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New York Philharmonic

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WebernBrahms

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Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic

2010–11 Season

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Alan Gilbert’s journey of musical discovery can be traced on Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic: 2010–11 Season; the series’ wide-ranging repertoire reflects his programmatic belief that individual works, both familiar and brand-new, should be combined in innovative ways in order to surprise, challenge, and delight the listener.

“When I became the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic a year ago, I was excited by the prospect of creating a close connection with the audience,” Alan Gilbert has said, adding, “I wanted our listeners to know that we choose every work we perform out of a real commitment to its value, so that even if someone isn’t familiar with a piece, they would feel comfortable coming to hear it simply because we programmed it.”

Alan Gilbert and the New York Philhar-monic: 2010–11 Season — 12 high-quality recordings of almost 30 works,

available internationally — represents the breadth of Alan Gilbert’s programs in his second season as Music Director. Building on the success of last year’s Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season, the first time an orchestra offered a season’s worth of re-corded music for download, the new series is more accessible and more flexible, of-fering performances either as a complete series or as individual works.

The 2010–11 series allows listeners to explore and own music that spans world premieres of Philharmonic commissions to works by past masters. Subscribers also receive bonus content, including audio recordings of Alan Gilbert’s onstage com-mentaries, the program notes published in each concert’s Playbill, and encores given by the soloists — all in the highest possible audio quality available for download.

For more information about the series, visit nyphil.org/itunes.

Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic: 2010–11 Season New York Philharmonic

Alan Gilbert, ConductorPinchas Zukerman, Violin

Recorded live October 14–16, 2010,Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

WEBERN (1883–1945)

Passacaglia, Op. 1 (1908) 10:26

BRAHMS (1833–97)

Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 77 (1878–79) 40:27Allegro non troppo 23:02

Adagio 9:17

Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace — Poco più presto 8:08

PINCHAS ZUKERMAN

BRAHMS Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 (1884–85) 42:21Allegro non troppo 13:21

Andante moderato 12:09

Allegro giocoso 6:17

Allegro energico e passionato — Più allegro 10:34


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Alan Gilbert on This Program

This program both opens and closes with a passacaglia, a musical form that emerged in the Baroque period that consists of a bass-line theme that is spun into a series of varia-tions. Webern, one of the three standard-bearers of the Second Viennese School in the 20th century, wrote the first piece on this concert before he fully established his mature compositional voice; it already reflects much of his aesthetic, which often includes the use of older musical forms.

One of the masters of all musical forms was Brahms, and his Symphony No. 4 — his final work in a genre that he mastered completely — represents a culmination in his music on several levels. Emotionally, it is potent and intense, and at the same time it is extremely rigorous in terms of the compositional methods and structures he uses. The Fourth is extremely intellectually sophisticated and complex; one can study this score over and over again and still never uncover all of the techniques Brahms employed. It is endlessly fascinating, which makes it very exciting to perform. The last movement, famously, is based on a passacaglia, and so this concert is bookended with two takes on that very old form. Webern’s music, like Brahms’s, reflects a kind of conflict between the intellectual rigor of his composition and its emotional impact — they are very much kindred spirits in this regard.

I am thrilled that Pinchas Zukerman, one of today’s consummate musicians, is the soloist for the Brahms Violin Concerto. I’ve always felt that Pinchas plays with an impec-cable technique and with an emotional impact that goes straight to your heart. You could say that he — like the music of Webern and Brahms — is a magnificent combination of the intellectual and the impassioned.

Passacaglia, Op. 1Anton WebernThe most decisive step in Anton Webern’s musical upbringing arrived in the autumn of 1904, when he and Alban Berg began studying composition with Arnold Schoen-berg, who was just nine years older than Webern. Although Schoenberg was not yet famous, his work had attracted the notice of no less an eminence than Gustav Mahler, who had alerted the musicolo-gist Guido Adler to the young composer’s exceptional talent. Adler in turn referred to Schoenberg a number of his students at the University of Vienna, including Webern, who happened to be one of the shining stars in his music history classes. It ap-pears that Webern was the very first pupil in Schoenberg’s studio, preceding Berg by a couple of weeks, and he was motivated in that direction at least in part by a per-formance of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht that he had heard during the preceding concert season. Webern would later report of that concert that “the impression it made on me was one of the greatest I had ever experienced.”

Schoenberg stopped offering formal classes after a year, frustrated that most of his pupils showed no aptitude for composition; however both Webern and Berg continued working with him pri-vately. The Passacaglia performed in this concert was the last piece that Webern completed while officially inscribed as a pupil of Schoenberg’s. His observation that Schoenberg demanded that composition

exercises “should not consist of any old notes written down to fill out an academic form” seem quite to the point in the case of this work, which is cast in the ancient “academic form” of the passacaglia, es-sentially a set of variations written over a repeating bass pattern. Webern’s sensitiv-ity to historical models was so developed by this time that he was entirely comfort-able with the idea of putting new wine into old bottles.

Schoenberg had probably proposed to Webern that there was wisdom in learning to work with a standard orchestra before adapting its forces too idiosyncratically; thus Webern, in a sense, retreats to the basic late-Romantic complement of instruments. If his orchestral idyll Im Som-merwind, from 1904, seems to have been inspired by Richard Strauss, the Passaca-glia represents Webern’s turn at mimicking Mahler, whose voice is suggested in its almost unbearably yearning phrases, chro-matic straining against an underlying tonal-ity, and generally turbulent expressionism.

Nonetheless, this is a tightly disciplined work. Webern respects the inherent struc-

In ShortBorn: December 3, 1883, in Vienna, Austria

Died: September 15, 1945, in Mittersill, near Salzburg

Work composed: 1908, completed in May

World premiere: November 8, 1908, in Vienna, the composer conducting the Tonkünstlerverein Orchester

New York Philharmonic premiere: October 23, 1948, Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor

Notes on the ProgramBy James M. Keller, Program Annotator

Notes on the Program (continued)

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ture of the passacaglia form so assiduously that he never departs from the underlying procession of eight-measure phrases (only in the coda allowing a sort of written-out ritardando). The “passacaglia melody” (that is, the sequence of notes heard in the initial eight measures) passes among various in-struments as the piece proceeds, often re-ceding into the background. One imagines that Schoenberg might have helped his pupil unravel the processes through which Brahms had built the finale of his Fourth Symphony (which concludes this program).

Webern felt he had reached a point of sufficient maturity with this work to baptize it with an opus number. In retrospect, we may see at the core of this Op. 1 an adumbration of the harmonic language that Webern would soon come to personify: the passacaglia theme itself is clearly set in D minor, but between the D that begins the melody and the D that ends it no note is repeated.

Instrumentation: two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clari-nets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, harp, and strings.

Learning from Schoenberg

Schoenberg did not mandate that his students adopt his own compositional methods. Both Webern and Berg were free to develop strikingly individualistic voices. Some years later Webern would write of Schoenberg’s tutelage:

People think Schoenberg teaches his own style and forces the pupil to adopt it. That is quite untrue — Schoenberg teaches no style of any kind, he preaches the use neither of old artistic resources nor of new ones. He says, “What is the point of teach-ing how to master everyday cases? The pupil learns how to use something he dare not use if he wants to be an artist. But one cannot give him what matters most — the courage and the strength to find an attitude to things which will turn everything he looks at into an exceptional case, because of the way he looks at it.” But this “thing that matters most” is what Schoenberg’s pupils do indeed receive. Schoenberg demands, above all, that what the pupil writes for his lessons should not consist of any old notes written down to fill out an academic form, but should be something achieved as the result of his need for self-expression. So he must, in fact, create — even in the musical examples written during the most primitive initial stages. Whatever Schoenberg explains with refer-ence to his pupil’s work arises organically from the work itself; he never has recourse to extraneous theoretical maxims.

So Schoenberg does in fact educate his student as a creator. With the utmost energy, he tracks down the pupil’s person-ality, seeking to deepen it, to help it break through — in short, “to give the pupil the courage and the strength to find an attitude to things which will make everything he looks at into an exceptional case, because of the way he looks at it.” It is an education in utter truthfulness with oneself.

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Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 77Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was the chief acolyte of the conservative stream of 19th-century Romanticism. As a young composer, in 1853, he sought out the composer and critic Robert Schuman, who was hugely impressed by the young man’s talent. On October 28 of that year he published in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (a musical magazine he had founded) an effusive article that acclaimed Brahms as a sort of musical messiah,

destined to give ideal presentation to the

highest expression of the time, ... springing

forth like Minerva fully armed from the

head of Jove.

Brahms fulfilled Schumann’s prophecy, becoming the figure who most fully adapt-ed the models of Beethoven (via Men-delssohn and Schumann) to the evolving aesthetics of the mid- to late-19th century. He did not achieve this without consider-able struggle: aware of the burden that fell on his shoulders, he was reluctant to sign off on works in the genres that invited direct comparison to Beethoven, most es-pecially in the case of string quartets and

symphonies. He did, however, manage to bring his First Piano Concerto to comple-tion in 1858. Between 1878 and 1881 he followed up with his Second Piano Concerto, a serene, warmhearted work in comparison to the tumultuous romanticism of the First. It was at about the same time that he also set to work on his transcen-dent Violin Concerto.

Brahms was not himself a violinist, but he was a pianist who, since the earli-

In ShortBorn: May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany

Died: April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria

Works composed and premiered: Violin Concerto: summer and early fall 1878; revised slightly that winter; premiered January 1, 1879, Joseph Joachim (the work’s dedicatee) as soloist, the composer conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig

Symphony No. 4: composed during the summers of 1884 and 1885; premiered October 25, 1885, in Meiningen, Germany, the composer conducting the Meiningen Ducal Chapel Orchestra; this was a couple of weeks after he had played in a two-piano reading of it for a private audience

New York Philharmonic premieres: Violin Concerto: premiered November 13, 1891, Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony (which would merge with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s New York Philharmonic), Adolph Brodsky, soloist

Symphony No. 4: premiered December 10, 1886, Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony (which would merge with the New York Philharmonic in 1928 to become today’s New York Philharmonic)


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est years of his career, had worked as an accompanist to violinists. He had the good fortune to number among his closest friends Joseph Joachim, one of the most eminent string players of his time. It was Joachim who had championed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in a way that lifted it in musical prestige from a perceived foot-note in that composer’s catalogue to an acknowledged masterwork in the reper-toire. He would introduce such important works as Schumann’s Phantasie for Violin and Orchestra (1854) and Violin Concerto (the latter only in private performances beginning in 1855), the final version of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (in 1868), as well as Brahms’s Violin Concerto and Double Concerto for Violin and Cello.

Joachim’s presence looms large in the case of Brahms’s Violin Concerto, as the composer consulted with him very closely while writing the piece, and there is no question that Joachim’s influence on the final state of the violin part and on the work’s orchestration overall was substantial. (Brahms also sought the advice of two oth-er eminent violinists — Pablo de Sarasate and Émile Sauret — but their input was of far less consequence to the composer.)

Brahms did some of his best work during his summer vacations, which he usually spent at a bucolic getaway in the Austrian countryside. The summer of 1878 — the summer of the Violin Concerto — found him in Pörtschach, on the north shore of the Wörthersee in the southern Austrian province of Carinthia. While writing his

Not a Fan

Among the violinists Brahms consulted for technical input concerning his Violin Concerto was the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, who employed his reportedly impeccable technique chiefly for the interpretation of variations on operatic airs and other “light” repertoire. For him were penned Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, and Dvorák’s Mazurek. All of these proved more to his liking than Brahms’s Concerto. Although Sarasate was a champion of Brahms’s string quartets, he famously refused to play the Concerto, protesting, in reference to its second movement, “Do you think me so devoid of taste that I would stand there in front of the orchestra, violin in hand, but like a listener, while the oboe plays the only melody in the entire work?”

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violin.” Brahms was a bit discouraged by the response and, to the regret of posterity, fed to the flames the draft he had already com-pleted for his Violin Concerto No. 2. One can only mourn what must have been lost.

“I shall never write a symphony!” Johannes Brahms famously declared in 1872. “You can’t have any idea what it’s like to hear such a giant marching behind you.” The gi-ant was Beethoven, of course, and although his music provided essential inspiration for Brahms, it also set such a high standard that the younger composer found it easy to discount his own creations as negligible in comparison.

Four more years would pass before Brahms would finally sign off on his First Symphony. However, once he had con-quered his compositional demons he moved ahead forcefully. Three symphonies would follow that first effort in relatively short order: the Second in 1877, the Third in 1882–83, and the Fourth in 1884–85. Each is a masterpiece, and each displays a markedly different character. The First is burly and powerful, flexing its muscles in Promethean exertion; the Second is sunny and bucolic; and the Third, although intro-spective and idyllic on the whole, mixes in a hefty dose of heroism.

With his Fourth Symphony, Brahms achieves a work of almost mystical transcendence born of opposing emo-tions: melancholy and joy, severity and rhapsody, solemnity and exhilaration. Clara Schumann, friend and muse to Brahms,

Inspired by Nature

Brahms found that his creative juices flowed most freely during his summer vacations, which he spent in a succession of villages in the Austrian, German, Swiss, or Italian countryside. Much of his Violin Concerto was composed in the resort town of Pörtschach, a small town on the north shore of the Wörthersee (known in English as Lake Worth) in the southern Austrian province of Kärnten (Carinthia), just a bit west of the university city of Klagenfurt. A popular des-tination for European vacationers, it has hosted several notable composers over the years: Mahler built a summer getaway at Maiernigg on the lake’s southern shore, where you can still visit the little composing cottage he built in the forested hill above his villa; and Alban Berg composed his own Violin Concerto while resid-ing along Lake Worth in the summer of 1935.

The summers of 1884 and 1885 — when Brahms was composing the Fourth Symphony — were spent at Mürzzuschlag, a charm-ing Styrian village at the southern end of the Semmering Pass, about a two-hour train trip southwest from Vienna, roughly midway between Vienna and Graz.

A visitor today cannot pass through either town without being reminded of their respective Brahmsian pasts. Music lovers planning a trip to Pörtschach can stay in the very room at the Schloss Leonstain castle-hotel where Brahms composed his Violin Concerto; dine at the hotel’s restaurant, one of the best in town; and take a moment to gaze at the Brahms statue in the castle’s courtyard.

Visitors to Mürzzuschlag can visit the com-munity conservatory, the Johannes Brahms Musikschule; explore the ring of hiking trails the composer once followed, now called the Brahmsweg; and, of course, there is a Brahms Museum “in the genuine summer residence of Johannes Brahms,” which sponsors innumerable mostly Brahms concerts and contains memo-rabilia relevant to Brahms’s vacations, including the piano he rented while he was in town.

Second Symphony there the summer before, Brahms had remarked that beautiful melodies so littered the landscape that one merely had to scoop them up.

Listeners today are likely to think that the composer scooped up quite a few for his Violin Concerto, too, but early listeners weren’t so sure. Critics were at best cool, at worst, savage. When the work was pre-sented by the Berlin Conservatory Orchestra, one newspaper complained that students should not be subjected to such “trash.” Joseph Hellmesberger, Sr., who as one of Vienna’s leading violinists had much experi-ence performing Brahms’s works, dismissed it as “a concerto not for, but against the


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recognized this play of duality already in the first movement, observing,

It is as though one lay in springtime among

the blossoming flowers, and joy and sorrow

filled one’s soul in turn.”

Brahms was well aware of his distinct achievement in this work. He composed it during two summer vacations at Mürz-zuschlag in the Styrian Alps — the first two movements in the summer of 1884, the second two in the summer of 1885. On many occasions he was known to suggest that his compositions reflected in some way the place in which they were written, and in this case he wrote from Mürzzuschlag to the conductor Hans von Bülow that his symphony-in-progress “tastes of the climate here; the cherries are hardly sweet here — you wouldn’t eat them!” Brahms was given to disparaging his works (in fact, he once described this symphony as “another set of polkas and waltzes”), but in this case his description perfectly evokes the bittersweet quality that pervades many of the Fourth Symphony’s pages.

Although it is cast in the same classical four-movement plan as his earlier sympho-nies, Brahms’s Fourth seems more tightly unified throughout its duration (largely through an insistence on the interval of the third — especially the minor third), and its movements accordingly proceed with a terrific sense of cumulative power. The opening movement (Allegro non troppo) is soaring and intense, and the second (Andante moderato) is by turns agitated and

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serene. The Allegro giocoso represents the first time Brahms included a real scherzo in a symphony, in contrast to the lighter al-legretto intermezzos that had served as the third movements of his first three. For the finale, Brahms unleashes a gigantic passa-caglia, a neo-Baroque structure in which an eight-measure progression (derived from the last movement of Bach’s Cantata No. 150) is subjected to 32 variations of widely varying character.

As soon as he completed the work, Brahms sent copies to several of his trusted friends and was miffed when they all responded with concern over this or that. His confidante, Elisabet von Herzogenberg, insisted that she respected the piece, but allowed of the first movement that “at worst it seems to me as if a great master had made an almost extravagant display of his skill!” His friend Max Kalbeck suggested he throw away the third movement entirely, use the finale as a freestanding piece, and com-pose two new movements to replace them.

