Gerard McBurney To Explore Sibelius' Symphony No. 5 In INSIDE THE MUSIC 5/15

Gerard McBurney will explore Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5 in a multimedia Inside the Music presentation, followed by a New York Philharmonic performance of the complete symphony, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Friday, May 15, 2009, at 8:00 p.m., on the Avery Fisher Hall stage.

The presentation will feature commentary and never-before-heard excerpts from early musical sketches and unpublished diary entries of Sibelius that shed light on the thoughts of Finland’s greatest composer. Mr. McBurney who, with photographer Petri Krook, was granted special access in Finland, will illustrate the program with footage of Sibelius’s country home in the changing seasons, showing the sights and sounds that inspired his music.

This presentation of Inside the Music is a Beyond the Score® production by the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra. Gerard McBurney is the creative director of Beyond the Score®.

Born in Helsinki, Finland, Esa-Pekka Salonen studied at the Sibelius Academy and made his conducting debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1979. In 1985 he was appointed chief conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, where he remained for 10 years. From 1985 to 1994 he was principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and since the beginning of the 2008–09 season he has been its principal conductor and artistic advisor. He was director of the Helsinki Festival in 1995–96, and is currently music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a position he will hold until the summer of 2009. He is also artistic director of the Baltic Sea Festival, an annual event in August in Stockholm and across the Baltic Sea region to promote unity and ecological awareness among the countries around the Baltic Sea. Mr. Salonen’s
guest-conducting engagements in the current season include appearances with the NDR Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Salonen is renowned for his interpretations of contemporary music, and has given countless premieres of new works. He has led critically acclaimed festivals of music by Berlioz, Ligeti, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Magnus Lindberg — who will become the New York Philharmonic’s Composer-in-Residence beginning in September 2009. Mr. Salonen’s major awards include the Siena Prize by the Accademia Chigiana in 1993, the first conductor ever to receive it; the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Opera Award in 1996, and the Society’s Conductor Award in 1997. In 1998 he was awarded the rank of Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. In May 2003 he received an honorary doctorate from the Sibelius Academy in Finland
and in 2005 the Helsinki Medal. Musical America named him its 2006 Musician of the Year.

Esa-Pekka Salonen is also a composer whose works have been performed worldwide. The New York Philharmonic commissioned and gave the World Premiere of his Piano Concerto in February 2007, performed by Emanuel Ax and conducted by Mr. Salonen at his last appearances with the New York Philharmonic.

Gerard McBurney is artistic programming advisor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and creative director of Beyond the Score®. A native of Cambridge, England, he studied in England and at the Moscow Conservatory before returning to London, where he worked for many years as a composer, arranger, broadcaster, teacher, and writer. In addition to his original compositions, Mr. McBurney has reconstructed lost and forgotten works by Shostakovich, and has published widely in the field of Russian and Soviet music. For 20 years he created and presented programs on BBC Radio 3, and he has written and researched nearly 30 television documentaries. McBurney was a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and also has acted as advisor and collaborator
with many orchestras and presenters, including Lincoln Center, the Emerson Quartet, the Hallé Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. McBurney was the narrator and director of Inside the Music at the New York Philharmonic on December 14, 2007, for an exploration of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4. Andrey Boreyko conducted the Orchestra in a complete  performance of the work.

Credit Suisse is the Global Sponsor of the New York Philharmonic.

This Inside the Music concert is presented by Mr. and Mrs. Toos N. Daruvala.

Generous support provided by the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation.

Tickets for Inside the Music are $26 to $72. All tickets may be purchased online at nyphil.org or by calling (212) 875-5656, 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily. Tickets may also be purchased at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office, 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.]