FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 6, 2012 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected]

JURAJ VALČUHA TO MAKE PHILHARMONIC DEBUT CONDUCTING WORKS BY WEBER, , AND RICHARD STRAUSS

Pianist André Watts Marks His 100th Philharmonic Performance with Rachmaninoff’s Piano No. 2

December 5–8 and 11

Juraj Valčuha will make his New York Philharmonic conducting debut when he leads the in Weber’s Oberon Overture; Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with André Watts, performing with the Philharmonic for the 100th time on December 6; Richard Strauss’s “Fantasie” from Die Frau ohne Schatten; and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite Wednesday, December 5, 2012, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, December 6 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, December 8 at 8:00 p.m.; and Tuesday, December 11 at 7:30 p.m. Mr. Valčuha will also lead the same program at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center December 7 at 8:00 p.m.

The program features a new Philharmonic collaborator making his debut — Juraj Valčuha — conducting longtime Philharmonic friend André Watts in his 100th performance with the Orchestra. Mr. Watts made his Philharmonic debut at age 16 at a Young People’s Concert telecast nationwide on CBS, conducted by then-Music Director Leonard Bernstein. Two weeks later, Mr. Bernstein engaged Mr. Watts to fill in for Glenn Gould, who had fallen ill.

“I wanted to please my mother and my teacher, and I wanted the guys onstage to think I was actually good,” André Watts said. “But I had no sense, thankfully, of the fact that this could be the beginning of my career. There were no great pressures. Of course, in hindsight, it became a big deal.”

The two works on the program by Richard Strauss are adapted from two of his : “Fantasie” comes from Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Strauss arranged Der Rosenkavalier Suite from his of the same name. The sweeping, dramatic melodies and sensitivity to mood in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 are also reflected in his two operas of the same period, The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini.

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Juraj Valčuha / André Watts / 2 Related Events  Pre-Concert Talks Composer and conductor Victoria Bond 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.

 Offstage Event André Watts, speaker Jeff Spurgeon, WQXR 105.9 FM, host Monday, December 3, 2012, 7:00 p.m. David Rubenstein Atrium, Broadway between 62nd and 63rd Streets New York Philharmonic Offstage events are free and seated on a first-come, first-served basis.

 National and International Radio Broadcast The program will be broadcast the week of January 9, 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 9:00 p.m. *Check local listings for broadcast and program information.

Artists Juraj Valčuha is chief conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Torino, Italy. In the 2012–13 season he makes debuts with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and the Filarmonica della Scala Milan and returns to the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., Philharmonia London, Maggio Musicale Florence, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, and Orchestre de Paris. Last season Mr. Valčuha made his debut with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonic, and the Boston, Cincinnati, Berlin Radio, and WDR symphony . He has appeared with Staatskapelle Dresden, Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra. Mr. Valčuha conducted a new production of Puccini’s La boheme at Teatro La Fenice Venezia. With the RAI Orchestra he appeared on tour in the Abu Dhabi Classics series with Yo-Yo Ma and Evgeni Bozhanov. He made his debut with the Staatskapelle Dresden in the 2009–10 season, and at the Bavarian Staatsoper he conducted Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, as well as Puccini’s Turandot in Stuttgart. From 2005–2007 he regularly led the Orchestre National de France and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo. He was assistant music director of the Orchestre et Opéra National de Montpellier from 2003 to 2005. A native Slovakian, Juraj Valčuha studied composition, conducting, and cimbalom at the Bratislava Conservatory. In 1998 he moved to Paris and studied with Janos Fürst.

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André Watts burst upon the music world at the age of 16, when Leonard Bernstein chose him to make his debut with the New York Philharmonic in their Young People’s Concerts, which were broadcast nationwide. Two weeks later, Bernstein asked him to appear again with the New York Philharmonic to substitute at the last minute for the ailing Glenn Gould in performances of Liszt’s E-flat-major Concerto. Mr. Watts’s recent and upcoming engagements include appearances with The Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the St. Louis, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Seattle, and National symphony orchestras. In celebration of the Liszt anniversary in 2011, he played all-Liszt recitals throughout the U.S. Highlights of his 2012–13 season include return visits to the Detroit and Cincinnati symphony orchestras and appearances with The Philadelphia Orchestra. He is also a regular guest at festivals including Ravinia, the Hollywood Bowl, and Tanglewood. Mr. Watts has appeared on numerous programs produced by PBS, the BBC, and the Arts and Entertainment Network. His 1976 New York recital, aired on Live From Lincoln Center, was the first full- length recital broadcast in the history of television. Mr. Watts’s discography includes recordings of works by Gershwin, Chopin, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky for CBS Masterworks; recital CDs of works by Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, and Chopin for Angel/EMI; and recordings featuring the of Liszt, MacDowell, Tchaikovsky, and Saint-Saens on Telarc. André Watts received a 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama, and in 1988 he won the Avery Fisher Prize. At age 26 Mr. Watts became the youngest person ever to receive an Honorary Doctorate from Yale, and he has been honored by the University of Pennsylvania, The Juilliard School, and his alma mater, the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Watts last appeared with the Orchestra in April 2008 performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, conducted by Charles Dutoit.

Repertoire Oberon, Carl Maria Von Weber’s last opera, was written in response to a request from London’s Covent Garden for a new work. The composer accepted the commission reluctantly; he was suffering from tuberculosis and his generally poor health was growing worse. Nevertheless, he accepted the offer out of concern for his family’s financial well-being. The opera relates the tale of the famous elf-king and his human wards. Despite its nonsensical libretto and convoluted plot, it contains beautifully orchestrated music of charm and delicacy that matches the fairy-tale nature of the story. The Overture was completed only three days before the opera’s August 12, 1836, premiere in London and was an instant success. Its inclusion in the New York Philharmonic’s very first concert, on December 7, 1842, attests to its popularity, and it remains one of two excerpts from Oberon heard regularly today. The Philharmonic most recently performed it under the baton of Lorin Maazel in Tokyo, on a November 2006 Asia tour.

After the failure of his Symphony No. 1 in 1897, (still in his early 20s) began to give more emphasis to his career as a concert pianist and conductor. He occasionally attempted a return to composition, but with only mixed results. Then, in 1901, he produced the Piano Concerto No. 2, which has arguably become the most celebrated work of its genre in the 20th century. Asked about this sudden reversal of fortune, the composer said he had undergone hypnotherapy. Whatever the cause of its success, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 began a (more) Juraj Valčuha / André Watts / 4 remarkable string of triumphs that continued with the Symphony No. 2 and the Piano Concerto No. 3. The Second Piano Concerto was first performed by the New York Symphony (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s New York Philharmonic) in December 1914, led by Walter Damrosch, with Ossip Gabrilowitsch as soloist. The Orchestra most recently performed the work in Vail, Colorado, in July 2008 conducted by Bramwell Tovey and featuring Joyce Yang as soloist.

Richard Strauss’s opera Die Frau Ohne Schatten (Woman without a Shadow) was first performed in Vienna in October 1919. Its convoluted plot, from a book by Von Hofmannsthal, centers on a princess who is unable to “cast a shadow,” i.e., have a child. Her husband, the Emperor, insists on an heir and secretly orders an intermediary to force one of his humble subjects who is pregnant to surrender her baby. In 1946 Strauss composed a “Fantasie” using material from the opera: it presents episodes from the score in almost the direct sequence in which they are performed in the opera. The piece’s luminous climax conveys when the spirits reward the Princess for her self-sacrifice with a “shadow” of her own. The Philharmonic has performed the Fantasie only once before, in February 1954, under the direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Richard Strauss thought Der Rosenkavalier his most emblematic work (he took to introducing himself as “the composer of Der Rosenkavalier”), and it marked the true beginning of his remarkable and fruitful collaboration with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The opera tells of an aristocratic married woman — the wife of a Field Marshal — who loses her 17-year-old lover when he falls for a bourgeois girl his own age. Within the framework of a comedy-farce, the work reflects movingly on love, social climbing, aristocratic grace, and the passage of time. It is also a uniquely stylish blend of nostalgia and sophistication, combining the sounds of Viennese waltz with the 18th-century ambiance of Mozart’s operas — all set to Strauss’s gorgeous vocal lines and fragrant orchestral textures. The work has become so popular that the publisher’s catalogue abounds in arrangements, and many eminent conductors have culled suites from it. The New York Philharmonic performed the World Premiere October 5, 1944, led by Artur Rodziński and most recently performed the work in July 2009, led by Bramwell Tovey.

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

* * * André Watts’s appearance with the New York Philharmonic is made possible through the Lawrence and Ronnie Ackman Family Fund for Distinguished Pianists.

* * * 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. (more) Juraj Valčuha / André Watts / 5

Tickets Tickets for these concerts start at $40. 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 Saturday, and 12:00 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].

For ticket information at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, call the Box Office at (888) 466-5722 or go to www.njpac.org.

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New York Philharmonic

Avery Fisher Hall

Wednesday, December 5, 2012, 7:30 p.m. Open Rehearsal — 9:45 a.m. Thursday, December 6, 2012, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, December 8, 2012, 8:00 p.m. Tuesday, December 11, 2012, 7:30 p.m.

Pre-Concert Talk (one hour before each concert) with Victoria Bond, composer and conductor

Juraj Valčuha, conductor* André Watts, piano

WEBER Oberon Overture RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 2 R. STRAUSS “Fantasie” from Die Frau ohne Schatten R. STRAUSS Der Rosenkavalier Suite ______

New York Philharmonic

New Jersey Performing Arts Center Newark, New Jersey

Friday, December 7, 2012, 8:00 p.m.

Juraj Valčuha, conductor* André Watts, piano

WEBER Oberon Overture RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 2 R. STRAUSS “Fantasie” from Die Frau ohne Schatten R. STRAUSS Der Rosenkavalier Suite

*denotes New York Philharmonic debut

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