Rafael Frübeck de Burgos To Lead NY Philharmonic; Leonidas Kavakos Soloist, 11/26-11/27 & 11/30

Rafael Fru?hbeck de Burgos will conduct the New York Philharmonic in the Overture to Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila; Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist; Debussy's Nocturnes, featuring the Women of the New York Choral Artists; and the Suite from Stravinsky's The Firebird (1919), Friday, November 26, 2010, at 8:00 p.m., Saturday, November 27, at 8:00 p.m. On Tuesday, November 30 at 7:30 p.m., Mr. Fru?hbeck will conduct the Orchestra in Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila Overture; Haydn's Symphony No. 100, Military; Debussy's Noctures; and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.

Mr. Fru?hbeck will also lead the Saturday Matinee Concert on November 27 at 2:00 p.m. The program will open with Mozart's String Quintet in G minor, K.516, with violinists Glenn Dicterow and Michelle Kim; violists Cynthia Phelps and Rebecca Young; and cellist Eileen Moon. Also on the program: Haydn's Symphony No. 100, Military, and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos.

These concerts with Leonidas Kavakos are part of a tribute to Dimitri Mitropoulos, the New York Philharmonic's Music Director from 1949 to 1958, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his death, sponsored by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. For more information, go to http://nyphil.org/mitropoulos or read the press release.

Mr. Fru?hbeck noted that, "The basis of the first program is Russian, but there is a big relationship between The Firebird and Debussy. In many aspects The Firebird is almost a French work because the French sound is so apparent in The Firebird, and in later pieces too. That's why I thought it was a very good idea to perform this beautiful piece - the three Nocturnes by Debussy - before The Firebird. Both go marvelously together and will make a beautiful second half, following a virtuoso violin concerto like the Tchaikovsky."

Related Events
• Pre-Concert Talk
Composer Victoria Bond will introduce the program one hour before each performance in the Helen Hull Room, unless otherwise noted. Pre-Concert Talks are $7.00; discounts available for multiple concerts, students, and groups. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org or call (212) 875-5656
• On the Music: The New York Philharmonic Podcast
Elliott Forrest, Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, producer, and weekend host on Classical 105.9 FM WQXR, is the producer of 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 program will be broadcast the week of December 6, 2010,* on The New York Philharmonic This Week, a radio concert series syndicated nationally to more than 300 stations by the WFMT Radio Network. The 52-week series, hosted by 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 Classical 105.9 FM WQXR on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m.
*Check local listings for broadcast and program information.

Raphael Fru?hbeck de Burgos returns to the New York Philharmonic for the third time since 2005. A regular guest with North America's top orchestras, Mr. Fru?hbeck will conduct the orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Houston, Montreal, Cincinnati, and Houston in the 2010-11 season. He appears annually at the Tanglewood Music Festival and regularly with the National, Chicago, and Toronto symphony orchestras.

Born in Burgos, Spain, Mr. Fru?hbeck studied violin, piano, music theory, and composition at the conservatories in Bilbao and Madrid, and conducting at Munich's Hochschule fu?r Musik, where he graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the Richard Strauss Prize. He currently is chief conductor and artistic director of the Dresden Philharmonic. He has made extensive tours with such ensembles as the Philharmonia of London, London Symphony Orchestra, National Orchestra of Madrid, and Swedish Radio Orchestra. He toured North America with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra, and the Dresden Philharmonic.

Since 1975 Mr. Fru?hbeck has been a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. The numerous honors and distinctions he has been awarded include the Gold Medal of the City of Vienna, the Bundesverdienstkreutz of the Republic of Austria and Germany, the Gold Medal from the Gustav Mahler International Society, and the Jacinto Guerrero Prize, Spain's most important musical award, conferred in 1997 by the Queen of Spain. In 1998 Rafael Fru?hbeck de Burgos received the appointment of emeritus conductor by the Spanish National Orchestra. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Navarra in Spain.

Mr. Fru?hbeck has recorded extensively for the EMI, Decca, Deutsche Gramophone, Spanish Columbia, and Orfeo labels. Several of his recordings are considered to be classics, including his interpretations of Mendelssohn's Elijah and St. Paul, Mozart's Requiem, Orff's Carmina burana, Bizet's Carmen, and the complete works of Manual de Falla.

Violinist Leonidas Kavakos was still in his teens when he won the Sibelius Competition in 1985, and he followed this success by winning the Paganini Competition in 1988. He subsequently received invitations to perform from all corners of the world. He served as artistic director of the Camerata Salzburg from 2007 to 2009, having previously been that ensemble's principal guest artist. In the 2010-11 season Mr. Kavakos will perform as concerto soloist, conductor, and chamber musician. He will appear with Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, London Symphony and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestras, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

Highlights of past seasons include several tours with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin led by Ingo Metzmacher; Rotterdam Philharmonic with Valery Gergiev; Israel Philharmonic Orchestra with Zubin Mehta; Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and The Philadelphia Orchestra with Christoph Eschenbach; and a tour through European cities with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly.

