FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 26, 2015 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected]

ALAN GILBERT AND THE

CONTACT! THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC’S NEW-MUSIC SERIES

“NEW MUSIC FROM NORDIC COUNTRIES”

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC To Perform Works by , Per NØRGÅRD, Đuro ŽIVKOVIĆ, and Kalevi AHO

Music Director ALAN GILBERT and Assistant Conductor COURTNEY LEWIS To Conduct

Saturday, March 7, 2015, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The sixth season of CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic’s new-music series, continues with “New Music from Nordic Countries,” Saturday, March 7, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with Met Museum Presents, led by Music Director Alan Gilbert and Assistant Conductor Courtney Lewis. Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Premiere of Per Nørgård’s Cello Concerto No. 2, Momentum, with Philharmonic cellist Eric Bartlett as soloist, and Kalevi Aho’s Chamber Symphony No. 2; Courtney Lewis will conduct the U.S. Premiere of the string orchestra version of Kaija Saariaho’s Terra Memoria, and the U.S. Premiere of Đuro Živković’s The White Angel.

The 2014–15 season of CONTACT! features World, U.S., and New York Premieres, as well as seminal works by leading composers, in programs that explore the new-music scene from four different countries. CONTACT! will continue with “New Music from Italy” at SubCulture, a chamber concert co-presented with 92nd Street Y (May 11, 2015), followed by “New Music from Japan,” conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (June 5, 2015).

Christopher Rouse, who in 2014–15 is completing his three-year term as The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, advises the Philharmonic on the CONTACT! series. Per Nørgård, whose Cello Concerto No. 2, Momentum, is featured on the program is the second recipient of The Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music at the New York Philharmonic, which recognizes a composer for extraordinary artistic endeavor in the field of new music

Artists Music Director Alan Gilbert began his New York Philharmonic tenure in September 2009, the first native New Yorker in the post. He and the Philharmonic have introduced the positions of (more) CONTACT!: “New Music from Nordic Countries” / 2

The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in- Residence, and the Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; and the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today’s music by a wide range of contemporary and modern composers inaugurated in spring 2014. As New York magazine wrote, “The Philharmonic and its music director Alan Gilbert have turned themselves into a force of permanent revolution.”

In the 2014–15 season Alan Gilbert conducts the U.S. Premiere of ’s Clarinet Concerto, a Philharmonic co-commission, alongside Mahler’s First Symphony; La Dolce Vita: The Music of Italian Cinema; the Verdi Requiem; a staging of Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, featuring Oscar winner Marion Cotillard; World Premieres; a CONTACT! program; and Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. He concludes The Nielsen Project — the multi-year initiative to perform and record the Danish composer’s symphonies and concertos, the first release of which was named by The New York Times as among the Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012 — and presides over the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. His Philharmonic- tenure highlights include acclaimed productions of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson, and Philharmonic 360 at Park Avenue Armory; World Premieres by Magnus Lindberg, , Christopher Rouse, and others; Bach’s B-minor Mass and Ives’s Fourth Symphony; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside the film; Mahler’s Second Symphony, Resurrection, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; and eight international tours.

Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, Alan Gilbert regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. His 2014–15 appearances include the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Opera, and The Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting ’s Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award. Renée Fleming’s recent Decca recording Poèmes, on which he conducted, received a 2013 Grammy Award. His recordings have received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The , where he holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. In May 2010 Mr. Gilbert received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music and in December 2011, ’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for his “exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary music.” In 2014 he was elected to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Courtney Lewis began his tenure as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic in September 2014, and made his debut with the Orchestra leading a Young People’s Concert in November 2014. He also serves as music director of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, a position he assumed in the 2014–15 season. Mr. Lewis’s previous posts include associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, where he made his subscription debut in the 2011–12 season, and Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he made his debut in the fall of 2011. From 2008 to 2014 Mr. Lewis was the music director of Boston’s Discovery Ensemble, a chamber orchestra dedicated not only to giving concerts of contemporary and established repertoire at the highest level of musical and technical excellence, but also to (more) CONTACT!: “New Music from Nordic Countries” / 3 bringing live music into the least privileged parts of Boston with workshops in local schools. He made his major American orchestral debut in November 2008 with the St. Louis Symphony, and has since appeared with the Atlanta Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, Alabama Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and Ulster Orchestra (for a series of BBC Radio 3 Invitation Concerts, as well as on subscription). Recent and upcoming engagements include debuts with the Lausanne Chamber and Vancouver, Detroit, North Carolina, and Edmonton symphony orchestras, as well as returns to the Minnesota Orchestra, Alabama Symphony, and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Courtney Lewis graduated from the University of Cambridge where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and clarinet with Dame Thea King. After completing a master’s degree with a focus on the late music of György Ligeti, he attended the Royal Northern College of Music, where his teachers included Sir Mark Elder and Clark Rundell.

Cellist Eric Bartlett joined the New York Philharmonic in 1997. He has appeared frequently as a member soloist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and is featured on several of their Deutsche Grammophon recordings. In addition to Orpheus, his solo appearances include the Cabrillo Music Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Anchorage Symphony, Hartford Chamber Orchestra, Aspen and Juilliard Orchestras, Brattleboro Music Center in Vermont, and the New York Philharmonic’s “Horizons ’84” series. Mr. Bartlett has participated in more than 90 premieres with ensembles such as , the New York New Music Ensemble, the Group for Contemporary Music, and the Columbia String Quartet, and he has commissioned new works for the cello from American composers. During the summer of 2000, Mr. Bartlett was invited by Marin Alsop to be a featured soloist in the North American premiere of James MacMillan’s Triduum, the middle third of which is a cello concerto. He has served as either artist-president or vice-president of Speculum Musicae since 1990. Mr. Bartlett has performed at the Mostly Mozart, Marlboro, Aspen, Adirondack, Grand Teton, and Waterloo music festivals, and has been a regular participant at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival since 1996. He served as principal cello of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and co-principal of Orpheus from 1984 until 1997. He recorded the cello music of Larry Bell for North-South Records on a CD entitled River of Ponds (which includes a collaboration with narrator Robert J. Lurtsema) and has also recorded for CRI, Opus One, Bridge, Delos, and Deutsche Grammophon. Eric Bartlett was awarded full scholarships to both The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School and received both his bachelor’s and master’s of music degrees from Juilliard, where he was a student of Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins. He is the recipient of a Solo Recitalist’s Award from the National Endowment for the Arts and a special Performance Award as a finalist of the 1987 New England Conservatory/Piatigorsky Award. He has served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts and is currently an adjunct professor at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music.

Repertoire Per Nørgård (b. 1932) is considered by many to be the most prominent Danish composer after Carl Nielsen. The latest recipient of the Philharmonic’s Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music, he has composed in a variety of genres, from symphonies, operas, and chamber music to film and theater music. In the program notes to his 2009 Cello Concerto No. 2, Momentum, Mr. (more) CONTACT!: “New Music from Nordic Countries” / 4

Nørgård cited Nielsen, who believed titles could serve as musical road signs: “As such a ‘road sign’ into the purely musical world of the present cello concerto, I at last settled for the title Momentum. This ‘sign post’ should point the listener in the direction of a process, which gains in strength and velocity as the work progresses. There is an expansion with respect to dynamics as well as tempi going on throughout the work, a continuous accumulating energetic expression.” The technically demanding work comprises four movements, the second of which, Together, was written first as a gift for cellist Jakob Kullberg and his fiancée as a wedding gift. Members of the New York Philharmonic performed Mr. Nørgård’s Tango Chikane on a Special Evening with Viktor Borge and a Company of Friends on October 28, 1968.

