Music Director Alan Gilbert begins his final weeks by leading the New York Philharmonic in Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. The program juxtaposes the tragedy and optimism of human experience through Schoenberg's depiction of the horror of the Holocaust and the message of hope, brotherhood, and joy in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw will feature Gabriel Ebert as narrator (in his Philharmonic debut) and the men of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, directed by Joe Miller. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony will feature soprano Camilla Tilling, mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack (debut), tenor Joseph Kaiser (debut), bass-baritone Eric Owens, and the Westminster Symphonic Choir, directed by Joe Miller. The performances will take place Wednesday, May 3, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, May 5 at 8:00 p.m.; Saturday, May 6 at 8:00 p.m.; and Tuesday, May 9 at 7:30 p.m. The program will be presented without intermission.
"The message of Beethoven's Ninth is eternal: it speaks of freedom and the power of the human spirit," Alan Gilbert said. "Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw is an incredibly powerful piece that shares a very similar DNA to the Beethoven. They couldn't be more different in terms of musical language, but the fact that they are about the triumph of faith and the indomitable nature of the human spirit makes them a perfect pairing that I've always wanted to do."
The New York Times wrote that Alan Gilbert and the Orchestra's performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in October 2013 was "a vibrant, lucid and intriguing account that culminated with a fleet, exciting finale" and called Mr. Gilbert an "insightful musician" who "reveals the inner workings and wondrous complexities of the piece."
This program is the first of Alan Gilbert's final four programs as Music Director, reflecting signature themes of his tenure and featuring works that hold particular meaning for him and musicians with whom he has formed close relationships. They include a concert highlighting the Philharmonic's close collaborations, with the New York Premiere of Kravis Emerging Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Aeriality, the New York Premiere of Composer-in-Residence Esa-Pekka Salonen's Wing on Wing, and Brahms's Violin Concerto with Artist-in-Residence Leonidas Kavakos as soloist (May 19-20 and 23); Wagner's complete Das Rheingold in concert (June 1, 3, and 6); and Alan Gilbert Season Finale: A Concert for Unity, celebrating the power of music to build bridges and unite people across borders (June 8-10). A website celebrating Alan Gilbert and the highlights of his tenure as Music Director through video, audio, and photos launched today at nyphil.org/gilbertfarewell.
Related Events
The New York Philharmonic is offering 100 free tickets to young people ages 13-26 for the concert Friday, May 5 as part of Philharmonic Free Fridays. Information is available at nyphil.org/freefridays. Philharmonic Free Fridays offers 100 free tickets to 13-26-year-olds to each of the 2016-17 season's 16 Friday evening subscription concerts.
Amy Wlodarski, speaker
New York Philharmonic Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence Michael Beckerman, moderator
Monday, April 24, 2017, 7:30 p.m.
On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, discover how two musical works divided by tonality and 125 years of fateful history share many of the same aspirations. Musicologist Amy Wlodarski and The Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence Michael Beckerman discuss these powerful musical settings and how the music in Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 reflects the invincible nature and freedom of the human spirit.
David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center (Broadway at 62nd Street)
Artists
As Music Director of the New York Philharmonic since 2009, Alan Gilbert has introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, and Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today's music; and the New York Philharmonic Global Academy, partnerships with cultural institutions to offer training of pre-professional musicians, often alongside performance residencies. The Financial Times called him "the imaginative maestro-impresario in residence."
Alan Gilbert concludes his final season as Music Director with four programs that reflect themes, works, and musicians that hold particular meaning for him, including Beethoven's Ninth Symphony alongside Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, Wagner's complete Das Rheingold in concert, and an exploration of how music can effect positive change in the world. Other highlights include three World Premieres, Mahler's Fourth Symphony, Ligeti's Mysteries of the Macabre, and Manhattan, performed live to film. He also leads the Orchestra on the EUROPE / SPRING 2017 tour and in performance residencies in Shanghai and Santa Barbara. Past highlights include acclaimed stagings of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, Janá?ek's The Cunning Little Vixen, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson (2015 Emmy nomination), and Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake starring Marion Cotillard; 28 World Premieres; a tribute to Boulez and Stucky during the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL; The Nielsen Project; the Verdi Requiem and Bach's B-minor Mass; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey, performed live to film; Mahler's Resurrection Symphony on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; performing violin in Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time; and ten tours around the world.
Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and former principal guest conductor of Hamburg's NDR Symphony Orchestra, Alan Gilbert regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. This season he returns to the foremost European orchestras, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw, and Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He will record Beethoven's complete piano concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Inon Barnatan, and conduct Gershwin's Porgy and Bess at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, his first time leading a staged opera there. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams's Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award, and he conducted Messiaen's Des Canyons aux étoiles on a recent album recorded live at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard School, where he holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. His honors include Honorary Doctor of Music degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music (2010) and Westminster Choir College (2016), Columbia University's Ditson Conductor's Award (2011), election to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2014), a Foreign Policy Association Medal for his commitment to cultural diplomacy (2015), Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2015), and New York University's Lewis Rudin Award for Exemplary Service to New York City (2016).
Gabriel Ebert is a Tony and Obie Award-winning actor. A native of Colorado, he is a graduate of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School. He has appeared at Lincoln Center Theater, starring in Amy Herzog's 4,000 Miles (for which he received the Obie Award for Best Actor) and most recently Dave Malloy's Preludes at LCT3. Mr. Ebert's Broadway credits include Harvey Fierstein's Casa Valentina, Tim Minchin's Matilda the Musical (2013 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical), Noël Coward's Brief Encounter with The Kneehigh Theatre Company, Helen Edmundson's adaptation of Therese Raquin, and John Logan's Red. Off-Broadway he has appeared in Peer Gynt at Classic Stage Company, The Heart of Robin Hood, Suicide Incorporated, Prometheus Bound, and a site-specific production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. He is currently starring in Martin Sherman's new play Gently Down the Stream with Harvey Fierstein. As a vocalist, Mr. Ebert has performed at Carnegie Hall and London's Royal Albert Hall. Last spring he appeared as part of a benefit performance for The Juilliard School alongside fellow alumnus Alan Gilbert. These performances mark his New York Philharmonic debut.
Soprano Camilla Tilling's early debut at New York City Opera launched her two-decades-long career that has since seen performances on the world's major opera, concert, and recital stages while simultaneously building an impressive discography. A highly regarded concert performer, Camilla Tilling is a regular guest with many of the world's leading orchestras. Recent concert highlights include J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle, Schumann's Faustszenen with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Thomas Hengelbrock, Brahms's A German Requiem with both the New York Philharmonic under Christoph von Dohnányi and with the Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, Dutilleux's Correspondances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, J.S. Bach's Mass in B minor with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Philippe Jordan, and Berg's Seven Early Songs with Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi, Orchestre National de France under Daniele Gatti, and the London Symphony Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth. Current season opera highlights include a house debut at Royal Swedish Opera as Countess Almaviva in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, while in concert she performs Mahler's Symphony No. 4 with the Berlin Philharmonic and Rattle, Beethoven's Missa solemnis at Milan's Teatro alla Scala with Haitink and also with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas, A German Requiem with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert. Ms. Tilling's many recordings include three recital discs with Paul Rivinius on the BIS label: the most recent, I Skogen (July 2015), is a celebration of Nordic composers. She appears on Haydn's The Creation with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Haitink, and Handel's The Resurrection with Le Concert d'Astree and Emmanuelle Haim, and she performs the role of Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo on DVD from Teatro alla Scala conducted by Daniel Harding. Camilla Tilling made her New York Philharmonic debut in December 2014 in Handel's Messiah, conducted by Gary Thor Wedow, and her most recent appearance was in March 2016 in A German Requiem with Christoph von Dohnányi.