Brahms did not cave in, but he an-ticipated the symphony’s premiere with mounting apprehension. His music had long been criticized as “too intellectual,” and Brahms knew that his Fourth Symphony was at least as rigorous as anything he had previously composed. To his amazement the symphony proved a success at its premiere, and audience enthusiasm only increased in subsequent performances.

Instrumentation: The Violin Concerto calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani,

and strings, in addition to the solo violin The Symphony No. 4 employs two flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle, and strings.

Cadenza: Pinchas Zukerman plays Joseph Joachim’s cadenza.


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ViolinsGlenn Dicterow

Concertmaster The Charles E. Culpeper Chair

Sheryl Staples Principal Associate

Concertmaster The Elizabeth G. Beinecke Chair

Michelle Kim Assistant Concertmaster The William Petschek Family Chair

Enrico Di CeccoCarol WebbYoko Takebe

Minyoung Chang+Hae-Young Ham

The Mr. and Mrs. Timothy M. George Chair

Lisa GiHae KimKuan-Cheng LuNewton Mansfield

The Edward and Priscilla Pilcher Chair

Kerry McDermottAnna RabinovaCharles Rex

The Shirley Bacot Shamel Chair

Fiona SimonSharon YamadaElizabeth Zeltser

The William and Elfriede

Ulrich Chair

Yulia Ziskel

Marc Ginsberg Principal

Lisa Kim* In Memory of Laura Mitchell

Soohyun Kwon The Joan and Joel I. Picket Chair

Duoming Ba

Marilyn Dubow The Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Chair

Martin EshelmanQuan GeJudith GinsbergHanna LachertHyunju LeeDaniel ReedMark SchmoocklerNa SunVladimir Tsypin

ViolasCynthia Phelps

Principal The Mr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Rose Chair

Rebecca Young*Irene Breslaw**

The Norma and Lloyd Chazen Chair

Dorian Rence

Katherine GreeneThe Mr. and Mrs. William J. McDonough Chair

Dawn HannayVivek KamathPeter KenoteKenneth MirkinJudith NelsonRobert Rinehart

The Mr. and Mrs. G. Chris Andersen Chair

CellosCarter Brey

Principal The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Chair

Eileen Moon*The Paul and Diane Guenther Chair

The Shirley and Jon Brodsky Foundation Chair

Evangeline Benedetti

Eric BartlettThe Mr. and Mrs. James E. Buckman Chair

Elizabeth DysonMaria KitsopoulosSumire KudoQiang TuRu-Pei YehWei YuWilhelmina Smith++

BassesEugene Levinson

Principal The Redfield D. Beckwith Chair

Orin O’BrienActing Associate Principal The Herbert M. Citrin Chair

William BlossomThe Ludmila S. and Carl B. Hess Chair

Randall ButlerDavid J. GrossmanSatoshi Okamoto

FlutesRobert Langevin

Principal The Lila Acheson Wallace Chair

Sandra Church*Mindy Kaufman

PiccoloMindy Kaufman

OboesLiang Wang

Principal The Alice Tully Chair

Sherry Sylar*Robert Botti

English HornThomas Stacy

The Joan and Joel Smilow Chair

ClarinetsMark Nuccio Acting Principal

The Edna and W. Van Alan Clark Chair

Pascual MartinezForteza

Acting Associate Principal The Honey M. Kurtz Family Chair

Alucia Scalzo++Amy Zoloto++

E-Flat ClarinetPascual Martinez

Forteza

Bass ClarinetAmy Zoloto++

2009–2010 SeasonALAN GILBERT Music DirectorDaniel Boico, Assistant ConductorLeonard Bernstein, Laureate Conductor, 1943–1990Kurt Masur, Music Director Emeritus

