Music Director Designate ALAN GILBERT Returns To Lead The New York Philharmonic In Two Programs, 4/30 - 5/9

Alan Gilbert, who will become Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2009, returns to New York to lead two weeks of programs with the Orchestra. The first series of concerts — Thursday, April 30, 2009, at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, May 1 and 2, and 8:00 p.m., and Tuesday, May 5, at 7:30 p.m. — will comprise Dvo?ák’s The Golden Spinning Wheel; Saint-Saëns’s Violin Concerto No. 3, with Joshua Bell as soloist; and Martin?’s Symphony No. 4.

The second set of concerts, Thursday, May 7, at 7:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, May 8–9 at 8:00 p.m. — will feature the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic Commission, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, baritone Russell Braun in his New York Philharmonic debut, and the New York Choral Artists, Joseph Flummerfelt, director. Steven Stucky will discuss the work on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall one hour before each concert. On this program Mr. Gilbert will also conduct his first Mahler symphony with the New York Philharmonic: the Blumine movement (originally included by Mahler in his First Symphony) and the complete Symphony No. 1.

Mr. Gilbert last conducted the Philharmonic in November 2008, when he led the
Orchestra in an all-Bernstein program at Carnegie Hall as part of the festival, Bernstein:
The Best of All Possible Worlds. He also conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in works by
Bernstein and Beethoven in a concert presented by the New York Philharmonic. He made
his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut in October 2008 with John Adams’s Dr. Atomic,
and has recently been named the first to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical
Studies at The Juilliard School.

Related events:

Pre-Concert Talks (April 30, May 1–2 and 5)
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and university professor at Adelphi University Paul Moravec 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.

Hear & Now Pre-Concert Talks (May 7–9)
Steven Stucky will discuss Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, one hour before each concert on the Avery Fisher Hall stage. Admission with concert ticket.

New York Philharmonic Offstage at Barnes & Noble
Violinist Joshua Bell will talk about his life and work at Barnes & Noble on Wednesday, April 29, at 7:30 p.m. at Lincoln Square. Philharmonic pianist Jonathan Feldman will accompany him in some musical selections. Hosted by a radio personality from 96.3 FM WQXR. There will be a CD signing at the conclusion.

New York Philharmonic Podcast
Elliott Forrest, Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, producer, and afternoon host of 96.3 FM WQXR, will host the podcast of the first concerts. 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 the second. These 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 May 11, 2009,* 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 WFMT’s Kerry Frumkin, 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 96.3 FM WQXR on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m.
*Check local listings for broadcast and program information.

Alan Gilbert will become Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in the 2009–10 season, the only native New Yorker to hold the post. In the same season he will become 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. Mr. Gilbert was chief conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra from 2000 to 2008, and was subsequently named its conductor laureate. He has been principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra (NDRSO) since 2004. Mr. Gilbert made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 2001 as the Diamond American Conductor, and has returned to conduct the Orchestra numerous
times, including during the acclaimed Philharmonic Festival: Charles Ives — An American Original in Context in 2004, and in March 2008, when he led the World Premiere of Marc Neikrug’s Quintessence: Symphony No. 2, a New York Philharmonic Commission. In May he will lead the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic Commission. Other 2008–09 highlights have included his Metropolitan Opera conducting debut with John Adams’s Dr. Atomic, and returns to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic.

Mr. Gilbert’s 2007–08 season included his Vienna Staatsoper debut; concerts with Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music — his alma mater — at the Kimmel Center and Carnegie Hall; and return engagements with The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris. In June 2008 he completed his tenure with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra with a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. Mr. Gilbert’s parents, Yoko Takebe and Michael Gilbert, both violinists in the New York Philharmonic (Mr. Gilbert is now retired), were his first teachers. Born and raised in New York City, the younger Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and The
Juilliard School; while at Curtis he was a substitute violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra. He also led Juilliard’s Pre-College Symphony.

