FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 24, 2015 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected] ALAN GILBERT AND THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC U.S. PREMIERE of PETER EÖTVÖS’s One-Act Opera Senza Sangue With Mezzo-Soprano ANNE SOFIE VON OTTER and Baritone RUSSELL BRAUN Program Also To Include SCHUBERT’s Symphony in B minor, Unfinished May 8–9, 2015 Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in the U.S. Premiere of Peter Eötvös’s one-act opera Senza sangue — featuring mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and baritone Russell Braun, the two vocalists for whom the work is being composed — and Schubert’s Symphony in B minor, Unfinished, Friday, May 8, 2015, at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, May 9, 2015, at 8:00 p.m. Alan Gilbert will have led the Philharmonic, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Russell Braun in the World Premiere of Peter Eötvös’s Senza sangue in Cologne, Germany, during the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. The Philharmonic co-commissioned Senza sangue with the Kölner Philharmonie as part of The Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music, and the work is written in Henri Dutilleux’s memory. Mr. Eötvös is one of three composers (along with Anthony Cheung and Franck Krawczyk) with whom the late Henri Dutilleux shared the inaugural Prize in 2011 and who were each commissioned to write a work for the Orchestra to premiere. “I highly appreciate the trust shown in me by Maestro Dutilleux by his selection to share the Kravis Prize, and I am most grateful for the commission from the New York Philharmonic and Kölner Philharmonie for Senza sangue,” Peter Eötvös said. “I prepared for it like a film director who decides he’s going to shoot his next film in black and white. In my previous operas I strove for a colorful palette of sound, but here I aim for sharp contrasts, and shades of black, grey, and white. I have emphasized a mass of sound: many instruments play the same line, creating a weighty sound, like a stroke in Japanese calligraphy, where a single black line is drawn with a thick brush.” Senza sangue (Without Blood) is based on the concluding passages of Alessandro Baricco’s novella of the same name about a child whose family is murdered in the midst of a civil war, but is saved when one of the marauders discovers her hiding but lets her live, and what happens once she grows up, having plotted her revenge, and meets him. The work will use the same orchestration, roles, and relationships between characters as Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, for which Senza sangue is eventually intended as a companion piece. Anne Sofie von Otter’s previous Philharmonic appearances include a performance of Bluebeard’s Castle, alongside baritone Matthias Goerne and led by Christoph von Dohnanyi, in March 2006. (more) Alan Gilbert / Anne Sofie von Otter / Russell Braun / 2 This will be Mr. Eötvös’s second work to be performed by the Philharmonic; in June 2014 as part of the inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL, the Orchestra performed the New York Premiere of his second violin concerto, DoReMi, with Midori as soloist (for whom it was written) and conducted by Alan Gilbert. This program follows the concert Wednesday, May 6, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. in which Alan Gilbert will lead the Orchestra in Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, and R. Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite, a program they will have performed on the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour, April–May 2015. Related Events Philharmonic Free Fridays The New York Philharmonic is offering 100 free tickets for young people ages 13–26 to the concert Friday, May 8 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 2014–15 season’s 18 Friday evening subscription concerts; it is part of Share the Music!, a new initiative to support expanded access to the New York Philharmonic. Pre-Concert Insights Author, pianist, and professor Arbie Orenstein will introduce the program May 6. Composer Daniel Felsenfeld will introduce the program May 8–9. Pre-Concert Insights are $7; discounts available for multiple talks, students, and groups. They take place one hour before these performances in the Helen Hull Room, unless otherwise noted. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org/preconcert or (212) 875-5656. 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-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-inResidence, 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 Philharmonictenure highlights include acclaimed productions of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, Janáček’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 (more) Alan Gilbert / Anne Sofie von Otter / Russell Braun / 3 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. Renée Fleming’s recent Decca recording Poèmes, 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. Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter’s long and exclusive relationship with Deutsche Grammophon produced numerous acclaimed recordings, including For the Stars, a collaboration with Elvis Costello. Her first recording for Naïve Classique, Love Songs with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau (2010), was followed by the Grammy-nominated Sogno Barocco with Leonardo García-Alarcón and Cappella Mediterranea, and Berlioz’s Les Nuits d'été with Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble. Her fourth recording for Naïve, Douce France, is a double CD of mélodies and chansons, released in October 2013. Recently, Ms. von Otter has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and David Robertson, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Daniele Gatti, and the National Symphony Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach. For the recent Wagner bicentenary she performed Wesendonck Lieder with Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, led by Minkowski, and with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, led by Paavo Järvi. To mark the centenary of Mahler’s death she appeared with Jonas Kaufmann and the Berlin Philharmonic, led by the late Claudio Abbado, in a televised performance of Das Lied von der Erde. This season’s highlights include a new production of Richard Strauss’s Capriccio at Lyric Opera of Chicago, led by Andrew Davis; Leocadia Begbick in Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, led by Mark Wigglesworth; and singing Waltraute in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung at the Vienna Staatsoper, led by Rattle. On the concert stage she performs Schubert orchestrated songs with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Jukka Pekka Saraste, and Zemlinsky’s Maeterlinck Lieder with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by Sakari Oramo. Anne Sofie von Otter made her Philharmonic debut in September 1987 performing in Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, led by Colin Davis; she will have most recently performed with the Philharmonic on its EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour in April–May 2015, led by Alan Gilbert. (more) Alan Gilbert / Anne Sofie von Otter / Russell Braun / 4 Baritone Russell Braun has received acclaim for his appearances as Chou En-lai in John Adams’s Nixon in China; Prince Andrei in Prokofiev’s War and Peace; The Traveller in Britten’s Death in Venice; and the title roles in Britten’s Billy Budd, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and Mozart’s Don Giovanni at The Metropolitan Opera, Opéra national de Paris, Vienna Staatsoper, Los Angeles Opera, Teatro alla Scala, and Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as well as the Salzburg and Glyndebourne festivals. This season features his debut as Ford in the Canadian Opera Company (COC) production of Verdi’s Falstaff, the title role of Don Giovanni with COC, Lescaut in The Met’s production of Massenet’s Manon, Britten’s War Requiem with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Brahms’s A German Requiem with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, and Fauré’s Requiem with the Calgary Philharmonic. Recent highlights include debuts as the Duke of Nottingham in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux and as Conte di Luna in Verdi’s Il Trovatore with COC; Chou Enlai in Nixon in China and Olivier in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio at The Met; Jaufré Rudel in Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin with the Oslo Philharmonic; Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride at COC; Gounod’s Faust at The Met; and Manon at La Scala. His discography features the 2015 Opera Award–nominated recording of Offenbach’s Fantasio with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Mark Elder (Opera Rara); the Grammy-nominated disc of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Dorian); the International Opera Award–nominated recording of Dietch’s Le Vaisseau Fantôme (Naïve); JUNO Award winners Mozart Arie e Duetti (CBC) and Apollo e Dafne (Handel); and a JUNO-nominated recording of Schubert’s Winterreise (CBC). He appears on DVDs including the Salzburg Festival’s Romeo et Juliette, Dido and Aeneas, Nixon in China (Nonesuch), Capriccio (Decca), and Alexina Louie’s comic opera Burnt Toast. Russell Braun made his New York Philharmonic debut alongside Joyce DiDonato in the 2009 World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, conducted by Alan Gilbert; he will have most recently performed with the Philharmonic on its EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour in April–May 2015, led by Alan Gilbert. Repertoire, May 6 Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) composed the 1911 original version of Petrushka for Serge Diaghilev’s famous Ballets Russes. While it had a triumphant premiere in Paris, in Vienna it met with violent opposition from the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic, who branded it “dirty” and initially refused to play it. Its subsequent London and New York Premieres, however, were unqualified successes. The ballet was created around the puppet character Petrushka, whom Stravinsky remembered seeing in carnival puppet shows in his childhood, and its score conjures the vibrant atmosphere of the Shrovetide fair in St. Petersburg. The original 1911 version of Petrushka was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in February 1923, when Albert Coates led the New York Symphony (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s Philharmonic); the Orchestra will have most recently performed it on the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour in April–May 2015, led by Alan Gilbert. In 1911 the Société Indépendante, the more radical of the two associations for living French composers, produced concerts of new music in which the composers’ names were omitted from the programs, and the audience was invited to guess who wrote what. This was the forum for the premiere of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales. The title, the composer wrote, “sufficiently indicates my intention of writing a cycle of waltzes after the example of Schubert.” The work (more) Alan Gilbert / Anne Sofie von Otter / Russell Braun / 5 was originally written for piano, and Ravel orchestrated it the following year. Like Beethoven, Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) was a pianist, composed at the piano, and introduced many of his innovations in piano pieces. As an expert orchestrator, he was able to carry their freshness over into their orchestral versions. Walter Damrosch led