Gilbert returns to Germany to lead the Bavarian Radio Symphony
Following rave reviews earlier this season for his debut performances with two of the world’s most august symphony orchestras – the Berlin Staatskapelle and Leipzig Gewandaus Orchestra – conductor Alan Gilbert returns to Germany for concerts of Brahms and Britten with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich (April 11-12). Gilbert – whose contract as music director of the New York Philharmonic was recently extended through the 2016-17 season – led performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle with the Berlin Staatskapelle in November, moving the Berliner Morgenpost to declare: “To say it straightaway, the performance of Alan Gilbert was a great event in Berlin concert life.” After the conductor’s recent concerts with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony plus Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony and Violin Concerto No. 1 (with Lisa Batiashvili), the Leipziger Volkzeitung offered praise at length: “Gilbert is an unpretentious expert, one who can embed sensuality and clarity in gestures of suggestive persuasion. … A really great ‘Great Concert,’ with a great conductor, who hopefully isn’t standing for the last time at the Gewandhaus podium.”
For his April concerts at Munich’s Herkulessaal with the Bavarian Radio Symphony (April 11-12), Gilbert will lead performances of Brahms’ Serenade No. 1 and, marking the centennial of Benjamin Britten’s birth, Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and Les Illuminations (with soprano Anna Prohaska).
Gilbert has had a particularly strong bond with the orchestras, audiences and critics of Germany since 2006, when he made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic as a last-minute replacement for Bernard Haitink – a performance that came only a month after a triumphant debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester. At the time, Klaus Geitel, dean of Germany’s classical music critics, described Gilbert in the Berliner Morgenpost as “the embodiment of a conducting ‘event’,” noting in his glowing review:
“He is a bundle of energy who fully understands how to coax his orchestra into a real frenzy. The outer movements [of Schumann’s First Symphony] swell in his hands right up to their gigantic releases. But he also proves to be a master of delicate nuances. The larghetto was absolutely poetic – dying away as if breathing its last. … He is absolutely aquiver with musicality and a clear view of his goal, but he’s self-contained, not nervous or high-strung, and not flashy. He knows exactly which way he wants to take the music. And that’s the way music works: anyone who doesn’t know what’s at the end can’t find the way there.”
Earlier this year, Gilbert returned to Germany in his role as principal guest conductor of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducting the group in Hamburg and Lübeck in programs that ranged from Brahms and Bruckner to Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.
Alan Gilbert’s most recent guest conducting appearances were with the Cleveland Orchestra, where he substituted in March for an ailing Pierre Boulez in a program of Ravel’s Mother Goose and Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Cleveland’s Plain Dealer called Gilbert’s Mahler “unabashedly extroverted” and “filled to the brim with emotion,” noting, “With Gilbert at the helm, 80 minutes passed in a veritable flash.” Critic Zachary Lewis continued: “The first half of the program, featuring Ravel’s ‘Mother Goose’ ballet, was a wholly different, though no less tantalizing, affair. … Not only did the piece itself occupy a world apart from the Mahler but Gilbert’s performance of it was also one of exceptional, shimmering refinement.” The blog Cultured Cleveland summed it up this way: “The program was an ideal match for Gilbert’s skills and tastes, and his fluency in interpreting it was like watching an expert driver put a Ferrari through its paces.”
Spring Concerts with the New York Philharmonic
After his concerts in Germany, Gilbert returns to the U.S. for performances with the New York Philharmonic. Highlights of the spring season include: Gilbert leading the world-premiere performances of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Philharmonic Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse’s Prospero’s Rooms, a Philharmonic commission (April 17-20); that program, at Avery Fisher Hall, also features Ives’s visionary Symphony No. 4 and Bernstein’s Serenade (with Joshua Bell as soloist). On April 26, the Philharmonic will present The Strand Settings, a song cycle by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg, co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall and featuring Renée Fleming (April 26, Carnegie Hall). Then, from May 2 to May 17, it’s back across the Atlantic as Gilbert leads the New York Philharmonic on its EUROPE / SPRING 2013 tour, which includes the orchestra’s first performances in Istanbul, Turkey in 18 years.
In June at Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic, the conductor presents Gilbert’s Playlist (May 31-June 29), a personal curatorial series showcasing many of the themes that have run through his tenure with the orchestra so far. Among the features of Gilbert’s Playlist will be the conductor and Philharmonic joining forces with trumpeter-composer Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to perform Marsalis’s Swing Symphony (May 31 and June 1; Swing Symphony will also be performed on its own in a Rush Hour concert on May 30). Gilbert will also reunite with Lisa Batiashvili to reprise their success from Leipzig with Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 on a program also featuring Dallapiccola’s searing one-act opera, Il Prigioniero (June 6-11). In addition, Gilbert will join Batiashvili as one of the two violinists playing Brahms’s String Quintet in G Major as part of a Saturday Matinee program on June 8 that also includes the orchestra’s Principal Violist Cynthia Phelps, Principal Cellist Carter Brey, and Associate Principal Violist Rebecca Young. Gilbert’s Playlist and the Philharmonic’s season culminate with the hotly anticipated A Dancer’s Dream: Two Works by Stravinsky (June 27-29), a fusion of symphony, theater and ballet pairing Petrushka and A Fairy’s Kiss. This collaboration with Doug Fitch, Edouard Getaz, and Giants Are Small reunites the team behind two highly acclaimed Philharmonic presentations: the production of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre – “an instant Philharmonic milestone,” according to the New York Times – and the equally celebrated realization of Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, hailed by the Washington Post as “another victory” for Gilbert and company.
