sign in sign up
<<
Home , Arie Vardi, Jennifer Koh, Lorin Maazel, Munich Philharmonic

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 10, 2012 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected]

FORMER MUSIC DIRECTOR TO CONDUCT TWO WEEKS OF CONCERTS

Pianist YEFIM BRONFMAN To Perform BRAHMS’s Concerto No. 1 Program To Conclude with SIBELIUS’s Symphony No. 2 January 16–19, 2013

Violinist JENNIFER KOH To Make Philharmonic Subscription Debut in LUTOSŁAWSKI’s Chain 2: Dialogue for Violin and Orchestra TCHAIKOVSKY’s Romeo and Juliet, Overture-Fantasy SHOSTAKOVICH’s Symphony No. 5 January 24–26, 2013

Former Music Director Lorin Maazel returns to the to conduct two programs in two weeks. In the first week, Mr. Maazel will lead Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 — with soloist Yefim Bronfman, continuing the Philharmonic’s survey this season of Brahms’s complete symphonies and concertos — and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 on Wednesday, January 16, 2013, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, January 17 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 18 at 2:00 p.m.; and Saturday, January 19 at 8:00 p.m.

The following week, Mr. Maazel will lead the Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Overture-Fantasy; Lutosławski’s Chain 2: Dialogue for Violin and Orchestra, with soloist Jennifer Koh in her Philharmonic subscription debut; and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 on Thursday, January 24, 2013, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 25 at 8:00 p.m.; and Saturday, January 26 at 8:00 p.m.

The works on both programs reflect the ’ reactions to nationalism. Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 is considered to represent Finland’s push for independence, and Tchaikovsky composed Romeo and Juliet at the suggestion of Mily Balakirev, head of the “Mighty Five” Russian nationalist composers. Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 5 under immense pressure to satisfy Josef Stalin. The Soviet regime also targeted Polish Lutosławski, who incorporated folk-music into his public works but kept his radically experimental music private until after Stalin’s death.

The Philharmonic’s season-long survey of Brahms’s complete symphonies and concertos features four conductors and five soloists. In November conducted Brahms’s Double (more)

Kurt Masur / Yefim Bronfman / Jennifer Koh / 2

Concerto for Violin and and Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, and 4. Following Mr. Maazel’s appearances Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Yefim Bronfman, Andris Nelsons will lead the Violin Concerto, with Christian Tetzlaff as soloist, February 6–9, 2013, and will conduct the Piano Concerto No. 2, with Rudolf Buchbinder as soloist, February 14– 16, 2013, and the Symphony No. 1 February 21–22, 2013. Brahms’s chamber music is appearing on all four Saturday Matinee Concerts, featuring Philharmonic musicians as well as violinist Lisa Batiashvili and Alan Gilbert, both of whom will play violin in the String Quintet in G major on June 8, 2013.

Related Events  Pre-Concert Talks Harvey Sachs, The Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic, will introduce the program January 16–19. Elizabeth Seitz, faculty member at The Boston Conservatory, will introduce the program January 24–26. Pre-Concert Talks are $7; discounts available for multiple concerts, students, and groups. They take place one hour before each performance in the Helen Hull Room, unless otherwise noted. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org or (212) 875-5656.

 National and International Radio Broadcast The January 16–19 program will be broadcast the week of February 6, 2013,* and the January 24–26 program will be broadcast the week of February 13, 2013,* on The New York Philharmonic This Week, a radio concert series syndicated weekly to more than 300 stations nationally, and to 122 outlets internationally, by the WFMT Radio Network.

The 52-week series, hosted by actor Alec Baldwin, is generously underwritten by The Kaplen Foundation, the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Philharmonic’s corporate partner, MetLife Foundation. The broadcast will be available on the Philharmonic’s Website, nyphil.org. The program is broadcast locally in the New York metropolitan area on 105.9 FM WQXR on Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. *Check local listings for broadcast and program information.

Artists For more than five decades, Lorin Maazel has been one of the world’s most esteemed and sought-after conductors. Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 2002 to 2009, he became music director of the Philharmonic in the 2012–13 season. In 2010–11 he completed his fifth and final season as the inaugural music director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain. He is the founder and artistic director of the Castleton Festival, based on his farm property in Virginia, which was launched to exceptional acclaim in 2009. Since then, the Festival has expanded its activities nationally and internationally, with productions in Beijing, Bari, Italy, and House in Muscat, Oman. Mr. Maazel’s previous posts have included music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1993– 2002); music director of the Symphony Orchestra (1988–96); general manager and chief conductor of the Vienna Staatsoper (1982–84, the first American to hold that position); (more)

Kurt Masur / Yefim Bronfman / Jennifer Koh / 3 music director of The (1972–82); and artistic director and chief conductor of the (1965–71). His close association with the includes 11 internationally televised New Year’s Concerts from Vienna.

