germany; he remains the group's conductor laureate. Botstein has guest conducted the London Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, and many other groups.
Botstein has made more than 25 recordings with various groups on the Telarc, Hyperion, and Bridge labels, as well as many others. Many of them have been devoted to lesser-known composers and works; in 2018, for Hyperion's "Romantic Piano Concerto" series, he and The Orchestra Now backed pianist Piers Lane in an album of works by Beethoven's student Ferdinand Ries. In 2021, Botstein conducted The Orchestra Now with Orion Weiss on the album Piano Protagonists, featuring music by Chopin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Korngold. He is the author of seven books, four of them in German, on music, culture, and Jewish intellectual history.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Ries: Piano Concertos Nos. 8 & 9 (Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto 75)
Piers Lane, The Orchestra Now, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by Hyperion on 27 Apr 2018
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Rubbra & Bliss: Piano Concertos (Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto 81)
Piers Lane, The Orchestra Now, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by Hyperion on 26 Jun 2020
24-Bit 88.2 kHz - Stereo -
Bristow & Fry: Classics of American Romanticism
The Orchestra Now, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by Bridge Records on 16 Sep 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, Piano Concerto, Variations on "I Got Rhythm" & Preludes
Mark Bebbington, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by SOMM Recordings on 27 May 2016
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Liszt: Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina commedia, S. 109 & Tasso. Lamento e trionfo, S. 96
Leon Botstein, London Symphony Orchestra
Classical - Released by Telarc on 25 Nov 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Strauss: By the Beautiful Blue Danube, Op. 314
American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by American Symphony Orchestra on 21 May 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Berio: Rendering
American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by American Symphony Orchestra on 28 Nov 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Popov: Symphony No. 1, Op. 7 - Shostakovich: Theme & Variations, Op. 3
Leon Botstein, London Symphony Orchestra
Classical - Released by Telarc on 22 Nov 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dukas: Ariane et Barbe-bleue
Classical - Released by Telarc on 24 Jul 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hartmann: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 6
Leon Botstein, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jard van Nes
Classical - Released by Telarc on 1 Jul 1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Buried Alive
The Orchestra Now, Michael Nagy, Leon Botstein, Bard Festival Chorale
Classical - Released by Bridge Records on 21 Aug 2020
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Glière: Symphony No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 42 "Il'ya Murometz"
Leon Botstein, London Symphony Orchestra
Classical - Released by Telarc on 1 Jan 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Foulds: A World Requiem, Op. 60
Masses, Passions, Requiems - Released by Chandos on 1 Jan 2008
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Schubert: Mirjams Siegesgesang, D. 942
American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, Sarah Shafer
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by American Symphony Orchestra on 13 Nov 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Walter: Symphony No. 1 in D Minor
NDR Sinfonieorchester, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by CPO on 1 Jan 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in B-Flat Major, Op. 100 (Live)
Classical - Released by American Symphony Orchestra on 26 Nov 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Joachim: Overtures
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Elmar Oliveira, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by imp on 1 Jan 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Chausson: Le roi arthus, Op. 23
Classical - Released by Telarc on 6 Jun 2005
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rimsky-Korsakov: Suite from The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh
American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein
Classical - Released by American Symphony Orchestra on 11 Sep 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B-Flat Major, WAB 105 "Fantastic" (1894 Schalk Edition)
Leon Botstein, London Philharmonic Orchestra
Classical - Released by Telarc on 1 Jul 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Taneyev: Oresteia
American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein
Opera - Released by American Symphony Orchestra on 20 Sep 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo