An Alpine Symphony, Op
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23 Season 2019-2020 Friday, October 4, at 8:00 Saturday, October 5, at The Philadelphia Orchestra 8:00 Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Haochen Zhang Piano Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 I. Moderato II. Adagio sostenuto III. Allegro scherzando Intermission Strauss An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64 This program runs approximately 1 hour, 55 minutes. LiveNote® 2.0, the Orchestra’s interactive concert guide for mobile devices, will be enabled for these performances. These concerts are sponsored by the Hess Foundation. The October 4 concert is sponsored by Mitchell and Hilarie Morgan. This concert is part of the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ Experience, supported through a generous grant from the Wyncote Foundation. Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 1 PM, and are repeated on Monday evenings at 7 PM on WRTI HD 2. Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details. 24 ® Getting Started with LiveNote 2.0 » Please silence your phone ringer. » Make sure you are connected to the internet via a Wi-Fi or cellular connection. » Download the Philadelphia Orchestra app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. » Once downloaded open the Philadelphia Orchestra app. » Tap “OPEN” on the Philadelphia Orchestra concert you are attending. » Tap the “LIVE” red circle. The app will now automatically advance slides as the live concert progresses. Helpful Hints » You can follow different tracks of content in LiveNote. While you are in a LiveNote content slide you can change tracks by selecting the tabs in the upper left corner. Each track groups content by a theme. For example, “The Story” track provides historical information about the piece and composer. “The Roadmap” track gives the listener more in-depth information about the orchestration and music theory behind the piece. *Note: Some pieces only contain one track. » Tap in the middle of the screen to display player controls such as Glossary, Brightness, Text Size, and Share. » Tap a highlighted word in yellow or select the “Glossary” in the player controls to take you to an in-depth glossary of musical terms. » If during the concert the content slides are not advancing, or you have browsed to other slides, you can tap the “LIVE” button in the bottom right corner to get to the current live slide. LiveNote is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the William Penn Foundation. 25 The Philadelphia Orchestra Jessica Griffin The Philadelphia Orchestra community centers, the Mann Through concerts, tours, is one of the world’s Center to Penn’s Landing, residencies, and recordings, preeminent orchestras. classrooms to hospitals, and the Orchestra is a global It strives to share the over the airwaves and online. ambassador. It performs transformative power of The Orchestra continues annually at Carnegie Hall, music with the widest to discover new and the Saratoga Performing possible audience, and to inventive ways to nurture its Arts Center, and the Bravo! create joy, connection, and relationship with loyal patrons. Vail Music Festival. The excitement through music The Philadelphia Orchestra Orchestra also has a rich in the Philadelphia region, continues the tradition of history of touring, having across the country, and educational and community first performed outside around the world. Through engagement for listeners Philadelphia in the earliest innovative programming, of all ages. It launched its days of its founding. It was robust educational initiatives, HEAR initiative in 2016 to the first American orchestra and an ongoing commitment become a major force for to perform in the People’s to the communities that it good in every community that Republic of China in 1973, serves, the ensemble is on a it serves. HEAR is a portfolio launching a now-five-decade path to create an expansive of integrated initiatives commitment of people-to- future for classical music, that promotes Health, people exchange. and to further the place champions music Education, The Orchestra also makes of the arts in an open and enables broad Access to live recordings available on democratic society. Orchestra performances, and popular digital music services Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now maximizes impact through and as part of the Orchestra in his eighth season as the Research. The Orchestra’s on Demand section of its eighth music director of The award-winning education and website. Under Yannick’s Philadelphia Orchestra. His community initiatives engage leadership, the Orchestra connection to the ensemble’s over 50,000 students, returned to recording, with musicians has been praised families, and community four celebrated CDs on by both concertgoers and members through programs the prestigious Deutsche critics, and he is embraced such as PlayINs, side-by- Grammophon label. The by the musicians of the sides, PopUP concerts, Free Orchestra also reaches Orchestra, audiences, and Neighborhood Concerts, thousands of radio listeners the community. School Concerts, sensory- with weekly broadcasts on Your Philadelphia Orchestra friendly concerts, the School WRTI-FM and SiriusXM. For takes great pride in its Partnership Program and more information, please visit hometown, performing for the School Ensemble Program, www.philorch.org. people of Philadelphia year- and All City Orchestra round, from Verizon Hall to Fellowships. 6 Music Director Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead The Philadelphia Orchestra through at least the 2025–26 season, an extraordinary and significant long-term commitment. Jessica Griffin Additionally, he became the third music director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in August 2018. Yannick, who holds the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair, is an inspired leader of The Philadelphia Orchestra. His intensely collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times has called him “phenomenal,” adding that under his baton, “the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better.” Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most thrilling talents of his generation. He has been artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000, and in summer 2017 he became an honorary member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He was music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 2008 to 2018 (he is now honorary conductor) and was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic from 2008 to 2014. He has made wildly successful appearances with the world’s most revered ensembles and has conducted critically acclaimed performances at many of the leading opera houses. Yannick signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon (DG) in 2018. Under his leadership The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to recording with four CDs on that label (a fifth will be released in October). His upcoming recordings will include projects with The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Orchestre Métropolitain, with which he will also continue to record for ATMA Classique. Additionally, he has recorded with the Rotterdam Philharmonic on DG, EMI Classics, and BIS Records, and the London Philharmonic for the LPO label. A native of Montreal, Yannick studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at Montreal’s Conservatory of Music and continued his studies with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini; he also studied choral conducting with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Among Yannick’s honors are an appointment as Companion of the Order of Canada; an Officer of the Order of Montreal; Musical America’s 2016 Artist of the Year; the Prix Denise-Pelletier; and honorary doctorates from the University of Quebec in Montreal, the Curtis Institute of Music, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, McGill University, the University of Montreal, and the University of Pennsylvania. To read Yannick’s full bio, please visit philorch.org/conductor. 26 Soloist Benjamin Ealovega Twenty-nine-year-old Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut as a winner of the Orchestra’s Albert M. Greenfield Student Competition in 2006 and his subscription debut in 2017, the same year he received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, which recognizes the potential for a major career in music. Since winning the gold medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, he has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the China Philharmonic with Long Yu at the BBC Proms; the Munich Philharmonic with Lorin Maazel at home and on a tour to China; the Sydney Symphony and David Robertson on a tour to China; the NDR Hamburg and Thomas Hengelbrock on a tour of Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai; and at the Easter Festival in Moscow by special invitation of Valery Gergiev. In addition to these current performances, Mr. Zhang continues his ongoing collaboration with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin with a tour of Japan in November. He previously toured China with the Orchestra in May 2019. Additional highlights of the 2019–20 season include an engagement with the Singapore Symphony, performances of all the Beethoven concertos with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, a China tour with the National Symphony and Gianandrea Noseda, and solo recitals across China and Europe. In July Mr. Zhang released his debut concerto album on BIS Records: Prokofiev’s Second Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto with the Lahti Symphony and Dima Slobodeniouk. His debut solo album—including works by Schumann, Brahms, Janáček, and Liszt—was released by BIS in February 2017. He is also featured in Peter Rosen’s award-winning documentary A Surprise in Texas, chronicling the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition. Mr. Zhang is an avid chamber musician. He is frequently invited by chamber music festivals in the U.S.