Mr. Maazel is also a highly regarded composer, with a wide-ranging catalogue of works written primarily over the last dozen years. His first opera, 1984, based on ’s literary masterpiece, had its world premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in May 2005. A revival of 1984 took place at La Scala in May 2008, and a Decca DVD of the original London production was released that same month.

Mr. Maazel has conducted more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000 opera and concert performances. He has made more than 300 recordings, including symphonic cycles/complete orchestral works of Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Mahler, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and , winning ten Grands Prix du Disques.

A second-generation American born in Paris, Lorin Maazel began violin lessons at age five and conducting lessons at age seven. He studied with Vladimir Bakaleinikoff and appeared publicly for the first time at age eight. Between ages 9 and 15, he conducted most of the major American orchestras, including the NBC Symphony at the invitation of former Music Director .

Yefim Bronfman is widely regarded as one of the world’s most talented virtuoso pianists. His 2012–13 season includes concerts with the (with ) in Berlin, Salzburg, and at the London Proms; appearances with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich (with David Zinman) and London’s ; a yearlong residency with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; a return to Salzburg’s Easter Festival with the Dresden Staatskapelle; appearances with the Vienna Philharmonic (with Michael Tilson Thomas) in Vienna and London; subscription concerts in Spain and ; and a spring tour with Ensemble Wien- Berlin. In North America he works with The Orchestra (with Fabio Luisi) in one of its visits and returns to the orchestras in Chicago, Dallas, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Montreal. With mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená he makes a short winter tour of venues including Carnegie Hall, and he gives solo recitals in Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, Paris, Berlin, and Lisbon.

Mr. Bronfman has been widely praised for his solo, chamber, and orchestral recordings. He was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2009 for his recording of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto, conducted by the composer (Deutsche Grammophon), and he won a Grammy in 1997 for his recording of the three Bartók Piano Concertos with Mr. Salonen and the .

Born in Tashkent, in the Soviet Union, in 1958, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973. There he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music (more)

Kurt Masur / Yefim Bronfman / Jennifer Koh / 4 at Tel Aviv University. He later studied in the at The Juilliard School, Marlboro Music Festival, and The Curtis Institute of Music, and his teachers included Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. He became an American citizen in July 1989.

Violinist Jennifer Koh is recognized for her intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. Since the 1994–95 season, when she won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ms. Koh has been heard with leading orchestras and conductors worldwide. Also a prolific recitalist, she appears frequently at major music centers and festivals.

With an impassioned musical curiosity, Ms. Koh is forging an artistic path of her devising, choosing works that inspire and challenge. In 2009 she introduced Bach and Beyond, a six-year, three-recital series that explores the history of the solo violin repertoire from J.S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas to works by modern-day composers and new commissions. Highlights of her 2012– 13 season include Bach and Beyond recitals in New York, Toronto, and Berkeley; the solo violin role of the title character in a new production of ’s , also in New York and Berkeley; appearances with the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas performed in a single concert in Houston.

Jennifer Koh regularly records for the Cedille label, which recently released Rhapsodic Musings and the Grammy-nominated album String Poetic. Her latest recording, featuring the works from her first Bach and Beyond recital, was released in the fall of 2012. Ms. Koh appeared with the Philharmonic in July 2006 for the Concerts in the Parks and at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, both times performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto led by Xian Zhang.

Repertoire, January 16–19 In 1857 , at the urging of his close friends Clara Schumann and violinist Joseph Joachim, began composing a concerto for piano. He took the first two movements from an incomplete sonata for two that he had started in 1854, when he was 21 years old. The resulting Piano Concerto No. 1 was first heard publicly in 1859, with the composer at the keyboard. Grandly dramatic and symphonic in scope, the work is one of Brahms’s major early achievements. The New York Philharmonic first performed the concerto in 1875 under the direction of , with Nannetta Falk-Auerbach — a pupil of Clara Schumann’s — as soloist. Most recently, it was performed in January 2011, with Christoph von Dohnányi conducting and as soloist.

Many believe that with his Symphony No. 2, was tapping into the contemporary undercurrent of Finnish patriotism and intense longing for self-rule after years of Swedish and Russian domination. Written in 1901, the piece was premiered in 1902 in Helsinki, conducted by the composer. The New York Philharmonic first performed it in January 1914, when led the New York Symphony (which later merged with the New York Philharmonic). The Orchestra most recently performed the symphony in July 2010, at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, led by Alan Gilbert. (more) Kurt Masur / Yefim Bronfman / Jennifer Koh / 5

Repertoire, January 24–26 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, a “fantasy-overture after Shakespeare,” received its world premiere in 1870 at Moscow’s Musical Society, conducted by Nicholas Rubinstein. The composer completed the composition in 1869, when he was 29 years old, making the work the fourth of his published orchestral scores. Following the premiere he revised it twice, enhancing the intense drama of the music and adding depth to his evocation of Shakespeare’s young lovers mired in the escalating hatred of the Montagues and Capulets. Romeo and Juliet was first performed by the Philharmonic in April 1876, with George Matzka conducting, and most recently in May 2012, led by Music Director Alan Gilbert.