BassoonsJudith LeClair

Principal The Pels Family Chair

Kim Laskowski*Roger NyeArlen Fast

ContrabassoonArlen Fast

HornsPhilip Myers

Principal The Ruth F. and Alan J. Broder Chair

Stewart Rose++* Acting Associate Principal

Cara Kizer Aneff**R. Allen SpanjerErik Ralske+Howard Wall

TrumpetsPhilip Smith

Principal The Paula Levin Chair

Matthew Muckey*Ethan BensdorfThomas V. Smith

TrombonesJoseph Alessi Principal The Gurnee F. and

Marjorie L. Hart Chair

Amanda Davidson*David Finlayson The Donna and

Benjamin M. Rosen Chair

Bass TromboneJames Markey

TubaAlan Baer Principal

TimpaniMarkus Rhoten

Principal The Carlos Moseley Chair

Kyle Zerna**

PercussionChristopher S. Lamb

Principal The Constance R. Hoguet Friends of the Philharmonic Chair

Daniel Druckman* The Mr. and Mrs. Ronald J. Ulrich Chair

Kyle Zerna

HarpNancy Allen Principal

The Mr. and Mrs. William T. Knight III Chair

Keyboard In Memory of Paul Jacobs

HarpsichordLionel Party

PianoThe Karen and Richard S. LeFrak Chair

Harriet WingreenJonathan Feldman

OrganKent Tritle

LibrariansLawrence Tarlow Principal

Sandra Pearson**Sara Griffin**

Orchestra PersonnelManagerCarl R. Schiebler

Stage RepresentativeLouis J. Patalano

Audio DirectorLawrence Rock

* Associate Principal** Assistant Principal+ On Leave++ Replacement/Extra

The New York Philharmonic uses the revolving seating method for section string players who are listed alphabetically in the roster.

Honorary Membersof the SocietyPierre BoulezStanley DruckerLorin MaazelZubin MehtaCarlos Moseley

New York PhilharmonicGary W. Parr Chairman

Zarin Mehta President and Executive

Director

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The Music Director

Alan Gilbert became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2009, the first native New Yorker to hold the post, ushering in what The New York Times called “an adventurous new era” at the Philharmonic. In his inaugural season he introduced a number of new initiatives: the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, held by Magnus Lindberg; The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, held in 2010–11 by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter; an annual three-week festival, which in 2010–11 is titled Hungarian Echoes, led by Esa-Pekka Salonen; and CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic’s new-music series. In the 2010–11 season Mr. Gilbert is leading the Orchestra on two tours of European music capitals; two performances at Carnegie

Hall, including the venue’s 120th Anniver-sary Concert; and a staged presentation of Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen. In his 2009–10 inaugural season Mr. Gilbert led the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi, and performances in nine cit-ies on the EUROPE / WINTER 2010 tour in February 2010. Also in the 2009–10 season, he conducted world, U.S., and New York premieres, as well as an acclaimed staged presentation of Ligeti’s opera, Le Grand Macabre.

Mr. Gilbert is the first person to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, and is conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR

Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted other leading orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, including the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. From 2003 to 2006 he served as the first music director of the Santa Fe Opera.

Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard Uni-versity, 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 Sym-phony 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, Mr. Gilbert received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music.

The Artist

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Pinchas Zukerman is respected as a vio-linist, conductor, pedagogue, and chamber musician. He will make more than 100 per-formances in the 2010–11 season, with appearances in North America, Europe, and Asia. He will perform a recital tour with pianist Yefim Bronfman, appearing in Carnegie Hall and in Chicago, Boston, Princeton, and Kansas City. His chamber ensemble of eight years, the Zukerman Chamber Players, will perform on the 92nd Street Y’s Distinguished Artists series and in Vienna, Paris, Milan, Naples, Istanbul, Budapest, Warsaw, and Eindhoven.

Mr. Zukerman is currently in his 12th season as music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Canada, where he is recognized for heightening the ensemble’s caliber and reputation and for developing the National Arts Centre Sum-mer Music Institute. In his second season as principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, he leads that ensemble on an extensive tour of China, as well as in Italy, England, Israel,

and Switzerland. His orchestral appearances include the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra (Lisbon), Moscow Virtuosi, Duisburg Philharmoniker, and the Boston, Seattle, Pacific, and Vancouver sym-phony orchestras.

Director and founder of the Pinchas Zuker-man Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music, Mr. Zukerman is devoted to the next generation of musicians, and has inspired younger artists with his magnetism and passion. His dedication to teaching has resulted in innovative programs in London, New York, and Ottawa, as well as in China and Israel.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1948, Pinchas Zuker-man began studying at age eight with Ilona Feher. With the guidance of Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals, and the support of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, he came to America in 1962 to study with Ivan Galamian on scholarship at The Juilliard School.


