FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 21, 2016 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected]

DAVID ROBERTSON TO RETURN TO PHILHARMONIC Conducting Works by ELGAR, John WILLIAMS, and HOLST

PRINCIPAL TUBA ALAN BAER TO MAKE SOLO DEBUT Performing JOHN WILLIAMS’s Tuba Concerto

Saturday Matinee Concert To Feature Prokofiev’s Quintet Music by VERY YOUNG from Afghanistan, Syria, Netherlands, and Performed by Philharmonic Musicians

May 26–28, 2016

David Robertson will return to the New York Philharmonic to conduct John Williams’s Tuba Concerto, featuring Principal Tuba Alan Baer in his Philharmonic solo debut; Holst’s The Planets; and Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro.

“This piece has such a sound track quality to it; that’s what really drew me into it,” Alan Baer said. “E.T. is very visible. It could fit right into the movie. In the third movement you hear a lot of fanfare — like The Empire Strikes Back.” Alan Baer will perform John Williams’s Tuba Concerto on an F tuba he helped create. The New York Times recently wrote of Alan Baer’s performance with the Philharmonic in Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, led by Semyon Bychkov in February 2016: “Alan Baer, the tuba player, deserves mention … having provided a firm, sonorous basis for those lovely brass chorales.”

John Williams’s music will be heard earlier in the week when he is honored at the New York Philharmonic Spring Gala, A John Williams Celebration, May 24, 2016, with the performing music from the Oscar-winning film ’s iconic scores, led by David Newman, along with clips from select films.

The Saturday Matinee Concert on May 28 at 2:00 p.m. opens with Prokofiev’s Quintet — performed by Principal Associate Concertmaster Sheryl Staples, Associate Principal Viola Rebecca Young, Principal Bass Timothy Cobb, Principal Liang Wang, and Principal Anthony McGill — followed by Holst’s The Planets, conducted by David Robertson. The concert will be followed immediately by New York Philharmonic musicians performing original compositions by students in the Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program — created by Very Young Composers Founder and Director Jon Deak — led by Assistant Conductor Joshua Gersen. The children whose works will be featured hail from Afghanistan,

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Syria, the Netherlands, and New York City. Audience members will be invited to contribute to organizations that benefit child refugees around the world: Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, and the New York Philharmonic Education Fund.

Related Events  Pre-Concert Insights Composer Daniel Felsenfeld will introduce the program. Pre-Concert Insights are $7, and discounts are available for three (3) or more talks and for students. They take place one hour before these performances in the Helen Hull Room, unless otherwise noted. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org/preconcert or (212) 875-5656.

Artists David Robertson launched his 11th season as music director of the St. Louis Symphony in the fall of 2015; he has also served as chief conductor and artistic director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra since January 2014. Highlights of the 2015–16 season with the St. Louis Symphony include a California tour featuring Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles..., with video imagery by photographer Deborah O’Grady, and soloist Timothy McAllister performing John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto. The concerto was part of the latest St. Louis Symphony recording, City Noir, on Nonesuch, which received the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance. Other highlights for Mr. Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony are the U.S. Premiere of Tan Dun’s Contrabass Concerto and John Adams’s most recent symphony for , Scheherazade.2 — Dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra, performed by Leila Josefowicz (co- commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw). The Scheherazade.2 performances are being recorded live by Nonesuch for future release. To celebrate his decade-long tenure with the St. Louis Symphony in 2014–15, David Robertson showcased 50 of the orchestra’s musicians in solo or solo-ensemble performances throughout the season. Other highlights included a concert performance of Verdi’s Aida featuring video enhancements by S. Katy Tucker, and a return to with a program featuring the music of Meredith Monk. In 2013–14 David Robertson led the St. Louis Symphony at Carnegie Hall in Britten’s Peter Grimes on the Britten centennial. In March 2015, David Robertson led a performance of Holst’s The Planets with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a “Global Orchestra,” in which musicians around Australia performed along through the Internet. Born in California, David Robertson was educated at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied horn and composition before turning to conducting. He received ’s 2006 Ditson Conductor’s Award, and he and the St. Louis Symphony are recipients of several major awards from ASCAP and the League of American , including the 2008–09 Award for Programming of Contemporary Music as well as the 2005–06 Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming. Musical America named David Robertson Conductor of the Year in 2000. In 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and that same year he received the Excellence in the Arts award from the St. Louis Arts and Education Council. In 2011 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. David Robertson made his Philharmonic debut in April 2001 leading a program of Wagner, Schoenberg, and Beethoven; he most recently appeared in January 2015, leading Emanuel Ax and a program of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Stravinsky, and Bartók.

