When
Leopold Stokowski hailed Jose Serebrier as "the greatest master
of orchestral balance", the 22-year-old musician was the Associate
Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra in New York. His Carnegie
Hall debut was hailed by the American press for the "great
intensity, precision, and clarity" of his music making. Said
The New York Times: "Jose Serebrier, who is at least 50 years
younger than Stokowski, let the music storm the heavens and sing
with great emotional vitality." By the time Serebrier had made
his debut recording for RCA (4th Symphony of Ives) with the London
Philharmonic Orchestra, he was winning accolades from music critics
and the public all over the world. Hi Fi News, the British publication,
insisted that: "Serebrier's recording of the Ives Symphony
is one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the gramophone."
In the U.S. High Fidelity/Musical America had this to say: "We
had renditions by Stokowski and other great conductors. Now Serebrier
has recorded the work with the London Philharmonic, and his performance
is unquestionably the clearest, most precise, and the most decisive
we have on disc. The clarity is quite extraordinary."
After five years as Associate Conductor of Stokowski's American Symphony Orchestra, Serebrier accepted an invitation from George Szell and the Rockefeller Foundation to become "Composer-in-Residence" of the Cleveland Orchestra, a position he held for several seasons. George Szell discovered Serebrier when he won the Ford Foundation American Conductors Award (together with James Levine). Szell, a member of the Jury, invited both conductors to join the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine as an Assistant Conductor and Serebrier as the Composer-in-Residence. Since then, Jose Serebrier has been conducting most major orchestras in America and Europe. Recently he made enormously successful debuts with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and made a triumphant return to the Cleveland Orchestra. Wrote The Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Jose Serebrier made a triumphant return to Cleveland...it was an exhilarating evening... Serebrier shapes an interpretation of controlled excitement, and the players perform magnificently for him. With the Cleveland Orchestra at his fingertips, the exuberant conductor seemed to be having the time of his life. He threw himself into the music unselfcontiously. In the slow movement he abandoned the baton and conducted from the heart. Serebrier's enthusiasm communicated brilliantly, and the orchestra played with enjoyment. The Tchaikowsky Fourth finale was so hair-raising that the large crowd burst into spontaneous cheers."
Jose Serebrier has become one of the most recorded conductors of his generation, with more than 180 releases. He has recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, SWR Symphony of Baden-Baden & Freiburg, Oslo Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony, Rome (RAI) Symphony,Sicilian Symphony, Belgian Radio Symphony, Czech State Philharmonic of Brno, Barcelona Symphony, and the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide Symphonies among others.
He records for RCA Victor, Decca Laserdiscs, Chandos, ASV, BIS, NAXOS, RR, Dinemec Classics among others, and has made videos for Decca and Kultur. Serebrier conducts Prokofiev, Beethoven and Tchaikowsky released on VHS in America on the Kultur label, has been shown over 50 times on the Arts and Entertainment network television in the U.S., and well as on television stations around the world. The video, which includes Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky" cantata at the Sydney Opera, Beethoven's Eroica Symphony and the Tchaikowsky First Symphony, has won numerous awards. Serebrier's recording of the Ives' 4th Symphony won a Grammy nomination. His recording of the Mendelssohn symphonies won the Music Retailers Association Award for Best Orchestral Recording, and the first of his series of Shostakovich's Film Suites for RCA won the Deutsche Schallplatten Award for Best orchestral Recording.Soundstage Internet magazine selected Serebrier's recording of Scheherazade with the London Philharmonic Orchestra as the Best Audiophile Recording of 2000. Gramophone magazine featured Serebrier's new Naxos recording of music by William Schuman, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, as an August 2001 "Selection of the month".The British Music & Musicians magazine wrote: "In over 40 years of listening to records and going to concerts, we have never heard more fully realized, more purely musical and more completely satisfying performances of the Mendelssohn symphonies than that sterling artist Jose Serebrier has given us. His is the only performance of Mendelssohn's "Scottish" Symphony which makes it stand along side the "Italian". He is the only conductor who has made complete sense of the "Scottish" and has demonstrated that it is indeed a great work. The main problem is the Finale, of which even conductors like Klemperer or Karajan -among others- have been unable to give coherent performances. Serebrier reveals a genuinely structural unity in this work which has astonished us. Serebrier's performance is fully alive."CD Review found Serebrier's recording of Tchaikowsky's Romeo & Juliet to be "the best in the catalogue. It receives a really fantastic performance. The Montagues versus Capulets feud projects itself right through the drama in thrilling fashion and the love music penetrates the senses as never before."
Serebrier's international tours in recent years have included an American tour with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, two Latin American tours with the Juilliard Orchestra, an American and a South American tour with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, a tour of the U.S. East Coast with the American Composers Orchestra and many tours of Australia and New Zealand.In 1985 Serebrier organized "Festival Miami". As it's Artistic Director, he commissioned prominent composers such as Elliott Carter (String Quartet No. 4), gave the American premieres of a Liszt opera, a Wagner overture and many others. During his Miami festivals he conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the American Symphony and others. Serebrier has received the coveted Alice M. Ditson Award from Columbia University for his persistent programming of new music.As a composer, Serebrier has won most important awards, including two Guggenheims (as the youngest in that Foundation's history, at age 19), Rockefeller Foundation grants, commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Harvard Musical Association, the B.M.I. Award, the Koussevitzky Foundation Award, etc.
Born in Uruguay of Russian and Polish parents, Serebrier has composed more than 100 works, published by Peer Music, Kalmus and Peters Corp. His First Symphony was premiered by Leopold Stokowski (who also premiered two other works of his), and several of his compositions have become highly successful ballets with companies such as the Joffrey Ballet and the Pittsburgh Ballet. His music has been recorded by conductors such as John Eliot Gardiner, among others.Serebrier's orchestrations have been highly successful. His rendition of Tchaikowsky's Andante Cantabile has been recorded several times, and is published, like most of Serebrier's own compositions, by Peer Music. His recent orchestration of the songs by Grieg have been performed world-wide and recorded. It is published by Peters, Grieg's original publishers.To celebrate the centenary of George Gershwin, the composer's descendants commissioned Serebrier to orchestrate the Three Piano Preludes and the Lullaby (originally for string quartet), and to record them with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. These orchestrations are published by Warner Bros., Gershwin's publishers.Several new recordings by Jose Serebrier are being released in the year 2001: on Naxos, a , a CD of music by the young American composer Carter Pann with the Czech State Philharmonic of Brno, and a . BIS is launching the first of the series SEREBRIER CONDUCTS TCHAIKOWSKY with the Bamberg Symphony, with the Fourth Symphony and Francesca da Rimini.
The French music critic Michel Faure has recently completed a new biography of Jose Serebrier, to be published by L'Harmattan in France and Canada in December2001.
©HNH International Ltd. 2001. All rights reserved.
more informations: http://www.joseserebrier.com/
