Download Debussy Lindberg - New York Philharmonic

4
Debussy
Lindberg
Alan Gilbert and the
New York Philharmonic
2010–11 Season
Alan Gilbert and the New York
Philharmonic: 2010–11 Season
Alan Gilbert’s journey of musical discovery
can be traced on Alan Gilbert and the New
York Philharmonic: 2010–11 Season; the
series’ wide-ranging repertoire reflects his
programmatic belief that individual works,
both familiar and brand-new, should be
combined in innovative ways in order to
surprise, challenge, and delight the listener.
“When I became the Music Director of
the New York Philharmonic a year ago, I
was excited by the prospect of creating a
close connection with the audience,” Alan
Gilbert has said, adding, “I wanted our
listeners to know that we choose every
work we perform out of a real commitment
to its value, so that even if someone isn’t
familiar with a piece, they would feel
comfortable coming to hear it simply
because we programmed it.”
Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic: 2010–11 Season — 12 highquality recordings of almost 30 works,
available internationally — represents the
breadth of Alan Gilbert’s programs in his
second season as Music Director. Building
on the success of last year’s Alan Gilbert:
The Inaugural Season, the first time an
orchestra offered a season’s worth of recorded music for download, the new series
is more accessible and more flexible, offering performances either as a complete
series or as individual works.
The 2010–11 series allows listeners to
explore and own music that spans world
premieres of Philharmonic commissions to
works by past masters. Subscribers also
receive bonus content, including audio
recordings of Alan Gilbert’s onstage commentaries, the program notes published in
each concert’s Playbill, and encores given
by the soloists — all in the highest possible
audio quality available for download.
For more information about the series,
visit nyphil.org/itunes.
New York Philharmonic
Alan Gilbert, Conductor
Chen Halevi, Clarinet
Carter Brey, Cello
Magnus Lindberg, Piano
Markus Rhoten, Timpani
Christopher S. Lamb, Percussion
Daniel Druckman, Percussion
Juhani Liimatainen, Electronics
Recorded live October 7–8 & 12, 2010,
Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
DEBUSSY (1862–1918)
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) (1892–94)
10:21
Magnus LINDBERG (b. 1958)
Kraft (1983–85; New York Premiere)
32:22
I
II
CHEN HALEVI, Clarinet
CARTER BREY, Cello
MAGNUS LINDBERG, Piano
MARKUS RHOTEN, Timpani
CHRISTOPHER S. LAMB, Percussion
DANIEL DRUCKMAN, Percussion
JUHANI LIIMATAINEN, Electronics
LOU MANNARINO, Live Sound Design
2
3
17:11
15:11
New York Philharmonic
4
5
Notes on the Program
By James M. Keller, Program Annotator
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un
faune (Prelude to the
Afternoon of a Faun)
Claude Debussy
In Short
Born: August 22, 1862, in St. Germain-en-Laye, just
outside Paris, France
Died: March 25, 1918, in Paris
Work composed: begun in 1892 (perhaps as early as
1891); completed by October 23, 1894
Claude Debussy achieved his musical
maturity in the final decade of the 19th
century, a magical moment in France
when partisans of the visual arts fully embraced the gentle luster of impressionism,
poets navigated the indirect locutions of
symbolism, composers struggled with the
pluses and minuses of Wagner, and the
City of Light blazed even more brightly
than usual, enflamed with the pleasures
of the Belle Époque.
Several early Debussy masterpieces
of the 1890s have remained firmly
ensconced in the enduring repertoire,
perhaps most strikingly the Prelude to the
Afternoon of a Faun. Debussy was hardly
a youngster when he composed it. He had
begun studying at the Paris Conservatoire
in 1872, when he was only ten; he then
served as resident pianist and musical pet
for Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s
mysterious patroness, in Russia and on her
travels during the summers of 1880–82.
He finally gained the imprimatur of the
Prix de Rome in 1884 (for his cantata
L’Enfant prodigue), enabling him to spend
the next two years in Italy. After inhaling
the Wagnerian breezes of Bayreuth in
1888 and 1889, he then grew enamored
of the sounds of the Javanese gamelan at
the Paris International Exposition of 1889.
During all this he also composed a great
World premiere: December 22, 1894, at a concert
of the Société Nationale de Musique in Paris,
Gustave Doret, conductor
New York Philharmonic premiere: November 12,
1905, Walter Damrosch conducting the New York
Symphony (which would merge with the New York
Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s New York
Philharmonic)
many songs and piano pieces, some of
which are still widely performed today.
While defining the composer’s distinctive voice, the Prelude to the Afternoon of
a Faun baffled many early listeners. Debussy’s fellow composer Alfred Bruneau
wrote of the piece:
[It] is one of the most exquisite instrumental
fantasies which the young French school
The Path to the Premiere
Radical though the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun was, its premiere was entrusted to a
relatively untried conductor, Gustave Doret (1866–1943). Doret would go on to become principal conductor of the Opéra-Comique, but in 1894 he was a recent graduate of the violin and
composition programs of the Paris Conservatoire. He recalled the experience of premiering
this Debussy work in his memoirs, Temps et contretemps, published in his native Switzerland
a year before his death:
The first concert I was to conduct at the
Société Nationale was set for December 22, 1894, and, as I expected, it was
to be a considerable test.
