Jaap van Zweden to Lead NY Philharmonic with Yuja Wang as Soloist

Music Director Designate Jaap van Zweden will return to conduct the New York Philharmonic in Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Yuja Wang as soloist, and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5. The performances take place Wednesday, February 28, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, March 2 at 8:00 p.m.; and Saturday, March 3 at 8:00 p.m.

Musical America's 2017 Artist of the Year, Yuja Wang performed Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in Jaap van Zweden's acclaimed New York Philharmonic debut in April 2012. Jaap van Zweden led Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during its 2014 Truth to Power festival. The Chicago Tribune wrote that Mr. van Zweden elicited "a tense grandeur at the end of the first movement, a manic, mechanized playfulness throughout the second and fourth. But there were singing and dancing qualities, too, and those in addition to raw power got the audience cheering."

Yuja Wang, Jaap van Zweden, and the Orchestra will reprise their performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1 on the ASIA 2018 tour, in Beijing, Tokyo, and Taipei.

Related Event

Philharmonic Free Fridays

The New York Philharmonic is offering an allotment of free tickets to young people ages 13-26 for the concert Friday, March 2 as part of Philharmonic Free Fridays. Philharmonic Free Fridays offers a limited number of free tickets to 13-26-year-olds to many of the 2017-18 season's Friday subscription concerts. Information on the 2017-18 season of Free Fridays is available at nyphil.org/freefridays.

Artists
Jaap van Zweden has become an international presence on three continents over the last decade. The 2017-18 season marks a major milestone as he completes his ten-year tenure as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and becomes Music Director Designate of the New York Philharmonic, anticipating his inaugural season, in 2018-19, when he becomes Music Director. He continues as music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, a post he has held since 2012. In addition to performances with the New York Philharmonic in New York and on tour, his 2017-18 season highlights include returns to the Chicago Symphony, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic orchestras.

Maestro van Zweden has also guest conducted The Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras; Boston, London, and Shanghai symphony orchestras; Los Angeles, Vienna, Berlin, and Munich philharmonic orchestras; Orchestre national de France; and Orchestre de Paris. In 2015 he launched the annual SOLUNA International Music & Arts Festival with the Dallas Symphony, and embarked on a four-year project with the Hong Kong Philharmonic to conduct the first-ever Hong Kong performances of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, to be released on Naxos Records. In the summers of 2017-19 he serves as principal conductor of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra and Gstaad Conducting Academy.

Jaap van Zweden's acclaimed recordings include Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Petrushka, Britten's War Requiem, and complete cycles of the Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner symphonies. He recorded Mahler's Symphony No. 5 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Mozart piano concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra and David Fray. His celebrated performances of Wagner's Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal (the last of which earned him the prestigious Edison award for Best Opera Recording in 2012) are available on CD and DVD. On the Dallas Symphony's record label, he has conducted symphonies by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mahler, and Dvo?ák, as well as the World Premiere recording of Stucky's August 4, 1964. A new recording agreement with Universal Music Group's U.S. Classical Division and the New York Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden is being launched in the 2017-18 season.

Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden was appointed the youngest-ever concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at 19. He began his conducting career 20 years later, in 1995. He is honorary chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, where he served as chief conductor, 2005-13, and conductor emeritus of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra. He also held the post of chief conductor of the Royal Flanders Orchestra, 2008-11. Maestro van Zweden was named Musical America's 2012 Conductor of the Year.

In 1997 Jaap van Zweden and his wife, Aaltje, established the Papageno Foundation to support families of children with autism, including by training music therapists and musicians. In August 2015 the opening of Papageno House, a home for autistic young adults and children, in Laren, the Netherlands, was attended by Her Majesty Queen Maxima.

Pianist Yuja Wang's 2017-18 season features recitals, concert series, and tours with some of the world's most venerated ensembles and conductors. She began the summer of 2017 on tour with the London Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas and a program featuring Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2, followed by a performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lionel Bringuier. Later engagements include concerts with the Munich Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev, a series of performances at the Verbier Festival, and a three-city German tour with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. She also embarks on play-conduct tours with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and joins Jaap van Zweden's inaugural tour with the New York Philharmonic and the final tour of Yannick Nézet-Séguin's directorship with the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Other notable appearances include concerts in Hong Kong, Miami, Prague, Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Washington, D.C. In the winter of 2017 Ms. Wang reunites with violinist and frequent collaborator Leonidas Kavakos for a European chamber tour, and in the spring of 2018 she embarks on a recital tour to premier venues in the U.S. and Europe, which includes stops in New York City, San Francisco, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Yuja Wang was born into a musical family in Beijing. After childhood piano studies in China, she received advanced training in Canada and at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music with Gary Graffman. Her international breakthrough came in 2007 when she replaced Martha Argerich as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Two years later she signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon and has since established her place among the world's leading artists with a succession of critically acclaimed performances and recordings. Ms. Wang was named Musical America's Artist of the Year for 2017. Yuja Wang made her New York Philharmonic debut performing Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1, led by Bramwell Tovey, in July 2006 at Bravo! Vail in Colorado. She most recently joined the Orchestra performing Messiaen's Turangalîla-symphonie in March 2016, led by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Repertoire
The Piano Concerto No. 1 (1854-58) is one of the works by Johannes Brahms (1833-97) that had a long, complex evolution - Brahms revised it even after it was premiered in 1859. Symphonic in scope, it lasts around 45 minutes, and begins with a long and stormy orchestral introduction, followed by a peaceful Adagio that comes as blessed relief, and about which the composer wrote to Clara Schumann: "I am also painting a lovely portrait of you; it is to be the Adagio." In his book on Brahms, Burnett James wrote: "The D-minor Concerto ... marks the end of Brahms's youthful romantic period. Never again was he to let himself go with such uninhibited passion; never again to wear his heart so unashamedly on his sleeve." The Philharmonic first performed this concerto at The Academy of Music in 1875, featuring soloist Nannetta Falk-Auerbach conducted by Carl Bergmann; Susanna Mälkki led Kirill Gerstein in the Orchestra's most recent presentation, in May 2015.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) composed his Symphony No. 5 during World War II - specifically, in the summer of 1944, while he was working at the Soviet government's House of Creative Work, a converted state farm in the countryside some 150 miles northeast of Moscow. Premiered in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory several months later, the new symphony was an immediate success and signaled the composer's return to symphonic composition after a 14-year hiatus. Prokofiev, writing in 1951 in the Moscow News, said: "My Fifth Symphony was intended as a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit. I cannot say that I deliberately chose this theme. It was born in me and clamoured for expression. The music had matured within me, it filled my soul." The first Philharmonic performance of this work was in March 1946, led by Artur Rodzi?ski; then Assistant Conductor Case Scaglione led the Orchestra's most recent performance, in November 2014.

Photo: Jaap van Zweden by Chris Lee