In 2009 Leonidas Kavakos was the season's Artist in Focus at London's Southbank Centre, for which he has been nominated for the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award 2010. In 1991 he won the Gramophone Award for the first-ever recording of the original version of Sibelius's Violin Concerto (1903-04) on BIS. His discography also includes Hindemith's Violin Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic (Chandos); solo sonatas by Ysaÿe (BIS); works by Debussy, Kreisler, Paganini, and others (Delos); and Sibelius's Humoresques (Finlandia). His most recent CD - which received the ECHO Klassik Award 2009 (Sony Classical) - is a recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and piano trios, recorded with the Camerata Salzburg, cellist Patrick Demenga,
and pianist Enrico Pace. Mr. Kavakos plays the "Abergavenny" Stradivarius of 1724.
He last appeared with the New York Philharmonic in April 2010, performing Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, conducted by Valery Gergiev. He is scheduled to perform with the Orchestra on the EUROPE / AUTUMN 2010 tour in Belgrade, Hamburg, and Luxembourg.

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 Britten's War Requiem and Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in June 2009 during Lorin Maazel's finAl Weeks as the New York Philharmonic's Music Director, and in May 2010 in the Philharmonic's staged presentation of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre and again in June 2009 for Beethoven's Missa solemnis on the final program of the season, both conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert. The ensemble is scheduled to perform in Mendelssohn's Elijah, November 10-11 and 13, conducted by Alan Gilbert.

Repertoire
Mikhail Glinka, considered the father of Russian nationalism, built a reputation largely on his operas The Life of the Tsar and Ruslan and Ludmila. The Overture to the latter has enjoyed popularity on its own in concert halls for a century and a half, and is probably Glinka's most widely performed orchestral piece. This work was first played by the New York Symphony (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today's New York Philharmonic) on January 3, 1896, led by Walter Damrosch; the most recent complete Philharmonic performance was in July 2007 at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, led by Bramwell Tovey.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, written in one month in 1877, was intended for the violin virtuoso Leopold Auer. Auer, however, refused to perform it when he saw the difficulty of the solo part. Instead, it was Adolf Brodsky who premiered the work in Vienna on December 4, 1881. In this concerto, Tchaikovsky creates a song-like solo violin part that lies over an orchestral score packed with energy and bold melodies.

Walter Damrosch, with Maud Powell as soloist, led the New York Symphony (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today's New York Philharmonic) in the first complete performance of the concerto in the United States in January 1889. The Orchestra most recently performed it in July 2010 in Bethel, New York, led by Bramwell Tovey, with Mikhail Simonyan as soloist.

When Claude Debussy first began composing his triptych of Nocturnes in 1894, he conceived them as being for violin and orchestra, intending them for the famed violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. However, when the works were finally completed five years later, they had transformed into pure orchestral works, without soloist. Debussy noted that his title was "not meant to designate the usual form of the Nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests." Though the richly colored Nocturnes is widely acknowledged as one of Debussy's masterworks, it is common for orchestras to program only the first two pieces, "Nuages" and "Fêtes," as a female choir is required for the third, "Sirènes," which will be performed in these concerts. The complete Nocturnes was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in February 1910, conducted by Gustav Mahler, and most recently, in March 1989, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.

What awakened the world to a 28-year-old Russian composer named Igor Stravinsky was his score for The Firebird, a two-scene ballet produced in Paris in 1910 by the Ballets Russes. Russian folklore lent the work its plot and vivid characters: Ivan, a young Tsarevich, the mystical Firebird, the ogre Kashchei, and 13 imprisoned princesses (one destined to marry Ivan). It has endured as one of Stravinsky's most popular works. Over the course of time the composer developed three concert suites from the original ballet: the first, in 1911; a second, from 1919, which is the most widely performed and is presented on this program; the third, in 1946. The Philharmonic first performed the 1919 version in February 1921, with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today's New York Philharmonic). The most recent complete performance was in November 2008, led by Andrey Boreyko.

Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 100, Military, was first performed in London on
March 31, 1794. Originally called a "New Grand Overture," the work became one of Haydn's greatest public successes; the second movement, containing the fanfares and percussion effects from whence the work derives its nickname, was encored at the first performance and frequently thereafter. Johann Peter Salomon, the impresario who had brought Haydn to England for the first time in 1791 and had persuaded him to return in 1794, owned the publication rights for all of Haydn's new symphonies, and quickly brought out an edition of the new one for home consumption, arranged as a piano trio. The New York Philharmonic first performed the symphony in January 1900, with Frank Damrosch leading the New York Symphony (which merged in 1928 with the New York Philharmonic to form today's New York Philharmonic). It was performed most recently in November 2002, led by Sir Colin Davis.Credit Suisse is the Global Sponsor of the New York Philharmonic.

These concerts are part of a special tribute to Dimitri Mitropoulos, sponsored by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Rafael Fru?hbeck de Burgos's appearance is made possible through the Charles A. Dana Distinguished Conductors Endowment Fund.

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 evening performance on November 26 start at $44, for November 27, $50, and for November 30, $40. Tickets for the Saturday Matinee start at $37. Tickets for Open Rehearsals are $18. Pre-Concert Talks are $7.00; discounts are available for multiple concerts, students, and groups (for information, visit nyphil.org/preconcert). All other 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 $12.50 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.