At this debut of mine, Claude Debussy
was to entrust me with the first performance of his Prélude à l’après-midi d’un
faune. He took me to his tiny apartment
on the rue Gustave-Doré (a strange
coincidence!), spread out the proofs of
the orchestral score, which were already
covered with corrections, and sat down
at the piano; while I, open-mouthed
and with eager ears, sat beside him. I
was completely seduced, entranced,
overwhelmed.
I promised that we would take as
much time preparing the score as
was needed. And never, I believe,
did rehearsals take place in such an
atmosphere of intimate collaboration.
Debussy was constantly modifying this
or that sonority. We tried it out, repeated
it, compared it. Once the players had
come to understand this new style, they
realized that we would have a serious
battle on our hands. Of course, Debussy’s name was familiar to the real
connoisseurs, but to the general public
it was still unknown. The hour of the
great test duly arrived, Debussy pressing
my hands and hiding his anxiety behind
a grin that I had come to recognize.
There was a vast silence in the hall as
I ascended to the podium and our splendid flutist, Barrère, unfolded his opening
line. All at once I felt behind me, as
some conductors can, an audience that
was totally spellbound. It was a complete triumph, and I had no hesitation
in breaking the rule forbidding encores.
The orchestra was delighted to repeat
this work, which it had come to love and
which, thanks to them, the audience had
now accepted.
has produced. This work is too exquisite,
alas! it is too exquisite.
Even at the distance of a century, listeners can appreciate Bruneau’s concern.
Debussy — or at least the Debussy of the
1890s — sometimes seemed so obsessed
with minute details of timbre that other musical concerns appeared to be overlooked;
everything threatened to implode into a
mass of sensual loveliness. Of the Prelude
to the Afternoon of a Faun the composer
6
7
Notes on the Program (continued)
Ferruccio Busoni said (intending, one would
think, a compliment), “It is like a beautiful
sunset; it fades as one looks at it.”
Debussy’s eventual style was not to display
the sort of firm, unmistakable architecture
that most composers up until that time had
cherished. His method would evolve into
something more intuitive, with themes that invite little development, with harmonies inspiring
momentary excitement rather than underscoring long trajectories. Although Debussy
is sometimes called a musical impressionist,
his aesthetic affinities would seem to be
more allied to the symbolists, those poets and
artists of the late-19th century who disdained
the purely expository or representational and
sought instead to evoke a specific, fleeting
emotional illumination in the reader or viewer
through sometimes mysterious metaphors.
One of the highpoints of symbolist poetry
was L’Après-midi d’un faune (The Afternoon
of a Faun) by Stéphane Mallarmé. The poem
first appeared in 1865 under the title Monologue d’un faune and then kept evolving
until it reached a definitive version in 1876.
At that point Mallarmé published it, under
its new title, in a slim volume embellished
with a drawing by Édouard Manet. Vintage
symbolism it is: a faun (a rural deity that is
half man and half goat) spends a languorous
afternoon observing, recalling, or fantasizing
about — it’s not always clear which — some
alluring nymphs who clearly affect him in
an erotic way. The poem became iconic in
its time (although it was merely a point of
departure for Mallarmé’s further, even more
revolutionary poetry), and Debussy fell under
its spell by the early 1890s, when he seems
to have discussed with Mallarmé the idea of
creating a musical parallel.
Debussy appears to have embarked on the
project sometime in 1892. By October 23,
1894, the score was complete and the piece
was premiered two months later, to such acclaim that it was immediately encored on the
same program. It became the most popular
of Debussy’s symphonic compositions and inspired a river of commentary that continues to
flow to this day. In an appreciation of the work,
composer (and former New York Philharmonic
Music Director) Pierre Boulez observed:
It has been said often: the flute of the Faune
brought new breath to the art of music; what
was overthrown was not so much the art of
development as the very concept of form itself,
here freed from the impersonal constraints of
the schema, giving wings to a supple, mobile
expressiveness, demanding a technique of
perfect instantaneous adequacy .... The potential
of youth possessed by that score defies exhaustion and decrepitude; and just as modern poetry
surely took root in certain of Baudelaire’s poems,
so one is justified in saying that modern music
was awakened by L’Après-midi d’un faune.
Certainly the work was radical in its unremitting sensuality, but its harmonic implications
were also profound, and in retrospect the
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun may be
considered a harbinger of the musical century
that lay ahead.
Instrumentation: three flutes, two oboes and
English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four
horns, antique cymbals, two harps, and strings.
