Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in an all-Russian program, featuring Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with the Russian-born pianist Yefim Bronfman as soloist, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, Thursday, January 7, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., Friday, January 8, at 8:00 p.m., and Tuesday, January 12, at 7:30 p.m. Mr. Gilbert will also lead the Rachmaninoff symphony on the Rush Hour Concert, Wednesday, January 6, at 6:45 p.m.
“When I first heard him play the Prokofiev Second Piano Concerto I was so blown away; it seemed almost impossible that a human being could play the piano with such epic grandiosity and amazing technical command,” said Alan Gilbert. “It’s really unbelievable to hear and see him play this piece. It’s tremendously exciting that he’s playing this with us in this, my first season.”
About Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, Mr. Gilbert notes that it fits perfectly with the Prokofiev piano concerto because, “while it’s Russian as well, it’s a completely different side of the Russian way of writing music. Prokofiev is at times lyrical but is definitely on the spikier side; Rachmaninoff has a way with melody and of sweeping tunes that is really unparalleled.”
Related Events
• Musical Suppers
The concert on January 8 will be followed by the first of the New York Philharmonic’s Musical Suppers — four post-concert repasts featuring menus created by renowned chefs and hosted by food critic Mimi Sheraton. Alain Ducasse will design the menu for this evening. Upcoming Musical Suppers will take place on February 12 (Jean-Georges Vongerichten); April 16 (Lidia Bastianich); and June 4 (Daniel Boulud). Tickets are $150 per person in addition to a concert ticket; the suppers will take place at Arpeggio Food and Wine in Avery Fisher Hall. For information, call (212) 875-5656 or visit nyphil.org.
• Pre-Concert Talk
New York Philharmonic Artistic Administrator John Mangum will introduce the program one hour before each performance. Tickets are $5 in addition to the concert ticket. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org or (212) 875-5656
• New York Philharmonic Podcast
Mark Travis, a producer for the WFMT Radio Network since 1999 and the producer of the 52-week-per-year nationally syndicated radio series, The New York Philharmonic This Week, will host this podcast. These award-winning previews of upcoming programs — through musical selections as well as interviews with guest artists, conductors, and Orchestra musicians — are available at nyphil.org/podcast or from iTunes.
• National Radio Broadcast
This concert will be broadcast the week of January 18, 2010,* on The New York Philharmonic This Week, a radio concert series syndicated nationally to more than 295 stations by the WFMT Radio Network. The 52-week series, hosted by the Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin, is generously underwritten by The Kaplen Foundation, the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Philharmonic’s corporate partner, MetLife Foundation. The broadcast will be available on the Philharmonic’s Website, nyphil.org. The program is
broadcast locally in the New York metropolitan area on 105.9 FM WQXR on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. *Check local listings for broadcast and program information.
Artists
Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in the 2009–10 season, the first native New Yorker to hold the post. For his inaugural season he has introduced a number of new initiatives: The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Magnus Lindberg; The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence Thomas Hampson; an annual three-week festival; and CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic’s new-music series. He led the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi; will take the musicians on a European tour in January–February 2010; and is conducting performances of world, U.S., and New York premieres. Also in the 2009–10 season Mr. Gilbert becomes the first to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, a position that will include coaching, conducting, and performance master classes. Highlights of Mr. Gilbert’s 2008–09 season with the New York Philharmonic included the November 14, 2008, Bernstein anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall, and a performance with the Juilliard Orchestra, presented by the Philharmonic, featuring Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, Kaddish. In May 2009 he conducted the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic Commission, and in July 2009 he led the New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, and four concerts at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado.
In June 2008 Mr. Gilbert was named conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, following his final concert as its chief conductor and artistic advisor. He has been principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra (NDRSO) since 2004. Mr. Gilbert regularly conducts other leading orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, including the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; The Cleveland Orchestra; Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw; and Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2003 he was named the first music director of Santa Fe Opera, where he served for three seasons.
Born and raised in New York City, Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School; he was a substitute violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra for two seasons, and assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1995 to 1997. In November 2008 he made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Dr. Atomic. His recording of Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance.
