Alan Gilbert to lead Juilliard Orchestra in works by Bernstein and Beethoven at Avery Fisher Hall, presented by the New York Philharmonic as part of the citywide festival, "Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds," Monday, November 24, 2008
Samuel Pisar To Narrate His Own Text in Bernstein's Symphony No. 3 "Kaddish"; Program Concludes with Performance of Beethoven Symphony No. 3 "Eroica"
New York Philharmonic Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert will lead the Juilliard Orchestra, Monday, November 24, 2008, at 7:30 p.m., in Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, Eroica, in a concert presented by the New York Philharmonic as part of the citywide festival, Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds. Jennifer Zetlan will be the soprano soloist in the Bernstein symphony; the speaker will be the Polish-born American international attorney and author, Samuel Pisar, who wrote a narration — at the request of Bernstein — for the work, based on his own experience as a Holocaust survivor. The choral parts will be performed by the Oratorio Society of New York, Kent Tritle, director, and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, Francisco J. Núñez, director.
On November 24, 1963 — 35 years to the date of this concert — the New York Philharmonic, led by George Szell, changed its program to perform the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony in memory of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated three days earlier. Leonard Bernstein, then in the process of orchestrating the final Amen section of his Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, dedicated the work “To the Beloved Memory of John F. Kennedy” — three weeks before he conducted the world premiere with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, on December 10, 1963, in Tel Aviv.
Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds, is a citywide celebration of more than 30 events in 10 different venues, presented by the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, and commemorating the 50th anniversary of the start of Bernstein’s tenure as the Philharmonic’s Music Director, the 65th anniversary of his famous 1943 debut with the Orchestra, and Bernstein’s 90th birthday year. For more information, go online to bernsteinfestival.org.
Artists
In June 2007 Alan Gilbert was named music director designate of the New York Philharmonic, with his tenure to begin in the 2009–10 season as one of the youngest music directors in the Orchestra’s history and the only native New Yorker to hold the post. Mr. Gilbert was chief conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra from 2000 to 2008, and was subsequently named its conductor laureate. He has been principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra (NDRSO) since 2004.
Alan Gilbert made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 2001 as the Diamond American Conductor, and has returned to conduct the Orchestra numerous times, including during the acclaimed Philharmonic Festival: Charles Ives — An American Original in Context in 2004, and in March 2008, when he led the World Premiere of Marc Neikrug’s Quintessence: Symphony No. 2, a New York Philharmonic Commission.
In the 2008–09 season Mr. Gilbert’s activities with the Philharmonic will include the Bernstein anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall, on November 14, 2008, as part of the citywide festival, Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds, in collaboration with Carnegie Hall. In April 2009 he will lead four Philharmonic concerts, and in May, the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic Commission. Other 2008–09 highlights include his Metropolitan Opera conducting debut with John Adams’s Dr. Atomic, and returns to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic.
Mr. Gilbert’s 2007–08 season included his Vienna Staatsoper debut; concerts with his alma mater — Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music — at the Kimmel Center and Carnegie Hall; and return engagements with The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris. In June 2008 he completed his tenure with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra with a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.
Mr. Gilbert was the first music director in the history of the Santa Fe Opera, and during the company’s 50th-anniversary season in 2006, he led the first United States production of Thomas Adès’s Tempest. His parents, Yoko Takebe and Michael Gilbert, both violinists in the New York Philharmonic (Mr. Gilbert is now retired), were his first teachers. Born and raised in New York City, the younger Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School; while at Curtis he was a substitute violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra. He also led Juilliard’s Pre-College Symphony.
Since graduating from The Juilliard School in 2006, soprano Jennifer Zetlan made her Metropolitan Opera debut as the Second French Actress in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, her New York City Opera debut as Frasquita in Bizet’s Carmen, and has received critical acclaim as Emily in Ned Rorem’s Our Town at the Aspen Music Festival, a role that she reprised with the Juilliard Opera Center in 2008. Also in 2008 she made role debuts as Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème with the Princeton Festival, and Gretel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel at the Aspen Music Festival. In the 2008–09 season she returns to the operatic stage to perform Nannetta in Verdi’s Falstaff and The Boxer’s Wife in Krenek’s Schwergewicht, oder Die Ehre der Nation (Heavyweight, or The Pride of the Nation) as part of a triple bill with conductor James Conlon, and The British Dancing Girl in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, conducted by the composer, all with Juilliard Opera. Additionally, Ms. Zetlan returns to The Met to cover a singer in Puccini’s La Rondine. In May 2010, she will perform the role of The Flier in the Seattle Opera’s world premiere of Daron Hagen’s Amelia.
