Yefim Bronfman Performs with the NY Philharmonic This Weekend

Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in Barto?k's Piano Concerto No. 3, with Yefim Bronfman as soloist, and Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 (Ed. Nowak, 1890), tonight, October 23, 2014, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, October 24 at 8:00 p.m.; Saturday, October 25 at 8:00 p.m.; and Tuesday, October 28 at 7:30 p.m.

"Bruckner is known for creating great washes of sound, which Barto?k also can do, masterfully, but with an astringent bite that creates a nice contrast with Bruckner's Romanticism. And the fact that both composed music that is so related to their respective national traditions seemed to me to make them a natural pairing," Alan Gilbert said. "In Bruckner's music you can escape today's frenetic world. To truly appreciate his timeless landscapes of sound, it's best to slow down your own personal clock. Even if he takes five minutes when another composer might take three, it is in a very specific point in the piece's overall architecture, and the symphony is absolutely in motion at all times and incredibly heartfelt."

Alan Gilbert led the Orchestra in Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 in April-May 2013 at Avery Fisher Hall, on the Free Annual Memorial Day Concert at The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, and on the EUROPE / SPRING 2013 tour. The Music Director also led the Orchestra in Bruckner's Second Symphony in June 2011.

Yefim Bronfman served as The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence during the 2013-14 season, and he joined the Board of Directors of the New York Philharmonic in 2014.

"As much as Fima and I have performed together, both here and around the world, we've never collaborated on Barto?k, and we both decided we wanted to do so now," Alan Gilbert said. "Fima's technique and musical personality really can encompass all types of music. This range and combination makes him the perfect partner for both the powerful, percussive aspects and the more lyrical and refined sensibilities in Barto?k's music."

"You can tell that the New York Philharmonic is a group of people who are dedicated and committed to every note they play; they are such a virtuosic ensemble," Yefim Bronfman has said. "They seem to have no limits -- this Orchestra is just amazing."

Yefim Bronfman earned a Grammy Award for his 1997 recording of Bartok's Piano Concertos Nos. 1-3.

Related Events:

- Pre-Concert Insights
New York Philharmonic Audio Producer Mark Travis will introduce the program. Admission/Tickets to Pre-Concert Insights are $7; discounts are available for multiple talks, students, and groups. These events take place one hour before performances, and are held in the Helen Hull Room, unless otherwise noted. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org/preconcert or (212) 875-5656.

- National and International Radio Broadcast
The program will be broadcast at a later date on The New York Philharmonic This Week, a radio concert series syndicated weekly to more than 300 stations nationally, and to 122 outlets internationally, by the WFMT Radio Network. The program is broadcast locally in the New York metropolitan area on 105.9 FM WQXR on Thursdays at 8:00 p.m., and will be available on the Philharmonic's Website, nyphil.org.

The 52-week series, hosted by actor Alec Baldwin, is generously underwritten by The Kaplen Brothers Fund, the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Philharmonic's corporate partner, MetLife Foundation.

*Check local listings for broadcast and program information, which is subject to change.

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.

Pianist Yefim Bronfman's 2014-15 season began with summer festivals at Tanglewood, Aspen, Vail, La Jolla, and Santa Fe, and includes U.S. performances with the Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, Atlanta, New World, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras, The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras. He performs the World Premiere of a concerto written for him by Jo?rg Widmann in December with the Berlin Philharmonic, and revisits Magnus Lindberg's Piano Concerto No. 2 (commissioned for him by the New York Philharmonic, with whom he premiered it in 2012) with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. With The Cleveland Orchestra, led by Franz Welser-Mo?st, Mr. Bronfman will perform and record both Brahms piano concertos, which he will also take to Milan's Teatro alla Scala with Valery Gergiev. He will return to Japan for recitals and orchestral concerts with London's Philharmonia Orchestra led by Esa-Pekka Salonen, as well as to Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, Sydney, and Melbourne. In the spring he will join Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lynn Harrell for their first U.S. tour together. Mr. Bronfman's recording of Barto?k's three piano concertos with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by Mr. Salonon, received a Grammy Award in 1997; the pianist received a Grammy nomination in 2009, for his Deutsche Grammophon recording of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Piano Concerto, and in 2013, for his recording of Magnus Lindberg's Piano Concerto No. 2, with the New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert. Born in Tashkent, in the Soviet Union, in 1958, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973. There he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. He later studied at The Juilliard School, Marlboro, and The Curtis Institute of Music, and with Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. He became an American citizen in July 1989. Mr. Bronfman was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1991 and the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in piano performance from Northwestern University in 2010. Mr. Bronfman's long history with the New York Philharmonic began with his debut in 1978, performing Beethoven's Triple Concerto alongside Shlomo Mintz and Yo-Yo Ma, led by Alexander Schneider; he most recently appeared throughout the 2013-14 season as The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence and in July 2014 during the Orchestra's Bravo! Vail residency, led by Alan Gilbert.

Repertoire:

In his final year, Be?la Barto?k (1881-1945) composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 as a birthday gift for his pianist wife, Ditta Pa?sztory. In its first movement one can hear the influence of Barto?k's Hungarian homeland, perhaps a kind of nostalgia for the country he fled in 1940 after the outbreak of World War II. The second movement, Adagio, is an instance of what has come to be called Barto?k's "night-music" style, in which the composer "evokes the atmosphere of nocturnal nature by musically conveying its quiet energy," in the words of Be?la Barto?k, Jr. Lois Kentner was the soloist for the New York Philharmonic's first performance of the concerto, in 1957 led by Thomas Schippers at Carnegie Hall; Peter Serkin was the soloist for its most recent performance, led by Pablo Heras-Casado, in April 2014.

Anton Bruckner, unlike any composer before him, combined the spiritual and technical resources of the 19th-century symphony to create massive "cathedrals of sound," featuring a repetitive style and developmental processes that were at first taken as signs of incompetence. Not until well into the 20th century did audiences and scholars alike come to fully appreciate the transcendent power and striking originality of Bruckner's symphonies. Although the composer finished portions of a ninth symphony, the Symphony No. 8 (1884-90) was his last completed work in this genre. He finished the first version in 1887, and Bruckner had a copy of the score sent to the conductor Hermann Levi, who had been a major supporter of the composer. However, Levi deemed the symphony unsuccessful and refused to perform it, advising the composer to rethink his work. Bruckner prepared a revised version that was completed in 1890. An 1892 publication of the score (which preceded the first performance) included additional changes made by the editor, and a major edition prepared in 1939 conflated the original and revised versions, leading to a plethora of performance options for this monumental work. The New York Philharmonic will perform Bruckner's own 1890 revision, as restored by the musicologist Leopold Nowak in 1955. The Orchestra first performed the Eighth Symphony in November 1919, led by Josef Stransky; the most recent performance was in January 2012, led by former Music Director Zubin Mehta.

Tickets for these performances start at $33. Tickets for Open Rehearsals are $20. Pre-Concert Insights are $7; discounts are available for multiple talks, students, and groups (visit nyphil.org/preconcert for more information). 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. A limited number of $16 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.]

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