Alan Gilbert & NY Philharmonic Set for Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala Concert, 10/7

Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala Concert, launching the Hall's 125th anniversary season. The program will feature the World Premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Vivo, a Carnegie Hall co-commission; Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1, with Evgeny Kissin as soloist; and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe? Suite No. 2, and takes place Wednesday, October 7, 2015, at 7:00 p.m. WQXR, New York's classical music radio station, will broadcast and stream the concert live on air at 105.9 FM and online at www.wqxr.org, hosted by WQXR's Jeff Spurgeon.

The Philharmonic has appeared at Carnegie Hall in more than 5,000 concerts - more than any other orchestra. The Orchestra's home from 1892-1962, the historic venue has hosted many historic milestones, including the 1893 World Premiere of Dvor?a?k's New World Symphony, Stravinsky's 1925 U.S. debut, the 1928 U.S. debuts of Vladimir Horowitz and Thomas Beecham, Arturo Toscanini's 1936 farewell concert, and Leonard Bernstein's 1943 Carnegie Hall and Philharmonic debuts, when he filled in at the last minute for an ailing Bruno Walter. The Philharmonic has performed at Carnegie Hall almost annually in recent years.

Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg served as the New York Philharmonic's inaugural Marie- Jose?e Kravis Composer-in-Residence from 2009 to 2012. Knowing that this program would conclude with Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe? Suite No. 2, Lindberg alludes to a harmonic pattern that is prominent in Ravel's score. "That particular sequence of chords is one of my true favorites," he says. Following this performance, Alan Gilbert and the Orchestra will again perform Magnus Lindberg's Vivo in one of three concerts that are part of the Philharmonic's residency partnership with the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan, October 9-11, 2015. Later this season, in January 2016, Alan Gilbert will conduct the Philharmonic in the U.S. Premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Violin Concerto No. 2, a Philharmonic Co-Commission written for and performed by Frank Peter Zimmermann, whose position as the Philharmonic's Mary and James G. Artist-in-Residence, in the 2011-12 season, coincided with the final season of Lindberg's Philharmonic post.

During Magnus Lindberg's tenure as Philharmonic Composer-in-Residence, Alan Gilbert led the Orchestra in the World Premieres of the composer's EXPO (2009, Philharmonic commission), Al largo (2010, Philharmonic commission), Souvenir (in memoriam Ge?rard Grisey) (2010 on CONTACT!, Philharmonic commission), and Piano Concerto No. 2 (2012, Philharmonic commission, performed by Yefim Bronfman); the U.S. Premiere of his Clarinet Concerto (2010, with Kari Kriikku at Carnegie Hall); the New York Premiere of Kraft (2010, followed by a 2013 reprise of the work at Volkswagen's Transparent Factory in Dresden, Germany); and Arena (2010), Gran Duo (2011), and Feria (2012).

The opening night performance by Mr. Kissin marks the first of the pianist's six Perspectives concerts at Carnegie Hall this season. The series celebrates 25 years since he launched the Hall's centennial season in 1990 with an acclaimed debut recital recorded live as a double album by BMG Classics.

Artists
Music Director Alan Gilbert began his New York Philharmonic tenure in 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 Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today's music; and New York Philharmonic Global Academy, collaborations with partners worldwide offering training of pre-professional musicians, often alongside performance residencies. As The New Yorker wrote, "Gilbert has made an indelible mark on the orchestra's history and that of the city itself."

Alan Gilbert's 2015-16 Philharmonic highlights include R. Strauss's Ein Heldenleben to welcome Concertmaster Frank Huang; Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala; and five World Premieres. He co-curates and conducts in the second NY PHIL BIENNIAL and performs violin in Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. He leads the Orchestra as part of the Shanghai Orchestra Academy Residency and Partnership and appears at Santa Barbara's Music Academy of the West. Philharmonic-tenure highlights include acclaimed stagings 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 (for which Mr. Gilbert is nominated for a 2015 Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction), and Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake starring Marion Cotillard; 24 World Premieres; The Nielsen Project, a performance and recording cycle; Verdi Requiem and Bach's B-minor Mass; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside the film; Mahler's Resurrection Symphony on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; and nine tours around the world. In August 2015 he led the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in the U.S. Stage Premiere of George Benjamin's Written on Skin, co-presented as part of the Lincoln Center-New York Philharmonic Opera Initiative.

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. This season Mr. Gilbert makes debuts with four great European orchestras - Filarmonica della Scala, Dresden Staatskapelle, London Symphony, and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields - and returns to The Cleveland Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony 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. His honors include an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music (2010), Columbia University's Ditson Conductor's Award for his "exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary music" (2011), election to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2014), and a Foreign Policy Association Medal for his commitment to cultural diplomacy (2015).

Pianist Evgeny Kissin has appeared with legendary conductors including Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohna?nyi, Carlo Maria Giulini, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, and Seiji Ozawa. Mr. Kissin began playing piano by ear at age two. At six he entered the Moscow Gnessin School of Music, where he was a student of Anna Kantor. He came to international attention in 1984 when, at age 12, he performed Chopin's Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow State Philharmonic under Dmitri Kitaenko. In 1990 Mr. Kissin made his North American debut, performing both Chopin concertos with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta; the following week he opened Carnegie Hall's centennial season with a spectacular debut recital, recorded live by BMG Classics. This season, in addition to Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala Concert with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Kissin performs with the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and The MET Orchestra, and appears in two recitals, a chamber music program, and a Jewish Poetry program, as part of the Carnegie Perspectives series. Over the years Evgeny Kissin has received a number of musical awards and accolades from around the world. He was special guest at the 1992 Grammy Awards ceremony, broadcast live to an audience estimated at more than one billion, and three years later he was named Musical America's youngest Instrumentalist of the Year. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of music by the Manhattan School of Music, the Shostakovich Award, and an honorary membership of the Royal Academy of Music in London. He most recently appeared with the Philharmonic in May 2012 performing Scriabin's Piano Concerto and Grieg's Piano Concerto, conducted by Alan Gilbert.

Repertoire
Vivo, by Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958), is subtitled "Concert Opener for Orchestra," which describes how it was conceived and how it will be presented in this World Premiere performance. Noting that the concert would conclude with Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe? Suite No. 2, Lindberg drew on his longstanding admiration of that work and incorporated several allusions to a distinctive harmonic pattern that is prominent in the French composer's score.

"That particular sequence of chords is one of my true favorites," Lindberg says. "It is almost as sophisticated as Ravel's harmony ever got. I don't quote it literally, but I almost do. Vivo is definitely linked to Daphnis and Chloe?." Lindberg, a Finn who stands among the front rank of modern European composers, served as the New York Philharmonic's Marie-Jose?e Kravis Composer in Residence, 2009-12. Faced with the prospect of writing a program opener, Lindberg toyed with the idea of surprising listeners by writing something slow ("like in Lohengrin"), but he eventually settled on a fast, rhythmically vibrant movement lasting about six minutes, and culminating with an unpredictable ending. Lindberg says that he likes "to play around with many different characters and gradually set up a plot or story [in longer works]. In a case like this, you need to get directly into it."

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