Season 20102010----20112011 The Philadelphia Orchestra Thursday, January 227777,, at 8:00 FriFriFriday,Fri day, January 22282888,, at 888:008:00:00:00 Jonathan Nott Conductor Andreas Haefliger Piano Mozart Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546 Bartók Piano Concerto No. 3 I. Allegretto II. Adagio religioso—Poco più mosso—Tempo I— III. Allegro vivace—Presto—Tempo I Intermission Schubert Symphony in C major, D. 944 (“Great”) I. Andante—Allegro, ma non troppo—Più moto II. Andante con moto III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace—Trio—Scherzo da capo IV. Allegro vivace This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. Jonathan Nott became principal conductor of the Bamberg Symphony in 2000. Since his appointment, he has taken the ensemble on tours to South America, Russia, Japan, and the U.S., the Salzburg and Edinburgh International festivals, and the BBC Proms. He was “Artiste Étoile” at the 2007 Lucerne Summer Festival, where the Bamberg Symphony was orchestra-in-residence. Mr. Nott has conducted many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, and Munich philharmonics; and the Royal Concertgebouw and Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestras. He conducted the Vienna Philharmonic at the Vienna Modern and Salzburg festivals, directed the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra on its 2009 European tour, and returned to his home city for his debut with the City of Birmingham Symphony in June 2010. This season he returns to the NHK Symphony in Tokyo, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the Netherlands Radio and Oslo philharmonics, and he will debut with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. These current concerts mark his Philadelphia Orchestra debut. Born in Great Britain, Mr. Nott studied music at Cambridge University, singing and flute in Manchester, and conducting in London. His conducting career began at the Frankfurt and Wiesbaden operas where he conducted all the major operatic repertoire, including Wagner’s Ring. He also directed the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR in a production of Strauss’s Elektra at the Baden-Baden Festival and in Wiesbaden. Mr. Nott was appointed chief conductor of the Lucerne Symphony in 1997 and principal conductor of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2000. Mr. Nott’s award-winning discography includes works by Mahler, Schubert, and Stravinsky with the Bamberg Symphony in co-production with the Bayerische Rundfunk under the Swiss label Tudor Records. Their latest release, Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, received the 2009 International Toblacher Komponierhäuschen Prize; in January 2010 it was also selected as winner of the Symphonic Works category at the MIDEM Classical Awards. With the Berlin Philharmonic he has recorded the complete orchestral works of György Ligeti, including the Requiem, for Warner Classics. In October 2009 Mr. Nott was awarded an E.ON AG Prize for Culture. Pianist Andreas Haefliger was born into a distinguished Swiss musical family and grew up in Germany, later going on to study at the Juilliard School. Engagements with major U.S. orchestras followed, including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2005. In Europe Mr. Haefliger has appeared with numerous ensembles, including the Royal Concertgebouw and Budapest Festival orchestras, the Rotterdam and Munich philharmonics, the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin, the Orchestre de Paris, and the London and Vienna symphonies. He has also been a frequent performer at such festivals as Lucerne and Salzburg, the BBC Proms, and the Vienna Festwochen. Engagements this season include appearances with the Toronto Symphony, the London Philharmonic, and Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchestra. Recent highlights include performances at Carnegie Hall and the Aspen Festival, and with the Strasbourg Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Vienna Radio Symphony, and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony. A frequent recitalist and chamber musician, Mr. Haefliger has collaborated with his late father, the tenor Ernst Haefliger, baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, the Takács Quartet, and his wife, flautist Marina Piccinini. He has a long-standing partnership with baritone Matthias Goerne, with whom in summer 2010 he performed at the festivals of Tanglewood, Toronto, and Aix-en-Provence, followed by an appearance at London’s Wigmore Hall in October. In recent years Mr. Haefliger’s solo recital appearances have been focused on an ongoing series, Perspectives on Beethoven, all of which have been recorded for the Avie label. Mr. Haefliger has recorded Mozart sonatas, Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze and Fantasiestücke, Schubert’s impromptus, and a disc of music by Sofia Gubaidulina for the Sony Classical label. He has also recorded with the Takács Quartet and Mr. Goerne for Decca. Mr. Haefliger’s latest release