December 2011
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Good Times, Great Oldies
The clock is winding down on 2011 … Here are a few things we are looking forward to in 2012:
• Music Director Alan Gilbert conducting the New York Premiere of Thomas Adès’s Polaris
• Celebrating the Year of the Dragon with Chinese New Year, featuring pianist Lang Lang, Philharmonic Principal Oboe Liang Wang, Tang Jun Qiao, and the Quintessenso Children’s Choir, conducted by...
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A New Year's Buzz
Check out what Philharmonic news had Twitter abuzz in the final week of 2011:
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From the Radio Room ... with Jean-Yves Thibaudet
Following this morning’s New Year’s Eve rehearsal, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet joined us in the radio room to discuss the importance of George Gershwin’s music, New Year’s Eve in New York, and more.
His interview will air at a later date on The New York Philharmonic This Week.
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“He’s a composer who has absolute control over what he puts on the page.”
– Music Director Alan Gilbert in praise of composer Thomas Adès, and looking forward to conducting a new work by Adès, Polaris, a Philharmonic co-commission that will be given its New York Premiere on January 5, 7 & 10, and its UK Premiere on the Orchestra’s upcoming EUROPE / WINTER 2012...
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An Avalanche of Accolades
Another exciting year for Alan Gilbert and the Philharmonic, with many of the Orchestra’s performances ranking atop critics’ lists of 2011’s best cultural events. Were you part of the scene that made this past year a musical success:
• The Cunning Little Vixen was ranked on the lists of The New York Times (Vivien Schweitzer and Anthony Tommasini), New York...
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WatchCelebrate Good Times
This Week at Lincoln Center features the final Philharmonic concerts you can catch before the end of year: Alan Gilbert conducting works by Haydn, Ravel, and selected songs by Schubert, featuring Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, December 28–30, and “A New Yorker’s New Year’s Eve,” a night of works by Gershwin and Bernstein, with pianist...
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Beat the Rush
Heading home, but looking for some good music before you get there? The New York Philharmonic’s Rush Hour Concerts — at 6:45 p.m. — offer shorter concerts at an early hour. On the first of three — January 4 — Alan Gilbert conducts Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and two Ravel favorites: Mother Goose and La Valse. In tandem with the concert is the launch of two new series: a free...
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Armchair Traveller
Beethoven in Cologne and Amsterdam with Frank Peter Zimmermann … Tchaikovsky in Luxembourg and Düsseldorf with Lang Lang … the UK Premiere of Thomas Adès’s Polaris in London … Can’t make it to Europe for the Philharmonic’s upcoming EUROPE / WINTER 2012 tour? Don’t worry, you won’t be left behind. These programs and more can be heard on the Orchestra’s home playing field with Music...
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“When Gilbert works, you can see the pulse thrumming through his body,...”
– Justin Davidson in “What Does a Conductor Do” in New York magazine. Follow the music critic as he traced the path taken by would-be conductors who study under Alan Gilbert at The Juilliard School, where he is the Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies and holds the William Schuman Chair in...
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A Holiday Buzz
Before signing off for the holidays, we bring you the Philharmonic news that had Twitter abuzz this week and what’s on the horizon:
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Countdown to the New Year
Made your plans for ushering in the New Year? What better way to bid adieu to 2011 than by joining Alan Gilbert and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for a New Yorker’s New Year’s Eve, with a program featuring works by two iconic New Yorkers: Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin. Let the countdown begin …
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Forever Young
Sure, Beethoven would have celebrated his 241st birthday this past weekend if he were alive, but the master is as hip today as he was 184 years ago.
Exhibit A: Jimmy Fallon and the cast of SNL rocking out Beethoven-style in this sketch.
Exhibit B: The Modern Beethoven, the Philharmonic’s three-week festival featuring Beethoven symphonies coupled with 20th century concertos, March 1–20.
What more...
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CONTACT! Kudos
The people have spoken and they liked what they heard. The third season of CONTACT! — the Philharmonic’s new-music series — was greeted with cheers. Here’s what some had to say about the concerts:
“It’s great surreal fun and has some lovely moments and some genuinely intense ones too, a cabaret for the end of the world.” — Likely Impossibilities
“If it was all a bit...
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Stocking Stuffer
The next release from the Alan...
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“I think she’s the ideal combination of vocal perfection and expressive,...”
– Music Director Alan Gilbert on Anne Sofie von Otter, who is joining him and the Philharmonic in performances of six Schubert songs, December 28–30. Learn more about the Swedish soprano’s thoughts on how orchestrations of these songs have “translated Schubert’s picturesque music by adding the...
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“Throughout his career, Alan Gilbert has enthusiastically and expertly conducted...”
– Fred Lerdahl, secretary of the Alice M. Ditson Fund and the Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University, on Alan Gilbert’s receiving the Ditson Conductor’s Award for his “exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary...
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The Buzz
Check out what Philharmonic news had Twitter abuzz this week and what’s on the horizon:
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“The process of rehearsing a new piece is always very intense. It is, after all,...”
– This and more from Brazilian-born composer Alexandre Lunsqui in “On Signatures, Broken Rhythms and Mutes,” the latest installment of CONTACT! High, his Q2 Music blog. His Fibers, Yarn, and Wire will be given its World Premiere tonight at the first of this season’s CONTACT!...
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New Music Is a CONTACT! Sport
Music Director Alan Gilbert and Composer-in-Residence Magnus Lindberg talk CONTACT! with Paul Pelkonen in the Daily News. Lindberg notes of the Music Director’s vision for the series: “one of his ideas was to show that an orchestra like the New York Philharmonic is up to doing this kind of music. It should become a natural extension of the repertoire.”
You can make CONTACT!...
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WatchChanneling Schubert
When it comes to German Lieder, few can match the word painting achieved by the great Romantic composer, Franz Schubert. His original piano accompaniments sparkle with extraordinary effects — water ripples and splashes as a trout pulls desperately against the fisherman’s line (Die Forelle); a young girl, unhappy in love, relentlessly turns the spinning wheel around and around...
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Get a Line on Lunsqui — Today on Q2 Music
Tune in to Q2 Music today at 12 p.m. to hearBrazilian-born composer Alexandre Lunsqui discuss his compositional aesthetic, the use of jazz and traditional Brazilian music in his writing, and the excitement and anxiety surrounding the World Premiere of his Fibers, Yarn, and Wire this weekend on CONTACT!. Listen today or stream the entire interview on-demand later in the day — and be sure to check...
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The latest edition of On the Music brings you...
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A Musical Pedigree
In a recent podcast interview with the U.K.’s Independent, Jamie Bernstein — pictured above as dad Leonard Bernstein’s left-hand-(wo)man — shares some personal insight on when she fully realized the impact her father’s Young People’s Concerts had on television.
She recalls: “A few years later — when the Flintstones were on television — on one episode, Wilma and...
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“New York City is, without question, one of the most energetic cities in the...”
– Alexandre Lunsqui on returning to his former home of New York City from Sao Paolo, Brazil, for the World Premiere of his Fibers, Yarn, and Wire on this week’s CONTACT! concerts. Mr. Lunsqui will be blogging this week for Q2 Music about his experience composing for, rehearsing with, and having...
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He's Created a Monster! (Well, Sort of)
HK Gruber, whose Frankenstein!! will receive its New York Philharmonic debut on this weekend’s CONTACT! concerts, is the great-great grandson of another composer, Franz Gruber, best known for a work that warms the hearts of millions every holiday season: Silent Night. Read more about the pan-demonium of Frankenstein!! —which features loads of toys, superheroes, children’s rhymes, and...
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The Buzz
Check out what Philharmonic news had Twitter abuzz this week and what’s on the horizon:
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Happy Birthday ...
… to us!
169 years ago on this day,the New York Philharmonic’s first concert took place in the Apollo Rooms on lower Broadway before an audience of 600. The concert opened with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and was led by Philharmonic founder-father Ureli Corelli Hill.
Tonight, the Orchestra performs its 15,277th concert before an audience of thousands, led by Daniel Harding.
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À suivre ... The Kravis Prize Is Coming!
Stay tuned to our Tumblr feed today and be the first to learn who is the recipient of The Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music. Can you guess who the prize’s inaugural winner will be?
Hint: C’est magnifique!
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Beer Hear
CONTACT! isn’t just a concert, it’s an experience, and this year it will be an experience made even sweeter with free beer. Following each concert in December you’re invited to mingle with the musicians and composers over a beer, generously provided by our friends at Brooklyn Brewery. What better way to follow up an adventure for your ears than with an adventure for your mouth. See you...
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“In this sublime silliness, the orchestra rediscovered its mission: making live...”
– New York magazine’s round-up of “The Year in Classical Music” ranked the Philharmonic’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen and Anne-Sophie Mutter’s performance with the Orchestra of Sofia Gubaidulina’s In Tempus Praesens among the top 10 events of 2011 —...
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WatchThis week’s concerts with guest conductor Daniel Harding and violinist Joshua Bell were featured on the latest edition of WNET’s This Week at Lincoln Center. Hear more about the program, which will include works by Oliver Knussen, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky.
