[email protected] BRAMWELL TOVEY And

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 15, 2017 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5700; [email protected] BRAMWELL TOVEY and YEFIM BRONFMAN TO RETURN TO NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC BARTÓK’s Piano Concerto No. 2 MUSORGSKY’s Pictures at an Exhibition SMETANA’s The Bartered Bride Overture December 27–30, 2017 Bramwell Tovey will conduct the New York Philharmonic in Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with Yefim Bronfman as soloist; Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (in Ravel’s orchestration); and Smetana’s The Bartered Bride Overture, Wednesday, December 27, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, December 28 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, December 29 at 8:00 p.m.; and Saturday, December 30 at 8:00 p.m. Yefim Bronfman — a Philharmonic Board Member and the 2013–14 season Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, who made his debut with the Orchestra almost 40 years ago — won a 1997 Grammy Award for his recording of Bartók’s complete piano concertos with the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Esa-Pekka Salonen, now the Philharmonic’s Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in- Residence. The Los Angeles Times wrote of Mr. Bronfman’s performance of Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009: “This happens to be one of the most virtuosic concertos in the standard repertory and Bronfman’s playing was a finely spun whirl of notes that verged on the unbelievable.” Bramwell Tovey will also conduct Members of the New York Philharmonic in New Year’s Eve: Bernstein on Broadway, December 31, 2017, featuring vocalists Annaleigh Ashford, Christopher Jackson, Laura Osnes, and Aaron Tveit. Artists Grammy and Juno award–winning conductor / composer Bramwell Tovey was appointed music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) in 2000. Under his leadership the VSO has toured China, Korea, Canada, and the United States. Mr. Tovey is also the artistic adviser of the VSO School of Music, a state-of-the-art facility and recital hall which opened in downtown Vancouver in 2011. In 2018, the VSO’s centenary year, he will become the orchestra’s music director emeritus. The 2017–18 season in Vancouver includes tours in the fall and spring showcasing the orchestra in British Columbia as well as key east coast Canadian cities. Other engagements will take Mr. Tovey to the New York Philharmonic; The Philadelphia Orchestra; the Indianapolis, St. Louis, Houston, Toronto, and Melbourne symphonies; and returns to summer festivals in Vail, Tanglewood, and the Hollywood (more) Bramwell Tovey / Yefim Bronfman / 2 Bowl. An active composer, Bramwell Tovey won the 2003 Juno Award for Best Classical Composition for his choral and brass work Requiem for a Charred Skull. Past commissions have come from ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, and Calgary Opera, which premiered his first full length opera, The Inventor, in 2011 (a recording of which by the VSO with UBC Opera and the original cast has been released on Naxos). In 2014 his trumpet concerto, Songs of the Paradise Saloon, was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Philadelphia Orchestra, both featuring Alison Balsom as soloist. Also a talented pianist, Mr. Tovey has appeared as soloist with many major orchestras including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras and the Sydney, Melbourne, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Toronto, and Royal Scottish National symphony orchestras. In the summer of 2014 he played and conducted Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in Saratoga with The Philadelphia Orchestra. He has performed his own Pictures in the Smoke with the Melbourne and Helsingborg Symphonies and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Bramwell Tovey was music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (1989–2001) and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg (2002–06). He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London and Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, and holds honorary degrees from the universities of British Columbia, Manitoba, Kwantlen, and Winnipeg. In 2013 he was appointed an honorary Officer of the Order of Canada for services to music. Mr. Tovey made his New York Philharmonic debut leading a Young People’s Concert in October 2000, and he led his first subscription concert in March 2002, comprising works by Haydn, Stravinsky, Webern, and Mozart. Most recently he conducted an all-American program during the Orchestra’s July 2017 residency at Bravo! Vail. Internationally recognized as one of today’s most acclaimed and admired pianists, Yefim Bronfman stands among a handful of artists regularly sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors, and recital series. In recognition of a relationship of more than 30 years, Mr. Bronfman will join the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta on the orchestra’s fall U.S. tour, including a stop at Carnegie Hall, followed by concerts in Munich, London, and Vienna with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mariss