FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 5, 2015 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5718; [email protected] ALAN GILBERT AND THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ARTIST-IN-ASSOCIATION INON BARNATAN To Make Philharmonic Debut Performing RAVEL’s Piano Concerto in G major Program Also To Include Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Nyx, DEBUSSY’s Jeux, and R. STRAUSS’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite March 19–20 and 24, 2015 Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, with Philharmonic Artist-in-Association Inon Barnatan in his Philharmonic debut, in a program that also includes Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Nyx, Debussy’s Jeux, and R. Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite, Thursday, March 19, 2015, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, March 20 at 11:00 a.m.; Tuesday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. “I’ve loved this concerto for a long time,” Inon Barnatan said. “One of my first memories of hearing it was in a recording with the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein, so to be able to play it with this Orchestra is fantastic. I think of it as a very New York piece. Ravel wrote it after Gershwin took him to hear jazz in Harlem — where I live in an apartment that used to be a speakeasy for the great jazz musicians — and you can hear the American jazz scene’s influence in this concerto. It also has extraordinary depth, and the second movement has some of the most moving music Ravel ever wrote.” The performances of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Nyx will mark the first time that a conductor other than Mr. Salonen will lead one of his works with the Philharmonic; Alan Gilbert will later lead the Orchestra in Nyx in Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Cologne during the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. Mr. Salonen will begin a three-year tenure as the Philharmonic’s Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence in the 2015–16 season. The position of the New York Philharmonic Artist-in-Association was created to highlight an emerging artist over the course of several consecutive seasons through concerto and chamber music appearances, building a relationship between the artist, the Philharmonic, and its audiences. “I’m honored that Inon Barnatan is part of our family as the Philharmonic’s first Artist- in-Association,” Alan Gilbert said. “He was the perfect person to start this new long-term relationship with: we believe in him that much. He’s a complete artist, wonderful pianist, a probing intellect, and plays an enormous range of music.” (more) Alan Gilbert / Inon Barnatan / 2 “To build such a deep, meaningful, and long-term relationship between the Orchestra, the audience, and me is a golden opportunity,” Inon Barnatan said. “I have such admiration for the musicians of the Orchestra and for Alan Gilbert, an intellectual musician who also brings his whole heart into music.” Inon Barnatan began his Artist-in-Association tenure in December 2014, when he joined cellist Alisa Weilerstein and Philharmonic musicians for a chamber music concert at 92nd Street Y as part of Dohnányi / Dvořák: A Philharmonic Festival. Also during the 2014–15 season, he will perform Dvořák’s Piano Quintet, Op. 81, with Philharmonic musicians (February 7, 2015). Alan Gilbert, Inon Barnatan, and the Philharmonic will perform the same program at Long Island University’s Tilles Center for the Performing Arts in Brookville, New York, on March 21, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. Related Events Pre-Concert Insights Author, pianist, and professor Arbie Orenstein will introduce the program. The Pre-Concert Insights on March 24 is sold-out. Pre-Concert Insights are $7; discounts available for multiple talks, students, and groups. They take place one hour before these performances in the Helen Hull Room, unless otherwise noted. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org/preconcert or (212) 875-5656. 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, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in- Residence, and the Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; and the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today’s music by a wide range of contemporary and modern composers inaugurated in spring 2014. As New York magazine wrote, “The Philharmonic and its music director Alan Gilbert have turned themselves into a force of permanent revolution.” In the 2014–15 season Alan Gilbert conducts the U.S. Premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Clarinet Concerto, a Philharmonic co-commission, alongside Mahler’s First Symphony; La Dolce Vita: The Music of Italian Cinema; Verdi’s Requiem; a staging of Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake featuring Oscar winner Marion Cotillard; World Premieres; a CONTACT! program; and Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. He concludes 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 EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. Last season’s highlights included the inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL; Mozart’s final three symphonies; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside the film; a staging of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson; and the ASIA / WINTER 2014 tour. 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 (more) Alan Gilbert / Inon Barnatan / 3 Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, he regularly conducts leading orchestras 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.” In 2014 he was elected to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Inon Barnatan, an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, is equally commanding in solo and chamber performances, having performed recitals at venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw; serving as a member of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and performing frequently as a recital partner of cellist Alisa Weilerstein. He has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Berlin’s Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the Atlanta, Dallas, Cincinnati, Houston, and San Francisco symphony orchestras. As New York Philharmonic Artist-in-Association, in the 2014–15 season Mr. Barnatan makes his Philharmonic subscription debut in March 2015 with Music Director Alan Gilbert conducting, after collaborating with Philharmonic musicians in two chamber music performances. Other season highlights include appearances with the Los Angeles and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic orchestras, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Orchestre national de France, and the Milwaukee and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras. In recital, he performs at London’s Wigmore Hall, Chicago’s Harris Theater, the Celebrity Series of Boston, and in New York City with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Jerusalem Quartet, and Howland Chamber Music Circle. Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Inon Barnatan started piano at the age of three and made his orchestral debut at eleven. His studies have connected him to some of the last century’s most distinguished pianists and teachers: he studied with Professor Victor Derevianko (a student of Heinrich Neuhaus), and continued studies with Maria Curcio (a student of Artur Schnabel) and Christopher Elton at London’s Royal Academy of Music. He has since studied with and been mentored by Leon Fleisher. Repertoire Recently announced as the 2015–18 Marie-Josee Kravis Composer-in-Residence, Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958) named his 2010 work Nyx for the Greek goddess of night. In his notes he writes: “Nyx is a shadowy figure in Greek mythology. … we have no sense of her character or personality. ... I’m not trying to describe this mythical goddess in any precise way musically. However, the almost constant flickering and rapid changing of textures and moods as well as a certain elusive character of many musical gestures may well be related to the subject. Nyx … employs a large orchestra, and has exposed concertante parts for solo clarinet and the horn section. ... Its themes and ideas essentially keep their properties throughout the piece while the environment surrounding them keeps changing constantly. Mere whispers grow into roar; an intimate line of the solo clarinet becomes a slowly breathing broad melody of tutti strings.” (more) Alan Gilbert / Inon Barnatan / 4 Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) wrote his Piano Concerto in G major (1929–31) after returning to France from his successful 1928 American concert tour (where he and George Gershwin had visited Harlem jazz clubs together) and began composing this G-minor Piano Concerto. Not surprisingly, it carries the imprint of the jazz craze then sweeping the U.S. and Europe. A bracing whack from the “slap stick” or “whip” in the percussion section sends piano and orchestra off on an effervescent romp.