New York Philharmonic To Feature Gilbert and Hardenberger in Concerts, 6/17-6/19

In the second of the final three weeks of his inaugural season, Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in Wagner's Siegfried Idyll; HK Gruber's trumpet concerto Aerial; Mozart's Symphony No. 25; and Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, Thursday, June 17, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., Friday, June 18, at 11:00 a.m., and Saturday, June 19, at 8:00 p.m. Joining the Orchestra to perform Aerial will be the Swedish trumpet virtuoso, Håkan Hardenberger, for whom it
was written, and who is making his New York Philharmonic debut.

Mr. Gilbert, in referring to the Gruber and Mozart works, describes the heart of the program as "fundamentally Viennese. Aerial by HK Gruber," he explains, "is a piece that is phenomenally difficult for the trumpet and incredibly fun to listen to. Håkan plays it with amazing technical command and also captures Gruber's uniquely Viennese take on jazz." Mr. Gilbert calls Mozart's G minor-Symphony No. 25 one of his "most succinct Sturm und Drang symphonies."

"We decided to open and close the program with two very contrasting works by Wagner," he continues. "Siegfried Idyll is based on the music from his Ring cycle, but he wrote it as a love offering to his wife. It's quite different from the emotionally charged Prelude and Liebstod from Tristan and Isolde, which, in a very different way, is also about love."

The New York Philharmonic will also hold several related events.

New York Philharmonic Program Annotator James M. Keller will introduce the program in a pre-concert talk one hour before each performance. Tickets are $5 in addition to the concert ticket. Attendance is limited to 90 people. For more information, visit nyphil.org or call (212) 875-5656.

Elliott Forrest, Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, producer, and weekend host on
Classical 105.9 FM WQXR, will produce a podcast for the concert. This podcast will be part of an award-winning series of previews of upcoming programs - through musical selections as well as interviews with guest artists, conductors, and Orchestra musicians - which are available at
nyphil.org/podcast or from iTunes.

This concert will be broadcast during the 2010-11 season (date to be announced) on The New York Philharmonic This Week, a radio concert series syndicated nationally to more than 300 stations by the WFMT Radio Network. The 52-week series, hosted by the Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin, is generously underwritten by The Kaplen Foundation, the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Philharmonic's corporate partner, MetLife
Foundation. The broadcast will be available on the Philharmonic's Website, nyphil.org. The program is broadcast locally in the New York metropolitan area on 105.9 FM WQXR on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m.  Check local listings for broadcast and program information.

Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2009, the first native New Yorker to hold the post. For his inaugural season he has introduced a number of new initiatives: the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, held by Magnus Lindberg, and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, held by Thomas Hampson; an annual three-week festival; and CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic's new-music series. This season he led the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi; took the musicians on a European tour in January-February 2010; and conducted world, U.S., and New York premieres. Also in the 2009-10 season, Mr. Gilbert became the first person to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, a position that includes coaching, conducting, and hosting performance master classes.
Highlights of Mr. Gilbert's 2008-09 season with the New York Philharmonic included the Bernstein anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall and a performance with the Juilliard Orchestra, presented by the Philharmonic. In May 2009 he conducted the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson's The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic Commission, and in July 2009 he led the Philharmonic's Concerts in the Parks and Free Indoor Concerts, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, and performances at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado. In June 2008 Mr. Gilbert was named conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, following his final concert as its chief conductor and artistic advisor. He has been principal guest conductor of Hamburg's NDR Symphony Orchestra since 2004, and he has conducted other leading orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, including the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2003 he was named the first music director of the Santa Fe Opera.
Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School. From 1995 to 1997 he was the assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. In November 2008 he made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams's Doctor Atomic. His recording of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award, and his recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 9 received top honors from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone magazine. On May 15, 2010, The Curtis Institute of Music awarded Mr. Gilbert an Honorary Doctor of Music degree.

Trumpet player Håkan Hardenberger performs with the world's leading orchestras, including the Los Angeles, Vienna, and Royal Stockholm philharmonic orchestras; and the Chicago, London, Bavarian, and NHK symphony orchestras. He regularly collaborates with conductors Pierre Boulez, Mikko Franck, Alan Gilbert, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Ingo Metzmacher, Andris Nelsons, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Storgårds, Thomas Dausgaard, and David Zinman.

Mr. Hardenberger has had numerous works written for him, including those by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Hans Werner Henze, Rolf Martinsson, Olga Neuwirth, Arvo Pärt, and Mark Anthony Turnage, as well as by HK Gruber, including his concerto, Aerial (which Mr. Hardenberger has performed more than 50 times) and Busking (which the trumpeter performed with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in the work's U.S. premiere). His extensive discography on the Philips, EMI, and BIS Records labels includes his most recent solo CD (BIS) and a disc of Turnage, Gruber, and Eotvös works with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Peter Eötvös (Deutsche Grammophon). He recently recorded Olga Neuwirth's ...miramondo multiplo... with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and Ingo Metzmacher (Kairos), and Gruber's Busking with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra (BIS).