Highlights of violinist Joshua Bell’s 2008–09 season include the release of Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, recorded with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, on Sony Classical; his return to his alma mater — Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music as a senior lecturer — and his performance on the sound track of the Paramount Vantage film Defiance. His 2009 activities also include a U.S. recital tour with pianist Jeremy Denk; a European tour with the Minnesota Orchestra; and a tour of Budapest and Vienna with the Camerata Academia, followed by recitals in London, Geneva, Buenos Aires, and Sao Paulo. Other performances include the Los Angeles Philharmonic and at festivals including Tanglewood, Verbier, and at the Hollywood Bowl. Joshua Bell came to national attention at age 14 in his orchestral debut with Riccardo Muti and The
Philadelphia Orchestra. A Carnegie Hall debut, the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a recording contract followed. He has since recorded more than 30 CDs since first signing, at age 18, with London/Decca. He joined the Sony Classical- Masterworks label in 1996. Recent recordings include John Corigliano’s The Red Violin Concerto and The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Billboard named Romance of the Violin the 2004 Classical CD of the Year, and Mr. Bell, the Classical Artist of the Year. He received a Mercury Prize and a Grammy Award for his recording of John Nicholas Maw’s Violin Concerto, and a Gramophone Award for his recording of the Barber and Walton Violin Concertos and Bloch’s Baal Shem. He has collaborated with numerous artists and on film scores, including the Oscar-winning sound track for The Red Violin.

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, winner of The Metropolitan Opera’s 2007 Beverly Sills Award, has performed throughout the world. Her 2008–09 season includes a recital at London’s Wigmore Hall; her first Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; a debut with the Kansas City Symphony in her home town; and a major international tour for the launch of her debut aria recording, Furore, of Handel arias (Virgin/EMI). She also sings her first Béatrice in Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict with Houston Grand Opera, and again in concert performances in Paris with Sir Colin Davis before she returns to the Paris Opéra in Mozart’s Idomeneo. Other highlights include a concert with James Levine and The Metropolitan Orchestra at Carnegie Hall,
and a second appearance at the Royal Opera House for her revival of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia.

In the 2007–08 season Ms. DiDonato made three role debuts. An admired interpreter of Handel, she performed and recorded the title role in Alcina (DG/Archiv) and the heroic lead in Ariodante (Geneva); and sang the bel canto hero, Roméo, in Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Paris Opéra. She also performed in her two signature Rossini operas — La Cenerentola in Barcelona, and Il barbiere di Siviglia for her debut with Lyric Opera of Chicago. She also gave recitals at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, Lincoln Center, and in Philadelphia, concluding her season with a return to Madrid’s Opera Real as Idamante in Mozart’s Idomeneo. Her discography encompasses recital discs of both Spanish and American music, world-premiere operas, and numerous Handel projects. Ms.
DiDonato last appeared with the New York Philharmonic in January 2006 performing Mozart’s Mass in C major, K.317, Coronation, led by Music Director Lorin Maazel.

Baritone Russell Braun has performed at The Metropolitan Opera; London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Paris Opéra; Vienna Staatsoper; Chicago’s Lyric Opera; Los Angeles Opera; Milan’s Teatro alla Scala; and at the Salzburg and Glyndebourne Festivals. His appearances have included the title roles in Britten’s Billy Budd, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande. He has also has performed as Papageno in Mozart’s The Magic Flute and as Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, among other roles. Mr. Braun’s 2008–09 season includes concerts, recitals, and operatic appearances, beginning with his role debut as Prince Andrei in the Canadian Opera Company’s
production of Prokofiev’s War and Peace in his home town of Toronto, Ontario. Other activities include Papageno with L’Opéra National de Paris; tours to Japan with the Salzburg Festival as Guglielmo in Mozart’s Cosí fan Tutte; and the title role in Eugene Onegin with Ottawa’s Opera Lyra. He performed Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Calgary Philharmonic as part of the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth, and, in May 2009 he returns to Toronto for an Off Centre Music Series concert. His discography of awardwinning recordings includes the 2008 Grammy-nominated Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Dorian); 2007 JUNO winner Mozart Arie e duetti (CBC), a 2007 JUNO winner; and 2006 Juno nominee, Winterreise (CBC). This is his New York Philharmonic debut.