Witold Lutosławski’s Chain 2: Dialogue for Violin and Orchestra is part of a musical triptych that includes the Partita for Violin and Orchestra and Interlude. Composed in 1984–85, Chain 2 was first performed in 1986, conducted by legendary new-music champion Paul Sacher, with Anne-Sophie Mutter as the soloist. Lutosławski described Chain 2 as a “miniature violin concerto,” and while it resembles that genre, it also employs improvised sections within fixed parameters. The piece is also an expression of the composer’s formal experimentation. “Over the last few years,” he said, “I have been working on a new type of musical form, which consists of two structurally independent strands. Sections within each strand therefore begin and end at different times. This is the premise on which the term ‘chain’ was selected.” In this way, Lutosławski wanted to “break the centuries-old European tradition of a series of sections, each of which would end with a cadence of all parts.” The Philharmonic first performed the work in February 1990, with conducting and Anne-Sophie Mutter as soloist. She was soloist for the work’s most recent Philharmonic performance as well, in January 2000, conducted by Kurt Masur.

Following the Soviet regime’s angry and ominous denunciation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and his ballet The Limpid Stream, the composer found himself in a very dangerous situation. His next work would have to satisfy the cultural authorities if he were to avoid imprisonment, deportation, or even death. The result was the Symphony No. 5 (1937), described publicly after its successful premiere as “a Soviet artist’s practical, creative reply to just criticism” — a phrase that Shostakovich may well have planted in the press to help rehabilitate his reputation. In this symphony he retreated from his earlier modernism toward a more populist, politically acceptable idiom. The work is composed on a heroic scale, with an expansive slow movement, lively scherzo rhythms, and an opening that recalls Beethoven. “The theme of my Symphony is the stabilization of a personality,” he said. “In the center of this composition — conceived lyrically from the beginning to end — I saw a man with all his experiences. The finale resolves the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements into the optimism and joy of living.” However, many listeners have sensed beneath its surface the oppressive conditions of its creation. The Philharmonic first performed the symphony in February 1942, led by Serge Koussevitzky, and most recently in February 2011, conducted by Andris Nelsons.

(more)

Kurt Masur / Yefim Bronfman / Jennifer Koh / 6

Credit Suisse is the Global Sponsor of the New York Philharmonic.

* * * Lorin Maazel’s appearance with the New York Philharmonic is made possible through the Daisy and Paul Soros Endowment Fund and the Charles A. Dana Distinguished Conductors Fund. * * * Yefim Bronfman and Jennifer Koh’s appearances with the New York Philharmonic are made possible through the Hedwig van Ameringen Guest Artists Endowment Fund.

* * * Programs of the New York Philharmonic are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

* * *

Tickets Tickets for these concerts start at $30. Tickets for Open Rehearsals are $18. Pre-Concert Talks are $7; discounts are available for multiple concerts, students, and groups (visit nyphil.org/preconcert for more information). All other 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 Saturday, and 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. on 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 $13.50 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 Communications Department at (212) 875-5714, or e-mail her at [email protected].

(more) Kurt Masur / Yefim Bronfman / Jennifer Koh / 7

New York Philharmonic

Avery Fisher Hall

Wednesday, January 16, 2013, 7:30 p.m. Open Rehearsal — 9:45 a.m. Thursday, January 17, 2013, 7:30 p.m. Friday, January 18, 2013, 2:00 p.m. Saturday, January 19, 2013, 8:00 p.m.

Pre-Concert Talk (one hour before each concert) with Harvey Sachs, The Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic

Lorin Maazel, conductor Yefim Bronfman, piano

BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 SIBELIUS Symphony No. 2 ______

Avery Fisher Hall

Thursday, January 24, 2013, 7:30 p.m. Open Rehearsal — 9:45 a.m. Friday, January 25, 2013, 8:00 p.m. Saturday, January 26, 2013, 8:00 p.m.

Pre-Concert Talk (one hour before each concert) with Elizabeth Seitz, faculty member at The Boston Conservatory

Lorin Maazel, conductor Jennifer Koh, violin**

TCHAIKOVSKY Romeo and Juliet, Overture-Fantasy LUTOSŁAWSKI Chain 2: Dialogue for Violin and Orchestra SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5

**denotes New York Philharmonic subscription debut

# # #

Tumblr — Your Backstage Pass

Photography is available by contacting the Communications Department at (212) 875-5700; [email protected].