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Season 2020111111----2020202011112222 The Philadelphia Orchestra Friday, March 161616,16 , at 888:008:00:00:00 Saturday, March 11171777,, at 8:00 Sunday, March 18, at 2:00 GGGianandreaGianandrea Noseda Conductor Juliette Kang Violin Rossini Overture to William Tell Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19 I. Andantino—Andante assai II. Scherzo: Vivacissimo III. Moderato Intermission Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 (“Scottish”) I. Andante con moto—Allegro un poco agitato—Assai animato—Andante come I— II. Vivace non troppo— III. Adagio— IV. Allegro vivacissimo—Allegro maestoso assai This program runs approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes. Born in Milan, Gianandrea Noseda serves as music director of the Teatro Regio in Turin, conductor laureate of the BBC Philharmonic, chief guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic, Victor de Sabata Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, principal conductor of the Orquesta de Cadaqués, and artistic director of the Stresa Festival. He became the first foreign principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1997, and he has also served as principal guest conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI. Mr. Noseda has worked closely with several youth orchestras worldwide and has also offered master classes to young conductors at the Royal Northern College of Music. His recent and upcoming engagements include his debut at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan conducting Verdi’s Luisa Miller, his first appearance at the Vienna State Opera conducting Verdi’s I vespri siciliani, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor with the Metropolitan Opera on tour in Japan, Verdi’s Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera, and appearances at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with the Teatro Regio. Mr. Noseda has been an exclusive Chandos recording artist since 2002. His discography includes discs of works by Prokofiev, Karłowitz, Dvořák, Smetana, Shostakovich, and Mahler; an extensive survey of the music of 20th-century Italian composers, including a Diapason d’Or Award-winning disc of the works of Wolf-Ferrari; and a cycle of Liszt’s complete symphonic works. With the BBC Philharmonic Mr. Noseda has recorded Rachmaninoff’s operas Francesca da Rimini, The Miserly Knight, and Aleko as well as the First, Second, and Third symphonies. His live performances with the BBC Philharmonic of the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, and Brahms have been made available for download by Chandos records. He also led the Vienna Philharmonic on Anna Netrebko’s first album for the Deutsche Grammophon label. Mr. Noseda has received the honour of Cavaliere Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica Italiana. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2010. For more information please visit www.gianandreanoseda.com. A native of Edmonton, Canada, violinist Juliette KangKang came to Philadelphia from the Boston Symphony, where she served as assistant concertmaster from 2003 to 2005. Prior to that she was a member of the first violin section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra from 2001 to 2003. Ms. Kang’s solo engagements have included the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas; l’Orchestre National de France conducted by Yehudi Menuhin; the Baltimore, Omaha, and Syracuse symphonies; the Boston Pops; and every major orchestra in Canada. She has also performed with the Czech Philharmonic, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the KBS Symphony in Seoul. She has given recitals in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet, in Tokyo at Suntory Hall, in Boston at the Gardner Museum, and in New York at the 92nd Street Y and the Frick Museum. As gold medalist of the 1994 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, she was presented at Carnegie Hall in a recital that was recorded live for the Samsung/Nices label. She has also recorded two discs for CBC Records, including the Schumann Violin Concerto with the Vancouver Symphony. Ms. Kang will be a featured soloist in the May 2012 Carnegie Hall debut of her hometown orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony. Ms. Kang has been involved with chamber music since studying quartets at the Curtis Institute of Music with Felix Galimir. Festivals she has participated in include Bravo! Vail Valley, Kingston Chamber Music, Bridgehampton, Marlboro, Moab (Utah), Skaneateles (New York), and Spoleto USA. In New York she has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at the Mostly Mozart Festival with her husband, cellist Thomas Kraines, and at the Bard Music Festival. After receiving a Bachelor of Music degree from Curtis as a student of Jascha Brodsky, where she entered the school at age nine, she earned a Master of Music degree at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Dorothy Delay and Robert Mann. She was a winner of the 1989 Young Concert Artists Auditions, and she subsequently received first