FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 28, 2013 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected]

ALAN GILBERT AND THE

ALAN GILBERT TO CONDUCT BY THE MARIE-JOSÉE KRAVIS COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE CHRISTOPHER ROUSE

Cellist To Perform BLOCH’S SCHELOMO

Program To Close with BRAHMS’S SYMPHONY NO. 1 Concluding This Season’s Survey of Brahms’s Complete Symphonies and

February 21–22

Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in Phantasmata by The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse; Bloch’s Schelomo, featuring cellist Jan Vogler; and Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 on Thursday, February 21, 2013, at 7:30 p.m. and Friday, February 22 at 11:00 a.m.

Phantasmata is the first work by Christopher Rouse that the Philharmonic will perform during his two-season tenure as Composer-in-Residence. The Philharmonic will perform the World Premiere of Mr. Rouse’s Prospero’s Rooms, a Philharmonic commission, April 17–20, 2013, with Alan Gilbert conducting.

Alan Gilbert said: “Chris Rouse is one of the most important composers working today. I’ve recorded a lot of his music, and it has been a very meaningful and a large part of my musical life for a long time. He has a unique voice and doesn’t leave anything to chance: he actually shapes the sound and the emotional flow of his music in a way that only great composers can. He truly writes what he hears.”

Mr. Rouse said of Phantasmata: “It’s one of my rabble-rouser pieces from the earlier 1980s. All of the movements were inspired by dreams. The first movement is my image of the astral body of St. John of the Cross floating through Antonio Gaudi’s Cathedral de La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona; the second movement, The Infernal Machine, imagines an enormous machine eternally in motion for no particular purpose; and the final movement, Bump, comes from a dream I had of the Boston Pops playing a tour performance in Hell.”

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Cellist Jan Vogler joins Alan Gilbert and the for Bloch’s Schelomo, and will also perform the work with them in Ann Arbor, Michigan, February 23–24, 2013.

“Bloch’s Schelomo was very dear to me since my childhood,” Mr. Vogler said. “I was about nine when my father’s friend brought a record to our home of Leonard Rose, former Principal of the New York Philharmonic, performing Schelomo. I became a cellist partly because of Leonard Rose and partly because of Schelomo.”

The Philharmonic’s season-long survey of Brahms’s complete symphonies and concertos, featuring four conductors and five soloists, concludes with these concerts. In November Kurt Masur conducted Brahms’s Double for Violin and Cello and Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, and 4. On January 16–19 Lorin Maazel conducted Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Yefim Bronfman, and on February 6–9 Andris Nelsons leads the with Christian Tetzlaff. Before he leads Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 in these concerts, Alan Gilbert will have conducted the Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring Rudolf Buchbinder as soloist, February 14–16, 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 The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse and Arbie Orenstein, author and professor of music at the School of Music at Queens College, will introduce the program. 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 program will be broadcast the week of March 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 Music Director Alan Gilbert began his tenure at the New York Philharmonic in September 2009, launching what New York magazine called “a fresh future for the Philharmonic.” The first native New Yorker in the post, he has introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis (more) Alan Gilbert / Jan Vogler / 3

Composer-in-Residence and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, an annual multi-week festival, and CONTACT!, the new-music series, and he has sought to make the Orchestra a point of civic pride for the city and country.

In 2012–13, Alan Gilbert conducts world premieres; presides over a cycle of Brahms’s complete symphonies and concertos; continues The Nielsen Project, the multi-year initiative to perform and record Nielsen’s symphonies and concertos; and leads the EUROPE / SPRING 2013 tour. The season concludes with June Journey: Gilbert’s Playlist, four programs showcasing themes he has introduced, including the season finale: a theatrical reimagining of Stravinsky ballets with director/designer Doug Fitch and New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Sara Mearns. Last season’s highlights included tours of Europe and California, several world premieres, Mahler symphonies, and Philharmonic 360, the Philharmonic and Park Avenue Armory’s acclaimed spatial-music program featuring Stockhausen’s Gruppen, about which The New York Times said: “Those who think classical music needs some shaking up routinely challenge music directors at major to think outside the box. That is precisely what Alan Gilbert did.”

Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies and holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The . Conductor Laureate of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of ’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, he regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award. His recordings have received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. In May 2010 Mr. Gilbert received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music and in December 2011, Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for his “exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary music.”

Cellist Jan Vogler has performed with conductors including Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Fabio Luisi, David Robertson, and Manfred Honeck, and orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic; the Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, Montreal, and Cincinnati symphony orchestras; as well as the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, and Vienna Symphony. A passionate recitalist and chamber musician, he performs regularly with pianists Hélène Grimaud and Martin Stadtfeld and with violinist Mira Wang. Recent performances of new works include compositions by Tigran Mansurian (WDR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Semyon Bychkov), John Harbison (Boston Symphony Orchestra), and (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra).