Also in the 2008–09 season, Ms. Zetlan will make her Carnegie Hall debut performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the New York Youth Symphony, and will be a featured singer on New York City Opera’s Looking Forward concert series. On the recital stage she will be presented by the Marilyn Horne Foundation as part of its On Wings of Song series at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church in New York City. Ms. Zetlan has a bachelor of music degree from the Mannes College of Music and a master of music degree from The Juilliard School where she is completing the advanced Artist Diploma this season.
Speaker Samuel Pisar was 10 years old when Stalin and Hitler carved up his native Poland and ignited World War II. After two years of Soviet oppression and four years in the Bialystok Ghetto, Auschwitz, and other Nazi camps, he was liberated by the U.S. Army, following a daring escape from Dachau. At the age of 16 he was one of the youngest Holocaust survivors and the only one of his family and school. He resumed his schooling in Paris, and ultimately received doctorates from Harvard University and the Sorbonne. He became an Australian national and British subject in 1948, and was made a U.S. citizen by a special Act of Congress, signed by President John F. Kennedy, in 1961. He served as a member of J.F.K.’s task force on foreign economic policy, advisor to the State Department, and consultant to Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Mr. Pisar practiced law on both sides of the Atlantic and has presided at numerous international conferences. His books include his memoir, Of Blood and Hope. He is a Commander of the French Legion of Honor, an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters, a Commander of Poland’s Order of Merit, and has received other honors.
Leonard Bernstein met Mr. Pisar through Mr. Pisar’s wife, Judith, who was a good friend of the musician. In 1989 the two men worked together on a World War II memorial event. In the months preceding Bernstein’s death on October 14, 1990, the composer of Kaddish asked him to write a new narration for the symphony. However, Mr. Pisar felt unequal to the power of Bernstein’s score, and unable to revisit the calamities he had endured.
More than a decade later, following the events of 9/11 which he felt “ushered in an increasingly inflamed world vaguely reminiscent of the one I had known,” Mr. Pisar was inspired to “settle down to write my ‘Dialogue with God.’” Mr. Pisar has since performed his narration of this symphony in 2003 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival, conducted by John Axelrod; in 2006 at the Lucerne Festival; in 2007 at the Berlin Philharmonic; and in 2008 with The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris.
The mainstay of The Juilliard School’s performing ensembles, the Juilliard Orchestra, is presented frequently in its own New York City series of a dozen concerts each season, and is a strong supporting partner to Juilliard’s operatic and dance performances as well. A recent tour of China under the baton of New York Philharmonic Associate Conductor Xian Zhang brought two programs to audiences in Beijing, Suzhou, and Shanghai on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. During the school’s 2005–06 centennial season, the Juilliard Orchestra traveled to six European cities — Aldeburgh, Berlin, Helsinki, Leicester, Lucerne, and London, with an appearance at the city’s famed “Proms” concerts — and six major symphony halls in the United States: Chicago’s Symphony Center, Dallas’s Meyerson, Irvine’s Barclay, Los Angeles’s Walt Disney, San Diego’s Copley, and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center. Principally led by the school’s director of conducting and orchestral studies James DePreist, the orchestra also appears with prominent guest conductors including John Adams, Vladamir Ashkenazy, Pierre Boulez, James Levine, David Robertson, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Among the orchestra’s current season highlights are the world premiere of a new work Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, commissioned by Juilliard and conducted by James Conlon at Carnegie Hall on October 27, and a concert performance of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, led by the composer himself, in January.
The Oratorio Society of New York has been part of the city’s cultural life since 1873. The Society’s 200 members come from all walks of life, volunteering their time for the joy of making music. The Society performs choral masterpieces in three concerts annually, including Handel’s Messiah. All concerts are at Carnegie Hall, the landmark 57th-Street music hall built for the Society by then board president Andrew Carnegie in 1891. In addition, the Society is dedicated to furthering oratorio singing and providing young singers with opportunities to advance their careers through the annual Lyndon Woodside Oratorio Solo Competition. The Oratorio Society has always viewed bringing new music to New York audiences as part of its mission. It has premiered works as diverse as Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem (1877), Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette (1882), a full-concert production of Wagner’s Parsifal at The Metropolitan Opera House (1886), Tchaikovsky’s a cappella Legend and Pater noster (1891) and Eugene Onegin (1908), the now-standard version of The Star-Spangled Banner (1917, which became the National Anthem in 1931), Bach’s B-minor Mass (1927), Dvo?ák’s St. Ludmila (1993), and Britten’s The World of the Spirit (1998), as well as works by Handel, Liszt, Schütz, Schubert, Debussy, Elgar, Saint Saëns, and many others. Kent Tritle is the music director of the Oratorio Society of New York.
