Music Director Leon Botstein leads The Orchestra Now in the opening of its 2023-24 Carnegie Hall season with a program titled Exodus: Jewish Composers in Exile on Tuesday, November 7 at 7 PM at Carnegie Hall. The evening, also marking TŌN’s first performance in New York City this season, offers seldom-heard works by Jewish composers Alexandre Tansman, Josef Tal, Walter Kaufmann and Marcel Rubin—including two NYC premieres—written while in exile from their homelands during World War II.
 
TŌN’s next concert in Manhattan launches the Orchestra’s popular Free Concerts series featuring TŌN Resident Conductor Zachary Schwartzman leading works by Schumann, Strauss, and Barber (Peter Norton Symphony Space, November 19). 
 
Exodus: Jewish Composers in Exile
Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, November 7, 2023 at 7 PM
Leon Botstein, conductor
Noam Heinz, baritone
Alexandre Tansman: Polish Rhapsody
Josef Tal: Exodus (NYC premiere)
Walter Kaufmann: An Indian Symphony (NYC premiere)
Marcel Rubin: Symphony No. 4, Dies irae

Alexandre Tansman was a multi-genre composer as well as a virtuoso pianist. He fled Europe for the United States in 1941, and his rhythmic Polish Rhapsody—inspired by the invasion of Poland and dedicated “to the defenders of Warsaw”—was premiered in St. Louis that same year. The NYC premiere of prolific composer Josef Tal’s Exodus is based on the Passover Haggadah and was debuted by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra during the first days of that country’s War of Independence. He had emigrated to Jerusalem before the war in 1942. The performance features Israeli – British – American baritone Noam Heinz, who performed the title role in the world premiere of the opera Theodor, about Israel's founding father Theodor Herzl, with the Israel Opera. 
 
The Orchestra offers another NYC premiere with An Indian Symphony by Walter Kaufmann, one of many Jewish refugees who found a haven in India, where he lived for 14 years and wrote his Symphony while exiled in Bombay. Viennese composer Marcel Rubin fled first to France and then to Mexico, where he wrote his melancholy Symphony No. 4, Dies irae, as a reflection of his experiences during the Second World War. Among his many honors are a Grand Austrian State Prize for Music and a Gold Medal of Vienna.

Tickets, priced at $25–$50, are available online at carnegiehall.org, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212.247.7800, or at the Carnegie Hall box office at 57th & Seventh Avenue.