23 Season 2019-2020 Thursday, February 27, at 7:30 The Philadelphia Orchestra Friday, February 28, at 2:00 Saturday, February 29, at 8:00 Edward Gardner Conductor Paul Jacobs Organ Britten Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20 I. Lacrymosa— II. Dies irae— III. Requiem aeternam Daugherty Once Upon a Castle, symphonie concertante for organ and orchestra I. The Winding Road to San Simeon II. Neptune Pool III. Rosebud IV. Xanadu First Philadelphia Orchestra performances Intermission 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. 24 Elgar Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 (“Enigma”) Enigma (Theme): Andante I. C.A.E. II. H.D.S.-P. III. R.B.T. IV. W.M.B. V. R.P.A. VI. Ysobel VII. Troyte VIII. W.N. IX. Nimrod X. Dorabella: Intermezzo XI. G.R.S. XII. B.G.N. XIII. ***: Romanza XIV. E.D.U.: Finale This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. These concerts are part of the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ Experience, supported through a generous grant from the Wyncote Foundation. Please join us following the February 27 and 29 concerts for a free Organ Postlude featuring Peter Richard Conte. Elgar from Organ Sonata in G major, Op. 28: I. Allegro maestoso Britten Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria Elgar/arr. Conte Sospiri, Op. 70 Elgar/arr. Conte Empire March 25 The Philadelphia Orchestra Jessica Griffin The Philadelphia Orchestra community centers, the Mann Through concerts, tours, is one of the world’s Center to Penn’s Landing, residencies, and recordings, preeminent orchestras. classrooms to hospitals, and the Orchestra is a global It strives to share the over the airwaves and online. ambassador. It performs transformative power of The Orchestra continues annually at Carnegie Hall, music with the widest to discover new and the Saratoga Performing possible audience, and to inventive ways to nurture its Arts Center, and the Bravo! create joy, connection, and relationship with loyal patrons. Vail Music Festival. The excitement through music The Philadelphia Orchestra Orchestra also has a rich in the Philadelphia region, continues the tradition of history of touring, having across the country, and educational and community first performed outside around the world. Through engagement for listeners Philadelphia in the earliest innovative programming, of all ages. It launched its days of its founding. It was robust educational initiatives, HEAR initiative in 2016 to the first American orchestra and an ongoing commitment become a major force for to perform in the People’s to the communities that it good in every community that Republic of China in 1973, serves, the ensemble is on a it serves. HEAR is a portfolio launching a now-five-decade path to create an expansive of integrated initiatives commitment of people-to- future for classical music, that promotes Health, people exchange. and to further the place champions music Education, The Orchestra also makes of the arts in an open and enables broad Access to live recordings available on democratic society. Orchestra performances, and popular digital music services Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now maximizes impact through and as part of the Orchestra in his eighth season as the Research. The Orchestra’s on Demand section of its eighth music director of The award-winning education and website. Under Yannick’s Philadelphia Orchestra. His community initiatives engage leadership, the Orchestra connection to the ensemble’s over 50,000 students, returned to recording, with musicians has been praised families, and community seven celebrated CDs on by both concertgoers and members through programs the prestigious Deutsche critics, and he is embraced such as PlayINs, side-by- Grammophon label. The by the musicians of the sides, PopUP concerts, Free Orchestra also reaches Orchestra, audiences, and Neighborhood Concerts, thousands of radio listeners the community. School Concerts, sensory- with weekly broadcasts on Your Philadelphia Orchestra friendly concerts, the School WRTI-FM and SiriusXM. For takes great pride in its Partnership Program and more information, please visit hometown, performing for the School Ensemble Program, www.philorch.org. people of Philadelphia year- and All City Orchestra round, from Verizon Hall to Fellowships. 