Lincoln Center's MOSTLY MOZART FESTIVAL 2014 Opening Week Highlights

The 2014 Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, New York's acclaimed annual summer celebration of classical music, gets underway with an opening week of performances featuring the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, late night recitals and contemporary music, including two free events.

The Festival kicks off with the world premiere of a new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams, commissioned by Lincoln Center and co-presented by the Mostly Mozart Festival and Lincoln Center Out of Doors, to be performed July 25 and 26, at 6:00 p.m. Titled Sila: The Breath of the World, this 70-minute site-determined work is specifically composed for the spatial characteristics of Lincoln Center's outdoor Hearst Plaza space. Approximately 80 musicians will be stationed around the plaza, creating a sonically immersive experience for audience members to move through. In the Inuit tradition, sila is the spirit that animates all things-the wind, the weather and all forces of nature. The collective ensemble performing the work comprises members of acclaimed contemporary music groups, including: Contemporaneous, The Crossing, eighth blackbird, Face The Music, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, Hotel Elefant, JACK Quartet, Meehan/Perkins Duo, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, TIGUE, and TILT Brass. Choreography around the plaza will be by Mark DeChiazza, and music direction by Doug Perkins, who produced the acclaimed recording of Adams' Inuksuit. All of these artists will be making their Festival debut. An artist talk with John Luther Adams in conversation with WNYC radio's John Schaefer will take place at 4 pm, prior to the second performance of Sila on July 26.

On Saturday, July 26, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra gives its own free performance, a preview concert ahead of the official opening of the Festival, that continues an annual tradition. This free preview of later Festival Orchestra offerings, led byRenée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée at Avery Fisher Hall, will feature music from the final scene of Gluck'sDon Juan, ou Le Festin de Pierre, Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni, along with Berlioz's masterwork Symphonie fantastique.

*Tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis on Saturday, July 26 at 10:00 a.m. from the Avery Fisher Hall box office. Limit two per person.

The Festival officially begins with an all-Mozart concert series by the Festival Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Louis Langrée, July 29 and 30 at 8:00 p.m. in Avery Fisher Hall. Maestro Langrée will lead the Festival Orchestra in Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni, Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K.488 with soloist Richard Goode, and the composer's joyous final symphony, No. 41, "Jupiter." Richard Goode, who made his Mostly Mozart Festival debut in 1971, returns for his first performance at the Festival in 23 years.

Conductor Andrew Manze returns to the Festival for a third consecutive summer, leading the Festival Orchestra in two popular symphonic works: Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, "Emperor" featuring soloist Steven Osborne, and Haydn's Symphony No. 104, "London." These concerts take place at Avery Fisher Hall, August 1 and 2 at 8:00 p.m. A pre-concert recital by members of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, program to be announced, will take place prior to each performance at 7:00 p.m.

The popular series A Little Night Music, featuring candles, complimentary wine and other refreshments in the intimate setting of the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, starts off with late-night recitals on three consecutive nights. Richard Goode gives the first recital of the series on July 31, performing two preludes and fugues from Bach's Well-tempered Clavier, Book II along with Schubert's Sonata in B-flat major, D.960. Steven Osborne performs the following evening, August 1, with an all-Schubert program, including his 13 Variations on a Theme by Anselm Hüttenbrenner, D.576, and Impromptu Nos. 1-4. Violist Antoine Tamestit performs Hindemith's Sonata for solo viola, Op. 25, No. 1, along with two of Bach's legendary cello suites on the viola. All performances in this series take place at 10:00 p.m.

All programs and artists are subject to change.

Tickets for Mostly Mozart Festival 2014 can be purchased online at MostlyMozart.org, by phone via CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, or by visiting the Avery Fisher Hall or Alice Tully Hall box offices at Broadway and 65th St.

LOUIS LANGRÉE

Since Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée was appointed to the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2002, his tenure has been marked by wide critical acclaim. In addition to his work with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Mr. Langrée is also Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a role he began in 2013, and Chief Conductor of the Camerata Salzburg. Highlights of Maestro Langrée's 2013-14 season included his debut with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich (Don Giovanni) and the Wiener Symphoniker at the Konzerthaus in Vienna. He will also continue his regular appearances with the Wiener Staatsoper (La Traviata), and Opéra Comique in Paris (Pelléas et Mélisande). During the 2012-13 season, he made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and NHK Symphony in Tokyo, in addition to return engagements with the Orchestre de Paris, Budapest Festival and Netherlands Philharmonic orchestras. He also returned to the Metropolitan Opera in New York (Dialogues des Carmélites), with which he has a long-term relationship. Recent conducting engagements include the Wiener Philharmoniker in concert in both Vienna and Salzburg. He has worked with many other orchestras in North America, Europe and further afield, including the London Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Santa Cecilia in Rome, La Scala, the Detroit, St. Louis and Baltimore symphony orchestras in the United States, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic. He also regularly conducts chamber orchestras including the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Academy of St Martin in the Fields and period instrument ensembles: the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enligtenment and Le Concert d'Astrée. Festival appearances have included Wiener Festwochen, Salzburg Mozartwoche, BBC Proms, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. He has held positions as Music Director of the Orchestre de Picardie (1993-98) and Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège (2001-06).

Louis Langrée was Music Director of Opéra National de Lyon (1998-2000) and Glyndebourne Touring Opera (1998-2003). He has also conducted at La Scala, the Royal Opera House-Covent Garden, Opéra-Bastille and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Dresden Staatsoper, Grand Théâtre in Geneva and the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. Louis Langrée's discography includes recordings for Virgin Classics, Universal and Naïve. Many of these have won awards including Diapason d'Or, Gramophone and Midem Classical. His most recent release is a DVD of La Traviata recorded at the Aix-en-Provence Festival with the London Symphony Orchestra for Virgin Classics, which has been awarded a Diapason D'Or. In 2006 he was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

About the Mostly Mozart Festival

Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival-America's first indoor summer music festival-was launched as an experiment in 1966. Called Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival, its first two seasons were devoted exclusively to the music of Mozart. Renamed the Mostly Mozart Festival in 1970, it has become a New York institution and, now in its 48th year, continues to broaden its focus to include works by Mozart's predecessors, contemporaries, and related successors. It is currently the only group in the United States dedicated to the classical period. In addition to concerts by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Mostly Mozart now includes concerts by visiting period-instrument ensembles, chamber orchestras and ensembles, and acclaimed soloists, as well as staged music presentations, opera productions, dance, film, and visual art.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Mostly Mozart Festival. Over the years, the Orchestra has toured to such notable festivals and venues as Ravinia, Great Woods, Tanglewood, Bunkamura in Tokyo, and the Kennedy Center. Conductors who made their New York debuts leading the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra include Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, and Edo de Waart. Soloists including Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Alicia de Larrocha, Richard Stoltzman, Emanuel Ax, and Garrick Ohlsson have had long associations with the Festival. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, flutist James Galway, soprano Elly Ameling, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida all made their U.S. debuts at the Mostly Mozart Festival.

ABOUT LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educational activities annually, LCPA offers 15 series, festivals, and programs including American Songbook, Avery Fisher Artist Program, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, Martin E. Segal Awards, Meet the Artist, Mostly Mozart Festival, Target Free Thursdays, and the White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center, which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and its 11 resident organizations, which include the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the School of American Ballet and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billion campus renovation, completed in October 2012.

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INFORMATION AND UPDATES

Visit MostlyMozart.org for information about the Festival and other updates.