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The New York Philharmonic, founded in 1842 by a group of local musicians led by American-born Ureli Corelli Hill, is by far the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, and one of the oldest in the world. It currently plays some 180 concerts a year, and on May 5, 2010, gave its 15,000th concert — a milestone un-matched by any other symphony orchestra in the world.

Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music Director in September 2009, the latest in a distinguished line of 20th-century musi-cal giants that has included Lorin Maazel (2002–09); Kurt Masur (Music Direc-tor from 1991 to the summer of 2002; named Music Director Emeritus in 2002); Zubin Mehta (1978–91); Pierre Boulez (1971–77); and Leonard Bernstein, who was appointed Music Director in 1958 and given the lifetime title of Laureate Conduc-tor in 1969.

Since its inception the Orchestra has championed the new music of its time, commissioning or premiering many important works, such as Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World; Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3; Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F; and Copland’s Connotations. The Philharmonic has also given the U.S. premieres of such works as Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9 and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4. This pioneering tradition has continued to the present day, with works of major contem-porary composers regularly scheduled each season, including John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning

On the Transmigration of Souls; Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3; Augusta Read Thomas’s Gathering Paradise, Emily Dickin-son Settings for Soprano and Orchestra; Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto; Magnus Lindberg’s EXPO; and Christopher Rouse’s Odna Zhizn.

The roster of composers and conductors who have led the Philharmonic includes such historic figures as Theodore Thomas, Antonín Dvorák, Gustav Mahler (Music Director, 1909–11), Otto Klemperer, Rich-ard Strauss, Willem Mengelberg (Music Director, 1922–30), Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini (Music Director, 1928–36), Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Bruno Walter (Music Advisor, 1947–49), Dimitri Mitropoulos (Music Director, 1949–58), Klaus Tennstedt, George Szell (Music Advisor, 1969–70), and Erich Leinsdorf.

Long a leader in American musical life, the Philharmonic has over the last century become renowned around the globe, ap-pearing in 429 cities in 62 countries on 5 continents. In October 2009 the Orches-tra, led by Music Director Alan Gilbert, made its debut in Hanoi, Vietnam. In Feb-ruary 2008 the Orchestra, led by then-Mu-sic Director Lorin Maazel, gave a historic performance in Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — the first visit there by an American orchestra and an event watched around the world and for which the Philharmonic earned the 2008 Common Ground Award for Cultural Diplo-macy. Other historic tours have included the 1930 Tour to Europe, with Toscanini; the first Tour to the USSR, in 1959; the

1998 Asia Tour with Kurt Masur, featuring the first performances in mainland China; and the 75th Anniversary European Tour, in 2005, with Lorin Maazel.

A longtime media pioneer, the Philhar-monic began radio broadcasts in 1922, and is currently represented by The New York Philharmonic This Week — syndicated nationally 52 weeks per year, and available on nyphil.org. On television, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Philharmonic inspired a generation through Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on CBS. Its television presence has continued with annual ap-pearances on Live From Lincoln Center on PBS, and in 2003 it made history as the first Orchestra ever to perform live on the Grammy Awards, one of the most-watched television events worldwide. In 2004 the Philharmonic became the first major American orchestra to offer download-able concerts, recorded live, and in 2009 the Orchestra announced the first-ever subscription download series: Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season, available exclusively on iTunes, and comprising more than 50 works that were performed during the 2009–10 season. Since 1917 the Philhar-monic has made nearly 2,000 recordings, with more than 500 currently available.

On June 4, 2007, the New York Philhar-monic proudly announced a new partner-ship with Credit Suisse, its first-ever and exclusive Global Sponsor.

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Executive Producer: Vince Ford

Producers: Lawrence Rock and Mark Travis

Recording and Mastering Engineer: Lawrence Rock

Performance photos: Chris Lee

Alan Gilbert portrait: Hayley Sparks

Major funding for this recording is provided to the New York Philharmonic by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser.

Pinchas Zukerman’s appearance is made possible through the Hedwig van Ameringen Guest

Artists Endowment Fund.

105.9 FM WQXR is the Radio Home of the New York Philharmonic.

Major support provided by the Francis Goelet Fund.

Programs 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.

Instruments made possible, in part, by The Richard S. and Karen LeFrak Endowment Fund.

Steinway is the Official Piano of the New York Philharmonic and Avery Fisher Hall.

Exclusive timepiece of the New York Philharmonic

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