8
Kraft
Magnus Lindberg
The Marie-Josée Kravis
Composer-in-Residence
In Short
Born: June 27, 1958, in Helsinki, Finland
Resides: in Helsinki
Work composed: 1983–85, on commission from the
Helsinki Festival
World premiere: September 4, 1985, by the Finnish
Radio Orchestra and the Toimii ensemble, with EsaPekka Salonen conducting
Magnus Lindberg, now in the second year
of his two-year appointment as the New
York Philharmonic’s Marie-Josée Kravis
Composer-in-Residence, emerged on the
international music scene in the 1980s,
one of a handful of Finnish composers
of his generation that included Kaija
Saariaho, Jouni Kaipainen, and EsaPekka Salonen. All four studied with the
same teacher at the Sibelius Academy
in Helsinki, the renowned composer and
pedagogue Paavo Heininen. Lindberg
also worked with another senior eminence of Finnish music, the composer
Einojuhani Rautavaara.
Lindberg and Salonen were close colleagues during their student years and
together they founded Toimii, an instrumental ensemble that not only championed modern music but also helped both
composers investigate novel instrumental
possibilities and compositional procedures.
Lindberg was also active as a pianist, making appearances in concert and on recordings, especially in contemporary repertoire.
In 1981 he left Finland for Paris, where he
studied with Vinko Globokar and Gérard
Grisey. Other formative training came
from Franco Donatoni (in Siena), Brian
Ferneyhough (in Darmstadt), and at the
EMS Electronic Music Studio (in Stockholm). His work has been honored with
New York Philharmonic premiere: these
performances, which also marked the New York
premiere of this work
such awards as the UNESCO International
Rostrum for Composers (1982 and 1986),
Prix Italia (1986), Nordic Council Music Prize
(1988), Royal Philharmonic Society Prize
(1993), and Wihuri Sibelius Prize (2003).
During the 1980s Lindberg’s music
revealed its composer’s penchant for complexity, a trait that led him to be uncompromising in the difficulties he sets before his
musicians. “Only the extreme is interesting,” Lindberg proclaimed, continuing:
Striving for a balanced totality is nowadays
an impossibility. ... An original mode of expression can only be achieved through the
marginal — the hypercomplex combined
with the primitive.
As the decade marched on, Lindberg
grew increasingly preoccupied with the
intricacies of rhythmic interaction on
multiple levels; this led to the composition, in 1983, of Zona for solo cello and
chamber ensemble. Zona — Lindberg
favors short, single-word titles — brought
9
his investigations of rhythmic complexity
to the practical limit of the unaided human
mind, so for his next major work, the awardwinning Kraft (for orchestra plus an ancillary
ensemble — Toimii, when the work was
unveiled — playing on both traditional musical instruments and such “found objects”
as chair legs and car springs), he devised
a computer program to assist in generating more meticulous calculations to fuel
his composition. Other computer programs
would follow, always keeping up with advances in technology.
In the course of music history composers drawn toward stylistic complexity have
often arrived at a breaking point and then
moved on to create within a sound-world
that (at least from the outside) appears
far simpler. Following the intense difficulty
of Zona and Kraft, Lindberg proceeded to
soundscapes that, in many cases, seem
more relaxed and less insistently “on
overload”; some might fairly be described
even as smooth or spacious. This said,
many of Lindberg’s scores, even in the
modern “classicist” mode, remain generally vigorous, colorful, dense, and kinetic,
and despite the extreme refinement of his
compositional method his scores manage
to sound very spontaneous.
Although he has worked in a variety of
genres, Lindberg has carved out a particular reputation as a composer of orchestral
music. “The orchestra,” he has declared, “is
my favorite instrument.” Symphonic works
of the past decade include his Feria (which
the New York Philharmonic performed in its
10
United States premiere, in 1997, conducted
by Jukka-Pekka Saraste), a Concerto for
Orchestra (2002), and concertos for cello
(1999), clarinet (2002), and violin (2006).
Among his most recent works is Seht die
Sonne (Behold the Sun), described in the Financial Times as “an extravagant and glittering piece on a grand scale”; and EXPO and
Al largo, two New York Philharmonic commissions which, respectively, opened and
closed the Orchestra’s 2009–10 season.
These scores reveal Lindberg’s increasing
interest in presenting clear-cut melody within
a vibrant symphonic texture, underscoring
that, even after composing some 80 works,
he continues to develop an idiosyncratic
path of personal creative discovery.
Instrumentation: four flutes (all doubling
piccolo) plus alto flute, three oboes and
English horn, three clarinets (one doubling E-flat clarinet) and bass clarinet,
three bassoons and contrabassoon, alto
saxophone, four horns, four trumpets, four
trombones, tuba, orchestral percussion, two
harps, piano (doubling celesta), and strings;
piccolos, horns, trumpets, and trombones
onstage and off; solo instruments include
clarinet (doubling E-flat, bass, and contrabass clarinets), cello, piano, timpani,
and two percussion, and live electronics;
clarinet, cello, and piano soloists also play a
variety of percussion instruments (onstage
and off).
