Lang Lang to Perform Mozart with Alan Gilbert and the NY Philharmonic, 10/21

Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in a one-night-only all- Mozart program featuring the Piano Concertos Nos. 17 and 24, with Lang Lang as soloist, and Overture to The Magic Flute, Tuesday, October 21, 2014, at 7:30 p.m.

"Lang Lang brings a completely personal quality to everything he performs," Alan Gilbert has said. "Mozart's music is uniquely challenging to the performer -- it has to be stylish and shaped, but ultimately human -- but there's nothing more fun or gratifying. You have to tell the story of the music. The story of Mozart is everybody's story, and it's an important one."

Lang Lang has performed with the New York Philharmonic 82 times, including his Philharmonic debut in 2002; he most recently appeared with the Orchestra on the EUROPE / WINTER 2012 tour, conducted by Alan Gilbert.

Artists

Music Director Alan Gilbert began his New York Philharmonic tenure in September 2009, the first native New Yorker in the post. He and the Philharmonic have introduced the positions of The Marie-Jose?e Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in- Residence, and the Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; and the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today's music by a wide range of contemporary and modern composers inaugurated in spring 2014. As New York magazine wrote, "The Philharmonic and its music director Alan Gilbert have turned themselves into a force of permanent revolution."

In the 2014-15 season Alan Gilbert conducts the U.S. Premiere of Unsuk Chin's Clarinet Concerto, a Philharmonic co-commission, alongside Mahler's First Symphony; La Dolce Vita: The Music of Italian Cinema; Verdi's Requiem; a staging of Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake, featuring Oscar winner Marion Cotillard; World Premieres; a CONTACT! program; and Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. He concludes The Nielsen Project - the multi-year initiative to perform and record the Danish composer's symphonies and concertos, the first release of which was named by The New York Times as among the Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012 - and presides over the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. His Philharmonic- tenure highlights include acclaimed productions of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, Jana?c?ek's The Cunning Little Vixen, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson, and Philharmonic 360 at Park Avenue Armory; World Premieres by Magnus Lindberg, John Corigliano, Christopher Rouse, and others; Bach's B-minor Mass and Ives's Fourth Symphony; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside the film; Mahler's Second Symphony, Resurrection, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; and eight international tours.

Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Hamburg's NDR Symphony Orchestra, Alan Gilbert regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. His 2014-15 appearances include the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Opera, and The Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams's Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award. Rene?e Fleming's recent Decca recording Poe?mes, on which he conducted, received a 2013 Grammy Award. His recordings have received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard School, where he holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. In May 2010 Mr. Gilbert received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music and in December 2011, Columbia University's Ditson Conductor's Award for his "exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary music." In 2014 he was elected to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Lang Lang performed with Pla?cido Domingo in the 2014 World Cup concert in Rio de Janeiro; with Metallica at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards; for four billion people globally during the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony; on the last night of the BBC Proms at London's Royal Albert Hall; and in the Liszt 200th birthday concert, broadcast live to more than 500 movie theaters throughout the U.S. and Europe. The pianist has formed musical partnerships with conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, and Simon Rattle, and artists outside classical music including dubstep dancer Marquese "nonstop" Scott and jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. With his Sony ambassadorship, Lang Lang brought Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7 to the sound track of the multi-million-selling computer game Gran Turismo 5 and 6. He has been featured on every major television network and in magazines worldwide, and has performed for international dignitaries including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon, four U.S. presidents, former German President Koehler, former French President Sarkozy, and French President Hollande. In 2011 Lang Lang performed for President Obama and former Chinese President Hu Jintao at a White House State Dinner, as well as at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace. As a United Nations Messenger of Peace and through his own Lang Lang International Music Foundation, the pianist is an advocate for global education. In 2009 he was included in Time magazine's TIME 100 as a symbol of the youth of China and its future. Lang Lang is a cultural ambassador for Shenzhen and Shenyang. His honors include being named one of the World Economic Forum's 250 Young Global Leaders, honorary doctorates from the Royal College of Music and Manhattan School of Music, the highest prize awarded by China's Ministry of Culture, Germany's Order of Merit, and France's Medal of the Order of Arts and Letters. Lang Lang made his Philharmonic debut in May 2002, performing Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Christoph Eschenbach; he most recently traveled with Alan Gilbert and the Orchestra during its 2012 tour of Europe, performing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Barto?k's Piano Concerto No. 2 in Luxembourg, Paris, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, and London.

Repertoire

After Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) moved to Vienna in 1781, he earned much of his income through public concerts in which he played his own music. His popularity with Viennese concertgoers can thus be gauged from the number of piano concertos he wrote each year. The peak was in 1784, when he produced six new concertos, including the Piano Concerto No. 17, one of only six works in the genre published during the composer's lifetime .The concerto may not have actually been written for Mozart's own use, however, but rather at the request of Gottfried von Ployer for his daughter, Barbara (often called Babette) - one of the most engaging and cultivated members of Viennese society, and one of Mozart's most gifted pupils in both piano and composition. It is said that at that time Mozart had a pet starling who could whistle the first five measures of the concerto - though it is unknown which came first, the starling's talents or the concerto. Igor Stravinsky led the Philharmonic's first presentation of this concerto, with soloist Beveridge Webster, at Carnegie Hall in January 1937; Jeffrey Kahane performed and conducted the Orchestra's most recent presentation of the concerto in February 2006.

A freemason, Mozart completed his opera famously filled with Masonic symbolism, The Magic Flute, in 1791. Utilizing a libretto by fellow Mason Emanuel Schilkaneder, which drew upon popular German and Austrian fairy tales, the Singspiel (a popular style that featured both spoken dialogue and singing) follows Tamino and his traveling companion Papageno, who rescue the Pamina from the clutches of her evil mother, the Queen of the Night. Finished only a few days before the opera's premiere, the Overture is a wonderfully energetic preview of the adventure to come, weaving story and music together to form an unusually unified masterpiece. The Magic Flute was ultimately one of Mozart's greatest successes, but the composer died less than two months after its premiere at Schikaneder's Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, and the piece would be his final complete work. Ureli Corelli Hill, founding President of the Philharmonic Society of New York, conducted the Orchestra's first presentation of the Overture in November 1843 at the Apollo Rooms; its most recent performance was in April 2011, led by Alan Gilbert.

Mozart composed his Piano Concerto No. 24 in Vienna in 1786, barely a month before the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro. It is widely considered to be among the composer's finest achievements, completed during one of his most creatively rich periods, when he was not only finishing Figaro but also working on several other pieces including Piano Concertos Nos. 22 and 23. The darkness of the Piano Concerto No. 24 and its minor key make it stand apart from its immediate predecessors, and it calls for the largest orchestra of his piano concertos, giving it a uniquely symphonic texture. It was premiered in April 1786 at Vienna's Burgtheater. The New York Philharmonic first performed this concerto in October 1944, with Robert Casadesus as soloist and Artur Rodzin?ski conducting, and most recently in March 2010, with Jeffrey Kahane leading from the keyboard.

Tickets for these performances start at $55. Tickets may be purchased online at nyphil.org or by calling (212) 875-5656, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday; 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturday; and noon to 5:00 p.m. Sunday. Tickets may also be purchased at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office. 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. To determine ticket availability, call the Philharmonic's Customer Relations Department at (212) 875-5656. [Ticket prices subject to change.]

Pictured: Lang Lang performing with the New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee.