NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC's 175Th BIRTHDAY December 7, 2017
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 27, 2017 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5700; [email protected] NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC’S 175th BIRTHDAY December 7, 2017 175th BIRTHDAY CONCERTS Led by Former Music Director ALAN GILBERT With Philharmonic Musicians as Soloists Homage to Inaugural Concert and to the Musicians of the Orchestra December 6–9, 2017 NEARLY 100 HISTORIC RADIO BROADCAST PERFORMANCES TO BE RELEASED FOR STREAMING FOR FIRST TIME NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC LEON LEVY DIGITAL ARCHIVES TO RELEASE ALL 19TH CENTURY MATERIALS ON DECEMBER 7 Fifth Release in a Multi-Year Project Funded by the LEON LEVY FOUNDATION ARCHIVAL EXHIBIT The New York Philharmonic at 175: A History of Innovation November 17, 2017–January 20, 2018 FREE INSIGHTS AT THE ATRIUM “Inside the Orchestra: Yesterday, Today, and Imagining the Future” With New York Philharmonic Musicians December 5, 2017 The New York Philharmonic will celebrate its 175th birthday with a subscription program led by former Music Director Alan Gilbert; nearly 100 historic radio broadcast performances released for streaming for the first time; a New York Philharmonic Digital Archives release of all of the Orchestra’s archival material from the 19th century; a New York Philharmonic Archives exhibit, The New York Philharmonic at 175: A History of Innovation; and a free Insights at the Atrium event, “Inside the Orchestra: Yesterday, Today, and Imagining the Future,” with Philharmonic musicians. More 175th birthday activities will be announced at a later date. The New York Philharmonic, the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States and one of the oldest in the world, presented its inaugural concert 175 years ago, on December 7, 1842, in the Apollo Rooms in downtown Manhattan. These events conclude the 175th anniversary celebrations that began in the 2016–17 season. (more) New York Philharmonic’s 175th Birthday / 2 175th Birthday Concerts Led by Alan Gilbert Former Music Director Alan Gilbert will return to lead the Orchestra in its 175th birthday program, combining an homage to the New York Philharmonic’s inaugural concert with a salute to the musicians who make up the Orchestra itself. The program features Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Weber’s Oberon Overture — both of which were performed on the Orchestra’s inaugural concert, on December 7, 1842 — and Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for Winds — selected to spotlight Philharmonic Principals — featuring Principal Oboe Liang Wang, Principal Clarinet Anthony McGill, Principal Bassoon Judith LeClair, and Acting Principal Horn Richard Deane in his Philharmonic solo debut. The program takes place Wednesday, December 6, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, December 7 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, December 8 at 2:00 p.m.; and Saturday, December 9 at 8:00 p.m. “I feel truly honored to preside over the New York Philharmonic’s 175th birthday concert, and to help mark such an impressive milestone,” said Alan Gilbert. “We continue the Philharmonic’s tradition of celebrating landmark birthdays with works from the inaugural program. But this time we wanted not only to hark back to that inaugural concert, but also to add a nod to the present day. Because this Orchestra is made up of an astounding array of virtuosos, it only seemed right to present several of these amazing musicians as soloists in Mozart’s delightful Sinfonia concertante for Winds.” Nearly 100 Historic Radio Broadcast Performances To Be Released for Streaming for First Time Nearly 100 historic performances will be released for streaming for the first time the week of December 7, 2017 — the Philharmonic’s 175th birthday week — on Apple Music and Google Play. Highlights include: Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Jascha Heifetz, led by Arturo Toscanini (1935) Wagner’s Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung with soprano Kirsten Flagstad, led by Bruno Walter (1952) Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, Tragic, led by Dimitri Mitropoulos (1955) Fauré’s Requiem with soprano Reri Grist, baritone Donald Gramm, organist Vernon DeTar, and the Choral Art Society; led by Nadia Boulanger (1962) George Crumb’s Star-Child (A Parable for Soprano, Antiphonal Children’s Voices, and Large Orchestra) with soprano Irene Gubrud, Principal Trombone Edward Herman, Jr., The Boys’ Choir of the Little Church Around the Corner and Trinity School, The Bell Ringers of Trinity School, The Brooklyn Boys’ Chorus; led by Pierre Boulez, David Gilbert, James Chambers, and Larry Newland (1977) Tan Dun’s Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra in Memory of Toru Takemitsu with Principal Percussion Christopher S. Lamb, led by Kurt Masur (1999) The radio broadcast performances