with Mr. Goerne of Schubert Lieder set to texts by Goethe was awarded a Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. FRAMING THE PROGRAM Mozart liked to show off and to experiment—and why not, as he was fully aware of his extraordinary compositional powers. One way he did this was through displays of counterpoint in which he engaged with the great accomplishments of the Baroque masters, Johann Sebastian Bach above all. He originally composed his austere Fugue in C minor for two pianos in 1783, soon after becoming enamored with Bach’s fugues. Five years later he arranged the work for strings and added an impressive adagio to start. Béla Bartók fled the horrors of war-torn Europe in 1940 and came to New York where he struggled to build a new life. After an initial period of compositional paralysis he wrote a final series of instrumental masterpieces before dying of leukemia five years later. Tonight we hear his last completed composition, the Third Piano Concerto. Although posterity has embraced Schubert’s seven completed symphonies, the composer apparently felt that all but his last, the C major that concludes the program, were preparatory works. In the summer of 1825, his health temporarily restored after a long illness, he composed this ambitious symphony meant to vie with the living legacy of Beethoven. Parallel Events 1788 Mozart Adagio and Fugue Music Haydn Symphony No. 90 Literature Goethe Egmont Art Canova Cupid and Psyche History Bread riots in France 1825 Schubert Symphony in C major (“Great”) Music Mendelssohn String Octet Literature Pushkin Boris Godunov Art Constable Leaping Horse History Decembrist revolt in Russia crushed 1945 Bartók Piano Concerto No. 3 Music Strauss Metamorphosen Literature Orwell Animal Farm Art Moore Family Group History Surrender of Germany Adagio and Fugue in C minor Wolfgang Amadè Mozart Born in Salzburg, January 27, 11756756 Died in Vienna, December 5, 1791 The 19th-century revival of Bach’s music is often dated to 1829, when the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted the St. Mathew Passion in Leipzig. While that legendary event sparked interest among Romantic composers, the rediscovery of the music of Bach and Handel had already been well underway for decades. A crucial figure in that revival was Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an Austrian diplomat and amateur musician who held weekly house concerts in Vienna. Mozart wrote to his father in April 1782 that “I go every Sunday at twelve o’clock to Baron van Swieten, where nothing is played but Handel and Bach. I am collecting at the moment the fugues of Bach. …” Ten days later Mozart sent his sister a prelude and fugue he had just written. He told her of van Swieten’s musicals and commented that when his wife, Constanze, heard the fugues she absolutely fell in love with them. Now she will listen to nothing but fugues and particularly (in this kind of composition) the works of Handel and Bach. Well, as she had often heard me improvise fugues, she asked me if I had ever written any down, and when I said I had not, she scolded me very thoroughly for not recording some of my compositions in this most artistic and beautiful of all musical forms. Mozart’s Fugal Frenzy Van Swieten enlisted Mozart to make string arrangements of various Bach fugues, including from the Well-Tempered Clavier, that could be played through at his house. Some years later he helped found the Society of Associated Cavaliers, a group of nobles that presented concerts on a larger scale. Mozart was commissioned to re- orchestrate four choral works by Handel ( Acis and Galatea, Messiah, Alexander’s Feast, and Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day ). It is no wonder that all these activities left their mark on Mozart’s own compositions, witness in particular his increased contrapuntal experimentation. Although Mozart had employed fugal passages in earlier sacred choral works, as well as in some instrumental pieces (especially string quartets in emulation of his friend Haydn), most of his fugal frenzy came after he moved to Vienna in 1781 and met van Swieten. The impact of Bach and Handel is apparent in Mozart’s two greatest religious works (both unfinished), the Mass in C minor and Requiem, as well as in the Overture to The Magic Flute and the last movement of his last symphony—the “Jupiter”—in which he uses five distinct themes and ends by combining them in a dazzling display of counterpoint. Such compositional virtuosity seems to have been congenial with Mozart’s precocious genius. “Too many notes, my dear Mozart,” Emperor Joseph II is alleged to have said to him, eliciting the response that there were “exactly as many notes as are needed.” But the imperial criticism was echoed by others: Mozart’s music was challenging and complex; it was often difficult to comprehend on first hearing and was hard to play. Leopold Mozart, himself an estimable musician, was constantly worrying that his son liked to show off too much in his compositions and insufficiently calculated public taste.