Season 2019-2020
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23 Season 2019-2020 Friday, November 29, at 8:00 The Philadelphia Orchestra Saturday, November 30, at 8:00 Susanna Mälkki Conductor Gil Shaham Violin Jolas A Little Summer Suite First Philadelphia Orchestra performances Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 71 I. Allegro ma non troppo II. Larghetto— III. Rondo: Allegro Intermission ProkofievSymphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100 I. Andante II. Allegro marcato III. Adagio IV. Allegro giocoso This program runs approximately 2 hours, 5 minutes. These concerts are part of The Philadelphia Orchestra’s WomenNOW and BeethovenNOW celebrations. 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 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 five 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. 25 Conductor Simon Fowler Simon Fowler Conductor Susanna Mälkki returns to The Philadelphia Orchestra for the first time since her 2014 debut. She continues to guest conduct the world’s leading ensembles, with 2019–20 appearances including return visits to the New York, London, and Munich philharmonics; the Cleveland Orchestra; the Boston, Chicago, and London symphonies; and the Orchestre National de Lyon. She also debuts with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Monte- Carlo Philharmonic. Recent engagements include the Vienna Symphony and the Vienna Radio Symphony (as a Vienna Konzerthaus “Portrait” artist), the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the Radio France Philharmonic. Ms. Mälkki is in her fourth season as chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, with highlights including premieres by leading national composers Kaija Saariaho and Lotta Wennäkoski and a new work by Felipe Lara (co- commissioned with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, featuring double bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding and flautist Claire Chase); a tour to Belgium; and the continuation of the orchestra’s Bartók Trilogy recordings for BIS Records. As part of her third season as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, she pays tribute to the late Oliver Knussen, programming his Violin Concerto and co-curating (with violinist Leila Josefowicz) a New Music Group concert centered on his chamber music. She also conducts Holst’s The Planets, Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite, and a new composition by Ms. Saariaho. A renowned opera conductor, Ms. Mälkki makes her debut at the Festival d’Aix en Provence in 2020, leading the world premiere of Ms. Saariaho’s new opera, Innocence. She also returns to the Opéra National de Paris to conduct Philippe Boesmans’s Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne. She has conducted at the Vienna State and Metropolitan operas and was the first woman to conduct at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, in 2011. Prior to her conducting studies she had a successful career as a cellist and from 1995 to 1998 was one of the principals of the Gothenburg Symphony. In 2011 she was awarded the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland—one of that country’s highest honors. She was also Musical America’s 2017 Conductor of the Year. 26 Soloist Luke Ratray Luke American violinist Gil Shaham made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1988 at the Mann Center and has performed regularly with the Philadelphians ever since. The Grammy Award-winner and Musical America “Instrumentalist of the Year” is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors. He regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals. Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J.S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin and recitals with his long-time duo partner, pianist Akira Eguchi. Appearances with orchestra regularly include the Berlin, Israel, New York, and Los Angeles philharmonics; the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphonies; the Orchestre de Paris; as well as multi-year residencies with the orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart, and Singapore. Mr. Shaham has recorded more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, the Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice awards. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. His recordings include 1930s Violin Concertos, Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar’s Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies, The Butterfly Lovers, and many more. His most recent recording, 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971, Mr. Shaham moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies at the age of seven, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981 he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic. In 1982, after taking first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition, he became a scholarship student at the Juilliard School. He also studied at Columbia University. He was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990 and in 2008 received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012 he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America. Mr. Shaham lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children. He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius. 27 Framing the Program This concert inaugurates The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Parallel Events BeethovenNOW series, honoring the composer’s 250th 1806 Music birthday, with his majestic Violin Concerto. It will continue Beethoven Weber with the complete piano concertos and symphonies. The Violin Concerto Symphony No. 1 program also continues the season-long WomenNOW Literature initiative, featuring women innovators and creators, with Armin and Betsy Jolas’s A Little Summer Suite. She composed the Brentano work in 2015 on the eve of her 90th birthday for the Berlin Des Knaben Philharmonic. It offers what she calls “wandering music” Wunderhorn Art that “seems aimless and could land anywhere at any time.” Constable Jolas likens the seven-section Suite to what the Russian Windermere composer Modest Musorgsky did a century and a half History earlier in his Pictures from an Exhibition. Formal Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is now such a familiar concert dissolution of favorite that it may be surprising to learn how long it took the Holy Roman to enter the general repertoire. In this majestic piece Empire Beethoven did not so much aim to dazzle with virtuoso 1944 Music technique (not that he makes anything easy for the Prokofiev Barber soloist) as to infuse a seriousness of purpose associated Symphony Symphony No. 2 with his symphonies. Beethoven’s contemporaries were No. 5 Literature somewhat baffled by this ambition and it was only later Camus in the 19th century, through the advocacy of the great Caligula violinist Joseph Joachim, that the Concerto won its rightful Art place with the public. Rivera The Rug Weaver Although Sergei Prokofiev immigrated to the West from History his native Russia in 1918, soon after the Revolution, he D-Day landings decided to return for good nearly two decades later.