Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala to be Webcast, 10/7

Carnegie Hall today announced that its Opening Night Gala concert on Wednesday, October 7 at 7:00 p.m.- launching the Hall's historic 125th anniversary season-will be webcast free of charge to a worldwide audience, thanks to its continued partnership with medici.tv. The Opening Night program, featuring the New York Philharmonic conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, will include the world premiere of Vivo by Magnus Lindberg, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2; and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with guest soloist Evgeny Kissin. Following the live webcast, free replay of this concert will be available to online audiences on medici.tv for another 90 days, playable worldwide on all internet-enabled devices, including smart phones, tablets, Chromecast, computers, and smart TVs.

The partnership between Carnegie Hall and medici.tv, making live webcasts of select Carnegie Hall concerts available for the first time, began in fall 2014, showcasing performances by some of the world's most celebrated artists. These webcasts have been enthusiastically received-reaching well over 1 million views over the past year-with audience members originating from countries around the world.

Carnegie Hall's Opening Night performance will also be heard live by listeners around the globe, kicking off the fifth annual Carnegie Hall Live broadcast and digital series. Produced by WQXR and Carnegie Hall and co-hosted by WQXR's Jeff Spurgeon and acclaimed soprano Christine Goerke, the concert will be broadcast by WQXR 105.9 FM in New York, streamed on wqxr.org and carnegiehall.org/wqxr, and heard on radio stations across the country through the WFMT Radio Network.

The Opening Night performance on October 7 kicks off a season-long celebration of 125 years of great music-making and memorable moments at Carnegie Hall. The Hall's recently-launched Our History: Your Stories web portal invites members of the public to share their own meaningful experiences at Carnegie Hall by uploading written, photographic, video, or audio stories online at carnegiehall.org/stories. The website acts as a digital collage, displaying how Carnegie Hall has shaped the lives of people of all different ages, cultures, and musical backgrounds and, in turn, how those people have contributed to Carnegie Hall's legacy.

Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala Concert: Additional Information
For 125 years, Carnegie Hall has been a place where music history has been made, with premieres of masterworks such as Dvo?ák's "New World" Symphony (by the New York Philharmonic in 1893) and Gershwin's An American in Paris, and recent acclaimed new music like Steve Reich's Octet and David Lang's little match girl passion. Carnegie Hall celebrates its 125th anniversary by honoring the present and looking to the future with the launch of an ambitious commissioning project, beginning with the opening night premiere of Magnus Lindberg's new fanfare Vivo. Between the 2015-2016 and 2019-2020 seasons, at least 125 new works will be commissioned from leading composers-both established and emerging-and premiered at the Hall through the 125 Commissions Project.

For Vivo-a fast, rhythmically vibrant concert opener-Mr. Lindberg, former Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic, drew on his longstanding admiration of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, the closing work on the program, and incorporated several allusions to the distinctive harmonic pattern in that 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."

The Opening Night performance by Evgeny 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 a spectacular debut recital recorded live as a double album by BMG Classics. Mr. Kissin has since earned the veneration and admiration of audiences worldwide as one of the most gifted classical pianists of his generation. For more information, visit carnegiehall.org/kissin.

This Opening Night Gala event benefits Carnegie Hall's artistic and education programs. The evening's performance will be followed by a black-tie post-concert dinner in Carnegie Hall's Weill Terrace and Terrace Room located in its Resnick Education Wing on the Hall's upper floors. Beatrice Santo Domingo is the Gala Lead Chairman, with Gala Chairs Shahla and Hushang Ansary; Mercedes T. Bass; Annette de la Renta; Bruce and Suzie Kovner; Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis; The Marc Haas Foundation; Ronald O. Perelman; Sana H. Sabbagh; Alejandro Santo Domingo and Charlotte Wellesley; Lauren and Andrès Santo Domingo; Sydney and Stanley S. Shuman; David M. Siegel and Dana Matsushita; Hope and Robert F. Smith; Margaret and Ian Smith; and Joan and Sanford I. Weill. PwC is the Opening Night Gala Sponsor for the 12th consecutive season, and Dennis M. Nally, Chairman, PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd., is the Corporate Chairman for the event.

About the Artists
Evgeny Kissin has appeared with the world's great orchestras under many leading conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Carlo Maria Giulini, Herbert von Karajan, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, and Seiji Ozawa. He was a special guest at the Grammy Awards in 1992, broadcast live to an audience estimated at more than one billion people; three years later, he became Musical America's youngest Instrumentalist of the Year. Also a prolific recording artist, his recording of works by Scriabin, Medtner, and Stravinsky (RCA Red Seal) received a Grammy Award in 2006 for Best Instrumental Soloist, and, in 2002, he was named ECHO Klassik's Soloist of the Year. His most recent Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with orchestra) was awarded in 2010 for his recording of Prokofiev's Second and Third piano concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy (EMI Classics). Mr. Kissin's exceptional talent inspired Christopher Nupen's documentary film Evgeny Kissin: The Gift of Music, which was released in 2000 on DVD by RCA Red Seal. Mr. Kissin's season long Perspectives series highlights his remarkable versatility, performing two grand concertos with two New York orchestras and a trio concert with distinguished performers, in addition to championing the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Albéniz, and Larregla in a solo recital performed twice within one week (the first pianist to do so at Carnegie Hall since Vladimir Horowitz in the 1970s). He also recites Yiddish poetry in a solo performance that celebrates Jewish musical traditions.