In the Composer’s Words
Kraft — the title is the German word for “power” or “strength” — is a huge work, running
about a half hour and spread across two connected movements, in which a group of soloists
(playing amplified cello, clarinet, piano, and many percussion instruments) play a leadership
role in relation to the large symphony orchestra. It’s often an intense, confrontational piece,
but it also includes expanses of great delicacy. It proved to be a defining work in Magnus
Lindberg’s oeuvre and for the concert music of its time, both in the breadth of its sonic palette
and in the way it employs possibilities for spatial effects through the movement of musicians
within the performing space. The composer has offered these thoughts about the piece:
scrap (where you have small pieces of
metal that you make noises with) up to
the big, heavy pieces of metal that you
can find.
The title Kraft is, of course, explicit,
but it has a deeper meaning in the
way it affects the entire structure of
the piece. It has a lot to do with the
temporal processes, where the power
of the space is merging things together.
For instance, having a sound that is
rotating around at full speed in the hall
and gradually it centralizes and it stops
in the middle of the hall — so there is
a moment when the sound is being
exposed from the four corners of the
hall, and for the audience it makes a
movement in the sound. There is this
central point which has the big, hanging
tam-tam, and it’s also a play-station
for one of the soloists, not just for the
purpose of making noise. Hopefully the
effect of it is a structured world of richness in sound.
I was living in Berlin in those days, and
that was the time when the alternative
music scene in Berlin was very strong,
with a kind of post-punk music and
groups like Einstürzende Neubauten.
They had drills on stage, and they
made an amazing noise with a kind of
non-tonal pop music, and this aspect
of it I found very fascinating. In a way,
it was a shock for me to see that this
kind of music was going on, and I was
jealous about the sound — the impact
of the sound and the huge forces they
managed to put together. And I thought,
“Why couldn’t we do this with the forces
of the symphony orchestra, which has
so much potential in different types of
sound?” So I really went a long way
and finally included the mobile soloists
group to play untypical instruments. A
performance of this piece takes a visit
to the local scrap-yard to bring in plenty
of junk. I wanted to include instruments
that produce noise, so everything from
sandpaper to stones, from metallic
11
New York Philharmonic
2010–2011 Season
ALAN GILBERT Music Director
Daniel Boico, Assistant Conductor
Leonard Bernstein, Laureate Conductor, 1943–1990
Kurt Masur, Music Director Emeritus
Violins
Glenn Dicterow
Concertmaster
The Charles E. Culpeper
Chair
Sheryl Staples
Principal Associate
Concertmaster
The Elizabeth G. Beinecke
Chair
Michelle Kim
Assistant Concertmaster
The William Petschek
Family Chair
Enrico Di Cecco
Carol Webb
Yoko Takebe
Minyoung Chang+
Hae-Young Ham
The Mr. and Mrs. Timothy
M. George Chair
Lisa GiHae Kim
Kuan-Cheng Lu
Newton Mansfield
The Edward and Priscilla
Pilcher Chair
Kerry McDermott
Anna Rabinova
Charles Rex
The Shirley Bacot Shamel
Chair
Fiona Simon
Sharon Yamada
Elizabeth Zeltser
The William and Elfriede
Cellos
Carter Brey
Marilyn Dubow
The Sue and Eugene
Mercy, Jr. Chair
Principal
The Fan Fox and Leslie R.
Samuels Chair
Martin Eshelman
Quan Ge
Judith Ginsberg
Hanna Lachert
Hyunju Lee
Daniel Reed
Mark Schmoockler
Na Sun
Vladimir Tsypin
Eileen Moon*
The Paul and Diane
Guenther Chair
The Shirley and Jon
Brodsky Foundation Chair
Flutes
Robert Langevin
Principal
The Lila Acheson Wallace
Chair
The Mr. and Mrs. James E.
Buckman Chair
Violas
Cynthia Phelps
Elizabeth Dyson
Maria Kitsopoulos
Sumire Kudo
Qiang Tu
Ru-Pei Yeh
Wei Yu
Wilhelmina Smith++
Principal
The Mr. and Mrs. Frederick
P. Rose Chair
Rebecca Young*
Irene Breslaw**
The Norma and Lloyd
Chazen Chair
Dorian Rence
Basses
Eugene Levinson
Katherine Greene
The Mr. and Mrs. William J.
McDonough Chair
Principal
The Redfield D. Beckwith
Chair
Dawn Hannay
Vivek Kamath
Peter Kenote
Kenneth Mirkin
Judith Nelson
Robert Rinehart
Orin O’Brien
Acting Associate Principal
The Herbert M. Citrin Chair
William Blossom
The Ludmila S. and Carl B.
Hess Chair
The Mr. and Mrs. G. Chris
Andersen Chair
Randall Butler
David J. Grossman
Satoshi Okamoto
Ulrich Chair
Yulia Ziskel
Marc Ginsberg
Principal
Kim Laskowski*
Roger Nye
Arlen Fast
Piccolo
Mindy Kaufman
Contrabassoon
Arlen Fast
Oboes
Liang Wang
Horns
Philip Myers
Principal
The Alice Tully Chair
Sherry Sylar*
Robert Botti
In Memory of Laura
Mitchell
Soohyun Kwon
The Joan and Joel I. Picket
Chair
Principal
The Ruth F. and Alan J.