are selected from compilations released on New York Philharmonic Special Editions, the Philharmonic’s former recording label launched in 1997: New York Philharmonic: The Historic Broadcasts 1923–1987, which earned Grammy Award nominations for Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes; Mahler Broadcasts, 1948–1982, the Orchestra’s first comprehensive (more) New York Philharmonic’s 175th Birthday / 3 collection of Mahler’s symphonies; New York Philharmonic: An American Celebration, highlighting works written in the 20th century; Bernstein LIVE, which includes Bernstein’s live performances recorded between 1951 and 1981; and Kurt Masur at the New York Philharmonic, reflecting the variety and breadth of Masur’s programming with the Philharmonic through live recordings of performances from his tenure. The producers of New York Philharmonic Special Editions are Sedgwick Clark, editor of Musical America; Philharmonic Archivist / Historian Barbara Haws; and Philharmonic Audio Director Lawrence Rock. New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives Releases All 19th Century Materials December 7 The fifth release of material in the New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives — the multi- year initiative to digitize the Orchestra’s extensive archives, funded by the Leon Levy Foundation — will be completed, and all material from the 19th century will be available online on December 7, 2017 — the New York Philharmonic’s 175th birthday. The New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives is available at archives.nyphil.org. Highlights of the additional 250,000 pages of materials that will be available free online include: More than 1,000 conducting scores and associated parts A rare lithographic edition of the conducting score of Wagner’s Rienzi Rare early editions of orchestral scores by Beethoven, Brahms, Bristow, and MacDowell 5,500 pages of handwritten minutes and attendance books from the Orchestra’s business meetings, with searchable text Almost 20,000 pages of ledgers, contracts, rental agreements, tour materials, brochures, library records, ephemera, and more Materials from founding Philharmonic member Anthony Reiff, Sr., and his son, Anthony Reiff, Jr., also a Philharmonic musician, including correspondence, photographs, programs, and ephemera Records from the New York Symphony, which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s New York Philharmonic More than 400 photographs of Orchestra members, composers, and other musicians The New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives currently contains almost two million pages, including marked conducting scores, business documents, photographs, and every printed program from the Orchestra’s founding in 1842 to the present. Supported by the Leon Levy Foundation, since 2005 the Digital Archives has received a total of $5 million to implement one of the world’s most ambitious and comprehensive digitization programs. Support for the digitization of the 19th-century material also comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). When completed, the online collection will contain every document in the New York Philharmonic Archives from 1842 through 1970 as well as all public documents from 1970 through today. The Philharmonic is the first major symphony orchestra to provide open access to its performance history data, through (more) New York Philharmonic’s 175th Birthday / 4 archives.nyphil.org/performancehistory, the longest running collection of data on classical music in the United States; it now links to the Digital Archives to facilitate access to the history of any artist, concert location, date, and work. All documents and the photographs themselves have been photographed by Ardon Bar Hama and his team using innovative and advanced techniques to achieve the highest quality. The images are managed in Hadoop, an open-source data system configured by a team of developers at Technology Services Group (TSG) in coordination with the Philharmonic’s Digital Archives team headed by Digital Archives Manager Kevin Schlottmann. The New York Philharmonic Archives, the oldest and most comprehensive collection of any symphony orchestra, contains approximately six million pages that date back to its founding in 1842, with holdings that include correspondence, business records, orchestral scores and parts, photographs, concert programs, and newspaper clippings, as well as concert and broadcast recordings dating from the 1920s. Archival Exhibit: The New York Philharmonic at 175: A History of Innovation The New York Philharmonic will present The New York Philharmonic at 175: A History of Innovation, an archival exhibit highlighting seminal events in Philharmonic history. From the printing plates for the first time Schiller’s Ode to Joy was sung in English — a translation the Philharmonic commissioned for the U.S. Premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in 1846 — to the first LP made by an orchestra,