Highlights of Mr. Hardenberger's 2009-10 season include a Spanish tour with the London Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Harding; concerts with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons in Birmingham and Germany; and performances with the Dresdner Philharmonie, Helsinki Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, and Seoul Philharmonic. Mr. Hardenberger will also conduct Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex at Malmö Opera.

Håkan Hardenberger was born in Malmö, Sweden. He began studying the trumpet at the age of eight with Bo Nilsson in Malmö and continued his studies both at the Paris Conservatoire, with Pierre Thibaud, and in Los Angeles with Thomas Stevens. He is a professor at the Malmö Conservatoire and the Royal Northern College of Music Manchester. These concerts represent his New York Philharmonic debut.

For all the Sturm und Drang ("storm and stress") involving his artistic innovations, political activities, and romantic life, Richard Wagner did enjoy a brief period of domestic tranquility. In November 1870, in gratitude for newfound happiness, he composed the chamber-scale Siegfried Idyll as a surprise birthday tribute to his wife, Cosima, whose birthday fell on December 25. The work is named not for the troubled operatic hero of Wagner's opera, but for their baby son, and was intended to evoke the sounds of a peaceful new life. The more uplifting musical themes from Wagner's opera Siegfried weave through the work, along with a German lullaby - giving the whole a
gently bucolic tone. The Philharmonic first performed Siegfried Idyll in March 1885, led by Theodore Thomas, and most recently, in June 2005, led by Lorin Maazel.

Austrian composer HK Gruber wrote Aerial (1998-99) for Swedish virtuoso trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger. The two collaborated closely on the flamboyantly difficult solo part, which calls on the performer to play three separate instruments (a trumpet, a piccolo trumpet, and a cow horn) and with many exotic techniques, including, among other things, singing while playing. The work consists of two "aerial views" of imagined landscapes: the first a magical vista bearing a title from Emily Dickinson, "Done with the Compass - Done with the Chart"; the second, featuring allusions to the sounds of dance music, of an empty planet where a sign hangs with the words, "Gone Dancing." These will be the New York Philharmonic's first performances of Aerial.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart chose to place only two of his 41 symphonies in a minor key. In both cases the key is G minor, and both works are shaded with the colors of despair. The first of these, Symphony No. 25, the "Little G minor," emerged early in the composer's career, and is a four-movement tumult of emotion that he wrote at home in the Salzburg of 1773. The three years that led up to the symphony's creation had seen Mozart travel to Italy three times, trips that resulted in the operas Mitridate (1770) and Lucio Silla (1772). The New York Philharmonic gave its first performance of the stormy Symphony No. 25 in October 1941, under the baton of John Barbirolli. Sir Colin Davis led the Orchestra's most recent complete performances of the work in March 2001.

Richard Wagner wrote both the libretto and music for Tristan und Isolde, to a scenario he derived from an early 13th-century poem by Gottfried von Strassburg. In the story, King Mark sends his nephew Tristan from Cornwall to Ireland to fetch Isolde, who is to be the king's bride in an arranged marriage. Isolde is an unwilling participant, and is determined to kill Tristan, who had previously slain
her fiancé. But when fatal poisons are replaced with love potions, Tristan and Isolde suddenly become lovers - a situation that brings accusations of betrayal and, ultimately, bloodshed. The opening and close of the opera, known respectively as the Prelude and Liebestod, were joined together in a concert version by Wagner himself. According to the composer's own program note, the Prelude traces the burgeoning of desire from "the tenderest shudder" to the "avowal of hopeless love." In the Liebestod, Isolde sings - over the dead body of Tristan - that "what Fate divided in life" is now united in death. The New York Symphony (which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today's New York Philharmonic) first performed the Prelude and Liebestod on January 17, 1880, led by Leopold Damrosch. The Orchestra's last performance was in December 2005 with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.

Credit Suisse is the Global Sponsor of the New York Philharmonic, and major support is provided by the Francis Goelet Fund. Programs of the New York Philharmonic are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the
Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Single tickets for these performances are $29 to $112. Tickets for Pre-Concert Talks are $5. Tickets for Open Rehearsals are $16. All tickets may be purchased online at nyphil.org or by calling (212) 875-5656, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets may also be purchased at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office or the Alice Tully Hall Box Office at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 65th Street. The Box Office opens at 10:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and at noon on Sunday. On performance evenings, the Box Office closes one-half hour after performance time; other evenings it closes at 6:00 p.m. A limited number of $12
tickets for select concerts may be available through the Internet for students within 10 days of the performance, or in person the day of. Valid identification is required. To determine ticket availability, call the Philharmonic's Customer Relations Department at (212) 875-5656. [Ticket prices subject to change.]

Photo: Alan Gilbert

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