23 Season 2017-2018 Wednesday, November 1, at 7:30 China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra Lü Jia Conductor Ning Feng Violin Gautier Capuçon Cello Zhao Jiping Violin Concerto No. 1 (in one movement) Chen Qigang Reflection of a Vanished Time, for cello and orchestra United States premiere Intermission Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 I. Allegro non troppo II. Andante moderato III. Allegro giocoso—Poco meno presto—Tempo I IV. Allegro energico e passionato—Più allegro This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra’s 2017 US Tour is proudly supported by China National Arts Fund. International Flight Sponsor: Hainan Airlines Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 1 PM. Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details. 24 Conductor Lü Jia is artistic director of music of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing, China, as well as music director and chief conductor of the NCPA Orchestra. He is also music director and chief conductor of the Macao Orchestra. He has served as music director of Verona Opera in Italy and artistic director of the Tenerife Symphony in Spain. Born into a musical family in Shanghai, he began studying piano and cello at a very young age. He later studied conducting at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, under the tutelage of Zheng Xiaoying. At the age of 24 Mr. Lü entered the University of Arts in Berlin, where he continued his studies under Hans- Martin Rabenstein and Robert Wolf. The following year he was awarded both the First Prize and Jury’s Prize at the Antonio Pedeotti International Conducting Competition in Trento, Italy, which launched his career. Mr. Lü has conducted nearly 2,000 orchestral concerts and opera performances in Europe and the United States. He has worked with such renowned opera houses and symphony orchestras as La Scala; the Deutsche Oper Berlin; the Royal Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Lyon National orchestras; the Chicago, Bamberg, and City of Birmingham symphonies; the Munich and Royal Liverpool philharmonics; and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. A highly acclaimed opera conductor, Mr. Lü has led more than 50 productions internationally and was the first Asian conductor appointed music director in an important opera house in Italy. In 2007 Italian President Giorgio Napolitano bestowed the President’s Prize on Mr. Lü for his exceptional contribution to Italian culture. In 2012 the Plácido Domingo International Vocal Competition invited him to serve on its jury, making him the Competition’s first-ever Chinese jury member. That same year he was appointed chief conductor and artistic director of opera at the NCPA. Under his musical direction, NCPA’s productions of Wagner’s Lohengrin and The Flying Dutchman, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Verdi’s Otello, Puccini’s Tosca, and many other works have received glowing reviews from the international press. 25 Soloist Felix Broede Felix Established at the highest level in China, violinist Feng Ning performs regularly in his native country with major international and local orchestras, in recital, and with the Dragon Quartet, which he founded in 2012. Now based in Berlin and enjoying a global career, he has developed an international reputation as an artist of great lyricism and emotional transparency, displaying tremendous bravura and awe-inspiring technical accomplishment. Born in Chengdu, China, Mr. Feng studied at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music; the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, with Antje Weithaas; and the Royal Academy of Music in London, with Hu Kun, where he was the first student ever to be awarded 100% for his final recital. The recipient of prizes at the Hanover International, Queen Elisabeth, and Yehudi Menuhin International violin competitions, Mr. Feng was also First Prize winner at the 2005 Michael Hill International Violin Competition in New Zealand, and in 2006 he won First Prize in the International Paganini Competition. Mr. Feng plays the 1721 “Macmillan” Stradivarius, on private loan, kindly arranged by Premiere Performances of Hong Kong. His strings are made by Thomastik-Infeld, Vienna. 26 Soloist Catherine Pluchart Cellist Gautier Capuçon performs each season with many of the world’s foremost conductors and instrumentalists and is also founder and leader of the Classe d’Excellence de Violoncelle at the Frank Gehry- designed Louis Vuitton Foundation auditorium in Paris. He is acclaimed internationally for his deeply expressive musicianship and exuberant virtuosity, as well as for the glorious sonority of his 1701 “Matteo Goffriller” cello. In addition to tonight’s performance, highlights of the 2017- 18 season include appearances in a number of orchestral tours across Europe, the U.S., and in Asia, including the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Vienna Symphony, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. Other concerto appearances include return performances with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Herbert Blomstedt, the