Season 2010-2011 the Philadelphia Orchestra
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Season 2010-2011 The Philadelphia Orchestra Thursday, January 20, at 8:00 Friday, January 21, at 2:00 Saturday, January 22, at 8:00 Alan Gilbert Conductor Richard Woodhams Oboe Rouse Oboe Concerto (in one movement) First Philadelphia Orchestra performances The Philadelphia Orchestra The Philadelphia Orchestra is among the world’s leading orchestras. Renowned for its artistic excellence since its founding in 1900, the Orchestra has inspired audiences through thousands of live performances, recordings, and broadcasts in Philadelphia and around the world. With only seven music directors throughout more than a century of unswerving orchestral distinction, the artistic heritage of The Philadelphia Orchestra is attributed to extraordinary musicianship under the leadership and innovation of Fritz Scheel (1900- 07), Carl Pohlig (1907-12), Leopold Stokowski (1912-41), Eugene Ormandy (1936-80), Riccardo Muti (1980-92), Wolfgang Sawallisch (1993-2003), and Christoph Eschenbach (2003-08). After 30 years of a celebrated association with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Charles Dutoit continues the tradition as chief conductor. Since Mr. Dutoit’s debut with the Orchestra in July 1980 he has led hundreds of concerts in Philadelphia, at Carnegie Hall, and on tour, as artistic director of the Orchestra’s summer concerts at the Mann Center, artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestra’s summer residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and now as chief conductor. With the 2012-13 season, the Orchestra honors Mr. Dutoit by bestowing upon him the title conductor laureate. Yannick Nézet-Séguin assumed the title of music director designate in June 2010, immediately joining the Orchestra’s leadership team. He takes up the baton as The Philadelphia Orchestra’s next music director in 2012. The Philadelphia Orchestra annually touches the lives of countless music lovers worldwide, through concerts, presentations, and recordings. Each year the Orchestra presents a subscription season at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, education and community partnership programs, and annual appearances at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center; it also regularly tours throughout the world. Its summer schedule includes performances at the Mann Center, free Neighborhood Concerts throughout Greater Philadelphia, and residencies at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. For more information on The Philadelphia Orchestra, please visit www.philorch.org. Conductor Alan Gilbert became music director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2009, the first native New Yorker to hold that post. In the 2010–11 season he conducts the orchestra in a staged presentation of Janá ček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Mahler’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies and Kindertotenlieder, the New York premiere of Thomas Adès’s In Seven Days, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, the world premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s a Voice, a Messenger, the New York premiere of composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft, and both programs in the orchestra’s new music series, CONTACT! Mr. Gilbert will also lead the orchestra in two tours of European music capitals, two performances at Carnegie Hall, and a free Memorial Day concert at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York. This season Mr. Gilbert will also conduct several other leading orchestras at home and abroad, including Hamburg’s NDR Symphony, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and, for the first time, Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He has previously led such ensembles as the Berlin and Los Angeles philharmonics; the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Bavarian Radio symphonies; and the Cleveland and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras. His Philadelphia Orchestra debut was in 2003. In 2009 Mr. Gilbert became the first person to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at the Juilliard School. In June 2008 he was named conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic following his final concert as chief conductor and artistic advisor. He has been principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony since 2004, and he was the first music director of the Santa Fe Opera, from 2003 to 2006. Mr. Gilbert studied at Harvard University, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Juilliard School. From 1995 to 1997 he was the assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. His recording of Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award, and his recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. In May 2010 the Curtis Institute of Music awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Music degree. Soloist Richard Woodhams became principal oboe of The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1977, succeeding John de Lancie, his distinguished teacher at the Curtis Institute. Mr. de Lancie was a pupil of Marcel Tabuteau, one of the most influential instrumentalists of