Alan Gilbert to Lead U.S. Premiere of Peter Eotvo's SENZA SANGUE in May

Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in the U.S. Premiere of Peter Eo?tvo?s's one-act opera Senza sangue - featuring mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and baritone Russell Braun, the two vocalists for whom the work is being composed - and Schubert's Symphony in B minor, Unfinished, Friday, May 8, 2015, at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, May 9, 2015, at 8:00 p.m.

Alan Gilbert will have led the Philharmonic, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Russell Braun in the World Premiere of Peter Eo?tvo?s's Senza sangue in Cologne, Germany, during the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour. The Philharmonic co-commissioned Senza sangue with the Ko?lner Philharmonie as part of The Marie-Jose?e Kravis Prize for New Music, and the work is written in Henri Dutilleux's memory. Mr. Eo?tvo?s is one of three composers (along with Anthony Cheung and Franck Krawczyk) with whom the late Henri Dutilleux shared the inaugural Prize in 2011 and who were each commissioned to write a work for the Orchestra to premiere.

"I highly appreciate the trust shown in me by Maestro Dutilleux by his selection to share the Kravis Prize, and I am most grateful for the commission from the New York Philharmonic and Ko?lner Philharmonie for Senza sangue," Peter Eo?tvo?s said. "I prepared for it like a film director who decides he's going to shoot his next film in black and white. In my previous operas I strove for a colorful palette of sound, but here I aim for sharp contrasts, and shades of black, grey, and white. I have emphasized a mass of sound: many instruments play the same line, creating a weighty sound, like a stroke in Japanese calligraphy, where a single black line is drawn with a thick brush."

Senza sangue (Without Blood) is based on the concluding passages of Alessandro Baricco's novella of the same name about a child whose family is murdered in the midst of a civil war, but is saved when one of the marauders discovers her hiding but lets her live, and what happens once she grows up, having plotted her revenge, and meets him. The work will use the same orchestration, roles, and relationships between characters as Barto?k's Bluebeard's Castle, for which Senza sangue is eventually intended as a companion piece. Anne Sofie von Otter's previous Philharmonic appearances include a performance of Bluebeard's Castle, alongside baritone Matthias Goerne and led by Christoph von Dohnanyi, in March 2006.

This will be Mr. Eo?tvo?s's second work to be performed by the Philharmonic; in June 2014 as part of the inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL, the Orchestra performed the New York Premiere of his second violin concerto, DoReMi, with Midori as soloist (for whom it was written) and conducted by Alan Gilbert.

This program follows the concert Wednesday, May 6, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. in which Alan Gilbert will lead the Orchestra in Stravinsky's Petrushka, Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, and R. Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier Suite, a program they will have performed on the EUROPE / SPRING 2015 tour, April-May 2015.