New York Choral Artists, a professional chorus founded and directed by Joseph Flummerfelt, has been heard with the New York Philharmonic in recent seasons performing repertoire ranging from Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time to Mozart’s Requiem. Among the memorable collaborations with the New York Philharmonic was the concert on September 20, 2001, of Brahms’s A German Requiem, commemorating the events of September 11, which was broadcast nationally on both television and radio.

The chorus opened the Philharmonic’s 2002–03 subscription season performing the world premiere of John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic with Lincoln Center’s Great Performers. Other highlights of the group’s history include participation in the 1995 New York Philharmonic concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, and a televised performance of the 1986 Statue of Liberty Concert in Central Park. The chorus performed Verdi’s Requiem with the Philharmonic in March 2006, conducted by Lorin Maazel, and in the October 2006 and February 2009 Philharmonic concerts of Ravel’s one-act opera,
L’Enfant et les sortilèges, also conducted by Mr. Maazel.

Composer Steven Stucky, whose Second Concerto for Orchestra received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Music, has received commissions from countless orchestras, performing groups, individuals, and foundations at home and abroad. Recent works include Radical Light, commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007; and Rhapsodies, a joint commission by the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Proms, and first performed there by the New York Philharmonic in August 2008. At the end of September 2008, August 3, 1964 — a large-scale oratorio, commissioned to commemorate the centenary of Lyndon B. Johnson — received its world premiere by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Stucky was appointed composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Philharmonic by André Previn in 1988, and is now consulting composer for new
music. He is active as a writer, lecturer, and educator, and has hosted the New York Philharmonic’s Hear & Now series since its inception.

(April 30, May 1–2 and 5): In 1896, Antonín Dvo?ák composed a series of four tone poems based on the writings of the Czech national writer Karel Jaromír Erben, whose poetry on subjects from folklore provided the inspiration for Dvo?ák’s colorful orchestral tales. The third of the series is The Golden Spinning Wheel, a fairy tale with some familiar elements: a young girl destined to marry a king, an evil stepmother who stands in the way, and a magical spinning wheel that sets things right again. Dvo?ák’s orchestration spins magic of its own as it weaves the whole story into a rich musical tapestry, complete with happy ending. The only previous Philharmonic performances of The Golden Spinning Wheel were in April 1932, led by Sir Thomas Beecham.

(April 30, May 1–2 and 5): The Violin Concerto No. 3 by Camille Saint-Saëns has proven to be among the composer’s most popular and highly regarded works, and it ranks as the finest of his three violin concertos. Success came easily upon the work’s 1881 world premiere in Paris, with the celebrated violinist Pablo de Sarasate — for whom Saint-Saëns composed the concerto — serving as soloist. Completed the previous year, the Violin Concerto No. 3 bears some similarities to Saint-Saëns’s earlier Piano Concerto No. 4 and Morceau de concert for violin. The New York Philharmonic gave its first performance of the work in 1894 under the direction of Anton Seidl, with Eugene Ysaÿe as soloist. Most recently it was performed in May 2007 led by Lorin Maazel, with Julian
Rachlin as soloist.

(April 30, May 1–2 and 5): The music of the prolific Czech composer Bohuslav Martin? is unified by a clear and unmistakable voice, characterized by rhythmic vitality and elegant handling of deceptively simple materials. Concerning the challenges of composing a symphony in the 20th century, he wrote: “What I maintain as my deepest conviction is the essential nobility of thoughts and things which are quite simple and which, not explained in high-sounding words and abstruse phrases, still hold an ethical and human significance.” His joyful Symphony No. 4, premiered in 1945, reveals Martin?’s unique grace and facility at realizing this ideal. The only previous Philharmonic performances of the symphony were in January 1986, with Erich Leinsdorf conducting.