Broder Chair
Stewart Rose++*
Acting Associate Principal
English Horn
Thomas Stacy
The Joan and Joel Smilow
Chair
Clarinets
Mark Nuccio
Acting Principal
The Edna and W. Van Alan
Clark Chair
Pascual Martinez
Forteza
Acting Associate Principal
The Honey M. Kurtz Family
Chair
Alucia Scalzo++
Amy Zoloto++
E-Flat Clarinet
Pascual Martinez
Forteza
Bass Clarinet
Amy Zoloto++
Lisa Kim*
Principal
The Pels Family Chair
Sandra Church*
Mindy Kaufman
Evangeline Benedetti
Eric Bartlett
Bassoons
Judith LeClair
Cara Kizer Aneff**
R. Allen Spanjer
Erik Ralske+
Howard Wall
Timpani
Markus Rhoten
Orchestra Personnel
Manager
Carl R. Schiebler
Principal
The Carlos Moseley Chair
Kyle Zerna**
Stage
Representative
Louis J. Patalano
Percussion
Christopher S. Lamb
Principal
The Constance R. Hoguet
Friends of the
Philharmonic Chair
Audio Director
Lawrence Rock
Daniel Druckman*
The Mr. and Mrs. Ronald J.
Ulrich Chair
* Associate Principal
** Assistant Principal
+ On Leave
++ Replacement/Extra
Kyle Zerna
Harp
Nancy Allen
The New York Philharmonic
uses the revolving seating
method for section string
players who are listed
alphabetically in the roster.
Principal
The Mr. and Mrs. William T.
Knight III Chair
Keyboard
Trumpets
Philip Smith
Principal
The Paula Levin Chair
Matthew Muckey*
Ethan Bensdorf
Thomas V. Smith
Trombones
Joseph Alessi
Principal
The Gurnee F. and
Marjorie L. Hart Chair
Amanda Davidson*
David Finlayson
The Donna and
Benjamin M. Rosen Chair
Bass Trombone
James Markey
In Memory of Paul Jacobs
Harpsichord
Lionel Party
Piano
The Karen and Richard S.
LeFrak Chair
Harriet Wingreen
Jonathan Feldman
Organ
Kent Tritle
Librarians
Lawrence Tarlow
Principal
Sandra Pearson**
Sara Griffin**
Tuba
Alan Baer
Duoming Ba
Principal
12
13
Honorary Members
of the Society
Pierre Boulez
Stanley Drucker
Lorin Maazel
Zubin Mehta
Carlos Moseley
New York
Philharmonic
Gary W. Parr
Chairman
Zarin Mehta
President and Executive
Director
The Music Director
Alan Gilbert became Music Director of
the New York Philharmonic in September
2009, the first native New Yorker to hold
the post, ushering in what The New York
Times called “an adventurous new era” at
the Philharmonic. In his inaugural season
he introduced a number of new initiatives:
the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis
Composer-in-Residence, held by Magnus
Lindberg; The Mary and James G. Wallach
Artist-in-Residence, held in 2010–11 by
violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter; an annual
three-week festival, which in 2010–11 is
titled Hungarian Echoes, led by Esa-Pekka
Salonen; and CONTACT!, the New York
Philharmonic’s new-music series. In the
2010–11 season Mr. Gilbert is leading the
Orchestra on two tours of European music
capitals; two performances at Carnegie
Hall, including the venue’s 120th Anniversary Concert; and a staged presentation
of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. In
his 2009–10 inaugural season Mr. Gilbert
led the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia
in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and
Abu Dhabi, and performances in nine cities on the EUROPE / WINTER 2010 tour
in February 2010. Also in the 2009–10
season, he conducted world, U.S., and New
York premieres, as well as an acclaimed
staged presentation of Ligeti’s opera, Le
Grand Macabre.
Mr. Gilbert is the first person to hold
the William Schuman Chair in Musical
Studies at The Juilliard School, and is
conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm
Philharmonic Orchestra and principal
guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR
14
Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted
other leading orchestras in the U.S. and
abroad, including the Boston, Chicago,
and San Francisco symphony orchestras;
Los Angeles Philharmonic; Cleveland and
Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Berlin
Philharmonic, Munich’s Bavarian Radio
Symphony Orchestra, and Amsterdam’s
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. From
2003 to 2006 he served as the first music
director of the Santa Fe Opera.
Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and
The Juilliard School. From 1995 to 1997
he was the assistant conductor of The
Cleveland Orchestra. In November 2008
he made his acclaimed Metropolitan
Opera debut conducting John Adams’s
Doctor Atomic. His recording of Prokofiev’s
Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a
2008 Grammy Award, and his recording
of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 received
top honors from the Chicago Tribune
and Gramophone magazine. On May 15,
2010, Mr. Gilbert received an Honorary
Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis
Institute of Music.
