FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE UPDATED October 31, 2013 October 7, 2013 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected]

ALAN GILBERT AND THE

Principal LIANG WANG To Perform NEW YORK PREMIERE of The Marie Josée-Kravis Composer-in-Residence CHRISTOPHER ROUSE’s OBOE

Concertmaster GLENN DICTEROW To Perform Concertmaster Solos from R. STRAUSS’s DON JUAN and ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA Launching Season-Long Farewell to the Philharmonic’s Longest-Serving Concertmaster

November 14–16 and 19, 2013

Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in the New York Premiere of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse’s Oboe Concerto, featuring Principal Oboe Liang Wang, and Richard Strauss’s Don Juan and Also sprach Zarathustra, both featuring Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow in concertmaster solos. The concerts will take place Thursday, November 14, 2013, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, November 15 at 2:00 p.m.; Saturday, November 16 at 8:00 p.m.; and Tuesday, November 19 at 7:30 p.m.

The performance of Christopher Rouse’s Oboe Concerto launches the second year of his tenure as The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence. “I’ve always said and long felt that Chris Rouse is one of the really important composers working today,” Alan Gilbert said. “As we enter our second year with him as Composer-in-Residence, it’s fun for me to see how the relationship gets stronger.”

“What I’ve always loved most about the Philharmonic is that they play as though it’s a matter of life or death,” Mr. Rouse said. “The energy, excitement, commitment, and intensity are so exciting and wonderful for a composer. Some of the very best performances I’ve ever had have been by the Philharmonic.”

“It’s a real workout for the oboist,” Mr. Rouse said of his Oboe Concerto. “It is one of my more genial works. There aren’t too many clouds in the sky. It’s meant to have a kind of amorous, romantic quality.” Principal Oboe Liang Wang added: “It’s a combination of lyrical themes with fireworks. It’s genius.”

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The Philharmonic had scheduled the New York Premiere of the Oboe Concerto in December 2010, but the program was adjusted due to a blizzard. Later this season, Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead Mr. Rouse’s on May 5, 2014, to open the Spring For Music festival at Carnegie Hall; the World Premiere of the New York Philharmonic–commissioned Symphony No. 4 on June 5–7, 2014, one of the highlights of the inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL; and on January 2–3 and 7, 2014. The will also perform Rapture at Long Island’s Tilles Center for the Performing Arts on January 4, 2014, and on the ASIA / WINTER 2014 tour.

This program also launches the season-long farewell to Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, who will step down at the end of the 2013–14 season, concluding his 34-year tenure as the Philharmonic’s longest-serving concertmaster. Mr. Dicterow selected four of his favorite concertmaster solos to perform during his final season, and two of those solos — in R. Strauss’s Don Juan and Also sprach Zarathustra — are featured on this program. Mr. Dicterow performed and recorded Also sprach Zarathustra only two weeks into his January 1980 trial period for his role as Concertmaster: a recording of those performances was released by CBS Records.

“The most challenging part of performing concertmaster solos is that you start out playing amongst your colleagues and all of a sudden the solo light goes on and you’re out there by yourself. You are a team player and then you’re at bat, and you have to try to hit a home run,” Mr. Dicterow said.

“Glenn is one of the great concertmasters, and he’s part of the reason the New York Philharmonic is as great as it is,” Alan Gilbert said. “I think everybody agrees that Glenn’s generosity and the warmth of his sound has become part of what makes this orchestra the New York Philharmonic.”

Glenn Dicterow will be spotlighted in two more concertmaster solos this season: in R. Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben — which he has performed 44 times with the Philharmonic — conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, December 12–14, 2013, and in Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3, conducted by Andrey Boreyko, January 22–25, 2014. On January 19, 2014, at Alice Tully Hall, The Juilliard School and the New York Philharmonic will present Mr. Dicterow in a free farewell chamber recital with Philharmonic musicians. Concluding the 2013–14 season, he will perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Principal Carter Brey and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence Yefim Bronfman, presented as part of The Beethoven Piano : A Philharmonic Festival, conducted by Alan Gilbert, June 24–28, 2014.

Related Events  Pre-Concert Talks Composer Paul Moravec 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.

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 National and International Radio Broadcast The program will be broadcast the week of December 8, 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 Brothers Fund, 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 8:00 p.m. *Check local listings for broadcast and program information.

Artists Music Director Alan Gilbert began his New York Philharmonic tenure in September 2009, the first native New Yorker in the post. He and the Philharmonic have introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in- Residence; CONTACT!, the new-music series; and, beginning in the spring of 2014, the NY PHIL BIENNIAL. “He is building a legacy that matters and is helping to change the template for what an American orchestra can be,” The New York Times praised.

In addition to inaugurating the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, in the 2013–14 season Alan Gilbert conducts Mozart’s three final symphonies; the U.S. Premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Frieze coupled with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; four world premieres; an all-Britten program celebrating the composer’s centennial; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey as the film is screened; and a staged production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel. He continues The Nielsen Project — the multi-year initiative to perform and record the Danish composer’s symphonies and concertos, the first release of which was named by The New York Times as among the Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012 — and presides over the ASIA / WINTER 2014 tour. Last season’s highlights included Bach’s B-minor Mass; Ives’s Fourth Symphony; the EUROPE / SPRING 2013 tour; and the season-concluding A Dancer’s Dream, a multidisciplinary reimagining of Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss and Petrushka, created by Giants Are Small and starring New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns.

Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies and holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School. Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, he regularly conducts leading around the world. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award. Renée Fleming’s recent Decca recording Poèmes, on which he conducted, received a 2013 Grammy Award. His recordings have received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. In May 2010 Mr. Gilbert received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music and in December 2011, Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for his “exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary music.”

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Liang Wang joined the New York Philharmonic in September 2006 as Principal Oboe, The Alice Tully Chair. Previously, he was principal oboe of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, and San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, as well as associate principal oboe of the San Francisco Symphony. Born in Qing Dao, , he comes from a musical family: his mother was an amateur singer and his uncle was a professional oboist with whom Mr. Wang began oboe studies at the age of seven. In 1993 Liang Wang enrolled at the Central Conservatory, and two years later became a full-scholarship student at the Idyllwild Arts Academy in California. He received his bachelor’s degree from The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Philadelphia Orchestra principal oboist Richard Woodhams. While at Curtis, he was a fellowship recipient at both the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with for Philadelphia Orchestra principal oboe John de Lancie, and the Music Academy of the West, where he was a Career Grant recipient. Mr. Wang was a prizewinner at the 2003 Fernard Gillet International Oboe Competition and the 2002 Tilden Prize Competition. An active chamber musician, he has appeared with the Santa Fe Chamber and the Angel Fire Music Festivals. He has appeared as soloist with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and in Santa Fe, and has given master classes at the Cincinnati Conservatory, was on the oboe faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and New York University. Liang Wang made his Philharmonic solo debut performing R. Strauss’s Oboe Concerto, led by Xian Zhang, in Hong Kong on the Asia 2008 tour. He most recently appeared as soloist in Poul Ruders’s Oboe Concerto, led by Alan Gilbert, as part of a CONTACT! concert in April 2013.

Glenn Dicterow made his solo debut at the age of 11 in Tchaikovsky’s Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His honors include the Young Musicians Foundation Award, Coleman Competition Award, Julia Klumpke Award, and Bronze Medal in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1970. Mr. Dicterow frequently appears as soloist with orchestras around the world, and he performed Bernstein’s Serenade with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in Isaac Stern at Eighty: A Birthday Celebration at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Dicterow is featured in the violin solos in Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Also sprach Zarathustra with Zubin Mehta for CBS Records. He has recorded works by Wieniawski with Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Lee Holdridge’s with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer; and Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Maxim Shostakovich. His most recent CD is a recital on Cala Records’ New York Legends series. Glenn Dicterow is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music. Beginning in the fall of 2013, he will become the first to hold the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.

