Program Notes | French Tales
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27 Season 2018-2019 Thursday, October 25, at 7:30 The Philadelphia Orchestra Friday, October 26, at 2:00 Saturday, October 27, at 8:00 Louis Langrée Conductor Kirill Gerstein Piano Saint-Saëns Danse macabre, Op. 40 Franck The Accursed Huntsman Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Intermission Ravel Piano Concerto in G major I. Allegramente II. Adagio assai III. Presto Ravel Suite No. 2 from Daphnis and Chloé I. Daybreak— II. Pantomime— III. General dance This program runs approximately 1 hour, 55 minutes. The October 27 concert is sponsored by Ken Hutchins. 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. 28 The Philadelphia Orchestra Jessica Griffin The Philadelphia Orchestra Philadelphia is home and orchestra, and maximizes is one of the preeminent the Orchestra continues impact through Research. orchestras in the world, to discover new and The Orchestra’s award- renowned for its distinctive inventive ways to nurture winning Collaborative sound, desired for its its relationship with its Learning programs engage keen ability to capture the loyal patrons at its home over 50,000 students, hearts and imaginations of in the Kimmel Center, families, and community audiences, and admired for and also with those who members through programs a legacy of imagination and enjoy the Orchestra’s area such as PlayINs, side-by- innovation on and off the performances at the Mann sides, PopUP concerts, concert stage. The Orchestra Center, Penn’s Landing, free Neighborhood is inspiring the future and and other cultural, civic, Concerts, School Concerts, transforming its rich tradition and learning venues. The and residency work in of achievement, sustaining Orchestra maintains a Philadelphia and abroad. the highest level of artistic strong commitment to Through concerts, tours, quality, but also challenging— collaborations with cultural residencies, presentations, and exceeding—that level, and community organizations and recordings, the on a regional and national by creating powerful musical Orchestra is a global cultural level, all of which create experiences for audiences at ambassador for Philadelphia greater access and home and around the world. and for the US. Having engagement with classical been the first American Music Director Yannick music as an art form. orchestra to perform in the Nézet-Séguin’s connection The Philadelphia Orchestra People’s Republic of China, to the Orchestra’s musicians serves as a catalyst for in 1973 at the request has been praised by cultural activity across of President Nixon, the both concertgoers and Philadelphia’s many ensemble today boasts critics since his inaugural communities, building an five-year partnerships with season in 2012. Under his offstage presence as strong Beijing’s National Centre for leadership the Orchestra as its onstage one. With the Performing Arts and the returned to recording, with Nézet-Séguin, a dedicated Shanghai Media Group. In four celebrated CDs on body of musicians, and one 2018 the Orchestra traveled the prestigious Deutsche of the nation’s richest arts to Europe and Israel. The Grammophon label, ecosystems, the Orchestra Orchestra annually performs continuing its history of has launched its HEAR at Carnegie Hall while also recording success. The initiative, a portfolio of enjoying summer residencies Orchestra also reaches integrated initiatives that in Saratoga Springs and Vail. thousands of listeners on the promotes Health, champions For more information on radio with weekly broadcasts music Education, eliminates The Philadelphia Orchestra, on WRTI-FM and SiriusXM. barriers to Accessing the please visit www.philorch.org. 29 Conductor Benoit Linero French conductor Louis Langrée, who made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in November 2016, has been music director of the Cincinnati Symphony since 2013. He recently toured with the ensemble to both Asia and Europe, with appearances at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival, the BBC Proms (London), and La Seine Musicale (Paris), among others. He is also music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York, a position he has held since 2002. At the Festival in 2018 he led a celebration of the Bernstein Centenary, including a staged performance of MASS. Recent and future conducting projects include debuts with the Czech Philharmonic at the Prague Spring Festival, the Orchestre National de France, and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin. Return engagements include the Vienna and Toronto symphonies, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He will also return to the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, and the Opéra Comique in Paris. He has conducted several world premieres, including works by Daníel Bjarnason, Magnus Lindberg, and Caroline Shaw. During the 2018-19 season he also conducts the premiere of a piece by Jonathan Bailey Holland, composer-in- residence with the Cincinnati Symphony. Mr. Langrée was music director of the Orchestre de Picardie (1993-98) and the Liège Royal Philharmonic (2001-06), and chief conductor of the Camerata Salzburg (2011-16). He was music director of the Opéra National de Lyon (1998-2000) and Glyndebourne Touring Opera (1998-2003). He has conducted at La Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Paris’ Opéra Bastille, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. His recordings with the Cincinnati Symphony include Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait narrated by Maya Angelou and world premieres by Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich, David Lang, Nico Muhly, and Zhou Tian (nominated for a Grammy Award). His recordings have received several Gramophone and Midem Classical awards. Mr. Langrée is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. 30 Soloist Marco Borggreve Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein gives the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s Piano Concerto this season with the Boston Symphony conducted by the composer, with performances in Boston and at Carnegie Hall. He and Mr. Adès will give the European premiere of the piece with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. They will also collaborate for performances of Ades’s In Seven Days with the London and Los Angeles philharmonics, and for recitals in New York and Boston. Other highlights of the 2018-19 season include appearances with the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov; a return to the London Symphony with Mark Elder; performances with the Shanghai and Guangzhou symphonies; recitals in London, Stuttgart, Lisbon, Singapore, Melbourne, and Copenhagen; and chamber concerts with the Hagen Quartet, violinist Veronika Eberle, and cellist Clemens Hagen in Lucerne, and with actor Bruno Ganz for recitals in Germany and Austria. Mr. Gerstein made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2007. Mr. Gerstein’s most recent recording, Scriabin’s Prometheus: The Poem of Fire with the Oslo Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko, was released on LAWO Classics this fall. Future releases include Busoni’s Piano Concerto on Myrios Classics in spring 2019 and a disc of Tchaikovsky piano concertos next summer, part of Mr. Bychkov’s Tchaikovsky Project for Decca with the Czech Philharmonic. Recent recordings for Myrios include The Gershwin Moment, released earlier this year; Liszt’s Transcendental Études, picked by the New Yorker as one of 2016’s notable recordings; and Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto in the composer’s own final version. Mr. Gerstein was brought up in the former Soviet Union studying both classical and jazz piano and at age 14 moved to the US where he was the youngest student to attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music. In 2010 he was awarded both an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Gilmore Artist Award, which provided the funds for him to commission new works from Timo Andres, Chick Corea, Alexander Goehr, Oliver Knussen, and Brad Mehldau. Mr. Gerstein taught at the Stuttgart Musik Hochschule from 2007 to 2017, and beginning this year will teach as part of the Kronberg Academy’s newly announced Sir András Schiff Performance Program for Young Artists. 31 Framing the Program No reason to get too scared, but the program today Parallel Events perfectly suits the Halloween season, presented from a 1874 Music French perspective under the direction of guest conductor Franck Bruckner Louis Langrée. The Accursed Symphony No. 4 Huntsman Literature The first half of the concert offers three evocative tone Hardy poems, beginning with Camille Saint-Saëns’s Danse Far from the macabre, a devilish dance featuring a mistuned solo Madding Crowd violin part for special effect. César Franck’s The Accursed Art Huntsman tells the supernatural tale of a defiant German Renoir count who sacrilegiously goes hunting on the Sabbath La Loge when everyone is in church. His wild ride becomes an History eternal demonic pursuit. Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s First American Apprentice, immortalized in Disney’s filmFantasia, is based zoo founded in on an ancient story made famous in a poem by Goethe. A Philadelphia lazy apprentice tries to save himself work by casting a spell to mobilize broomsticks—the problem is he does not know 1910 Music Ravel Berg how to get them to stop when things begin to go awry. Daphnis and String Quartet The second half presents two masterpieces by Maurice Chloé Literature Ravel. He composed the Piano Concerto in G major in 1928 Forster after a tour of America in which he deepened his enthusiasm Howard’s End for jazz. The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Boston Art Symphony simultaneous gave the American premiere of the Léger Concerto, which is by turns bluesy and thrilling. Nues dans le forêt Ravel composed the ballet Daphnis and Chloé for Sergei History Diaghilev’s fabled Ballets Russes. The work premiered DuBois founds in Paris in 1912, less than a year before the company NAACP unveiled Igor Stravinsky’s scandalous The Rite of Spring.