15
The Artist
ers. ClaRecords also works with specialists
in other artistic fields to stimulate dialogue
between different forms of art in the 21st
century. Projects include WindsUnlimited,
a period instrument wind group exploring
woodwind repertoire from the Classical and
Romantic periods. With composer and bandoneon player Marcelo Nisinman, Mr. Halevi
has formed TangoLab, a group of four diverse
but complementary musicians who share a
passion for expanding the horizons of tango. A
native of the Negev desert in Israel, he studied
the clarinet with Yitzchak Kazap and Richard
Lesser, continuing with Mordechai Rechtman
and Chaim Taub for his chamber music studies. Chen Halevi is clarinet professor at the
Trossingen Hochschule für Musik in Germany,
and gives master classes around the world.
Since 2007 he has been a faculty member
in the summer master classes at The Banff
Centre in Canada.
Clarinetist Chen Halevi has performed as
soloist with major orchestras in the U.S.,
Europe, and Japan, including the Israel
Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra,
European Soloists, Heilbronn Chamber
Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, Jerusalem
Radio Orchestra, Leipzig’s MDR Symphony
Orchestra, Hamburg’s NDR Symphony
Orchestra, and Deutsche SymphonieOrchester Berlin. He participates frequently
at festivals around the world, including the
Marlboro, Ravinia, Santa Fe, Schleswig-Holstein, Davos, and Verbier Chamber Music
festivals. He has performed chamber music
with Pinchas Zuckerman and Christoph
Eschenbach, as well as with well-known
string quartets. Chen Halevi has had a number of works dedicated to him by eminent
composers; a highlight is Doppelgaenger, a
new clarinet concerto by Sven Ingo Koch,
commissioned by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
In 2007 Mr. Halevi founded ClaRecords
to commission, produce, and record new
pieces from leading and emerging compos-
Finnish-born Magnus Lindberg is The
Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence
of the New York Philharmonic and one of
16
today’s leading composers. In addition to
his compositional work, he also performs
as a pianist: as a soloist in his own piano
repertoire; in a duo, Dos Coyotes, with the
cellist Anssi Karttunen; and as a member
of the experimental ensemble Toimii, which
he cofounded. During the 1970s and
1980s he performed regularly in a piano
duo with Risto Väisänen, specializing in
contemporary music. Mr. Lindberg has
been a frequent soloist in Kraft, which has
been performed at many of the world’s
leading festivals and venues, including the
Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Paris’s
Cité de la musique, the Casa da Musica
Porto, and at London’s Southbank Centre.
Some of the orchestras with whom Mr.
Lindberg has performed Kraft include the
Finnish and Swedish Radio Symphony
Orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic,
Hessischer Radio Symphony Orchestra,
and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.
Magnus Lindberg is also regularly invited
to perform as soloist in his 1994 Piano
Concerto, including performances with
the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
and the Orchestre Philharmonique de
Radio France, and is the soloist in the
commercial recording of the work on the
Ondine label with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka
Salonen. Mr. Lindberg has also given
several performances internationally as
a pianist in Stravinsky’s Les Noces with
the Labèque sisters, conducted by fellow
composer and performer Thomas Adès,
and with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir
Simon Rattle.
Carter Brey was appointed Principal Cello
(The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Chair)
of the New York Philharmonic in 1996. He
made his official subscription debut with
the Orchestra in May 1997 performing
Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations led by then
Music Director Kurt Masur, and has since
performed as soloist with the Orchestra each
season. He rose to international attention in
1981 as a prizewinner in the Rostropovich
International Cello Competition. The winner
of the Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Prize,
Avery Fisher Career Grant, Young Concert
Artists’ Michaels Award, and other honors,
he also was the first musician to win the Arts
Council of America’s Performing Arts Prize.
Mr. Brey has appeared as soloist with
virtually all the major orchestras in the United
States, and performed under the batons of
prominent conductors including Claudio Abbado, Semyon Bychkov, Sergiu Comissiona,
and Christoph von Dohnányi. His chamber
music career is equally distinguished, with
regular appearances with the Tokyo and
Emerson string quartets, The Chamber Music
17
The Artist
Society of Lincoln Center, and at festivals
such as Spoleto (in both the United States
and Italy) and the Santa Fe and La Jolla
Chamber Music Festivals. He presents an
ongoing series of duo recitals with pianist
Christopher O’Riley; together they have
recorded The Latin American Album, a
disc of compositions from South America
and Mexico released on Helicon Records.
His most recent recording is of Chopin’s
complete works for cello and piano, with
pianist Garrick Ohlsson (Arabesque).
