Live performance at the Musikverein, Vienna - TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5 by Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra - Hobart Earle, Conductor

In point of fact, the Odessa Philharmonic is the first performing arts organization in the entire country to have had its funding status raised by the government of Ukraine from regional to federal to national, since the independence of Ukraine in 1991.

Hobart Earle has conducted hundreds of concerts with the Odessa Philharmonic to wide acclaim -- in the major concert halls of the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia and throughout Ukraine. Highlights of Maestro Earle’s career include performances in the Musikverein (Vienna), the Philharmonie (Cologne), the Beethovenhalle (Bonn), the Barbican Hall (London), the National Auditorium (Madrid), the Liszt Academy (Budapest) the Great Halls of the Moscow Conservatory and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society, and in the United States he has appeared in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Davies Hall in San Francisco and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Hobart Earle’s festival credits include appearances at such music festivals as the Bregenz Spring Festival (Austria), the Festival of Perth (Australia), the Lugano Spring Festival (Switzerland), the Chichester Festivities (England), the Nuits Musicales du Suquet in Cannes (France), the Budapest Spring Festival, (Hungary), the Varna Summer Festival (Bulgaria) and the Cultural Capital of Europe 1997 in Thessaloniki, Greece.

In Europe, he has led such orchestras as the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Vienna Tonkuenstler Orchestra, the Noord-Nederlands Orkest in Holland, the Orchestra della Toscana in Italy, and in the U. S., the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra and the San Diego Chamber Orchestra.

In recognition of his work with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, Hobart Earle was awarded the title “Distinguished Artist of Ukraine”, the first and only foreigner in the history of Ukraine so honored. Under his dynamic leadership, the Orchestra has become a great source of pride at home with the concert hall regularly sold out. One of the most popular figures in the city of Odessa, Maestro Earle was presented with the annual "Friend of Ukraine" award by the Washington Group (an association of Ukrainian/American professionals) on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the independence of Ukraine in 1996. He was the first person in the arts to receive the award. In 2003, in conjunction with leading newspapers in Ukraine, the Russian Cosmonaut Association named a star in the ‘Perseus’ constellation as ‘Hobart Earle’.

As founder and music director of the American Music Ensemble Vienna/Ensemble for Viennese Music New York from 1987-1991, Hobart Earle premiered many works by living composers in addition to reviving several lesser-known compositions from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During his tenure in Odessa, Hobart Earle has also led numerous performances of repertoire never before heard there. In particular, he is the first conductor to perform such major works in Odessa as: Gustav Mahler's 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 9th symphonies, Anton Bruckner's 8th symphony, Richard Strauss's "Four Last Songs", Elgar's 'Enigma' Variations, Alban Berg's "3 Excerpts from Wozzeck", Gustav Holst's "The Planets", Aaron Copland's "El Salon Mexico" and "Lincoln Portrait" and Leonard Bernstein's 'Jeremiah' symphony.

Hobart Earle and the American Music Ensemble Vienna can be heard on two world premiere CDs of American Music on the Albany Records label, including music by George Whitefield Chadwick, Henry Gilbert and Miguel del Aguila. On the ASV label, Maestro Earle has recorded two highly acclaimed CDs with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra of previously unrecorded music by Ukrainian composers Mykola Kolessa, Myroslav Skoryk, Yevhen Stankovych and Reinhold Gliere. His performance of Tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra in Vienna’s Musikverein in 2001 was recorded by the Austrian Radio live in concert, and awarded “Best Classical Album 2002” at the ‘JPFolks Music Awards’ in Hollywood, California.

He was a student of Ferdinand Leitner in Salzburg and Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood. Hobart Earle studied conducting at the Academy of Music in Vienna; received a performer's diploma in clarinet from Trinity College of Music, London; and is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University.

"Conductor Hobart Earle secured much of the same integrity of performance from his players in Mahler Symphony No. 2 - The Resurrection ... this must go down as one of the best performances of Mahler in Perth."

Sunday Times, Perth, Western Australia

"In Shostakovich's 5th Symphony, as with Mahler's symphonies, one of the principal tasks of the conductor is to bring consistency to heterogeneity, to build the overall context. Anyone setting out merely to "play correctly" risks permanent boredom. Not Hobart Earle. The ambiguity he exposed in this only outwardly affirmative work, the way he built up the lines of thematic development, marks him out as a truly important conductor."

Stuttgarter Zeitung, Germany

"Earle and his orchestra have almost perfected the idiom of the Viennese waltz."

Die Presse (Vienna)

"Earle has Odessa in fine form ...in its American debut at Orchestra Hall on Friday, the Orchestra showed that it could join the top ranks of American orchestras without breaking step. Earle's baton technique is noticeably like Carlo Maria Giulini's - fluid, graceful to the point of being balletic but still exact. (And Earle's memory isn't bad: he conducted the entire concert without a score.)"

