“Getting to hear such talented young musicians play this passionate and exciting music alongside seasoned professionals is a unique opportunity to experience something new,” says Daniela Candillari who is the Principal Conductor at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.
Read our interview with Daniela, below:
Featuring MSM OP students and faculty members
Daniela Candillari, Conductor
ANNA CLYNE (MM ’05), This Midnight Hour BEDŘICH SMETANA Die Moldau SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27
MSM Orchestral Performance students and faculty members take a bow in January 2024
Daniela: I’m really looking forward to performing this program with everyone. We have a very nice arch of three stylistically different pieces, each with its own challenges and all of them also have an incredible narrative. Preparing for this concert and working with everyone was really special, and I think that energy always comes through in the performance.
Daniela: This Midnight Hour by Anna Clyne has been on my list of pieces to program for quite a while now. Anna Clyne is a great composer and this particular piece is quickly becoming a regular part of the concert programs around the world. The textures that she creates within the orchestra are imaginative, and the idea behind the piece is a combination of two poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire. It has a very energetic opening and those episodes are woven in with incredibly poetic and almost mystical sections.
Moldau is, of course, a long time favorite of audiences and players. It’s an incredibly descriptive piece and I just love the simplicity of the orchestration in the very opening, that leads into all of the strings joining in and supporting the melody played by the violins and the oboe. It’s a piece with so many different musical characters and because of the imaginative use of every section in the orchestra one can almost see every single scene played out.
The last piece is one of my personal favorites, Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninoff. He had such a great way of conveying pure and raw emotion. There is so much passion, excitement and nostalgia in his music.The writing for the strings is incredibly connected and lush. The pairing of a rhythmical motive in the first movement between violas, French horn and bass is an incredible color. The way that he would use individual wind instruments to highlight a moment is just beautiful.
As someone who grew up listening a lot to orthodox church choirs, I love how he translated that sound into the orchestra with brass writing and one of my favorite moments is in the final movement with this gorgeous brass choral that is majestic and powerful.
Conductor Daniela Candillari
Daniela: The level of talent at MSM is very high and it’s always fun getting to create an ensemble together. Of course this is a very special project, where students are also joined by the wonderful faculty. It gives the students a chance to experience what it means to perform on a bigger stage, what that means for the projection of the instruments, what it means to play with a section and how it all comes together. Orchestral music is chamber music on a larger scale, and for the students to have that experience sitting next to world class players is just incredible and very unique.
Daniela: Getting to hear such talented young musicians play this passionate and exciting music alongside seasoned professionals is a unique opportunity to experience something new.
Head of the OP Program David Chan and concertmaster of the MET Opera Orchestra (standing) takes a bow at last years faculty-student OP concert in Neidorff-Karpati Hall.
Conductor Daniela Candillari brings her “confidence and apparently inexhaustible verve” (The New York Times) to opera houses and concert stages throughout North America and internationally. She is renowned for guiding groundbreaking world premieres to the stage “with a sure hand” (The New York Times) as well as her “incisive leadership” (Wall Street Journal) of classical music’s most frequently performed masterpieces.
Candillari’s exciting 2024-2025 season of orchestra and opera engagements includes two world premieres in St. Louis, where she enters her fourth season as Principal Conductor at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. In celebration of their 50th anniversary season, she conducts the company’s 44th world premiere, This House, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage and her daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber. Earlier in the year, she leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Nina Shekhar’s Accordion Concerto, an SLSO commission, featuring accordionist Hanzhi Wang, on a program with Samuel Barber’s School for Scandal overture and Antonín Dvořák’s “New World” symphony.
Candillari’s season opens in Belgium with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. She returns to New York to lead Trinity Church’s resident orchestra NOVUS in the East Coast Premiere of Gabriel Kahane’s emergency shelter intake form, followed by appearances leading concerts at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. Other 2024-2025 highlights include a return to New Orleans Opera to conduct Camille Saint-Saëns’ rarely performed French masterpiece, Samson and Delilah, and debuts with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, and Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
Candillari’s 2023-24 season opened with rave reviews for her “seamless” leadership (The New York Times) of two world premieres: 10 Days in a Madhouse by composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch at Opera Philadelphia, where she made her company debut; and Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s Grounded with Washington National Opera at The Kennedy Center, also a company debut. Winner of the Best New Opera Award by the Music Critics Association of North America, 10 Days in a Madhouse, about trailblazing reporter Nellie Bly, was also named the best classical music performance of 2023 by the Washington Post, which noted, “under the baton of Daniela Candillari, the ensemble swerved from lush, harmonically rich embraces of memory into disconcerting panic attacks of sound effects.” Immediately following this triumph, Candillari conducted the world premiere of Grounded, a co-commission of the Metropolitan Opera, with the Wall Street Journal praising her “expertly rendered” delivery of “Tesori’s colorful orchestration.”
Possessing a “fine combination of fire and attention to detail” (KDHX), Candillari continued her season in February with an appearance at Yale School of Music for Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, followed by an April return to Arizona Opera for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In June, she received great acclaim for leading Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’s company premiere of Handel’s Julius Caesar as well as the annual Center Stage concert, before concluding the season in July with Bizet’s Carmen at Music Academy of the West, where she has served as Principal Opera Conductor since 2022, following her 2019 debut with the company in Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain.
In the previous season, Candillari made her New York Philharmonic debut in their inaugural season inside the new David Geffen Hall conducting cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, for which she was praised for her “enthusiastic, energetic yet sensitive direction” and “perfect control over the orchestra” (Broadway World). She made her Carnegie Hall Presents debut leading the American Composers Orchestra in a program of premieres. Other engagements from previous seasons include debuts with the Metropolitan Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin, and productions with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera, Detroit Opera, Orchestre Métropolitan Montreal, and Classical Tahoe Festival. A passionate educator, she has led opera productions at the Juilliard School and concerts at Manhattan School of Music. She has also led made-for-film world premiere of Clint Borzoni’s The Copper Queen with Arizona Opera, released in 2021 and later screened by Opera Philadelphia in 2022, as well as the film of Ana Sokolović’s Svadba with Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Philadelphia that was released in early 2022 and won Opera America’s 2023 Award for Digital Excellence in Opera.
As a composer, Candillari has been commissioned by established artists including instrumentalists from the Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh Symphonies, as well as the three resident orchestras of Lincoln Center: the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet. She is deeply involved with Music Academy of the West’s programming for young artists and has recently participated in master classes and discussions at DePaul University, Chicago Humanities Festival, and Valissima Institute.
Daniela Candillari grew up in Serbia and Slovenia. The artist holds a Doctorate in Musicology from the Universität für Musik in Vienna, a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a Master of Music and Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance from the Universität für Musik in Graz. A Fulbright Scholarship recipient, she was also awarded a TED Fellowship, and is fluent in German, English, Italian, Serbian, and Slovenian.
130 Claremont Avenue New York, New York 10027 212-749-2802
Email This Page
Email Message
Page Reference (will be sent in email)
https://www.msmnyc.edu/news/jan-22-daniela-candillari-conducts-a-special-orchestral-performance-concert-featuring-students-alongside-faculty-members/
This site uses cookies to improve user experience. By continuing, you agree to our updated policy. To find out more, visit our cookie & information use policy.