Repertoire Composed when the composer was only 24, Richard Strauss’s Don Juan (1888) shows us a different Don. Unlike Mozart’s more traditional image of the libertine in Don Giovanni, for example, Strauss’s depiction is based on an unfinished verse-play (written in 1844, published posthumously in 1851) by the dramatist/poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802–50), in which the world- weary hero tires of his search for the ideal of womanhood. In the brief span of around 16 or 17 minutes of intense music, Strauss depicts Don Juan in a flurry of upward-rushing notes (as if he were setting out on yet another quest), two sensuous love scenes, and, in eerily scored, (more)

New York Premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Oboe Concerto / 5 shuddering gestures, a scene in which he allows himself to be killed in a duel — an unceremonious demise for the iconic Don. Known for crafting notoriously difficult works to perform, the composer wrote to his father (an eminent horn player) about the challenges of this tone poem for the Weimar orchestra, which “huffed and puffed … One of the horn players sat there, out of breath, sweat pouring from his brow, asking ‘Good God, in what have we sinned that you should send us this scourge!’… I was really sorry for the wretched brass. They were quite blue in the face; the whole affair was so strenuous.”

The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse writes about his Oboe Concerto (originally commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra in 2004): “I have noticed that [my concertos] seem to fall into one of two categories: ‘somber’ (e.g., , violoncello) and ‘genial’ (guitar, ). My oboe concerto … is of the latter variety.” Rouse also explains the nature of the musical material and its demands on the soloist: “There is no overt program to this piece. It aims, of course, to explore the capabilities of the oboe, of which the first in everyone’s mind is its capacity to play long, lyrical lines.” But he did not want “to deny the instrument’s more virtuosic attributes, and so there are plenty of moments when the soloist is asked to play music requiring substantial agility.” As a result, the concerto represents a kind of interplay between those lyrical and virtuosic qualities. A five-note chord in the strings at the beginning is the source for much of the melodic and harmonic material that metamorphoses, by turns, into dreamy, meditative, sensuous, lyrical, and colorful music.

Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra (1895–96) is a tone poem inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1885 philosophical poem of the same name that, in turn, was based on the sixth- century BCE Persian prophet Zoroaster. Strauss wrote: “I did not intend to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche’s work musically. I meant rather to convey in music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman.” Tone poems draw inspiration from literary or other sources, and Strauss excelled at composing them. (He once said: “I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher!”) Strauss depicts the opening of Nietzsche’s book — as the prophet apostrophizes the sun — with a majestic rising fanfare of , full orchestra, and organ that hails the primeval sunrise. Eight more sections follow, including Of the Back-world Dwellers, Of the Great Longing, Of Joys and Passions, and the finale, Night Wanderer’s Song. Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey immortalized Also sprach Zarathustra. Wassily Safonoff conducted the Philharmonic’s first performance of this work in 1908 at Carnegie Hall; David Robertson led the Orchestra’s most recent performances at Avery Fisher Hall in 2003 and at the Ravinia and Bravo! Vail festivals in the summer of 2004.

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

* * * Christopher Rouse is The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence.

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* * * Additional support for these concerts is provided by The Francis Goelet Fund.

* * * Classical 105.9 FM WQXR is the Radio Home of the New York Philharmonic.

* * * Programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Tickets Tickets for these concerts start at $29. 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 Marketing and Communications Department at (212) 875-5714, or e-mail her at [email protected].

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New York Philharmonic

Avery Fisher Hall

Thursday, November 14, 2013, 7:30 p.m. Open Rehearsal — 9:45 a.m. Friday, November 15, 2013, 2:00 p.m. Saturday, November 16, 2013, 8:00 p.m. Tuesday, November 19, 2013, 7:30 p.m.

Pre-Concert Talk (one hour before each concert) with composer Paul Moravec

Alan Gilbert, conductor Liang Wang, oboe

R. STRAUSS Don Juan Glenn Dicterow, violin Christopher ROUSE Oboe Concerto (New York Premiere) R. STRAUSS Also sprach Zarathustra Glenn Dicterow, violin

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