New York Philharmonic

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2009 – 2010New York Philharmonic

Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season

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David Robertson

Conducts

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The 2009–10 season — Alan Gilbert’s first as Music Director of the Philharmonic — introduces his vision for the Orchestra, one that both builds on its rich legacy and looks to the future and reflects the diver sity of his interests. He sees the Orchestra as a place that both celebrates the greatest of the classical repertoire and nurtures today’s composers and tomorrow’s music. The season's program­ming reflects his belief in the importance of artistic collaboration, his commitment to raising audience awareness and understanding of music, and his interest in making the Philharmonic a destination for all.

“I’d like to develop a special kind of rapport and trust with our audience,” Mr. Gilbert says. “The kind of belief that would make them feel comfortable hearing anything we program simply because we programmed it. Looking ahead, I hope my performances with the Orchestra will consist of our tightly combined human chemistry, a clear persona that is both identifiable and enjoyable.”

About This SeriesIn Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season, the New York Philharmonic breaks new ground by being the first orchestra to offer a season’s worth of recorded music for download. Offered exclusively through iTunes, this series brings the excitement of Alan Gilbert’s first season to an international audience.

The iTunes Pass will give subscribers access to more than 50 works, comprising new music (including New York Philhar­monic commissions) and magnificent selections from the orchestral repertoire, performed by many of the world’s top artists and conductors. The subscription also features bonus content, such as Alan Gilbert’s onstage commentaries, and exclusive extras, including additional performances and lectures.

For more information about the series, visit nyphil.org/itunes.

Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season

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

Danzas from Estancia, Op. 8a by Alberto Ginastera ©Copyright 1953 by Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

Copyright Renewed.

Dance Figures by George Benjamin © Faber Music Ltd.

Major funding for this recording is provided to the New York Philharmonic by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser.

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.

New York Philharmonic

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New York Philharmonic

David Robertson, Conductor

Recorded live February 18–20, 2010,Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

George BENJAMIN (b. 1960) Dance Figures: Nine Choreographic Scenes for Orchestra (2004) 15:30

DEBUSSY (1862–1918) Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) (1892–94) 10:43

GINASTERA (1916–83) Danzas del Ballet Estancia (Dances from the Ballet Estancia), Op. 8bis (1941) 11:49The Land Workers 3:03

Wheat Dance 3:01

The Cattle­Men 1:52

Final Dance: Malambo 3:53

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Notes on the ProgramBy James M. Keller, Program Annotator

Dance Figures: Nine Choreographic Scenes for OrchestraGeorge Benjamin

After 18 years teaching at the Royal College of Music, George Benjamin was named the Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King’s College, London, in 2001, succeeding Harrison Birtwistle in that position. Recognized as one of the foremost British composers of his time, Benjamin has been widely acknowledged in his native country and abroad. He was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1996, elected to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 2000, and awarded the Deutsche Symphonie­Orchester’s first­ever Schoenberg Prize for composition in 2001.

Benjamin’s formation as a composer was international in nature. Following early work in piano and composition in England, he moved to France to study composi­tion with Olivier Messiaen and piano with Yvonne Loriod; he then returned to England to become a pupil of Alexander Goehr at King’s College, Cambridge. Both nations provided platforms for his early successes in the 1980s. Since then his music has been warmly embraced in the United States as well: his symphonic pieces have been commissioned by the orchestras of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston, and he has become a frequent faculty member at

the Berkshire Music Festival at Tangle­wood. Retrospectives of his work have been undertaken by the London Sym­phony Orchestra, as well as by ensembles in Brussels, Tokyo, Berlin, Strasbourg, and Madrid. He also provided compositions for the opening festivities of two important concert halls: Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall and Tokyo’s Opera City Concert Hall.

In addition to being a composer, Benja­min has often appeared as a pianist and a conductor, more often as the latter. On the podium he typically champions the music of 20th­ and 21st­century composers, and he has led the premieres of compositions by György Ligeti, Gérard Grisey, Unsuk Chin, and Wolfgang Rihm, among other notable figures.