(May 7–9): Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, is an approximately 30-minute cantata for mezzo-soprano, baritone, large chorus, and large orchestra. The work sets a wide and diverse selection of texts from many traditions and cultures — from Rainer Maria Rilke and Pablo Neruda to the medieval mystic Marguerite Porete to traditional Navajo poetry — that together form ameditation on human experience. The composer explains: “I am always worried about saying that the piece is ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious,’ which suggests one must listen a certain way. It is more about being a fully developed human being. I chose the texts because I felt they were the utterances of a fully realized being; beautiful words spoken by people
across time and across countries and across languages. We live in a very intolerant age; the less space we have to live in, the less tolerance we have. The ways points of view are expressed in language are more important than the essence of what is expressed. It was wonderful to work with these poems from that perspective.” These concerts mark the world premiere of The World in Flower. The work was composed for Mr. Lieberson’s wife, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Peter Lieberson was born in New York City in 1946; his principal composition teachers were Milton Babbitt, Charles Wuorinen, Donald Martino, and Martin Boykan. After musical studies at Columbia University, he moved to Boulder, Colorado, to study with Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist master. He came to national attention in 1983 with the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 1, composed for Peter Serkin and commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for its centennial. From 1984 to 1988 he taught at Harvard University, and subsequently became international director of Shambhala Training, a meditation and cultural program in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Philharmonic gave the New York Premiere of Mr. Lieberson’s Red Garuda in November 2004, with James Conlon conducting and Peter Serkin as piano soloist. In 1996 the New York Philharmonic premiered Mr. Lieberson’s Fire, led by Leonard Slatkin, which the Orchestra had commissioned as part of its 150th-Anniversary celebration.

(May 7–9): Gustav Mahler began working on the ideas that grew into his Symphony No. 1 in 1876, when he was still a young man. The years between the completion of the work and its premiere in 1889 (with the Budapest Philharmonic, conducted by Mahler himself) were ones of artistic growth and experimentation, often marked by a preoccupation with the meaning of life. At first Mahler called the work a Symphonic Poem in Two Parts; he later gave its sections programmatic titles, such as “From the Days of Youth” and “Human Comedy,” partially in an effort to help audiences
comprehend the symphony’s vast scope. Mahler eventually jettisoned descriptive titles and simply called it Symphony in D, with the added subtitle Titan, a reference to a novel by Jean Paul. This was when the work comprised five movements, including a second movement entitled Blumine. After further revisions, however, the composer removed the subtitle as well as Blumine (although that Andante movement would re-emerge in 1966, to be occasionally reinstated into the First Symphony). The Symphony No. 1 marked a radical expansion of symphonic ambition and content, and is highly dramatic, full of turmoil and struggle, moving from pastoral interludes and scenes of nature to a sardonic funeral march, and on to a stirring finale that affirms the ceaseless energies of life itself. The Philharmonic gave the work’s U.S. Premiere on December 16, 1909, conducted by
the composer, and performed it most recently on the New York Philharmonic 2006 Tour of Italy, led by Lorin Maazel. Blumine has been included in Philharmonic performances of the Symphony No. 1 twice: in February 1971, with Seiji Ozawa conducting, and most recently in September 1988, led by Zubin Mehta.

The April 30, May 1–2 and 5 concerts are dedicated to Sandra and Stanford Warshawsky for their generous support of the New York Philharmonic.

The commissioning of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower was made possible with a generous gift from Marie-Josée Kravis.

Major support for The World in Flower was provided by the Francis Goelet Fund.

Hear & Now is made possible through a major grant from the Fan Fox and Leslie Samuels Foundation.

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 the performances on April 30–May 5 are $36 to $114. Tickets for Pre-concert Talks are $5. Tickets for Open Rehearsals are $16. Tickets for the May 7–9 concerts are $30 to $109. The Hear & Now pre-concert lectures are free to concert ticketholders.

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.]

 

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