Alan Gilbert Leads NY Philharmonic In ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, With YoYo Ma As Soloist, 3/15-18

Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in the New York Premiere of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Esa-Pekka Salonen's Cello Concerto - a New York Philharmonic co-commission with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Barbican Centre, and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg - with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist. The program will also include John Adams's The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra), celebrating John Adams's 70th birthday year, and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, and takes place Wednesday, March 15, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, March 17 at 8:00 p.m.; and Saturday, March 18 at 8:00 p.m.

The Orchestra and Yo-Yo Ma will again perform Esa-Pekka Salonen's Cello Concerto on the EUROPE / SPRING 2017 tour, March 23-April 7, 2017, marking its European Premiere during the Philharmonic's third residency at London's Barbican Centre under the auspices of its International Associates initiative, and its German Premiere at the new Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

"Of course, it's fun to work with friends," Esa-Pekka Salonen said. "It gives me a lot of pleasure to develop the partnership and friendship that's been there for decades. When I'm writing for [Yo-Yo Ma] I have his sound in mind. I know that [he has] no limits, which for a composer is very inspiring."

"Esa-Pekka Salonen is a truly compelling composer," Alan Gilbert said. "Yo-Yo Ma is a close musical colleague, and it's always a privilege to be onstage with this giant."

In his second season as The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, Esa-Pekka Salonen led Circle Map, a program celebrating the music of spectral-music composer Kaija Saariaho presented by Park Avenue Armory in October 2016; the Orchestra will give the New York Premiere of his Wing on Wing, with sopranos Anu and Piia Komsi, in May 2017; he will conduct the U.S. Premiere of Tansy Davies's new work for four horns with Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra in April 2017; and he will continue his advisory role on CONTACT!, the Philharmonic's new-music series.

Since his May 1978 Philharmonic debut, Yo-Yo Ma has appeared 55 times with the Philharmonic. Highlights include the World Premieres of Richard Danielpour's Cello Concerto No. 2, Through the Ancient Valley (March 2001, led by Kurt Masur) and Bright Sheng's The Song and Dance of Tears (March 2003, led by David Zinman), and a concert celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Silk Road Ensemble, led by Alan Gilbert.

The performances of John Adams's The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) are part of Alan Gilbert and the Philharmonic's celebrations of the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer's 70th birthday year. The previous week, March 9-11, 2017, Alan Gilbert will lead the Orchestra in an all-John Adams program featuring his Harmonielehre and Absolute Jest, with the New York Philharmonic String Quartet as solo ensemble in its debut. They will perform The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra), Absolute Jest, and Harmonielehre on the Young People's Concert on March 11, 2017, and on the EUROPE / SPRING 2017 tour.

Related Events

Philharmonic Free Fridays

The New York Philharmonic is offering 100 free tickets to young people ages 13-26 for the concert Friday, March 17 as part of Philharmonic Free Fridays. Information is available at nyphil.org/freefridays. Philharmonic Free Fridays offers 100 free tickets to 13-26-year-olds to each of the 2016-17 season's 16 Friday evening subscription concerts.

Artists
As Music Director of the New York Philharmonic since 2009, Alan Gilbert has introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, and Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today's music; and the New York Philharmonic Global Academy, partnerships with cultural institutions to offer training of pre-professional musicians, often alongside performance residencies. The Financial Times called him "the imaginative maestro-impresario in residence."

Alan Gilbert concludes his final season as Music Director with four programs that reflect themes, works, and musicians that hold particular meaning for him, including Beethoven's Ninth Symphony alongside Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, Wagner's complete Das Rheingold in concert, and an exploration of how music can effect positive change in the world. Other highlights include three World Premieres, Mahler's Fourth Symphony, Ligeti's Mysteries of the Macabre, and Manhattan, performed live to film. He also leads the Orchestra on the EUROPE / SPRING 2017 tour and in performance residencies in Shanghai and Santa Barbara. Past highlights include acclaimed stagings of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, Janá?ek's The Cunning Little Vixen, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson (2015 Emmy nomination), and Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake starring Marion Cotillard; 28 World Premieres; a tribute to Boulez and Stucky during the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL; The Nielsen Project; the Verdi Requiem and Bach's B-minor Mass; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey, performed live to film; Mahler's Resurrection Symphony on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; performing violin in Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time; and ten tours around the world.

Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and former principal guest conductor of Hamburg's NDR Symphony Orchestra, Alan Gilbert regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. This season he returns to the foremost European orchestras, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw, and Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He will record Beethoven's complete piano concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Inon Barnatan, and conduct Gershwin's Porgy and Bess at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, his first time leading a staged opera there. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams's Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award, and he conducted Messiaen's Des Canyons aux étoiles on a recent album recorded live at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard School, where he holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. His honors include Honorary Doctor of Music degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music (2010) and Westminster Choir College (2016), Columbia University's Ditson Conductor's Award (2011), election to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2014), a Foreign Policy Association Medal for his commitment to cultural diplomacy (2015), Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2015), and New York University's Lewis Rudin Award for Exemplary Service to New York City (2016).

The many-faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is testament to his continual search for new ways to communicate with audiences and to his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal. Mr. Ma maintains a balance between his engagements as soloist with orchestras worldwide and his recital and chamber music activities. His discography includes more than 100 albums, including 18 Grammy award winners. Mr. Ma serves as the artistic director of Silkroad, an organization he founded to promote cross-cultural performance and collaborations at the edge where education, business, and the arts come together to transform the world. More than 80 works have been commissioned specifically for the Silk Road Ensemble, which tours annually. Mr. Ma also serves as the Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Negaunee Music Institute. His work focuses on the transformative power music can have in individuals' lives, and on increasing the number and variety of opportunities audiences have to experience music in their communities. Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris to Chinese parents who later moved the family to New York. He began to study cello at the age of four, attended The Juilliard School, and in 1976 graduated from Harvard University. He recently joined the Aspen Institute Board of Trustees. Mr. Ma has received numerous awards, among them the Avery Fisher Prize (1978), the National Medal of Arts (2001), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010), and in 2011 was recognized as a Kennedy Center Honoree. He has performed for eight American presidents, most recently at the invitation of President Obama on the occasion of the 56th Inaugural Ceremony. Yo-Yo Ma made his New York Philharmonic debut in May 1978 performing Beethoven's Triple Concerto alongside Yefim Bronfman and Shlomo Mintz, conducted by Alexander Schneider. He most recently appeared as part of the Chinese New Year Concert and Gala in February 2015, conducted by Long Yu.

Repertoire
John Adams (b. 1947) composed The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) (1985) in the midst of creating his opera Nixon in China. When he saw the scenario for Act III of the opera, he was so excited to begin work on the opera that, despite his pressing deadline for a commission for the Milwaukee Symphony, he wrote The Chairman Dances out of ideas he had for the opera. He writes that "it was in fact a kind of warmup for embarking on the creation of the full opera.... So The Chairman Dances began as a 'foxtrot' for Chairman Mao and his bride, Chiang Ch'ing, the fabled 'Madame Mao,' firebrand, revolutionary executioner, architect of China's calamitous Cultural Revolution, and (a fact not universally realized) a former Shanghai movie actress. In the surreal final scene of the opera, she interrupts the tired formalities of a state banquet, disrupts the slow-moving protocol and invites the Chairman, who is present only as a gigantic forty-foot portrait on the wall, to 'come down, old man, and dance.'" The Orchestra first performed The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) in July 2006 at the New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks and during its Bravo! Vail summer residency, led by Marin Alsop.

The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958) wrote his new Cello Concerto (2016) for longtime friend Yo-Yo Ma. The Finnish-born composer's works have become known for their stylistic flexibility, freely moving between contemporary idioms, and blending intricate, virtuosic elements with innovative rhythms and melodies. Having collaborated on commissions with numerous soloists, he agrees with his teacher Einojuhani Rautavaara, who, Salonen said, "always felt that when he writes for someone specific, there's something about the aura of that person that becomes part of the energy of that piece."

Disappointed in his infatuation with an actress he had admired from afar (and whom he would, in fact, eventually marry), Hector Berlioz (1803-69) poured a Faustian tale into his Symphonie fantastique. The piece was composed in 1830, only three years after the death of Beethoven, but it was decades ahead of its time in terms of harmonic language, orchestration, descriptive ideas, and melodic treatment. Its five programmatic movements trace the story of the ruinous decline of a gifted young artist brought about by his desperate, unrequited love. In Reveries, Passions, boy meets girl; he obsesses over her in A Ball; he realizes his love is unrequited during A Scene in the Fields; March to the Scaffold is the beginning of his opium-induced fever-dream, which is continued in the final movement, Dream of a Witches' Sabbath. The New York Philharmonic's January 1866 performance of the work, led by Carl Bergmann, was the first of seven U.S. Premieres of Berlioz works that the Orchestra would ultimately present. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos led the Orchestra's most recent performances of the piece, in October 2012 and during its July 2013 Bravo! Vail residency.