the New York Symphony (which would merge with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s New York Philharmonic) in the Orchestra’s first performance of the work in October 1916 at Aeolian Hall; the Orchestra will have most recently performed it on the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour in April–May 2015, led by Alan Gilbert. Richard Strauss (1864–1949) thought his 1911 comic opera Der Rosenkavalier to be the work most emblematic of himself (he took to introducing himself as “the composer of Der Rosenkavalier”), and it marked the true beginning of his remarkable and fruitful collaboration with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The opera tells of an aristocratic married woman — the wife of a field marshal — who loses her 17-year-old lover when he falls in love with a bourgeois girl his own age. Within the framework of a comedy-farce, the work reflects movingly on love, social climbing, aristocratic grace, and the passage of time. It is also a uniquely stylish blend of nostalgia and sophistication, combining the sounds of Viennese waltz with the 18th-century ambiance of Mozart’s operas — all set to Strauss’s gorgeous vocal lines and fragrant orchestral textures. So popular has the work become that the publisher’s catalogue abounds in arrangements of it, and many eminent conductors have culled suites from it. The New York Philharmonic performed the World Premiere of this Der Rosenkavalier Suite in October 1944, led by its likely arranger, Artur Rodziński; the Orchestra will have most recently performed it on the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour in April–May 2015, led by Alan Gilbert. Repertoire, May 8–9 Few musical works have been subject to as much conjecture as Franz Schubert’s Symphony in B minor, Unfinished. Schubert (1797–1828) began the work in 1822, finishing the first two movements and sketches for the third. Then he stopped. One scholar has speculated that the composer was intimidated by his own achievement; another suggests that he was fearful of accusations of plagiarizing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2; another interpretation alludes to an unrequited romance. The piece was not premiered until 1865, decades after Schubert’s untimely death in 1828. Although unfinished, the symphony’s drama and melodic invention have ensured its reputation. The work was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in February 1869, led by Carl Bergmann, and most recently in October 2011, conducted by Kurt Masur. Peter Eötvös (b. 1944) based his one-act opera Senza sangue (Without Blood) on Alessandro Baricco’s novella of the same name, which follows the aftermath of an incident that takes place during a civil war. When a group of men kills a family, one of the attackers spares the life of the young daughter. She spends her life in a schizophrenic state, seeking retribution by arranging the deaths of her family’s murderers, one by one. Mari Mezei’s libretto focuses on the last portion of the novel, which takes place years later, when the daughter finally meets the marauder who spared her life, and Peter Eötvös’s opera portrays this dramatic encounter. Throughout the meetings, questions arise: Can murder be excused by faith in a better world? Can revenge save a broken life? Was the fight for a better world in vain if it did not succeed? The Philharmonic cocommissioned Senza sangue with the Kölner Philharmonie as part of The Marie-Josée Kravis (more) Alan Gilbert / Anne Sofie von Otter / Russell Braun / 6 Prize for New Music, awarded every two years to a composer for extraordinary artistic endeavor in the field of new music. Mr. Eötvös is one of the three composers (along with Anthony Cheung and Franck Krawczyk) with whom the late Henri Dutilleux shared the inaugural Prize in 2011 and who were each commissioned to write a work for the Orchestra to premiere. The Philharmonic, led by Alan Gilbert with soloists Anne Sofie von Otter and Russell Braun, will have performed the work’s World Premiere in Cologne, Germany, during the Orchestra’s EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. *** The May 8–9 concerts are made possible with generous support from The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation. *** Programs are supported, in part, by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. *** Tickets Tickets for these performances start at $33. 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.] For press tickets, call Lanore Carr in the New York Philharmonic Marketing and Communications Department at (212) 875-5714, or e-mail her at [email protected]. (more) Alan Gilbert / Anne Sofie von Otter / Russell Braun / 7 New York Philharmonic Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center Wednesday, May 6, 2015, 7:30 p.m. Pre-Concert Insights (one hour before each concert) with author, pianist, and professor Arbie Orenstein Alan Gilbert, conductor STRAVINSKY RAVEL R. STRAUSS Petrushka (1911, original version) Valses nobles et sentimentales Der Rosenkavalier Suite Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center Friday, May 8, 2015, 8:00 p.m. Saturday, May 9, 2015, 8:00 p.m. Pre-Concert Insights (one hour before each concert) with composer Daniel Felsenfeld Alan Gilbert, conductor Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano Russell Braun, baritone SCHUBERT Peter EÖTVÖS Symphony in B minor, Unfinished Senza sangue (U.S. Premiere–New York Philharmonic Co-Commission, with the support of the Kravis Prize for New Music, with the Kölner Philharmonie) ### ALL PROGRAMS SUBJECT TO CHANGE What’s New — Get the Latest News, Video, Slideshows, and More Photography is available in the New York Philharmonic’s online newsroom, nyphil.org/newsroom, or by contacting the Communications Department at (212) 875-5700; [email protected].
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