Jansons, another frequent collaborator. In addition to returns to the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras, The Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, and Pittsburgh, National, Indianapolis, and Toronto symphony orchestras, in the spring he will tour with the Vienna Philharmonic and Andrés Orozco-Estrada in a special program celebrating the pianist’s 60th birthday. In Europe he can also be heard with the Berlin Philharmonic; in recital in Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, and London; and on tour with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons. A tour in Asia with the London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda brings the season to a close in June. Mr. Bronfman has given numerous solo recitals in the leading halls of North America, Europe, and the Far East, including acclaimed debuts at Carnegie Hall in 1989 and Avery Fisher (now David Geffen) Hall in 1993. In 1991 he gave a series of joint recitals with Isaac Stern in Russia, marking Mr. Bronfman’s first public performances there since his emigration to Israel at age 15. That same year he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists, and in 2010 he was honored as the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane prize in piano performance from Northwestern University. Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973. He made his New York Philharmonic debut in May 1978 performing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto alongside violinist Shlomo Mintz and (more) Bramwell Tovey / Yefim Bronfman / 3 cellist Yo-Yo Ma, conducted by Alexander Schneider. He most recently joined Alan Gilbert and the Orchestra in Shanghai for a July 2017 performance of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2, as part of the Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership. Repertoire Bedřich Smetana (1824–84) is considered by many as the founding father of Czech music. His second opera, The Bartered Bride, which takes its inspiration from the Czech countryside, follows the story of two lovers, Hans and Marie, who are prevented from marrying by Marie’s father, who has secured a more lucrative potential husband through a matchmaker. As the tale unfolds, Hans outwits all involved and, in the end, manages to secure Marie’s hand in marriage. The opera was not an immediate success on its 1866 premiere — partially because war was imminent, and Smetana fled shortly thereafter to avoid the Prussian occupation of Prague. Upon returning to the city, he was made conductor of the National Theater, a position that helped give The Bartered Bride a second chance, and it was ultimately recognized as the first great Czech opera. Its virtuosic Overture, composed before the rest of the opera, instantly sets the mood, and is filled with the rhythms and inflections of both the Czech language and Bohemian folk dances. The Philharmonic’s first performance of The Bartered Bride Overture was in January 1888, led by Walter Damrosch with the New York Symphony (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s New York Philharmonic). The Orchestra most recently performed it in July 2004, conducted by David Robertson during the Orchestra’s annual Bravo! Vail summer residency. By the time Béla Bartók (1881–1945) completed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1931, he was 50 years old. He had written the new concerto with his first in mind, believing that though the earlier was a “good work” (in his words) and reflected his assimilation of folk music, contemporary innovation, neoclassicism, and propulsive rhythms, it presented considerable difficulties to both orchestra and audience. “For this reason,” Bartók wrote, “I wanted my Second Concerto … to be a kind of antithesis to the First, easier in its orchestral part and more lucid in structure. This is the purpose and at the same time the reason for the more conventional and simpler treatment of most of the themes.” It was 15 months between the virtuosic concerto’s completion and its premiere in Frankfurt, conducted by Hans Rosbaud with Bartók at the piano (in the outspoken anti-Fascist composer’s final German appearance). Within a few months Bartók was performing it with orchestras throughout Europe. The Philharmonic first performed the concerto in March 1951, led by Franco Autori and with Andor Foldes as soloist; the most recent performance was in February 2012, led by then Music Director Alan Gilbert with Lang Lang as soloist, during the EUROPE / WINTER 2012 tour. Modest Musorgsky (1839–81) created Pictures at an Exhibition as a piano suite, written a few months after the death of artist and architect Viktor Hartmann, the composer’s dear friend whose drawings inspired the composition. As was the case with other Musorgsky works, fellow composers saw fit to “improve,” complete, rework, or orchestrate the piece; it is best known in this orchestration by Ravel, who once said, “For me, orchestration is more play than work.” Pictures at an Exhibition is a musical gallery crawl of sorts, depicting the viewer’s encounter with each of the ten pictures in the exhibition, plus “traveling music” between each picture.

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