Soprano Hillevi Martinpelto, a resident of Stockholm, concentrates most of her work this season in Sweden, where she sings regularly with the Royal Opera. Recent operatic engagements, at home and abroad, have included Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser; Desdemona in Verdi's Otello; La Contessa in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro; Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore; Alice Ford in Verdi's Falstaff; and the Marschallin in R. Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier in Stockholm. She also has sung Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin in Leipzig; Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera in Gothenburg; Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly in Berlin; Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni in Dresden, Menorca, and Hong Kong; and Vitellia in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito at the Maggio Musicale in Florence and in Munich.
Ms. Martinpelto has given Lieder recitals and sung in concert performances of Lohengrin, Weber's Der Freischütz, La clemenza di Tito, and Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Edinburgh Festival, as well as concert performances of La clemenza di Tito with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London and New York. Her appearances with orchestra have included Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony in Amsterdam; Mahler's Symphony No. 2 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Sir Simon Rattle's valedictory concerts as its music director; Mendelssohn's Elijah in Paris; Handel's Messiah in London at the BBC Proms; Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Berlin and at the Tanglewood Music Festival; Schumann's Paradise and the Peri in Torino; and Sibelius's Luonnatar with the Hallé Orchestra, Manchester.
Hillevi Martinpelto trained in Stockholm and made her debut at the Royal Opera as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly. Her principal recordings are on the Deutsche Grammophon and EMI labels. These concerts represent her New York Philharmonic debut.
American baritone Thomas Hampson has performed in the world's preeminent concert halls and opera houses and with many of today's most renowned musicians and orchestras; he also maintains an active interest in teaching, music research, and technology. An important interpreter of German romantic song, he is known as a leading proponent of the study of American song through his Hampsong Foundation, which he founded in 2003 to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding. In the 2009-10 season Mr. Hampson becomes the first Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic as well as the Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence. In these roles he will perform three programs with the Orchestra, appear on the Orchestra's European tour, give a recital in AlIce Tully Hall, and present three lectures entitled "Listening to Thought" as part of the Orchestra's Insights Series.
Much of Mr. Hampson's 2009-10 season is devoted to his "Song of America" project. In collaboration with the Library of Congress, Mr. Hampson is performing recitals and presenting master classes, educational activities, exhibitions, and broadcasts across the country and through a new interactive online resource, www.songofamerica.net; as part of the project, he has just released a new album, Wondrous Free - Song of America II, on his own label, Thomas Hampson Media. Other engagements include Mendelssohn's
Elijah, led by Kurt Masur in Leipzig; Verdi's Ernani and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin with Zurich Opera; Verdi's La traviata at The Metropolitan Opera; solo recitals throughout the United States and in many European capitals; and the galas of the Vienna Staatsoper and the new Winspear Opera House in Dallas.
Raised in Spokane, Washington, Thomas Hampson has released more than 150 albums that have received many honors, including a Grammy Award, two Edison Prizes, and the Grand Prix du Disque. He has been named Kammersänger of the Vienna Staatsoper; Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France; and Special Advisor to the Study and Performance of Music in America by Dr. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress. Other accolades include the Austrian Medal of Honor in Arts and Sciences (in 2004), and the Edison Life Achievement Award (2005). Mr. Hampson last appeared with the New York Philharmonic on September 20, 2001, in Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem, led by Kurt Masur in memory of 9/11.
Repertoire
Mozart's three-movement Symphony No. 38, Prague, while actually written in Vienna, was premiered in Prague in January 1787, only a month after its completion. Mozart had arrived in the Czech city less than one month after the first Prague performance of his latest opera, The Marriage of Figaro, and touched by the universal delight expressed by the people of Prague for Figaro, offered the city his newest symphony, which he conducted at its premiere. The New York Philharmonic first performed the appropriately nicknamed Prague Symphony in January 1866, led by Carl Bergmann, and most recently, while on tour in West Palm Beach, Florida, in February 2003, led by Lorin Maazel.
Alexander Zemlinsky was a friend to Schoenberg and Mahler, and his music, like much of theirs, is sensual and deeply expressive. The Lyric Symphony of 1922-23, his best known and most performed work, is akin to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde - a work in the form of an orchestral song cycle, but with the scope and weight of a symphony. Set to texts from the work of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, and sung by solo baritone and soprano in alternation, its seven connected movements explore an emotional journey of love, moving from yearning to attainment and then to a final parting. The work has been programmed by the Philharmonic only once before, in December 1979, with soprano Johanna Meier, baritone Dale Duesing, and James Levine conducting.