A prolific and award-winning recording artist, Mr. Vogler records exclusively for SONY Classical. Upcoming releases include Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello (2012) and the Schumann with the Vienna Philharmonic (2013). With The Knights and Eric Jacobsen he recorded Experience: Live from New York, which includes Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix, in a special arrangement for cello and

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orchestra. This live CD was recorded at (Le) Poisson Rouge, formerly the Village Gate, home to many Hendrix concerts.

A cello prodigy at age six, Jan Vogler first studied with his father, Peter Vogler, and subsequently with Josef Schwab in Berlin, , and . At 20 he became principal cello of the Dresden Staatskapelle, and was named the youngest concertmaster in the history of the orchestra. He has won the Echo-Award (the German equivalent of the Grammy) and the 2006 European Cultural Award. Mr. Vogler is the general director of the Dresden Musikfestspiele, and founder and artistic director of the Moritzburg Chamber Music Festival. He plays the 1707–1710 Stradivarius Ex Castelbarco/Fau and the 1721 Domenico Montagnana Ex- Hekking . Mr. Vogler’s debut with the New York Philharmonic was in 2005, performing the Orchestra-commissioned Berceuse for Dresden by Colin Matthews in both Dresden and New York.

Repertoire Christopher Rouse explained that the title of Phantasmata was inspired by the German-Swiss physician and occultist Paracelsus (1493–1541), who defined the word as “hallucinations created by thought.” The composer wrote Phantasmata between 1981 and 1985 on commission from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, which premiered it in October 1986 with Leonard Slatkin conducting. The piece grew out of an earlier composition, The Infernal Machine, which serves as Phantasmata’s middle movement. The first movement, scored for strings and percussion, is titled The Evestrum of Juan de la Cruz in the Sagrada Familia, 3 A.M. — “evestrum” being Paracelsus’s name for the astral body, suggesting an out-of-body journey through Antoni Gaudí’s famous cathedral in Barcelona. Rouse has called the finale, Bump, a “nightmare conga” evoking “a gala Boston Pops performance in Hell.” These are the New York Philharmonic’s first performances of the piece. The Orchestra played The Infernal Machine in 1984 and 1999, both under the direction of Leonard Slatkin.

Swiss-born composer Ernest Bloch’s deep reverence for his Jewish ancestry led him to convey, through music, his idea of the Hebrew spirit: the “holy fervor of the race which is latent in our soul,” as he described it. Schelomo is one such composition. Using the rich timbre of the cello, the piece communicates the range of emotions found in the Book of Ecclesiastes in “a voice vaster and deeper than any spoken language,” the composer wrote. Bloch’s influence on American music in the early 20th century is seen in the remarkable list of students he tutored, among them Leon Kirchner, Roger Sessions, and Randall Thompson. Bloch, who died in 1959, once contributed program notes to the New York Philharmonic, and he conducted the Orchestra in the U.S. Premiere of his own Symphony in C-sharp minor. The Philharmonic first performed Schelomo on February 19, 1931, led by Bernardino Molinari, with Alfred Wallenstein as soloist. The most recent performance was in May 2005, led by Leonard Slatkin, with as soloist.

After a gestation of 15 years, Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 officially appeared in 1877. The delay was due in part to Brahms’s concern about being compared to Beethoven, whose (more) Alan Gilbert / Jan Vogler / 5 specter both frightened and inspired him. In 1872 he said: “I shall never write a symphony! You cannot imagine what it’s like to hear such a giant marching behind you!” Nevertheless, as former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator Michael Steinberg wrote, “When [Brahms] at last brought himself to move, he moved surely.” By 1885 Brahms had composed his three other symphonies. The Symphony No. 1 entered the New York Philharmonic’s repertoire in December 1877, under the direction of Theodore Thomas. The Orchestra last performed the work in July 2012, conducted by Andrey Boreyko, at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in Vail, Colorado. Alan Gilbert and the Orchestra will perform the work February 21–22 before the performance in Ann Arbor February 23.

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

* * * Christopher Rouse is The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence.

* * * Jan Vogler’s appearance with the New York Philharmonic is 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 $27. 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 Friday, 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, and 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].

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New York Philharmonic

Avery Fisher Hall

Thursday, February 21, 2013, 7:30 p.m. Open Rehearsal — 9:45 a.m. Friday, February 22, 2013, 11:00 a.m.

Pre-Concert Talk (one hour before each concert) with The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in- Residence Christopher Rouse and Arbie Orenstein, author and professor of music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College

Alan Gilbert, conductor Jan Vogler, cello

Christopher ROUSE Phantasmata BLOCH Schelomo BRAHMS Symphony No. 1

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