Chicago Tribune

"Earle and the musicians were soon on the same wave length. Particularly effective was his way of brining out inner voices, revealing new, cleaner textures. Throughout this symphony Earle was able to mould the individual movements so as to leave a strong sense of their architecture in the mind. He also has the uncanny ability to prepare the listener for the end of a movement -- the musical equivalent of saying, "Pay attention, here it comes" -- and then to turn the actual conclusion into an eloquent summary statement."

Buffalo News, NY

"Mr. Earle demonstrated why he is viewed in such high regard in conducting circles this past weekend. Music is never dull to this conductor. America is in desperate need of young native conductors, and occasionally they surface out of nowhere (usually from European ensembles) to show that there is a new generation of conductors out there."

Town Topics, Princeton, NJ

Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra

Odessa, one of the most beautiful cities on the Black Sea Coast, can look back upon a remarkable cultural history. At the end of the nineteenth century, Odessa was a major cultural center, visited by many outstanding musical personalities. Violin pedagogue Piotr Stoliarsky and his pupils David Oistrakh and Nathan Milstein are among Odessa's best known musical "children". The pianists Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter also grew up in Odessa, as did Shura Cherkassky, who was born on Pushkin Street, one of the city's most colorful avenues.

From this proud musical tradition comes the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, the vast majority of whom are graduates of the Odessa Conservatory and almost half of whom entered the conservatory from the Stoliarsky School. The orchestra was founded in 1937 and throughout the Soviet era performed regularly at home under such conductors as Nathan Rachlin, Yuri Temirkanov, Kurt Sanderling, Arvid Jansons and also Mariss Jansons. During the Soviet years, Odessa, a major center before the revolution, was relegated to the ranks of "regional" city. Unlike Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Odessa the orchestra was not allowed to travel outside the borders of the USSR.

With the independence of Ukraine, the orchestra's status rose; in January of 1993 the Government of Ukraine formally awarded the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra federal status. The OPO is the only performing arts organization in Ukraine outside of Kiev to attain this distinction. The new status was acknowledgment of the orchestra's dynamic progress during the preceding two years under new music director Hobart Earle. The orchestra has since become the first from Ukraine to cross both the Atlantic Ocean and the Equator. In the years since 1992 the orchestra and Hobart Earle have made a total of 10 trips to Western Europe, 3 trips to North America and in 1995 crossed the Equator to go the Festival of Perth in Australia, performing in such major halls as the Musikverein in Vienna, the Philharmonie in Cologne, the Beethovenhalle in Bonn, the Barbican Hall in London, the National Auditorium in Madrid, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Carnegie Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Davies Hall in San Francisco and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

In addition to their regular concerts at home in Odessa, during the 1990s the orchestra and Hobart Earle have traveled to the Ukrainian cities of Lviv, Ivano Frankivsk, Ternopil, Chernivtsy, Uzhgorod, Vinnitsya, Zhitomir, Khmelnitsky, Kirovograd, Poltava and Mikolayiv, in addition to making a total of thirteen different trips to perform in Kyiv (Kiev). In 1994 the OPO became the first symphony orchestra from a former republic to perform the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society since the breakup of the USSR. Today, the local audience in Odessa takes pride in the orchestra's achievements and fill the concert hall regularly. The OPOs series of CD recordings "Music of Ukraine" under Hobart Earle for British record label ASV features previously unrecorded works by Ukrainian composers. Their live performance of Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony, recorded by the Austrian Radio in Vienna's Musikverein in 2001, was awarded "Best Classical Album" at the 2002 'Just Plain Folks Music Awards' in Hollywood, California.

In June 1992, President Leonid Kuchma granted "National Status" to the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, making it the only performing arts organization in the entire country to have been raised from regional to national since the independence of Ukraine in 1991.

"The rise and rise of Ukraine's Odessa Philharmonic, under their dynamic young American chief, Hobart Earle, must rank as one of the unlikeliest stories to have emerged from the classical music world in recent times."

Gramophone Magazine

"Their sound was quite hypnotic - with a rich, creamy texture to rival any crack team from Berlin or Vienna, and quiet playing that grabbed the attention like an urgent whisper."

The Independent, London

"Strings often dominate in East European orchestras and the winds are often indifferent and left to look after themselves. Not so with the Odessa: there is a match of brilliance between the departments which suggest the makings of a great orchestra."

Sunday Times, Perth, Western Australia

"...a Brahms second symphony of white-hot intensity, tensile strength and unflagging sense of purpose."

The Financial Times, London

"Even in such a quintessentially North American score as Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, the Ukrainians managed to sound like anything other than strangers: indeed, I wish the orchestra's stirring rendition of O Canada could have been recorded and presented to the O'Keefe Center."

Toronto Star

"The string's evenness of tone was impressive."

The Washington Post

"What the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra has to offer can be favorably compared almost anywhere in the world. Such precision in a string section is rarely heard. It is even rarer for a big orchestra to play with such balance of tone color at the wildest moments."

Rheinische Post, Duesseldorf

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