Alan Gilbert, the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic since 2009, introduced the positions of Composer-in-Residence, Artist-in-Residence, and Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; NY PHIL BIENNIAL; and New York Philharmonic Global Academy. In the 2015-2016 season, Alan Gilbert conducts R. Strauss's Ein Heldenleben to welcome Concertmaster Frank Huang and five world premieres; co-curates 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 and Residency Partnership and appears at Santa Barbara's Music Academy of the West. Philharmonic-tenure 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 (for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction), and Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake starring Marion Cotillard; 24 world premieres; The Nielsen Project; Verdi Requiem; 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 US 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, he regularly conducts leading orchestras nationally and internationally. This season, Mr. Gilbert makes debuts with four great European orchestras-Filarmonica della Scala, Dresden Staatskapelle, London Symphony Orchestra, and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields-and returns to The Cleveland Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Juilliard's Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies, his honors include election to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2014) and a Foreign Policy Association Medal (2015).

The New York Philharmonic plays a leading cultural role in New York City, the United States, and the world. This season's projects will connect the Philharmonic with up to 50 million music lovers through live concerts in New York City and on its worldwide tours and residencies; digital recording series; international broadcasts on television, radio, and online; and as a resource through its wide range of education programs and Digital Archives. The orchestra has commissioned and premiered works by leading composers from every era since its founding in 1842-including Dvo?ák's "New World" Symphony; John Adams's Pulitzer Prize-winning On the Transmigration of Souls, dedicated to the victims of 9/11; and Magnus Lindberg's Piano Concerto No. 2. Renowned around the globe, the Philharmonic has appeared in 432 cities in 63 countries-including the groundbreaking 1930 tour of Europe; the unprecedented 1959 tour to the USSR; the historic 2008 visit to Pyongyang, D.P.R.K., the first there by an American orchestra; and the orchestra's debut in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2009. The New York Philharmonic serves as a resource for its community and the world. It complements its annual free concerts across the city-including the Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer-with Philharmonic Free Fridays and a wide range of education programs, among them the famed, long-running Young People's Concerts and Philharmonic Schools, an immersive classroom program that reaches thousands of New York City students. Committed to developing tomorrow's leading orchestral musicians, the Philharmonic has established the New York Philharmonic Global Academy, collaborations with partners worldwide offering training of pre-professional musicians, often alongside performance residencies. These include the Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership and collaborations with Santa Barbara's Music Academy of the West and The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. The oldest American symphony orchestra and one of the oldest in the world, the New York Philharmonic has made almost 2,000 recordings since 1917, including several Grammy Award winners, and its self-produced digital recording series continues in the 2015-2016 season. Music Director Alan Gilbert began his tenure in September 2009, succeeding a distinguished line of 20th-century musical giants that includes Leonard Bernstein, Arturo Toscanini, and Gustav Mahler.

Program Information
Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 7:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
CARNEGIE HALL'S OPENING NIGHT GALA
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
Alan Gilbert, Music Director and Conductor
Evgeny Kissin, Piano

MAGNUS LINDBERG Vivo (World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23
MAURICE RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2

Perspectives: Evgeny Kissin

Opening Night Gala Lead Sponsor: PwC

Major support for the 125 Commissions Project is provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation.

This concert is being webcast live on medici.tv and carnegiehall.org/medici. For 90 days after the concert, it will also be available for free replay.

This performance will be heard live as part of the Carnegie Hall Live broadcast and digital series. The concert will be broadcast by 105.9 FM WQXR in New York, streamed on wqxr.org and carnegiehall.org/wqxr, and heard on radio stations across the country through the WFMT Radio Network.

Bank of America is the Proud Season Sponsor of Carnegie Hall.

Ticket Information
Tickets for Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala on October 7: Gala Benefit tickets-priced at $3000-include concert seating and the post-concert dinner in the Weill Terrace and Terrace Room. Tickets priced at $1250 include the concert and a pre-concert cocktail reception at 5:30 p.m. in Carnegie Hall's Rohatyn Room. All gala benefit tickets are available by calling the Carnegie Hall Special Events office at 212-903-9679 or online at carnegiehall.org/openingnightgala.

A limited number of Opening Night concert-only tickets-priced at $68 to $220-are now available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, or online at carnegiehall.org.

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