Mr. Brey was educated at the Peabody
Institute, where he studied with Laurence
Lesser and Stephen Kates, and at Yale
University, where he studied with Aldo
Parisot and was a Wardwell Fellow and a
Houpt Scholar. His violoncello is a rare
J. B. Guadagnini made in Milan in 1754.
tra, led by Eliahu Inbal. Born in 1978 in
Hanover, Germany, Mr. Rhoten attended the
College of Arts in Berlin, and continued his
studies as an apprentice with the National
Opera Orchestra Mannheim. Subsequently,
he was awarded a stipend for the Academy
of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
in Munich, and in 2002 became principal
timpanist of the Bavarian Radio Symphony
Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. He has also
worked with conductors Mariss Jansons,
Riccardo Muti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Franz
Welser-Möst, Thomas Daussgard, Paavo
Järvi, and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others. Mr. Rhoten has also performed with the
Hessen Radio Symphony Orchestra, Zurich
Opera Orchestra, North German Radio
Philharmonic, Lower Saxony State Opera Orchestra, and Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.
Markus Rhoten joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Timpani (The Carlos
Moseley Chair) in September 2006. Prior
to this appointment he was the principal
timpanist of the Berlin Symphony Orches-
Christopher S. Lamb joined the New
York Philharmonic as Principal Percussion
(The Constance R. Hoguet Friends of the
Philharmonic Chair) in 1985. He made
his Philharmonic solo debut in the world
18
premiere of Joseph Schwantner’s Percussion Concerto, one of several commissions
celebrating the Philharmonic’s 150th
Anniversary, and has since performed
the work with orchestras throughout the
United States. Mr. Lamb has also given
the world premiere of Tan Dun’s Concerto
for Water Percussion, also commissioned
by the New York Philharmonic, which he
then performed on the Orchestra’s South
America tour, as well as in Asia and Europe with the London Philharmonic, Royal
Concertgebouw, and Leipzig Gewandhaus
orchestras. In November 2001, the third
and most recent commission for Mr. Lamb
by the New York Philharmonic, Susan
Botti’s EchoTempo for Soprano, Percussion, and Orchestra, was given its world
premiere by Ms. Botti, Mr. Lamb, and the
New York Philharmonic under the baton of
Kurt Masur.
In 1999 Mr. Lamb was the recipient of
a prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award to
lecture and conduct research in Australia.
On the faculty of the Manhattan School
of Music since 1989, he has given clinics
and master classes worldwide. He has
designed his own line of concert snare
drum sticks and is frequently consulted
on instrument design concepts by leading
percussion equipment manufacturers.
Christopher Lamb has recorded
chamber works on the New World, Cala,
and CRI labels. He is a graduate of the
Eastman School of Music in Rochester,
New York.
Daniel Druckman, the New York Philharmonic Associate Principal Percussion (The
Mr. and Mrs. Ronald J. Ulrich Chair), joined
the Orchestra in 1991. His solo engagements have included the Los Angeles
Philharmonic and the American Composers Orchestra; the New York Philharmonic’s
Horizons concerts and San Francisco
Symphony’s New and Unusual Music series;
and recitals in New York, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, and Tokyo. He has performed with
ensembles including The Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center, Group for Contemporary Music, Orpheus, Steve Reich and
Musicians, and Philip Glass Ensemble, and
has appeared at the major U.S. summer music festivals. As soloist and a member of the
New York New Music Ensemble and Speculum Musicae, Mr. Druckman has premiered
works by composers from Milton Babbitt to
Charles Wuorinen. He serves as chairman
of the percussion department and director
of the percussion ensemble at The Juilliard
School. Recent solo recordings include Elliott
Carter’s Eight Pieces for Four Timpani and
19
The Artist
Jacob Druckman’s Reflections on the
Nature of Water on Koch International.
The son of composer Jacob Druckman,
Daniel Druckman had invaluable exposure
to music and musicians at an early age. He
attended Juilliard, where he was awarded
the Morris A. Goldenberg Memorial Scholarship and the Saul Goodman Scholarship,
and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music in 1980. Additional studies
were undertaken at the Berkshire Music
Center at Tanglewood, where he received
the Henry Cabot Award for outstanding
instrumentalist.
with composers such as Paavo Heininen,
Magnus Lindberg, Einojuhani Rautavaara,
Kaija Saariaho, and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Since 2002 Mr. Liimatainen has been
professor of sound design at the Theatre
Academy of Finland. He is a longtime
member of the ensemble Toimii, where he
has been responsible for sound reproduction, live electronics, tapes, and videos, and
with which he has appeared frequently as
part of the solo group in Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft. He has also worked with the
Avanti! orchestra and the Finnish Theater
Orchestra, among other ensembles, and
has performed on period instruments with
the groups Free Okapi, Son Panic, and
HumppAvanti! Juhani Liimatainen’s sound
design and compositional work includes
numerous theatrical productions, operas,
festivals, and recordings.