Finnish composer Kalevi Aho (b. 1949) has composed symphonies, operas, concertos, vocal music, and works for chamber groups and solo instruments. His compositions have developed from neo-classicism through modernist idioms to post-modernism; his music tends to contrast wide-ranging moods, styles, and genres; and his symphonic works often reflect an “abstract drama” similar to his operatic scores. Mr. Aho composed his Chamber Symphony No. 2 in 1991–92 for the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra. The composer writes that the work “begins with highly intensive ‘music of inner voices’ that tests the limits of expression. As the violins descend from their dizzy heights, a fate-like rhythmic motif rises momentarily from the lower instruments to dominate the entire orchestra.” The three-movement symphony moves through an array of textures, melodies, and emotions, before heading toward a “lullaby-like progression on two violas and two cellos using motifs taken from the first movement.” Kalevi Aho has received Denmark’s Leonie Sonning Prize (1974), Germany’s Henrik Steffens Prize (1990), and Poland’s Flisaka Prize (1996). A writer as well as composer, Mr. Aho’s output has totaled 500 essays, presentations, columns, and other writings.

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) wrote of Terra Memoria for string orchestra: “I love the richness and sensitivity of the string sound. … I feel when writing for a string quartet that I’m entering into the intimate core of musical communication. The piece is dedicated ‘for those departed.’ We continue remembering the people who are no longer with us; the material — their life — is ‘complete,’ nothing will be added to it. Those of us who are left behind are constantly reminded of our experiences together. … The title Terra Memoria refers to two words which are full of rich associations: to earth and memory.” Ms. Saariaho is a prominent member of a group of Finnish composers and performers who are now, in mid-career, making a worldwide impact. Study and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music, and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by combining live music and electronics. The New York Philharmonic has previously performed four of Ms. Saariaho works, including the 1999 World Premiere of Oltra Mar, Seven Preludes for the New Millennium, one of the Orchestra’s Messages for the Millennium commissions, conducted by then Music Director Kurt Masur; the U.S. Premieres of Quatre instants (Four Instants), in November 2004 led by Sakari Oramo, and Adriana Songs, a Philharmonic commission, in December 2006 led by David Robertson; and the New York Premiere of Château de l’âme in May 2003 led by Robert Spano.

An early interest in folklore and Byzantine music led Serbian-Swedish composer and violinist Đuro Živković (b. 1975) to develop a variety of compositional techniques such as polyrhythm, (more) CONTACT!: “New Music from Nordic Countries” / 5 improvisation, special harmony-based scales, microtones, layer-polyphony (multiphony), and heterophony, and a recent interest in the harmonic organization has resulted in a new approach to his process. Inspired by a fresco located in Serbia’s Mileševa monastery, Mr. Živković’s 2006 The White Angel, for chamber orchestra, was premiered by the SAMI Sinfonietta, conducted by Katarina Andreasson. The work utilizes what he calls his “harmonic field” technique, which explores how chords exist in relation to each other. In a review, Milorad Marinkovic wrote, “The score of The White Angel is a musical shaping of elements of dynamics, radiation, kinetic and other categories that actually explain the energy, love and moving — the three characteristics of angelic existence.” Mr. Živković’s music has been commissioned, performed, recorded, and broadcast by leading soloists and ensembles across Europe, Japan, and North America. His On the Guarding of the Heart received the Grawemeyer Award in 2014.

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

* * * Programs are supported, in part, by public funds from 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 Tickets for CONTACT! at The Metropolitan Museum of Art start at $25. Tickets may be purchased online at metmuseum.org/tickets. To determine ticket availability, please call the Met Museum Presents Box Office at (212) 570-3949. [Ticket prices subject to change.]

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

(more) CONTACT!: “New Music from Nordic Countries” / 6

CONTACT!: “NEW MUSIC FROM NORDIC COUNTRIES”

The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 Fifth Avenue

Saturday, March 7, 2015, 7:00 p.m.

Alan Gilbert, conductor (Nørgård and Aho) Courtney Lewis, conductor (Saariaho and Živković) Eric Bartlett, cello

Per NØRGÅRD Cello Concerto No. 2, Momentum (New York Premiere) Eric Bartlett, solo cello Kalevi AHO Chamber Symphony No. 2 Đuro ŽIVKOVIĆ The White Angel (U.S. Premiere) Kaija SAARIAHO Terra Memoria for string orchestra (U.S. Premiere of string orchestra version)

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