26 Conductor Benjamin Ealovega Edward Gardner makes his Philadelphia Orchestra debut with these performances. Chief conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic since October 2015, he has led that orchestra on multiple international tours, including performances in Berlin, Munich, and Amsterdam, and at the BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival. He was recently appointed principal conductor designate of the London Philharmonic, with his tenure commencing in September 2021. In demand as a guest conductor, he has made debuts over the past two seasons with the New York Philharmonic; the Chicago, Vienna, and Berlin Radio symphonies; and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in a new production of Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová. Return engagements included the Gewandhaus, Philharmonia, and Teatro alla Scala orchestras. In April 2019 he conducted the London Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in New York. In addition to these current performances, highlights of Mr. Gardner’s 2019–20 season include appearances at the Royal Opera House for a revival of Benoît Jacquot’s production of Massenet’s Werther and the Metropolitan Opera for Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. In London he conducts the London Philharmonic in four concerts across the season and brings the Bergen Philharmonic to the Royal Festival Hall with their acclaimed production of Britten’s Peter Grimes. He finishes the season by taking the Bergen Philharmonic on its first-ever tour to China. Guest conducting highlights include performances with the San Francisco, Finnish Radio, and Montreal symphonies, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. He also continues his longstanding collaborations with the City of Birmingham Symphony, where he was principal guest conductor from 2010 to 2016, and the BBC Symphony. An exclusive Chandos recording artist, Mr. Gardner’s projects with the Bergen Philharmonic have included music by Sibelius, Grieg, Janáček, Bartók, and Schoenberg. With the BBC Symphony he has focused on Elgar and Walton and released acclaimed discs of music by Lutosławski and Szymanowski. He recently released the complete set of Mendelssohn symphonies and overtures with the City of Birmingham Symphony. 27 Soloist Ficarri Zelek Organist Paul Jacobs combines a probing intellect and extraordinary technical mastery with an unusually large repertoire, both old and new. He has performed to great critical acclaim on five continents and in each of the 50 United States. The only organist ever to have won a Grammy Award—in 2011 for Messiaen’s towering Livre du Saint-Sacrement—he is an eloquent champion of his instrument both in the U.S. and abroad. He has transfixed audiences, colleagues, and critics alike with landmark performances of the complete works for solo organ by J.S. Bach and Messiaen. He made musical history at age 23 when he gave an 18-hour marathon performance of Bach’s complete organ works on the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. A fierce advocate of new music, Mr. Jacobs has premiered works by Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, Bernd Richard Deutsch, John Harbison, Wayne Oquin, Stephen Paulus, Christopher Theofanidis, and Christopher Rouse, among others. As a teacher he has also been a vocal proponent of the redeeming nature of traditional and contemporary classical music. He is repeatedly invited as soloist to perform with prestigious orchestras, thus making him a pioneer in the movement for the revival of symphonic music featuring the organ. He regularly appears with the Chicago, Cincinnati, Edmonton, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Lucerne, Montreal, Nashville, National, Pacific, Phoenix, San Francisco, Toledo, and Utah symphonies; the Cleveland and Minnesota orchestras; and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2008. In addition to these current concerts, highlights of Mr. Jacobs’s 2019–20 season include performances of Mr. Daugherty’s Once Upon a Castle with the Kansas City Symphony; three orchestral engagements with Giancarlo Guerrero, including programs with the Nashville and Bamberg symphonies; a recital for the inauguration of the newly restored Hazel Wright organ at the Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California; and a Paris recital at the Maison de la Radio, presented by Radio France and the Orchestre National de France, featuring the world premiere of a new work written for Mr. Jacobs by French composer Jean-Baptiste Robin. 28 Framing the Program The great English composer Benjamin Britten was a Parallel Events committed pacifist who spent the first years of the Second 1899 Music World War in America but decided to return home in 1942. Elgar Sibelius Among the works he wrote in this country was the Sinfonia “Enigma” Symphony No. 1 da Requiem, and despite the potential unpopularity of his Variations Literature position he told the New York Sun “I’m making it just as Wilde anti-war as possible.” Unlike a more conventional four- The Importance movement Classical symphony, its three movements allude of Being Earnest to the Catholic Mass for the Dead: Lacrymosa, Dies irae, Art and Requiem aeternam. Cézanne Man with The contemporary American composer Michael Daugherty Crossed Arms was inspired to write his lush Once Upon a Castle by History visits to Big Sur on the Pacific coast. He was particularly Boer War begins impressed by the theater organ in William Randolph Hearst’s spectacular San Simeon mansion. The Hearst Castle was 1940 Music later fictionalized as Xanadu in Orson Welles’sCitizen Kane, Britten Stravinsky Sinfonia da Symphony in C and in Once Upon a Castle Daugherty brings out what he Requiem Literature calls the “Technicolor” nature of the instrument there.