About the Orchestra

MISSION STATEMENT

Chamber Orchestra of New York is the city’s premier young professionals orchestra. Founded to advance the careers of extraordinary artists, the orchestra presents works that bridge the classical and modern traditions. Internationally recognized for its championing of the Italian repertoire, the orchestra aims to cultivate a wider audience for the future of classical music.

BIOGRAPHY

Established in 2006, the Chamber Orchestra is the first auditioned young professionals orchestra in the history of New York City. Its triumphant debut was held on October 11, 2007 at Zankel Hall/Carnegie Hall. Following the Inaugural Season 2007/08 finale concert, Vivien Schweitzer of The New York Times wrote: “The musicians played producing a polished, rich sound…a stirring performance [of Mahler’s Adagietto and]…a voluptuous rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir….”

Over its first years, the orchestra’s Advisory Board developed to include esteemed artists such as film composer Ennio Morricone, conductor Alan Gilbert, and soloists Lynn Harrell, Cho-Liang Lin and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. Honorary Board members include Respighi family descendants Elsa and Gloria Pizzoli, Respighi archive curator/cataloger Potito Pedarra and musicologist Luigi Verdi.

The orchestra currently performs its Masterworks Series at Carnegie Hall, together with its regular Spring performance at the Adelphi University Performing Arts Center. It also returns with regularity for concerts at The Morgan Library and Museum. Over recent seasons, the orchestra has been featured at fashion shows by Moncler, Tory Burch, Dolce & Gabbana at Lincoln Center, and Orlebar Brown for their 007 Collection.

In 2008, Ottorino Respighi’s great nieces Elsa and Gloria Pizzoli, and archive curator/cataloger Potito Pedarra, entrusted Music Director and composer Salvatore Di Vittorio with the task of editing, orchestrating, and completing several of Respighi’s early orchestral works – such as the first Violin Concerto (in A) – in their first printed, published editions (now) distributed by Casa Ricordi in Milan. In championing Respighi’s music, the Chamber Orchestra then established The Respighi Prize music competition in 2010 in collaboration with Bologna, Italy (Respighi’s birthplace), and also received a prestigious ongoing Google Grant for online marketing.

Read Story Behind the Respighi Editions
With permission to premiere and record the works, the orchestra released its first albums of Respighi’s and Di Vittorio’s music on Naxos Records in 2011, which have been airing internationally from BBC London, RAI throughout Italy, and WQXR NY, and to much critical acclaim. Additional early Respighi editions were published, and the ensemble became the first orchestra on Naxos Records with such masterworks as Respighi’s Trittico Botticelliano and The Birds. The orchestra has also championed restorations of works by Claudio Monteverdi and Alessandro Scarlatti. News of the orchestra’s work led to grants from the Vaughan Williams Trust, for various U.S. Premieres of early Vaughan Williams, projects which inspired yet another Naxos recording.
The orchestra has also been commissioned on several occasions by The Morgan Library and Museum, the home of one of the most important music archives in the world. In 2016, the Morgan Library showcased the orchestra in collaboration with an exhibition on Rome, and invited Maestro Di Vittorio to compose a free transcription based on Liszt’s Fountains of Villa d’Este for piano. Di Vittorio’s own La Villa d’Este a Tivoli received much attention at the premiere, and was then entered into the Morgan’s music archive.
In 2017, the orchestra founded the New York Conducting Workshop, and the program now includes staff conductors Maestros John Farrer (Conductors Guild), Dirk Brossé (Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia) and Toshiyuki Shimada (Yale University Symphony Orchestra).

Chamber Orchestra of New York celebrated its 10th Anniversary Season in 2017/2018 with an opening concert at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on October 28, 2017. In the 2018/2019 Season, the orchestra launched its Maestro Juniors Education Program for New York City Public Schools. During it’s 12th Season 2019/2020, the orchestra made its Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Opera House debut in collaboration with St. Petersburg Ballet (Russia) for Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

For the 13th Season 2021/2022, the orchestra concludes the third of three new albums for Naxos Records – thereby completing seven albums in just thirteen seasons.

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  • Story Behind the Respighi Editions

    A few Italian conductors of chamber orchestras noticed early on the neoclassical influence of Ottorino Respighi on Salvatore Di Vittorio’s early works, pairing them together in their programs. Music critics also made the connection, with some articles praising Di Vittorio and then described him as “following in the footsteps of Respighi”. In March of 2006, Di Vittorio founded the Chamber Orchestra of New York “Ottorino Respighi” to honor this bond and his commitment to the Italian repertoire. These developments caught the attention of certain Respighi scholars and the news eventually reached Respighi’s great-nieces, Elsa Pizzoli Mazzacane and Gloria Pizzoli Mangini.

    Subsequently, Gloria Pizzoli hosted Di Vittorio in her home in Rome in January of 2008 along with Elsa Pizzoli at which time they spoke by phone with family archive curator/cataloger Potito Pedarra in Milan. They would invite Di Vittorio to complete several of the Bolognese composer’s unpublished early orchestral works. In the coming days, Di Vittorio would meet Potito Pedarra in Milan, and together they would visit Italian publisher Casa Ricordi to begin discussing the long-term project.

     

     

    Amongst the works planned included the first Violin Concerto (in A Major), which would be completed compositionally in the third movement, the Tre Liriche for mezzo-soprano and orchestra would be completed in orchestration, and the remainder of the works would be completed editorially (i.e., as critical editions). All of the works would be engraved and published in their first printed editions. Today, the works are published under Edizioni Panastudio (Palermo) and distributed by Casa Ricordi (Milan).

     

     

     

    During an interview for RAI Italia at Carnegie Hall in March of 2019, Di Vittorio was asked why he felt he had received such a great honor from the family and archive curator of one of Italy’s greatest orchestral composers. Di Vittorio responded “It was a tremendous honor forme as a composer to have earned their trust, and I had such great respect for them as they nurtured and escorted me to Respighi archives and a few related sites around Italy. They had caught that I shared Respighi’s love and unique interest in composing orchestral program music, with themes of antiquity. But, frankly, I learned later from Casa Ricordi that there were actually only a few living Italian neoclassical composers that would even have been considered at the time. Neoclassical composers are a rarity these days, including in Italy. I am forever grateful to Elsa, Gloria, and Potito for their dear friendship, vision and belief in the importance of my work as a composer.”

    Di Vittorio continues to publish first printed editions of Respighi’s early orchestral works, and champions the works in performances with orchestras – especially with the Chamber Orchestra of New York for ongoing recordings on Naxos Records.

     

     

     

    Visit: Works – Respighi Editions

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