prize at the Menuhin Violin Competition of Paris in 1992. These current performances mark her Philadelphia Orchestra solo subscription debut. She lives in Center City with her husband and two daughters. FRAMING THE PROGRAM The program today offers a grand musical tour as Italian, Russian, and German composers visit Switzerland, Paris, and Scotland. William Tell proved to be Rossini’s last opera. He was 37 when he composed it and the most famous living composer in Europe, but he opted for early retirement and lived for nearly another 40 years without again composing for the theater. The marvelous four-part Overture is not only one of his most famous works, but also one of his most innovative. Sergei Prokofiev completed his First Violin Concerto in 1917, not long before the Russian Revolution. He left his native country in the aftermath of the political turmoil that event unleashed and wended his way to America before settling a few years later in Europe. It took him some time to find a home for his Concerto, which finally premiered in Paris in 1923. Nearly a century earlier Felix Mendelssohn made a grand tour of Europe that inspired fascinating letters, remarkable drawings, and enduring music. His trip to Scotland at age 20 left its mark on various compositions, including his evocative Symphony No. 3, the “Scottish.” Parallel Events 1829 Rossini Overture to William Tell Music Bellini La straniera Literature Tennyson Timbuctoo Art Delacroix Sardanapalus History Slavery abolished in Mexico 1842 Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3 Music Glinka Ruslan and Lyudmila Literature Longfellow Poems of Slavery Art Turner Snowstorm History Treaty of Nanking ends Opium War 1917 Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1 Music Respighi Fountains of Rome Literature Eliot Prufrock and Other Observations ArtArtArt Modigliani Crouching Female Nude History U.S. enters World War I Overture ttoo William Tell Gioachino Rossini Born iiinin Pesaro, February 29, 1792 Died iiinin Paris, November 13, 1868 In the first important German-language history of music, published in 1834 and written by Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, the years 1800-32 are characterized as “The Epoch of Beethoven and Rossini.” This description may seem somewhat odd today because it reflects distinctions between instrumental and vocal music, aesthetic ideologies, and a north/south geography that are no longer much discussed. What Kiesewetter recognized was that even though Beethoven had already been considered the greatest composer for some two decades, Rossini was the most popular by the 1820s. His operas dominated Europe’s opera houses—and beyond: This music was so endlessly arranged that it could be heard in almost every conceivable setting, from intimate domestic gatherings to large orchestral concerts. A Master’s Last Opera No composer of Italian opera formed a more significant bridge between Mozartean Classicism and Verdian high Romanticism than Rossini. His some three dozen operas defy easy categorization: They are Classical in musical design yet often Romantic in dramatic outlook. His contribution to the history and development of grand opera was critical; but more to the point for most contemporaries and for posterity, his unique comic idiom and fluid melodic style are utterly irresistible to the ear. Rossini was not only a brilliant composer, but also a shrewd one. He knew what worked and once he had perfected a formula, be it how to write an overture, mold an aria, or craft a finale, he tended to stick to it for some time. The lilting melodies, infectious rhythms, and bubbling crescendos found in most of his overtures were widely admired and imitated. (Beethoven esteemed Rossini’s operas; Schubert wrote two “Overtures in the Italian Style,” which is to say, à la Rossini.) But Rossini wrote not only opera buffa (comic opera). For one thing, he married a celebrated singer who desired more serious fare and that was surely one of various reasons he concentrated on writing opera seria for about the last 10 years of his career, beginning in 1817. For his last opera, William Tell, composed for the Paris Opera and premiered in 1829, Rossini based his libretto on Friedrich von Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell (1804), which tells a story of Swiss patriots struggling against Austrian imperial dominance in the 13th century. Although it is not clear whether Rossini at the time intended this long and demanding work to be his final opera—audience tastes were changing—it does synthesize many elements of his style. After the premiere Rossini in essence retired, at the height of his fame and at the age of 37. He lived a rich and famous man for nearly 40 more years. A Closer Look The music of William Tell, an opera in four acts that lasts some four hours (not counting intermissions), manifests a seriousness that contrasts with the composer’s comic successes, such as The Italian Girl in Algiers (1813) and The Barber of Seville (1816). Likewise the Overture to this opera is unique, functioning programmatically in a new way.

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