School Notes: School of Music
May/June 2016

Remembering a longtime Philharmonia director

Otto-Werner Mueller, professor of conducting at the Yale School of Music and music director of the Yale Philharmonia from 1973 to 1987, passed away at his home on February 25. He was 89. Dean Robert Blocker said, “Under Otto-Werner Mueller’s artistic direction, the Yale Philharmonia emerged as one of the nation’s leading university orchestras. His accomplishments with orchestras and his talent for nurturing young conductors have influenced the careers and lives of his students, and indeed our musical landscape.”

In addition to attracting enthusiastic audiences on campus, Mueller and the Yale Philharmonia recorded regularly for NPR’s Performance Today, appeared frequently in New York City, and for two seasons served as the resident orchestra of the Evian (France) Music Festival. Mueller was widely regarded as the most important conducting pedagogue of the last 50 years; his students included Jahja Ling ’80MusAM, ’85MusAD; Edward Cumming ’84MusM, ’85MusAM, ’92MusAD; and Alasdair Neale ’85MusM, ’86MusAM, to name a few. 

Kudos for Yale Opera students, alumni

Students and alumni of the Yale Opera program performed in Warsaw, Poland, as part of the 20th annual Beethoven Easter Festival. The program on March 18 featured one-act operas by Vaughan Williams and Holst with Evanna Chiew ’16ArtA, soprano; Nicole Percifield ’15ArtA, soprano; Kathleen Reveille ’16MusM, mezzo-soprano; and Eric Barry ’10MusM, ’11ArtA, tenor; along with the Warsaw Philharmonic Women’s Chamber Choir and the Warsaw Chamber Opera Sinfonietta. Łukasz Borowicz conducted. On March 25, David Pershall ’10MusM, ’11ArtA sang the baritone solo in Krzysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion, conducted by the composer. Penderecki was a member of the YSM composition faculty in the 1970s.

David Pershall and soprano Claudia Rosenthal ’08, ’14MusM, each won the top prize in the George London Foundation Awards competition. The annual event for young American and Canadian opera singers held the final round of this year’s competition February 19 in New York City. Of the 23 finalists from an initial field of 85, Rosenthal and Pershall were among the six awarded grand prizes of $10,000 each.