Vienna Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov, the San Francisco Symphony and Stéphane Denève, the City of Birmingham Symphony and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, and the London Philharmonia and Paavo Jäarvi. A regular recital and chamber musician, Mr. Capuçon appears annually in the world’s major halls and festivals. Highlights this season include a return to Carnegie Hall with pianist Daniil Trifonov; an extensive international recital tour with duo partner and pianist Jérôme Ducros, supporting the release of the album Intuition; and performances at the Verbier Festival. Recording exclusively for Erato (Warner Classics), he has won multiple ECHO Klassik awards and holds an extensive discography. Other recent recordings include Beethoven Sonatas with pianist Frank Braley, Shostakovich’s Cello Concertos with the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, and Schubert’s String Quintet with Quatuor Ébène. Born in Chambéry, France, in 1981, Mr. Capuçon began playing the cello at the age of five. He studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris with Philippe Muller and Annie Cochet-Zakine, and later with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna. The winner of various first prizes in many leading international competitions, including the International André Navarra Prize, he was named New Talent of the Year by Victoires de la Musique in 2001. 27 China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra China NCPA Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing. Established in March 2010, the orchestra performs in more than a dozen opera productions presented by its home venue every year, as well as in regular orchestral concerts in its own season. Artists associated with the orchestra included Zubin Mehta, Valery Gergiev, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fabio Luisi, Lang Lang, Stephen Kovacevich, Leo Nucci, and Yuja Wang, among many others. Lorin Maazel worked closely with the ensemble before his passing and praised the musicians for their “amazing professionalism and great passion in music.” The NCPA Orchestra has gained critical acclaim for its performances in NCPA’s opera productions of not only classical repertoire works such as Puccini’s Tosca, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Verdi’s Aida and Nabucco, and Wagner’s Lohengrin, but also newly commissioned works such as Lei Lei’s The Chinese Orphan and Guo Wenjing’s The Rickshaw Boy. In its own orchestral concert season, it has consistently presented creative and diverse programs. The orchestra’s performance of The “Ring” without Words with its creator, Lorin Maazel, was released on SONY Classics worldwide, the only recording he ever made with a Chinese orchestra. The NCPAO has also extensively explored contemporary music. It gave the Chinese premieres of works by Tōru Takemitsu and Giya Kancheli, among others, and the world premieres of many works by composers including Michael Gordon and Augusta Read Thomas. The NCPA Orchestra has received widespread international praise for its performances at the Kissingen Summer Music Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and concerts in many cities in Germany, as well as in Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Daegu, Abu Dhabi, Taipei, and Macao. During the 2014-15 season, the orchestra undertook its first North American tour, where it performed in seven major cities in the US and Canada, under the baton of Lü Jia, including in a presentation by The Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center. 28 China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Opened in 2007, China’s National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) has become one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world. Strongly committed to presenting and supporting the highest standards of artistic excellence, the Center is considered the home away from home for many of today’s leading artists and ensembles. Across four stellar state-of-the-art performance spaces, the NCPA presents more than 850 events annually, from classical and contemporary concerts to opera, ballet, and theater productions to education and outreach programs. With a mission to share the transformative power of the arts to as many people as possible, the Center serves a diverse and broad audience spanning all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. The NCPA is not only celebrated as a leading venue for visiting performing artists and ensembles, but it is also home to one of China’s premier orchestras, the China National Center for the Performing Arts Orchestra. Since its launch in 2010, the NCPA Orchestra has become one of the brightest jewels in China’s artistic crown, performing many critically acclaimed concerts at the venue and abroad. In addition to their main- stage concert season, they are also the resident orchestra for all of the Center’s opera productions. Under the direction of its music director, Lü Jia, the ensemble is composed of some of the world’s finest musicians, who all share in the center’s belief of presenting concerts of the highest artistic quality.