Juhani Liimatainen was born in Keuruu,
Finland, in 1952. Between 1977 and
2002 he worked at the Experimental
Studio of YLE (Finnish Broadcasting)
where, among other responsibilities, he
maintained and developed the studio,
taught composers and musicians, and
oversaw the design and execution of
live electronics for studio and concert
productions. He has done studio work
20
21
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic, founded
in 1842 by a group of local musicians
led by American-born Ureli Corelli Hill, is
by far the oldest symphony orchestra in
the United States, and one of the oldest
in the world. It currently plays some 180
concerts a year, and on May 5, 2010, gave
its 15,000th concert — a milestone unmatched by any other symphony orchestra
in the world.
Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music
Director in September 2009, the latest in
a distinguished line of 20th-century musical giants that has included Lorin Maazel
(2002–09); Kurt Masur (Music Director from 1991 to the summer of 2002;
named Music Director Emeritus in 2002);
Zubin Mehta (1978–91); Pierre Boulez
(1971–77); and Leonard Bernstein, who
was appointed Music Director in 1958 and
given the lifetime title of Laureate Conductor in 1969.
Since its inception the Orchestra has
championed the new music of its time,
commissioning or premiering many
important works, such as Dvořák’s
Symphony No. 9, From the New World;
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3;
Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F; and
Copland’s Connotations. The Philharmonic
has also given the U.S. premieres of such
works as Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 8
and 9 and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4. This
pioneering tradition has continued to the
present day, with works of major contemporary composers regularly scheduled
each season, including John Adams’s
Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning
On the Transmigration of Souls; Stephen
Hartke’s Symphony No. 3; Augusta Read
Thomas’s Gathering Paradise, Emily Dickinson Settings for Soprano and Orchestra;
Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto;
Magnus Lindberg’s EXPO; and Christopher
Rouse’s Odna Zhizn.
The roster of composers and conductors
who have led the Philharmonic includes
such historic figures as Theodore Thomas,
Antonín Dvořák, Gustav Mahler (Music
Director, 1909–11), Otto Klemperer, Richard Strauss, Willem Mengelberg (Music
Director, 1922–30), Wilhelm Furtwängler,
Arturo Toscanini (Music Director, 1928–
36), Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Bruno
Walter (Music Advisor, 1947–49), Dimitri
Mitropoulos (Music Director, 1949–58),
Klaus Tennstedt, George Szell (Music
Advisor, 1969–70), and Erich Leinsdorf.
Long a leader in American musical life,
the Philharmonic has over the last century
become renowned around the globe, appearing in 429 cities in 62 countries on 5
continents. In October 2009 the Orchestra,
led by Music Director Alan Gilbert, made its
debut in Hanoi, Vietnam. In February 2008
the Orchestra, led by then-Music Director
Lorin Maazel, gave a historic performance
in Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Re­
public of Korea — the first visit there
by an American orchestra and an event
watched around the world and for which
the Philharmonic earned the 2008 Common Ground Award for Cultural Diplomacy.
Other historic tours have included the
1930 Tour to Europe, with Toscanini; the
first Tour to the USSR, in 1959; the 1998
22
Asia Tour with Kurt Masur, featuring the
first performances in mainland China; and
the 75th Anniversary European Tour, in
2005, with Lorin Maazel.
A longtime media pioneer, the Philharmonic began radio broadcasts in 1922,
and is currently represented by The New
York Philharmonic This Week — syndicated
nationally 52 weeks per year, and available
on nyphil.org. On television, in the 1950s
and 1960s, the Philharmonic inspired a
generation through Bernstein’s Young
People’s Concerts on CBS. Its television
presence has continued with annual appearances on Live From Lincoln Center on
PBS, and in 2003 it made history as the
first Orchestra ever to perform live on the
Grammy Awards, one of the most-watched
television events worldwide. In 2004
the Philharmonic became the first major
American orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live, and in 2009
the Orchestra announced the first-ever
subscription download series: Alan Gilbert:
The Inaugural Season, available exclusively
on iTunes, and comprising more than 50
works that were performed during the
2009–10 season. Since 1917 the Philharmonic has made nearly 2,000 recordings,
with more than 500 currently available.
On June 4, 2007, the New York Philharmonic proudly announced a new partnership with Credit Suisse, its first-ever and
exclusive Global Sponsor.
23
Executive Producer: Vince Ford
Producers: Lawrence Rock and Mark Travis
Recording and Mastering Engineer: Lawrence Rock
Performance photos: Chris Lee
Alan Gilbert portrait: Hayley Sparks
Magnus Lindberg's Kraft used by arrangement with G. Schirmer Inc. OBO Edition Wilhelm Hansen
Major funding for this recording is provided to the New York Philharmonic by
Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser.
Magnus Lindberg is The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence.
Major support provided by the Francis Goelet Fund.
Classical 105.9 FM WQXR is the Radio Home of the New York Philharmonic.
Programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural
Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Instruments made possible, in part, by The Richard S. and Karen LeFrak Endowment Fund.
Steinway is the Official Piano of the New York Philharmonic and Avery Fisher Hall.
Exclusive Timepiece of the New York Philharmonic
24
25
Performed, produced, and distributed
by the New York Philharmonic
© 2010 New York Philharmonic
NYP 20110104
26
27