This season mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack makes her debuts with the New York Philharmonic, in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 led by Alan Gilbert; at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville; at The Metropolitan Opera, as the Kitchen Boy in Mary Zimmerman's new production of Dvo?ák's Rusalka; and at Florida Grand Opera as the title role in Bizet's Carmen. Ms. Mack also returns to Arizona Opera as Angelina in Rossini's La Cenerentola and Santa Fe Opera as Bradamante in Handel's Alcina. Recently, she was seen at San Francisco Opera as Rosina in The Barber of Seville and created the role of Jacqueline Kennedy in the World Premiere of David T. Little and Royce Vavrek's JFK at Fort Worth Opera. She also made her Arizona Opera debut in the title role of Carmen and was seen in recital with tenor Alek Shrader at the Tucson Desert Song Festival. In concert Ms. Mack made debuts with three orchestras under Charles Dutoit: Orchestra de la Suisse Romande in Ravel's L'Heure espagnole and L'Enfant et les sortilèges, Boston Symphony Orchestra in L'Heure espagnole, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat. She also made her MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra debut in Rossini's Giovanna d'Arco under James Gaffigan and performed Vivaldi's Judith triumphans with Boston Baroque. Daniela Mack is an alumna of the Adler Fellowship Program at San Francisco Opera, where she has appeared as Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo, Siebel in Gounod's Faust, and Lucienne in Korngold's Die tote Stadt for her house debut. She performed the title role of La Cenerentola as a member of the Merola Opera Program and made her West Coast recital debut on San Francisco Opera's Schwabacher Debut Recital Series. Ms. Mack was a finalist in the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. These performances mark her New York Philharmonic debut.
Tenor Joseph Kaiser enjoys success in opera, oratorio, and concert appearances throughout North America and Europe. With his versatility and strength as an actor, he has worked with leading stage directors including Robert Carsen, Christof Loy, David McVicar, Peter Sellars, and Stephen Wadsworth. He regularly appears with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston, Montreal, Berlin Radio, and Vienna Radio symphony orchestras. Concert highlights include Beethoven's Fidelio with Jérémie Rhorer conducting Le Cercle de l'Harmonie on a European tour; Mozart's Requiem with Ivor Bolton and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri with Simon Rattle and The Philadelphia Orchestra; Berlioz's Requiem, both with Marek Janowski and The Combined forces of Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and with Donald Runnicles both with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic; Berlioz's Te Deum with Charles Dutoit and the NHK Symphony Orchestra; and Bruckner's Te Deum with Daniel Barenboim and the Orchestra and Chorus of Milan's Teatro alla Scala. Past opera appearances have included Britten's Peter Grimes at Theater an der Wien; Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence; Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and Richard Strauss's Capriccio at the Opéra National de Paris; Mozart's The Magic Flute and Richard Strauss's Salome at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Martin?'s Juliette at the Opernhaus Zürich; Eugene Onegin and Handel's Theodora at the Salzburg Festival; and many appearances at The Metropolitan Opera including in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, The Magic Flute, Salome, Handel's Rodelinda, and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. These performances mark Joseph Kaiser's New York Philharmonic debut.
Bass-baritone Eric Owens launched the 2016-17 season with his role debut as Wotan in David Pountney's new production of Wagner's Das Rheingold at Lyric Opera of Chicago. He sings a trio of operas at The Metropolitan Opera: the house's premiere of Kaijo Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin, a new production of Dvo?ák's Rusalka under Mark Elder, and a revival of Mozart's Idomeneo conducted by James Levine. Other highlights include recitals with Susanna Phillips at Carnegie Hall and Lawrence Brownlee at Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Metropolitan Opera's 50th anniversary at Lincoln Center gala, and, for the third time, he joins the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Negaunee Music Institute to present an interactive recital for incarcerated youth with Riccardo Muti and Joyce DiDonato. He rounds out his season singing Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or at Santa Fe Opera. Mr. Owens collaborates regularly with Muti, Simon Rattle, Michael Tilson Thomas, Alan Gilbert, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Franz Welser-Möst, Andrew Davis, Osmo Vänskä, and Donald Runnicles. In addition to performing with leading opera companies in Europe and North America, he has appeared with orchestras including the New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles philharmonic orchestras; Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Bavarian Radio, Atlanta, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Swedish Radio symphony orchestras; and the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras. Mr. Owens is featured on several recordings including excerpts from Richard Strauss operas (Telarc) and John Adams's A Flowering Tree (Nonesuch Records) and Doctor Atomic (Sony). A Philadelphia native, Eric Owens began studying piano at age six, and at eleven began formal oboe training under Lloyd Shorter of the Delaware Symphony and Louis Rosenblatt of The Philadelphia Orchestra. He studied voice while an undergraduate at Temple University and as a graduate student at the Curtis Institute of Music. He currently studies with Armen Boyajian. He serves on the boards of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and Astral Artistic Services. Eric Owens made his New York Philharmonic debut in June 2003 singing selections from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, led by then Philharmonic Music Director Lorin Maazel, during the Orchestra's residency at Sardinia's Teatro Lirico di Cagliari. He most recently appeared with the Philharmonic during its July 2016 Bravo! Vail residency in his role as The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, performing songs by Richard Strauss and the Final Scene from Act III of Wagner's Die Walküre.