the 20th century, who served as principal oboe of the Orchestra from 1915 until 1954. Mr. Woodhams’s tenure has included solo appearances with The Philadelphia Orchestra in Philadelphia, as well as in New York, Boston, and other cities throughout the United States and Asia in collaboration with its four previous music directors. His recordings with the Orchestra include Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto with Wolfgang Sawallisch. Mr. Woodhams has given first performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra of solo works by J.S. Bach, Bellini, Haydn, Rochberg, Joan Tower, and Vaughan Williams. He has also given premieres of chamber works by William Bolcom, Chuck Holdeman, Thea Musgrave, Bernard Rands, Ned Rorem, Richard Wernick, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Mr. Woodhams has played solo works with such notable musicians as violinists Alexander Schneider and Itzhak Perlman, pianists Christoph Eschenbach and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and the Guarneri, Shanghai, and de Pasquale string quartets. He has also recorded Joan Tower’s Island Prelude with the Tokyo String Quartet. Active as a teacher at the Curtis Institute and Temple University, Mr. Woodhams’s former pupils occupy prominent positions in orchestras both in the United States and abroad, including principal posts in the orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and Pittsburgh. He is also a founding and current member of the World Orchestra for Peace, an internationally assembled orchestra founded by Sir Georg Solti in 1995, now led by Valery Gergiev. Since 2000 Mr. Woodhams has taught and played annually at the Aspen Music Festival, where he performed Christopher Rouse’s Oboe Concerto in 2009 with David Robertson; he has also participated in the Marlboro and La Jolla music festivals, among others. He began his musical studies in his native Palo Alto, California, with Raymond Dusté and started his orchestral career with the Saint Louis Symphony under Walter Susskind at the age of 19. The Music Oboe Concerto Christopher Rouse Born in Baltimore, February 15, 1949 Now living there During the early 1980s Christopher Rouse was considered one of the most promising young American composers of his generation. But while many others have been saddled (or cursed) with similar labels over the years, Rouse is among the few to have translated that potential into genuine success and widespread acclaim, becoming one of the most sought-after composers in America today. What has helped Rouse stand out from the others who also “showed promise?” Partly it is his exceptional familiarity with many varieties of music—from Bach and Bruckner to folk and hard rock—and partly his development of an eclectic, versatile, and distinctive style that can easily be adapted to different modes of musical expression. Numerous Influences Rouse learned to play percussion at a young age. It proved not only to be a linking thread between the classical and pop music traditions that he enjoys in equal measure, but also influenced his later works, which often employ expanded percussion sections. Early in his career, Rouse favored sustained energetic and percussive works of unflagging intensity. He also freely acknowledged the influence of rock music in his work—Bonham for example, which Rouse composed in 1988 for eight percussionists, honors the memory of John Bonham, drummer of famed rock band Led Zeppelin. But Rouse’s scores then began to combine these propulsive, percussive allegros with elegiac movements of soulful yearning. At the same time his music blended tonal harmony and aggressive chromaticism (though even in its atonal passages, Rouse’s harmonies are never far away from tonality). With the joint influences of the Western classical tradition and vernacular music (including folk music) still evident even in his mature works, Rouse has developed a unique style based on the synthesis of sometimes widely disparate elements. And in addition to quoting other musical styles, he frequently makes reference to specific works by other composers, partly as homage and partly as a thread in the fabric of this multilayered musical texture. This stylistic synthesis is demonstrated most tellingly in his two symphonies (a third is due to be premiered in May 2011), and in the series of concertos for bass (1985), trombone (1991), cello (1992), flute (1993), and clarinet (2000) that, along with the symphonies, are among his most lauded scores. Rouse’s reputation hinges mainly on his orchestral compositions, with some significant chamber pieces and a highly regarded choral Requiem (from 2007) rounding out his major works. But the scale and complexity of his scores belie a rather idiosyncratic compositional process. Rather than working out musical ideas at the piano (an instrument he doesn’t play well) or in a sketchbook, he reportedly mulls them over and embellishes them in his head until, Mozart-like, they are ready to be written out complete, in full score, starting at the first measure. Rouse has held faculty positions at some of the most respected music schools in the country—the University of Michigan, the Eastman School of Music, and the Juilliard School—and in 2002 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.