Although his writing displays the sort

of meticulous attention to detail we may associate with many French composers, Benjamin’s own evolving style has not usu­ally seemed particularly French, unless we would consider his fascination with some of the interests of the musique spectrale composers in the 1980s as such. At least in their fastidiousness, some of his works may more directly suggest his interest in the compositional rigor of Webern and, by extension, the canonic processes of Re­naissance composers. Indeed, a prominent canon is to be heard in the eighth section of Dance Figures.

Benjamin’s works often take an inor­dinately long time — years, even — to germinate, but when they reach the point he’s seeking, he knows it. He observes:

There may be millions of notes in a work,

but when you really find the right notes, and

they resonate in the right way, something

mysterious happens. It’s that moment when

things suddenly lock into each other, and

you realize: I’ve got a piece!

In this context, the work played here was an exception:

Dance Figures really is different, not least

because it took me only three months to

write from beginning to end. I had seen

Balanchine’s wonderful choreography to

Stravinsky’s Agon, with its little forms that

leave space and air for dancers to work in,

and it seemed to me that writing for dance

demands a succession of small forms rather

than narrative, symphonic discourse.

The Work at a Glance

George Benjamin has provided this listening guide in the published score of Dance Figures:

Nine short movements, several interlinked, all defined by strong contrasts in character, form, and color. I. A simple introduction, exclusively for divided high strings, leading through a suspended chord to:II. An ornate melody shared amongst the winds, underpinned by a sonorous harmonic texture. Its calm conclusion is joined to:III. A brief polyphonic movement, divided into two halves — the first legato and plaintive, the second more energetic and pointed.IV. Various musical materials cross-cut and superimpose in this volatile movement: virtuoso woodwind flourishes, heavy chords in the low-est regions of the orchestra, a fierce quartet of horns, a hesitant oboe solo ... On its third ap-pearance a distant, slow chorale links to:V. A flowing song, sharing the main line be-tween a viola solo and muted trumpets. An abrupt change of atmosphere marks the coda, where an E-flat clarinet takes the foreground.VI. The full orchestra, employed as a single mass, placed almost entirely in a high regis-ter. Monolithic pulses are disrupted by abrupt changes in pace while blaring melodic frag-ments hocket across the brass.VII. After a pause, a complete contrast — a veiled texture, subdued and low in tessitura. A deep major third in muted trombones leads to:VIII. A longer movement, reflective in mood and scored for chamber-like resources. A dark-hued canon between bass clarinets and cellos prefaces three statements of the same simple melody. At each recurrence the tempo slows considerably while the melody is harmonized and embellished in different ways.IX. A very short but energetic Presto, exploiting a play of perspectives across the full orchestra as a melodic line, mainly in the first violins, spins its way through a mass of other materials.

In ShortBorn: January 31, 1960, in London, England

Resides: in London

Work composed: 2004, on a joint commission from the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie/Koninklijke Muntschouwburg (Brussels); the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for its MusicNOW series; and Strasbourg Musica. Dedicated: “For Sam, Rosie, Alex, and Francesca”

World premiere: as a concert work, on May 19, 2005, at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; as a ballet, on May 17, 2006, conducted by Kazushi Ono at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels with the Rosas Dance Company, choreographed by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker

New York Philharmonic premiere: these concerts, which mark the work’s New York premiere

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Notes on the Program (continued)

In fact, Benjamin had something of a head start on this work, since he describes Dance Figures as “a much expanded orch­estral transcription of Piano Figures, a series of short piano pieces intended for children to play.”

Whether many children are actually playing Piano Figures is not known; the ten­movement suite (composed in 2004) was premiered in 2006 by Pierre­Laurent Aimard, and Benjamin sometimes per­forms it himself.

In the solo­piano setting (Piano Figures), the sections are identified by subtitles, which are omitted from the published orchestral score (Dance Figures). The first six numbers are performed without a break, as are the final three, yielding a two­part structure that stops for a breather only about two­thirds of the way through the piece. Dance Figures was imagined from the outset as both a score to be choreographed and as a stand­alone orchestral work.