Recognized as one of the world's leading choral ensembles, the Westminster Symphonic Choir is composed of students at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. It has recorded and performed with major orchestras under many internationally acclaimed conductors for the past 83 years, and the choir has sung more than 400 performances with the New York Philharmonic alone. The ensemble's 2016-17 season includes Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Alan Gilbert; Mozart's Mass in C minor and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé with The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; and Britten's War Requiem with The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit. Recent seasons have included performances of Bernstein's Mass with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; Villa-Lobos's Choros No. 10 with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and Gustavo Dudamel; and Christopher Rouse's Requiem with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert at Carnegie Hall. Westminster Choir College is a division of Rider University's Westminster College of the Arts, which has campuses in Princeton and Lawrenceville, New Jersey. A professional college of music with a unique choral emphasis, Westminster prepares students for careers in teaching, sacred music, and performance. The Westminster Symphonic Choir made its New York Philharmonic debut in January 1959 in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, conducted by John Barbirolli; it most recently performed Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil (Vespers), conducted by Joe Miller, as part of Beloved Friend - Tchaikovsky and His World: A Philharmonic Festival in January 2017. Joe Miller is conductor of two of America's most renowned choral ensembles: the Westminster Choir and the Westminster Symphonic Choir. He is also director of choral activities at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. He is also artistic director for choral activities for the Spoleto Festival USA and director of the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir. Mr. Miller's 2016-17 season with the Westminster Choir includes a concert tour of the southern U.S., several national radio broadcasts, the ensemble's annual residency at Spoleto Festival USA, and performances at the World Symposium on Choral Music in Barcelona. As conductor of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, Mr. Miller has collaborated with some of the world's leading orchestras and conductors, earning him critical praise. Joe Miller is also founder and conductor of the Westminster Summer Choral Festival Chamber Choir, a program that offers professional-level choral and vocal artists the opportunity to explore challenging works for one week each summer on the Westminster campus in Princeton.
Insights at the Atrium Speakers
Amy Lynn Wlodarski is associate professor of music at Dickinson College, where she teaches music history and conducts the college choir, and where she has received both of the college's institutional teaching awards and a pedagogical award from the Oral History Association. Dr. Wlodarski's scholarly work explores the expressive and political dynamics that lie at the intersection of Jewish history, memory, and creativity; it specifically considers how 20th-century composers have responded to the Holocaust in their music, and how these works have been received over time in various performance spaces. Amy Lynn Wlodarski is the author of Musical Witness and Holocaust Representation (Cambridge, 2015) - the first book to attempt a thematic chronology of postwar Holocaust representation in music - and with Elaine Kelly is the co-editor of Art Outside the Lines: New Perspectives on GDR Art Culture (Rodopi/Brill, 2011), a volume dedicated to reconsidering the legacy of East German art. A leading scholar in postwar Jewish art music, Dr. Wlodarski has written on topics as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism, and the Jewish musicians of Terezín. Her work has been commissioned for several valuable scholarly collections, including the Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music (Cambridge, 2015) and Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture (Oxford, 2014). She has published in the leading journals in her field, and her 2010 article on Steve Reich, "The Testimonial Aesthetics of Different Trains," received the Irving Lowens Award for best musicological article from the Society for American Music. Her research has been supported by prestigious institutions, such as the Fulbright Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Posen Foundation, and Presser Foundation. She was selected as a Harry T. Starr Fellow in Judaica at Harvard University in 2012-13, and is currently a fellow-in-residence at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. Dr. Wlodarski earned her doctorate in musicology from the Eastman School of Music. In addition to teaching and conducting at Dickinson College, she regularly conducts pre-concert forums for ensembles such as The Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Opera.