The Boychoir of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City is composed of boys from several divisions of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. The ensemble was founded in 1988 by its artistic director Francisco J. Núñez with a commitment to diversity and musical excellence, and today more than 1,100 children of all ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds participate annually through the chorus’s core after-school program and its satellite program in New York City schools. The Young People’s Chorus of New York City has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall and the White House to Smetana Hall in Prague and St. Martin in the Fields in London. It represented the United States at the 2005 World Symposium on Choral Music in Kyoto, has won five gold medals in World Choir Olympics competitions, and was recently honored to sing for Pope Benedict XVI on his first papal visit to the U.S. The group has premiered over 50 commissions as part of its Transient Glory series and has been recognized with a 2005 Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, Chorus America’s 2006 Education Outreach Award, and as “a national model of artistic excellence and diversity” by the Presidential Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
Repertoire
Like Leonard Bernstein’s first two symphonies and several of his other works, his Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, is concerned with modern man’s struggle for meaning and spiritual faith. In the Symphony No. 3 he addressed his chosen subject more directly than ever before: the work includes a speaker, a figure who narrates and acts out the crisis of faith in conjunction with several contrasting settings of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. In this explicitly dramatic context, the music — which contains some of Bernstein’s most ambitious and complex writing — is revealed as very personal and very specific in meaning. However, the crucial spoken text gave Bernstein trouble. His original version, completed in 1963, cast the speaker as the voice of man angrily confronting God with his grievances and seeking reconciliation; revisions made in 1977 refined this conception. But late in life the composer was still reconsidering the piece; in 1989, the year before his death, he invited his friend Samuel Pisar to create a new text for the symphony based on his own personal story of faith, as a Holocaust survivor. In 2003 Mr. Pisar was the speaker in the premiere of his own version, a role which he reprises at these concerts. The New York Philharmonic gave the New York Premiere of the Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, in April 1964, with the composer conducting and Felicia Montealegre as speaker; Jennie Tourel was the soloist. The only other Philharmonic performances of the work were in September 1988, led by Zubin Mehta, with Sam Waterston as speaker and Wendy White as soloist.
Seeing Napoleon as the liberator of the downtrodden, Ludwig van Beethoven initially titled his Symphony No. 3 “Bonaparte.” However, when Napoleon crowned himself the Emperor of France, Beethoven showed his disappointment by changing the title to “A Heroic Symphony Composed to Celebrate the Memory of a Great Man.” It was then dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, at whose home Beethoven conducted a private performance prior to the symphony’s public premiere at the Theater an der Wien on April 7, 1805. The Eroica Symphony, in which Beethoven perfected the new “symphonic ideal,” was a turning point in the history of modern music. According to New York Philharmonic Program Annotator James M. Keller, Beethoven’s development as a composer — his building on Classical models to create his own musical voice, and the use of that voice to advocate his support of political liberties — came together in his Symphony No. 3. “After Beethoven’s Third there was no turning back for symphonists,” he writes. The New York Philharmonic first performed the Symphony No. 3 in February 1843, with Ureli Corelli Hill conducting, and most recently, in November 2006, with Lorin Maazel conducting.
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Credit Suisse is the Global Sponsor of the New York Philharmonic.
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The New York Philharmonic’s participation in Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds is made possible, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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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.
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Tickets for this performance are $25 (orchestra level) and $10 (2nd and 3rd tier levels) and are available at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office, through CenterCharge, (212) 721-6500, or purchased online at www.lincolncenter.org. Limited FREE tickets for students and seniors are available beginning October 20 at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office.
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Juilliard Orchestra
Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds
Presented by the New York Philharmonic
at Avery Fisher Hall
Monday, November 24, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Alan Gilbert, conductor
Jennifer Zetlan, soprano
Samuel Pisar, speaker
Oratorio Society of New York Philharmonic
Kent Tritle, director
Young People’s Chorus of New York City
Francisco J. Núñez, director
BERNSTEIN Symphony No. 3, Kaddish
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3, Eroica
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