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Alan Baer joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Tuba in June 2004. Previously, he served as principal tuba of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, with which he performed as a featured soloist nearly every year, and of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. His other performing credits include The Cleveland Orchestra, Peninsula Music Festival of Wisconsin, New Orleans Symphony, Los Angeles Concert Orchestra, Ojai Festival Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, and Brazil. Alan Baer’s teachers have included Rudy Emilson, Dr. Gary Bird, Ronald Bishop, and Tommy Johnson. He received his bachelor of music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and was awarded its Alumni Achievement Award in 2005. He has appeared in recitals and master classes at colleges and universities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has held teaching positions at California State University, Long Beach, and at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Mr. Baer currently serves as Director of Brass Studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and serves on the faculties of The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, and Mannes School of Music. He is a representative of the Buffet Musical Instrument Group, and performs exclusively on Meinl- Weston tubas. Alan Baer is a member of the New York Philharmonic Principal Brass Quintet. These performances mark his New York Philharmonic solo debut.

Founded in 1873 by Leopold Damrosch, the Oratorio Society of New York is one of the city’s oldest musical organizations. From its earliest days, the Society played an integral role in the musical life of the city, presenting its own concerts and performing at musically and historically significant events. It also created a fund to finance building a concert hall. When became the Society’s fifth president in 1888, he adopted the cause, enlisting architect William Tuthill, a fellow board member, to design a “Music Hall” that would provide a suitable artistic home for the Society. In 1891, singing under Tchaikovsky’s baton, the Society — as well as the New York Symphony (one of the forebears of today’s New York Philharmonic) — helped inaugurate the concert hall that came to be known as Carnegie Hall. It has appeared there ever since. Throughout its history, the Society has sung the traditional repertory — it has performed Handel’s Messiah every December since 1874 — as well as infrequently performed and contemporary works. In May 2016 it will present the New York Premiere of Marjorie Merryman’s Jonah and Haydn’s Missa Angustiis (Nelson Mass) at Carnegie Hall, and in November 2015 it presented the Carnegie Hall premiere of Juraj Filas’s Requiem: Opera Spei. In the summer of 2015 it presented a series of concerts in Germany. In March 2003 the Society received the UNESCO Commemorative Medal and the Cocos Island World Natural Heritage Site Award for its series of benefit concerts in Costa Rica. It made its European debut in 1982 and has since performed in Europe, Asia, and Latin and South America. On its 100th anniversary the Society was presented with the Handel Medallion, New York City’s highest cultural award, in recognition of these contributions. The Oratorio Society’s Women’s Chorus is drawn from the Society’s full membership. The Women’s Chorus also performed in the New York Philharmonic’s 2013 The Planets — An HD Odyssey. The Oratorio Society’s relationship with the Philharmonic dates to January 1877, when the ensemble participated in a program led by Leopold Damrosch; it most recently appeared on a July 2013 Summertime Classics concert conducted by Bramwell Tovey. Kent Tritle, music director of the Oratorio Society of New York, is also director of choral activities at the Manhattan School of Music; director of cathedral (more)

David Robertson / Alan Baer / 4 music and organist at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine; and music director of Musica Sacra, New York’s longest continuously performing professional chorus. In addition, Mr. Tritle is a member of the graduate faculty of The Juilliard School, chair of the organ department of the Manhattan School of Music, and the organist of the New York Philharmonic. Kent Tritle founded the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert series at New York’s Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, and led it to great acclaim from 1989 to 2011. From 1996 to 2004, he was music director of New York’s The Dessoff Choirs. Mr. Tritle hosted The Choral Mix with Kent Tritle, a weekly program on WQXR, from 2010 to 2014. Kent Tritle has made more than a dozen recordings on Telarc, AMDG, Epiphany, Gothic, VAI, and MSR Classics.

