Season 2020111111----2020202011112222 The Philadelphia Orchestra Thursday, January 1919,, at 8:00 Friday, January 202020,20 ,,, at 222:002:00:00:00 SaturSaturday,day, January 212121,21 , at 888:008:00:00:00 Herbert Blomstedt Conductor Leif Ove Andsnes Piano Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 I. Allegro con brio II. Largo III. Rondo: Allegro—Presto Intermission Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 (“Eroica”) I. Allegro con brio II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai III. Scherzo (Allegro vivace) and Trio IV. Finale: Allegro molto—Andante—Presto This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. Born in Springfield, MA, in 1927, Herbert Blomstedt moved with his family to Sweden in 1929 and later attended the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and the University of Uppsala. He studied contemporary music at Darmstadt and Baroque music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, also continuing his conducting studies with Igor Markevitch in Salzburg, with Jean Morel at Juilliard, and with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. Honors and accomplishments followed quickly: in 1953 the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize; in 1954 his conducting debut (with the Stockholm Philharmonic) and first appointment as a music director (with Sweden’s Norrköping Symphony); and in 1955 first prize at the Salzburg conducting competition. Mr. Blomstedt is conductor laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, where he served as music director from 1985 to 1995. His recordings with the ensemble, which include complete cycles of the Nielsen and Sibelius symphonies, have been awarded a Grand Prix du Disque, a German Record Critics Award, a Gramophone Award, and two Grammy awards. From 1975 to 1985 he was chief conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle, during which time he led that orchestra in its first visits to the U.S. and on many recordings, including complete cycles of the Beethoven and Schubert symphonies. Mr. Blomstedt also served as music director of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony and, from 1998 to 2005, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. During his time in Leipzig he led a number of recordings, including Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, Sandström’s High Mass, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The German label Querstand has released a set of live recordings from throughout his tenure with the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Mr. Blomstedt is currently honorary conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the NHK Symphony, the Danish and Swedish radio symphonies, and the Bamberg Symphony. Mr. Blomstedt’s many distinctions include membership in the Royal Musical Academy of Stockholm, and several honorary doctorates. He has also been awarded Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for the advancement of American music, Austria’s Anton Bruckner Prize, and Denmark’s Carl Nielsen Prize. In 2003 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit by German President Johannes Rau. Mr. Blomstedt made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1987. This season pianist Leif Ove Andsnes performs works of Beethoven with the Swedish and Norwegian chamber orchestras; the Trondheim, BBC, and Vienna symphonies; and in North America with the Pittsburgh, Montreal, and Boston symphonies. With the Mahler Chamber Orchestra he has begun a multi-year Beethoven performing and recording project for Sony Classical. Other highlights of the 2011-12 season include performances of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Hannover's NDR Radio Philharmonic, Japan's NHK Symphony, and the Bergen Philharmonic, and a spring recital tour in the U.S. with baritone Matthias Goerne. Mr. Andsnes will also serve as music director of the 2012 Ojai Music Festival in California. Mr. Andsnes is an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist. His discography comprises more than 30 discs for EMI Classics, including, most recently, Rachmaninoff's Third and Fourth piano concertos with the London Symphony and a disc of Schumann's complete piano trios with violinist Christian Tetzlaff and cellist Tonja Tetzlaff. Mr. Andsnes’s other recordings include works of Grieg, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff; a series of Schubert discs with tenor Ian Bostridge; and world-premiere recordings of works by Marc-André Dalbavie and Bent Sørensen, paired with music of Lutosławski and Kurtag. He has been nominated for seven Grammy awards and has been awarded five Gramophone awards. Mr. Andsnes was born in Karmøy, Norway, in 1970, and studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under Jiří Hlinka; he has also worked with Jacques de Tiège. Mr. Andsnes has received the Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav as well as Norway’s Peer Gynt Prize. He has also been awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's Instrumentalist Award and the Gilmore Artist Award. Mr. Andsnes currently lives in Copenhagen and Bergen, and also spends time at his mountain home in Norway's western Hardanger area. He is a professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, a visiting professor at the Royal Music Conservatory of Copenhagen, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In June 2010 he achieved one of his proudest accomplishments to date, as he became a father for the first time. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1997. FRAMING THE PROGRAM “O you men who think or say that I am hostile, peevish, or misanthropic, how greatly you wrong me.” So Beethoven lamented in a long (and apparently unsent) letter that he wrote to his two brothers in the fall of 1802. This is the beginning of the so-called Heiligenstadt Testament in which the composer poured out his heart concerning the harrowing personal and professional consequences of his loss of hearing. By age 31 Beethoven had emerged as the great new light on the European musical scene, but now disaster loomed. The concert today presents two compositions—two great thirds—written in the immediate aftermath of the Heiligenstadt Testament: the Third Piano Concerto and the Third Symphony, which Beethoven entitled the “Heroic Symphony.” Both works initially challenged performers, audiences, and critics because of their length, difficulty, and “bizarre” effects. But within a few years most had recognized their greatness and how in particular the “Eroica” Symphony had changed the course of orchestral music. Parallel Events 1801802222 Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 Music Haydn Harmoniemesse Literature Chateaubriand René Art Canova Napoleon Bonaparte History Herschel discovers binary stars 1803 Beethoven Symphony No. 3 Music Spohr Violin Concerto No. 1 Literature Schiller Der Braut von Messina Art West Christ Healing the Sick History Louisiana Purchase Piano Concerto No. 3 Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770 Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827 While Mozart did not invent the piano concerto, he was the one to bring it to prominence and the first to create enduring musical monuments. He served as an inspiring model for the young Beethoven and comparisons between them started early. An important music journal announced that the 12-year-old prodigy “would surely become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart if he were to continue as he has begun.” At 16 Beethoven left his native Bonn to go to Vienna in the hopes of studying with his idol. He is said to have played for Mozart and allegedly earned his approving remark, “Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.” Beethoven was soon called home, however, to tend to his gravely ill mother and remained in Bonn for the next five years. In 1792, with assistance from the Elector Maximilian Franz and Count Waldstein, Beethoven won the chance to return to Vienna. Mozart had recently died and Haydn would be his teacher. Waldstein informed Beethoven, “With the help of assiduous labor you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” The Virtuoso as Composer After studies with Haydn and others, Beethoven began to mold his public career. As Mozart had found some two decades earlier, piano concertos offered the ideal vehicle to display multiple performing and composing gifts. Beethoven put off publication of his piano concertos, reserving them for his private use. The conductor and composer Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried relates an anecdote with respect to the Third Piano Concerto that highlights its function for the composer. At the premiere, Beethoven asked his friend to turn pages for him. But Seyfried reports: Heaven help me! That was easier said than done. I saw almost nothing but empty leaves; at the most on one page or the other a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all of the solo part from memory, since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to put it all down on paper. He gave me a secret glance whenever he was at the end of one of the invisible passage and my scarcely concealable anxiety not to miss the decisive moment amused him greatly. In April 1801 the 30-year-old Beethoven wrote to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig: “In this connection I wish to add that one of my first concertos [the B-flat major, Op. 19] and therefore not one of my best works, is to be published by Hofmeister, and that Mollo is to publish a concerto [the C major, Op. 15] which indeed was written later, but which also does not rank among the best of my works in this form.” After playing his first two concertos for years in many places, Beethoven was clearly becoming dissatisfied. He had progressed considerably in his musical thinking. He may have already begun his next piano concerto, a work that was long thought to have been composed around the turn of the century, but that recent research suggests took shape mostly in 1802 and early 1803, around the time of the “Eroica” Symphony and the Heiligenstadt Testament, the remarkable letter (never sent) that Beethoven wrote to his brothers in which he despaired over encroaching deafness.