Meanwhile, Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic’s Nielsen Project recently earned high marks from the New York Times, which named the first CD installment of their cycle of orchestral works by 20th-century Danish master Carl Nielsen as one of the “Best Classical Albums of 2012.” The review praised Gilbert’s “pulsing and insightful accounts” of the Symphonies No. 2 “The Four Temperaments” and No. 3 “Sinfonia espansiva.” The disc, released last September on the Dacapo label, is the first in a series that will offer Nielsen’s six symphonies and three concertos on four CDs, culminating in a complete set for the 150th anniversary of Nielsen’s birth in 2015.
This month, Gilbert will also be seen on an iconic television program, making a special guest appearance on Sesame Street (on YouTube April 9; on PBS stations beginning April 11, and on WNET/Thirteen in New York City on April 12). Earlier this season Gilbert showed off his comedy skills, appearing in an episode of NBC’s popular TV series 30 Rock.
A list of the conductor’s spring engagements follows, with additional information to be found at his website: www.alangilbert.com.
Alan Gilbert: upcoming engagements
April 5: New York, NY (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
New York Philharmonic
CONTACT! No. 2
Chin: Gougalon (U.S. premiere)
Ruders: Oboe Concerto (U.S. premiere, with Liang Wang)
Hillborg: Vaporized Tivoli (NY premiere)
Robin: Backdraft (U.S. premiere–New York Philharmonic Co-Commission)
April 6: New York, NY (Symphony Space)
New York Philharmonic
CONTACT! No. 2
Chin: Gougalon (U.S. premiere)
Ruders: Oboe Concerto (U.S. premiere, with Liang Wang)
Hillborg: Vaporized Tivoli (NY premiere)
Robin: Backdraft (U.S. premiere–New York Philharmonic Co-Commission)
April 11 & 12: Munich, Germany (Herkulessaal der Residenz)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Brahms: Serenade No. 1, Op. 11
Britten: Les Illuminations, Op. 18 (with Anna Prohaska, soprano)
Britten: A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34
April 17, 18, 19 & 20: New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
Rouse: Prospero’s Rooms (world premiere–New York Philharmonic Commission)
Bernstein: Serenade (after Plato’s “Symposium”) (with Joshua Bell)
Ives: Symphony No. 4
April 24, 25 & 27: New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 (with Emanuel Ax)
Bruckner: Symphony No. 3
April 26: New York, NY (Carnegie Hall)
New York Philharmonic
Respighi: The Fountains of Rome
Hillborg: The Strand Settings (world premiere, Philharmonic co-commission, with Renée Fleming)
Mussorgsky/Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition
May 2-17
EUROPE/SPRING 2013 tour
New York Philharmonic
Complete tour information available here
May 27: New York, NY (The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine)
New York Philharmonic
Free Annual Memorial Day Concert
Bruckner: Symphony No. 3
May 30: New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
Rush Hour Concert Program No. 3
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (music director/trumpet)
Marsalis: Swing Symphony (Symphony No. 3)
May 31 & June 1: New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
Gilbert’s Playlist
The Jazz Effect
Stravinsky: Ragtime for 11 Instruments (conducted by Case Scaglione)
Shostakovich: Tahiti Trot (conducted by Case Scaglione)
Copland: Clarinet Concerto (with Mark Nuccio)
Marsalis: Swing Symphony (Symphony No. 3)
June 6, 8 & 11: New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
Gilbert’s Playlist
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 (Lisa Batiashvili)
Dallapiccola: Il Prigioniero (cast to include Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Patricia Racette, soprano; Peter Hoare, tenor; The Collegiate Chorale)
June 7: Greenvale, NY (Tilles Center, C.W. Post Campus)
New York Philharmonic
Mussorgsky: Prelude to Khovanshchina
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 (with Lisa Batiashvili)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique”
June 8: New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
Saturday Matinee Concert
Brahms: String Quintet in G major (with Gilbert on violin)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique”
June 20, 21 & 22: New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
Gilbert’s Playlist
Rouse: Seeing for Piano and Orchestra (with Emanuel Ax)
Wagner/arr. Alan Gilbert, after Erich Leinsdorf: A Ring Journey
June 27, 28 & 29: New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
Gilbert’s Playlist
(with Sara Mearns, dancer; a production by Giants Are Small; Doug Fitch, director/designer; Edouard Getaz, producer; Karole Armitage, choreographer)
Stravinsky: The Fairy’s Kiss
Stravinsky: Petrushka
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