Instrumentation: three flutes (two doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets (one doubling E­flat clarinet, one doubling bass clarinet) plus an E­flat clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, temple blocks, guiros, ratchets, tam­tam, bass drum, orchestra bells, cym­bals, anvils, fishing­rod reel (or very quiet ratchet), cowbells, vibraphone, whip, vibra­slap, snare drums, tambourine, log drums, alarm bell, harp, celesta, and strings.

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)Claude Debussy

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 remain 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, 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 many songs and piano pieces, some of which are still widely performed today.

While defining the composer’s distinc­

tive voice, the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun baffled many early listeners. Debussy’s fellow­composer Alfred Bruneau wrote of the piece:

[It] is one of the most exquisite instrumental

fantasies which the young French school has

produced. This work is too exquisite, alas! it is

too exquisite.

Even at the distance of more than 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 Ferruccio Busoni said (intending, one would think, a compliment), “It is like a beautiful sunset; it fades as one looks at it.”

In ShortBorn: August 22, 1862, in St. Germain­en­Laye, just outside Paris, France

Died: March 25, 1918, in Paris

Work composed: begun in 1892 (perhaps as early as 1891); completed in 1894

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)

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Notes on the Program (continued)

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, and with harmonies that inspire momentary excitement rather than underscore 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 late­19th 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 Mono-logue 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. The piece was premiered two months later to such acclaim that it was immediately encored on the same program. 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.

The Path to the Premiere

Radical though the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 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 grad-uate 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 De-bussy 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 atmo-sphere of intimate collaboration. De-bussy 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 spell-bound. 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.

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Danzas del Ballet Estancia (Dances from the Ballet Estancia), Op. 8bisAlberto Ginastera

Alberto Ginastera made a greater impact on the international classical music scene than did any other Argentine composer. Born into a family with Catalan and Italian roots, he was schooled entirely in his native country, principally at the National Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires. By the time he was 18 he was awarded first prize in a composi­tion contest, and in quick succession he produced numerous pieces with a distinc­tive flavor, often employing native Argentine rhythms or folk melodies. Many of these ear­ly works he would later destroy or withdraw, denouncing them as immature examples of his art, but some have found places in the repertoire, including his Danzas argentinas (for piano, 1937), his ballet Estancia, and his chamber composition Impresiones de la Puna (1934).

Argentina endured a period of political op­pression in the mid­20th century under the regime of Juan Perón. In 1945 the govern­ment forced Ginastera to resign from his position on the music faculty of the National Military Academy because he had signed a petition in support of civil liberties. The then 30­year­old composer traveled with his fam­ily to the United States, where he studied from 1945 to 1947 with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship. On his return to Argentina he formed a national composers’ organization similar to the League of Com­posers in New York. After Perón was over­

thrown, in 1955, Ginastera assumed several political­academic posts in Argentina and begin to introduce important new music from Europe and North America to eager minds in his country. In 1969, exasperated with the political situation in Argentina, Ginastera left definitively, and he spent most of the rest of his life in Geneva, where he died in 1983.

Ginastera’s later works moved toward an abstracted Modernism, even exploring serial composition and polytonality. Nonetheless, the composer remained concerned about the gap that separated audiences from serious musical composition during his lifetime, and he proclaimed that the proper aspiration of a composer was “to be integrated into society, not stand apart from it.”

Outwardly, Ginastera was reserved, polite, and formal. In the late 1960s, when his opera Bomarzo was stunning audiences with its alleged lewdness, his fellow­composer and longtime friend Aaron Copland commented on “the tremendous contrast between the outward personality and the inner man,” and observed:

In ShortBorn: April 11, 1916, in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Died: June 25, 1983, in Geneva, Switzerland

Work composed: 1941; dedicated to Lincoln Kirstein

World premiere: May 12, 1943, at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Ferruccio Calusio conducting the Orquesta del Teatro Colón

New York Philharmonic premiere: February 20, 1969, Seiji Ozawa, conductor

He is never off the cuff, but speaks always

with due consideration for feelings and

decorum. He’s the last man in the world you’d

expect to shock people with a sensational

opera. A lot goes on inside we don’t know

about, obviously.

