Season 2012-2013
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27 Season 2012-2013 Thursday, October 25, at 8:00 The Philadelphia Orchestra Friday, October 26, at 2:00 Saturday, October 27, at 8:00 Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Joshua Bell Violin Frank Concertino Cusqueño World premiere—Commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra Bernstein Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium) for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp, and Percussion I. Phaedrus: Pausanias (Lento—Allegro marcato) II. Aristophanes (Allegretto) III. Eryximachus (Presto) IV. Agathon (Adagio) V. Socrates: Alcibiades (Molto tenuto—Allegro molto vivace) Intermission Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 I. Allegro non troppo II. Andante moderato III. Allegro giocoso—Poco meno presto—Tempo I IV. Allegro energico e passionato—Più allegro This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. 228 Story Title The Philadelphia Orchestra Jessica Griffin Renowned for its distinctive vivid world of opera and Orchestra boasts a new sound, beloved for its choral music. partnership with the keen ability to capture the National Centre for the Philadelphia is home and hearts and imaginations Performing Arts in Beijing. the Orchestra nurtures of audiences, and admired The Orchestra annually an important relationship for an unrivaled legacy of performs at Carnegie Hall not only with patrons who “firsts” in music-making, and the Kennedy Center support the main season The Philadelphia Orchestra while also enjoying a at the Kimmel Center for is one of the preeminent three-week residency in the Performing Arts but orchestras in the world. Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and also those who enjoy the a strong partnership with The Philadelphia Orchestra’s other area the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Orchestra has cultivated performances at the Mann Festival. an extraordinary history of Center, Penn’s Landing, artistic leaders in its 112 and other venues. The The ensemble maintains seasons, including music Philadelphia Orchestra an important Philadelphia directors Fritz Scheel, Carl Association also continues tradition of presenting Pohlig, Leopold Stokowski, to own the Academy of educational programs for Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Music—a National Historic students of all ages. Today Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Landmark—as it has since the Orchestra executes a and Christoph Eschenbach, 1957. myriad of education and and Charles Dutoit, who community partnership Through concerts, served as chief conductor programs serving nearly tours, residencies, from 2008 to 2012. With 50,000 annually, including presentations, and the 2012-13 season, its Neighborhood Concert recordings, the Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin Series, Sound All Around is a global ambassador becomes the eighth music and Family Concerts, and for Philadelphia and for director of The Philadelphia eZseatU. the United States. Having Orchestra. Named music been the first American For more information on director designate in 2010, orchestra to perform in The Philadelphia Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin brings a China, in 1973 at the please visit www.philorch.org. vision that extends beyond request of President Nixon, symphonic music into the today The Philadelphia 29 Soloist Lisa-Marie Mazzucco Violinist Joshua Bell was just 14 years old when he made his highly acclaimed Philadelphia Orchestra debut, performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 at the Academy of Music under the baton of Riccardo Muti and launching his career into a permanent spotlight. Since that performance in 1982 Mr. Bell has appeared with the Orchestra 27 times, most recently in the summer of 2012 at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Other recent concert highlights include the premiere, also this past summer, of Edgar Meyer’s new concerto for violin and double bass, which Mr. Bell performed with Mr. Meyer at Tanglewood, Aspen, and the Hollywood Bowl. Mr. Bell began the 2012-13 season with the San Francisco Symphony’s Opening Night Gala. Often referred to as the “poet of the violin,” Mr. Bell is one of the world’s most celebrated violinists. He is an Avery Fisher Prize recipient and Musical America’s 2010 Instrumentalist of the Year. Recently appointed music director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, he is the first person to hold this title since Neville Marriner formed the orchestra in 1958. Mr. Bell currently records exclusively for Sony Classical. He has recorded more than 40 CDs and is a multiple Grammy Award winner. He performed on the soundtrack for the film The Red Violin, which won the Oscar for Best Original Score. His television appearances have ranged from Great Performances on PBS to Sesame Street. In 2007 he made headlines when he performed, incognito, in a Washington, D.C., subway station for a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post story examining art and context. Born in Bloomington, IN, Mr. Bell received his first violin at age four after his parents noticed him plucking tunes with rubber bands he had stretched around the handles of his dresser drawers. At 12 he began studying with renowned violinist Josef Gingold at Indiana University and two years later made his debut with the Philadelphians. Mr. Bell’s Carnegie Hall debut, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a notable recording contract soon followed. His career has now spanned over 30 years as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and conductor. Mr. Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius and uses a late-18th-century French bow by François Tourte. For more information visit www.joshuabell.com. 30 Framing the Program The Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned Gabriela Lena Parallel Events Frank’s Concertino Cusqueño, which receives its world 1885 Music premiere on these concerts, to honor Yannick Nézet- Brahms Franck Séguin as the eighth music director of the ensemble. In Symphony Symphonic this composition the California-born and bred Frank, the No. 4 Variations daughter of a Peruvian immigrant, imaginatively blends Literature her South American heritage with a love for the music of Haggard the 20th-century English composer Benjamin Britten. The King Solomon’s principal theme of the one-movement work is spun from Mines a religious melody (“Ccollanan María”) and a simple motif Art Van Gogh that opens Britten’s Violin Concerto. The Potato Looking to the past in such a way had earlier inspired Eaters Johannes Brahms when he composed his Fourth Symphony, History which concludes today’s concert. He based the last Galton proves movement of the work on a recurring theme drawn from individuality of J.S. Bach’s Cantata No. 150. Brahms’s final symphony fingerprints proved a masterful culmination to his symphonic career, a 1954 Music work that honors the past all the while forging compositional Bernstein Stravinsky innovations that inspired the next generation of composers. Serenade In Memoriam Between these compositions by Frank and Brahms we Dylan Thomas hear Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade, a violin concerto in Literature all but name after Plato’s Symposium. The five-movement Golding work offers reflections on the nature of love as amicably Lord of the Flies Art argued among a group of philosophers in a long night of De Kooning passionate discussion. Marilyn Monroe History Segregation ruled illegal in U.S. 31 The Music Concertino Cusqueño Sabina Frank Gabriela Lena Frank is a brilliant, genial composer whose beautiful music appeals to a wide audience. She was born in Berkeley, California, in 1972. Her father, a Mark Twain scholar, instilled in her a love of literature and the vernacular, while her mother, an artist, surrounded their precocious daughter with a collection of fascinating visual stimuli. At age three she began to play the piano, picking out notes from Peruvian folk music heard on her parents’ stereo. Like Clara Schumann, Frank did not begin to speak until she was five or six years old. She Gabriela Lena Frank soon embarked on a journey to craft an aural response to Born in Berkeley, California, her rich cultural Latin American, Lithuanian, and Chinese September, 26, 1972 heritage, even adding folk-music tunes to traditional Now living there Classical sonatinas. During her last year in high school, Frank came to the decision to devote her life to composition, following her passion to Rice University, where she received a firm foundation in what she calls “old school” music-making. Subsequently, at the University of Michigan under the tutelage of William Bolcom, among many others, she worked to make “old school” music new by nurturing her predilection for folk genres and enriching her music with allusions to literary and visual sources. A Prolific and Award-winning Composer Frank has composed in a wide range of musical genres, from string quartets to piano works to pieces for orchestra. She bestows on each a poetic title, which she calls “the hardest part.” Like Gustav Mahler and others preceding her, she debates the amount of information she wishes her audience to know about a piece before it is heard. She has won numerous awards, including a Latin Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for Inca Dances (2009), a piece for guitar and string quartet, and a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Frank’s music has been premiered by many major orchestras: the Indiana Symphony, Peregrinos (2009); the Houston Symphony, La Llorona: Tone Poem for Viola and Orchestra (2007); and the Utah Symphony, Three Latin American Dances for Orchestra (2004). Numerous 32 ensembles have performed her music, among them the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra featuring Dawn Upshaw, which premiered La Centinela y la Paloma (The Keeper and the Dove, 2011); the ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, which played Hilos (2010); and Ballet Hispanico, which introduced her Puntos Suspensivos (2010). She has composed Ritmos Anchinos (2006) for the Silk Road Project, under the direction of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and Inkarrí (2005) for the venerable Kronos Quartet. The Naxos label has issued a recording of Hilos with the ALIAS Ensemble. Music that “Speaks to a Lot of People” Frank possesses a unique ability to capture sound in its original environment, as one might recognize the wind through chimes.