Pianist Yefim Bronfman appears regularly with such celebrated ensembles as the New York, Berlin, Israel, Los Angeles, and Vienna philharmonic orchestras, and The Cleveland Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, London’s Philharmonia, Orchestre de Paris, and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He has collaborated with conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph von Dohnányi, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yuri Temirkanov, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman. Summers have regularly taken him to festivals from Aspen and Tanglewood to Bad Kissingen and Verbier. He has also given numerous solo recitals in the leading halls of North America, Europe and the Far East.
Highlights of Mr. Bronfman’s 2009–10 season include performances with the ChicagoSymphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Cleveland orchestras; London Philharmonia; and a recital tour in Japan, Rome, Vienna, Warsaw, and North America, culminating at Carnegie Hall, where he will appear with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená.
Mr. Bronfman received a Grammy Award in 1997 for his recording of the three Bartók piano concertos. His most recent releases include Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; a recital disc, Perspectives; recordings of the Beethoven piano concertos with the Tönhalle Orchestra Zürich, led by David Zinman; Tchaikovsky’s Trio in A minor, with violinist Gil Shaham and cellist Truls Mørk; and a Schubert/Mozart disc with the Zukerman Chamber Players.
Yefim Bronfman was born in Tashkent, in the Soviet Union, and immigrated to Israel in 1973, making his international debut two years later with Zubin Mehta and the Montreal Symphony. He made his New York Philharmonic debut in May l978. In 1991 he received the Avery Fisher Prize. Mr. Bronfman last appeared with the New York Philharmonic in September 2008, performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, conducted by Lorin Maazel. He will perform the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 with the New York Philharmonic, led by Alan Gilbert, on the Europe/Winter 2010 tour to Europe in January– February 2010.
Repertoire
Following the premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1913, the writer Viacheslav Karatygin commented on the unruly audience: “Ten years from now the audience will atone for yesterday’s hissing with unanimous applause for the now famous composer with the European reputation.” Karatygin’s prediction, although off by a few years, was entirely accurate: by the late 1920s the concerto was generally acknowledged as an important step in the composer’s musical evolution. It is more than twice as long as his Concerto No. 1 and its solo part is much more challenging. Further, it seemed remarkable, Karatygin noted, for the “enormous reserve of health, robustness, and merriment which overflow from the music.” This concerto was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in January 1948 led by Charles Munch, with Zadel Skolovsky as
soloist, and most recently, in March 2003 with Evgeny Kissin and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich.
Pianist, conductor, and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff moved from Moscow to Dresden in 1906 to find more time to compose, feeling that his active professional life and many social obligations in Russia prevented him from composing. With his newly found solitude, he began working on the Symphony No. 2 that year, completed it the following year, and conducted its premiere in St. Petersburg the next. More than a decade earlier, his First Symphony had met with blistering criticism; his Second, in contrast, was favorably reviewed and is still one of Rachmaninoff’s most popular works. The Second Symphony entered the Philharmonic’s repertoire in 1911, when it was performed by the New York Symphony Society (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s New York Philharmonic) led by Walter Damrosch. It was performed most recently in November 2007, led by Semyon Bychkov.
Alan Gilbert’s appearance is made possible through the Daisy and Paul Soros Endowment Fund.
Yefim Bronfman’s appearance is made possible through the Lawrence and Ronnie Ackman Family Fund for Distinguished Pianists.
Programs of the New York Philharmonic are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Single tickets for these performances are $43 to $124. Tickets for the Rush Hour Concert are $37 to $85. Tickets for Pre-Concert Talks are $5. Tickets for Open Rehearsals are $16. All tickets may be purchased online at nyphil.org or by calling (212) 875-5656, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets may also be purchased at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office or the AlIce Tully Hall Box Office at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 65th Street. The Box Office opens at 10:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and at noon on Sunday. On performance evenings, the Box Office closes one-half hour after performance time; other evenings it closes at 6:00 p.m. A limited number of $12 tickets for select concerts may be available through the Internet for students within 10 days of the performance, or in person the day of. Valid identification is required. To determine ticket availability, call the Philharmonic’s Customer Relations Department at (212) 875-5656. [Ticket prices subject to change.]
For press tickets, call Lanore Carr in the New York Philharmonic Communications Department at (212) 875-5714, or e-mail her at carrl@nyphil.org.