Estancia resulted from a commission tendered in 1941 by American Ballet Cara­van. The group’s director, Lincoln Kirstein, envisioned an evening of three one­act ballets by three Latin American compos­ers — Ginastera, Francisco Mignone of Brazil, and Domingo Santa Cruz of Chile — choreographed by George Balanchine. The troupe disbanded in 1941 before the project could be realized, but Ginastera was able to get some instant mileage out of his score by extracting four sections to stand as his Danzas del Ballet Estancia (Op. 8bis), a huge hit at its premiere in Buenos Aires. The ballet would not be staged until 1952, also in Buenos Aires, but with choreography by Michel Borowski instead of Balanchine.

When Ginastera composed Estancia, he was going through his phase of objective nationalism (as he termed it), transpos­ing elements of folk music directly into a classical format. The ballet’s scenario was perfectly suited to this approach. Its plot is minimal — city boy falls in love with country girl, who grows to like him only when he develops the skills of a ranchman — but its five scenes add up to a celebration of rural life in Argentina. The complete ballet (though not the Danzas suite) even includes sung and recited passages from Martín Fierro, José Hernández’s epic poem from the

Música Argentina

As with all Latin American countries, Ar-gentina made its first steps in Western art music under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church. Jesuit missionaries from Spain, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany helped establish a flourishing musical culture in Argentina from the 16th through the 18th centuries, and the eminent Italian composer and organist Domenico Zi-poli arrived in 1717 to oversee music in Cór-doba, Argentina’s principal cultural center at that time. In 1776 the capital of what was by then the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata was officially established at Buenos Aires, which from then on would be the hub of Argentine musical life. Numerous Argentine composers emerged during the 19th and 20th centuries, but most were appreciated principally within the nation’s boundaries. A handful, however, achieved prominence beyond them, including — apart from Ginas-tera — the neo-Romantic Carlos Guastavino (1912–2000), the “new tango” proponent Astor Piazzolla (1921–92), and the theatrical avant-gardist Mauricio Kagel (1931–2008), who worked largely in Germany. Among Argentina’s current contributions to the musical scene are three particularly notable figures whose careers have unrolled mostly in the United States: Lalo Schifrin (b. 1932), Mario Davidovsky (b. 1934), and Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960).

Notes on the Program (continued)

1870s about the lives of the gauchos on the pampas, a text that is deeply ingrained in the psyche of all Argentines.

Instrumentation: flute (doubling piccolo) and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, tim­pani, triangle, castanets, tambourine, snare drum, tenor drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam­tam, xylophone, piano, and strings.

New York Philharmonic

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ViolinsGlenn 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 CeccoCarol WebbYoko Takebe

Minyoung ChangHae­Young Ham

The Mr. and Mrs. Timothy M. George Chair

Lisa GiHae KimKuan­Cheng LuNewton MansfieldKerry McDermottAnna RabinovaCharles Rex

The Shirley Bacot Shamel Chair

Fiona SimonSharon YamadaElizabeth ZeltserYulia Ziskel

Marc Ginsberg Principal

Lisa Kim* In Memory of Laura Mitchell

Soohyun Kwon The Joan and Joel I. Picket Chair

Duoming Ba

Marilyn Dubow The Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Chair

Martin EshelmanQuan GeJudith GinsbergMyung­Hi Kim+Hanna LachertHyunju LeeDaniel ReedMark SchmoocklerNa SunVladimir Tsypin

ViolasCynthia Phelps

Principal The Mr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Rose Chair

Rebecca Young*+Irene Breslaw**

The Norma and Lloyd Chazen Chair

Dorian Rence

Katherine GreeneThe Mr. and Mrs. William J. McDonough Chair

Dawn HannayVivek KamathPeter KenoteBarry LehrKenneth MirkinJudith NelsonRobert Rinehart