Michael Beckerman, The Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic for the 2016-17 season, is Carroll and Milton Petrie Chair and Collegiate Professor of Music at New York University. He has written articles on such subjects as film scoring, music of the Roma (Gypsies), Mozart, Brahms, exiled composers, and music in the camps, as well as many studies and several books on Czech topics, including Dvo?ák and His World (Princeton University Press, 1993), Janá?ek as Theorist (Pendragon Press, 1994), New Worlds of Dvo?ák (W.W. Norton, 2003), Janá?ek and His World (Princeton, 2004), and Martin?'s Mysterious Accident (Pendragon, 2007). He has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times and was a regular guest on Live From Lincoln Center and other radio and television programs in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Dr. Beckerman lectures nationally and internationally and has organized many concerts and symposia. He was awarded the Janá?ek Medal by the Czech Ministry of Culture, is a recipient of the Dvo?ák Medal, and is also a Laureate of the Czech Music Council; he has twice received the Deems Taylor Award. He was chair of the New York University Department of Music (2004-13), served as distinguished professor at Lancaster University (2011-15), and last year received an honorary doctorate from Palacký University in the Czech Republic.
Repertoire
Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) escaped the Holocaust, having emigrated to the U.S. in 1934 due to the rising tide of anti-Semitism, and was horrified by news of the atrocities committed against Jews throughout Europe during World War II. In Poland, almost 500,000 Jews were confined to the Warsaw ghetto beginning in March 1942, and many of those who didn't die from starvation or disease were eventually transferred to the concentration camp at Treblinka. One report that particularly affected Schoenberg was of a group of prisoners singing the traditional Jewish prayer "Schema Jisroel" as they were led away to the death camp, and in 1947 the composer decided to create his own dramatization of the story in A Survivor from Warsaw. Schoenberg wrote that the work is "...at first a warning to all Jews, never to forget what has been done to us... We should never forget this... The miracle of [the story] is, to me, that all these people who might have forgotten, for years, that they are Jews, suddenly facing death, remember who they are." Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, the six-plus minute twelve-tone work for narrator, men's chorus, and orchestra was premiered in November 1948 in New Mexico by the Albuquerque Civic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kurt Frederick. The New York Philharmonic's first presentation of A Survivor from Warsaw was in April 1950, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos. Its most recent performance was in May 1974, led by Pierre Boulez.
Ludwig van Beethoven's (1770-1827) monumental orchestral experiment, Symphony No. 9, was premiered in Vienna on May 7, 1824. At this point he was nearly deaf, and when the performance was over, according George Marek's Beethoven biography, it was the alto soloist Caroline Unger who "plucked [the composer] by the sleeve and gently turned him around toward the audience. When he saw what was going on, he bowed, and when the audience realized that he had heard nothing of their previous expression of enthusiasm, they redoubled it. He had to bow again and again." Beethoven hadn't composed a symphony for a decade, and now this transcendent work stood apart from what had gone before. He had already pushed the boundaries of the symphonic genre starting with the Eroica, but the inclusion of vocal soloists or choral writing in a symphony - as he does in the Ninth - was a new idea. The Ninth embodies the ideals many associate with Beethoven's music, expressed more grandly and more beautifully than ever: the triumph over adversity, the journey from anguish to joy, from conflict to harmony, epitomized in Schiller's "Ode to Joy," the text Beethoven set in the final movement (and which seems to have supplanted the more customary subtitle of the Ninth, "Choral"). The New York Philharmonic gave the U.S. Premiere of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in May 1846, conducted by George Loder, for which it commissioned the first English translation of "Ode to Joy." Alan Gilbert led the Orchestra's most recent performance of the complete work in October 2013.
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