Repertoire Edward Elgar’s (1857–1934) Introduction and Allegro for strings, Op. 47, was composed for the London Symphony Orchestra at the suggestion of August Jaeger (the inspiration for the Nimrod movement of the Enigma Variations), who thought “a brilliant, quick scherzo” would be a good fit for the recently formed ensemble. While writing the Introduction and Allegro, scored for string quartet and string orchestra, Elgar wrote to a friend that the work was to incorporate “a devil of a fugue,” and so it does, alongside a stirring melody inspired by a Welsh folk song. The piece highlights each instrument’s virtuosity, and was premiered under the composer’s baton on March 8, 1905. The New York Philharmonic performed its U.S. Premiere later that same year, in November 1905, when Walter Damrosch led the New York Symphony (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s New York Philharmonic). The Philharmonic’s most recent performance of the Introduction and Allegro was given in December 2010, led by Colin Davis.

John Williams (b. 1932) composed his Tuba Concerto in 1985 to celebrate the centennial of the Boston Pops Orchestra. The technically demanding, three-movement work was written specifically for Boston Pops Orchestra principal tuba Chester Schmitz. The Boston Globe called the concerto “a virtuoso workout for the soloist and for the instrument … and at points even sumptuously orchestrated. More to the point, it is actually good music in which interesting ideas are put through their paces spankingly.” This is the first time the New York Philharmonic is presenting this work.

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) struggled for many years to build a career as a composer, and it was only with the premiere of The Planets that he gained popular success. Based on the composer’s understanding of astrology, the work evokes the distinctive attributes assigned to each planet — Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune — in colorful character sketches. “Mars” so forcefully evoked the terrors of war that listeners at an informal performance in 1918 were certain that the music depicted World War I, although Holst had completed the section before the war began. The New York Philharmonic first performed The Planets in December 1921, conducted by Albert Coates; the most recent performance was in July 2013 during the Orchestra’s annual Bravo! Vail residency, led by Bramwell Tovey.

* * * David Robertson’s appearance is made possible through the Charles A. Dana Distinguished Conductors Endowment Fund. (more)

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* * * Very Young Composers is sponsored, in part, by the Susan and Elihu Rose Foundation, Inc., Muna and Basem Hishmeh, The ASCAP Foundation Irving Caesar Fund, and Mr. and Mrs. Stephen D. Solender.

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

Tickets Single tickets for this performance start at $30. Pre-Concert Insights are $7 (visit nyphil.org/preconcert for more information). Tickets may be purchased online at nyphil.org or by calling (212) 875-5656, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday; 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturday; and noon to 5:00 p.m. Sunday. Tickets may also be purchased at the David Geffen Hall Box Office. The Box Office opens at 10:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and at noon on Sunday. On performance evenings, the Box Office closes one-half hour after performance time; other evenings it closes at 6:00 p.m. A limited number of $16 tickets for select concerts may be available through the Internet for students within 10 days of the performance, or in person the day of. Valid identification is required. To determine ticket availability, call the Philharmonic’s Customer Relations Department at (212) 875-5656. (Ticket prices subject to change.)

For press tickets, call Lanore Carr at the New York Philharmonic at (212) 875-5714, or e-mail her at [email protected].

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New York Philharmonic

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center

Thursday, May 26, 2016, 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 27, 2016, 2:00 p.m. Saturday, May 28, 2016, 8:00 p.m.

Pre-Concert Insights (one hour before each concert) with composer Daniel Felsenfeld

David Robertson, conductor Alan Baer*, tuba Women of the Oratorio Society of New York Kent Tritle, director

ELGAR Introduction and Allegro John WILLIAMS Tuba Concerto HOLST The Planets

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Saturday Matinee Concert

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center

Saturday, May 28, 2016, 2:00 p.m.

David Robertson, conductor Women of the Oratorio Society of New York Kent Tritle, director Sheryl Staples, violin Rebecca Young, viola Timothy Cobb, bass Liang Wang, oboe Anthony McGill, clarinet

PROKOFIEV Quintet HOLST The Planets

The concert will be followed by New York Philharmonic musicians performing original compositions by students in the Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program from Afghanistan, Syria, the Netherlands, and New York City, led by Assistant Conductor Joshua Gersen.

* denotes New York Philharmonic debut # # #

ALL PROGRAMS SUBJECT TO CHANGE

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Photography is available in the New York Philharmonic’s online newsroom, nyphil.org/newsroom or by contacting (212) 875-5700 or [email protected].