The Mr. and Mrs. G. Chris Andersen Chair

CellosCarter Brey

Principal The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Chair

Eileen Moon*The Paul and Diane Guenther Chair

Qiang TuThe Shirley and Jon Brodsky Foundation Chair

Evangeline Benedetti

Eric BartlettThe Mr. and Mrs. James E. Buckman Chair

Elizabeth DysonMaria KitsopoulosSumire KudoRu­Pei YehWei Yu

BassesEugene Levinson

Principal The Redfield D. Beckwith Chair

Orin O’BrienActing Associate Principal The Herbert M. Citrin Chair

William BlossomThe Ludmila S. and Carl B. Hess Chair

Randall ButlerDavid J. GrossmanSatoshi Okamoto

FlutesRobert Langevin

Principal The Lila Acheson Wallace Chair

Sandra Church*Renée SiebertMindy Kaufman

PiccoloMindy Kaufman

OboesLiang Wang

Principal The Alice Tully Chair

Sherry Sylar*Robert Botti

English HornThomas Stacy

The Joan and Joel Smilow Chair

ClarinetsMark NuccioActing Principal

The Edna and W. Van Alan Clark Chair

Pascual MartinezForteza

Acting Associate Principal The Honey M. Kurtz Family Chair

Alucia Scalzo++Amy Zoloto++

E-Flat ClarinetPascual Martinez

Forteza

Bass ClarinetAmy Zoloto++

2009–2010 SeasonALAN GILBERT Music DirectorDaniel Boico, Assistant ConductorLeonard Bernstein, Laureate Conductor, 1943–1990Kurt Masur, Music Director Emeritus

BassoonsJudith LeClair

Principal The Pels Family Chair

Kim Laskowski*Roger NyeArlen Fast

ContrabassoonArlen Fast

HornsPhilip Myers

Principal The Ruth F. and Alan J. Broder Chair

Erik Ralske Acting Associate Principal

R. Allen SpanjerHoward Wall

TrumpetsPhilip Smith

Principal The Paula Levin Chair

Matthew Muckey*Ethan BensdorfThomas V. Smith

TrombonesJoseph Alessi Principal The Gurnee F. and

Marjorie L. Hart Chair

Amanda Stewart*David Finlayson The Donna and

Benjamin M. Rosen Chair

Bass TromboneJames Markey

TubaAlan Baer Principal

TimpaniMarkus Rhoten

Principal The Carlos Moseley Chair

PercussionChristopher S. Lamb

Principal The Constance R. Hoguet Friends of the Philharmonic Chair

Daniel Druckman* The Mr. and Mrs. Ronald J. Ulrich Chair

HarpNancy Allen Principal

The Mr. and Mrs. William T. Knight III Chair

Keyboard In Memory of Paul Jacobs

HarpsichordLionel Party

PianoThe Karen and Richard S. LeFrak Chair

Harriet WingreenJonathan Feldman

OrganKent Tritle

LibrariansLawrence Tarlow Principal

Sandra Pearson**Sara Griffin**

Orchestra PersonnelManagerCarl R. Schiebler

Stage RepresentativeLouis J. Patalano

Audio DirectorLawrence Rock

* Associate Principal** Assistant Principal+ On Leave++ Replacement/Extra

The New York Philharmonic uses the revolving seating method for section string players who are listed alphabetically in the roster.

Honorary Membersof the SocietyPierre BoulezStanley DruckerLorin MaazelZubin MehtaCarlos Moseley

New York PhilharmonicGary W. Parr Chairman

Zarin Mehta President and Executive

Director

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The Music Director

In September 2009 Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, the first native New Yorker to hold the post. For his inaugural season he has introduced a number of new initiatives: the positions of The Marie­Josée Kravis Composer­in­Residence, held by Magnus Lindberg, and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist­in­Residence, held by Thomas Hampson; an annual three­week festival; and CONTACT, the New York Philharmonic’s new­music series. He leads the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi; on a European tour in January–February 2010; and in performances of world, U.S., and New York premieres. Also in the 2009–10 season, Mr. Gilbert becomes the first person to

hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, a position that will include coaching, conducting, and hosting performance master classes.

Highlights of Mr. Gilbert’s 2008–09 season with the New York Philharmonic included the Bernstein anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall, and a performance with the Juilliard Orchestra, presented by the Philharmonic, featuring Bernstein’s Kad-dish Symphony. In May 2009 he conducted the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philhar­monic Commission, and in July 2009 he led the New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks and Free Indoor Concerts, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, and four performances at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado.

In June 2008 Mr. Gilbert was named conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, following his final concert as its chief conductor and artistic advisor. He has been principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra since 2004. Mr. Gilbert regularly conducts other leading orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, including the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; The Cleveland Orchestra; Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Amsterdam’s Royal Concert gebouw Orchestra; and Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2003 he was named the first music director of the Santa Fe Opera, where he served for three seasons.

Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard Univer­sity, The Curtis Institute of Music, and

The Juilliard School. He was a substitute violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra for two seasons and assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1995 to 1997. In November 2008 he made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Dr. Atomic. His recording of Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance.

The Artists

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In the fall of 2009 conductor

David Robertson began his fifth season

as music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

(SLSO), while continuing as prin­cipal guest conductor of the BBC

Symphony Orchestra, a post he has held since 2005. Highlights of his current season with the SLSO include performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall and a four­city tour of California. His guest engagements include appearances with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Chi­cago Symphony Orchestra, and Cleveland Orchestra in the U.S.; and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra abroad. From 2000 to 2004 David Robertson was the first artist to simultaneously hold the posts of music director for the Orchestre National de Lyon and artistic director of Lyon’s Auditorium. He also served as music director of Paris’s Ensemble Intercontemporain (1992– 2000) and was resident conductor of the Jerusa­lem Symphony Orchestra (1985–87).

His opera credits include The Metropolitan Opera, Opéra de Lyon, Bavarian Staatsoper, Théâtre du Châtelet, Hamburg Staatsoper,

and San Francisco Opera.Mr. Robertson’s discography features

numerous recordings for the Sony Classi­cal, Naive, EMI/Virgin Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, Atlantic/Erato, Nuema, Adès, Valois, and Naxos labels, in addition to his recent recording of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony with the SLSO for Nonesuch. His download­only Live from Powell Hall releases, also with the SLSO, include works by Adams, Scriabin, and Szymanowski. Other recordings feature works by composers such as Bartók, Elliott Carter, Dvorák, Ginastera, Steve Reich, and Saint­Saëns.

David Robertson attended London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied French horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting. His honors include Columbia Univer­sity’s 2006 Ditson Conductor’s Award; with the SLSO, the League of American Orchestras’ 2005–06 A.S.C.A.P.–Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming; Musical America’s 2000 Conductor of the Year Award; and the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts 1997 Conduc­tors Award. He is the recipient of honor­ary doctorates from Webster University (2009) and Maryville University (2007), as well as of the 2010 Excellence in the Arts Award from the St. Louis Arts and Educa­tion Council.

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New York Philharmonic

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The New York Philharmonic, founded in 1842 by a group of local musicians led by American­born 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 December 18, 2004, gave its 14,000th 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 20th­century 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 Dvorák’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 works such 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; and Esa­Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto.

The roster of composers and conductors who have led the Philharmonic includes such historic figures as Theodore Thomas, Antonín Dvorák, 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 61 countries on 5 continents. In February 2008 the Orchestra, led by then­Music Director Lorin Maazel, gave a historic performance in Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — the first visit there by an American orchestra, and an event watched around the world and for which the Philharmonic received 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 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 and Sirius XM Radio. 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 most­watched television events worldwide. In 2004, the New York Philharmonic was the first major American Orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live. Following on this innovation, in 2009 the Orchestra announced the first­ever subscription download series, Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season, available exclusively on iTunes, produced and distributed by the New York Philharmonic, and comprising more than 50 works 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 first­ever and exclusive Global Sponsor.

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