1. Art and Diseño

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 2, 2015
Contact: Katherine E. Johnson
(212) 875-5718; [email protected]
THOMAS ADÈS TO MAKE
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC CONDUCTING DEBUT
LEADING U.S. PREMIERE of His TOTENTANZ
With Mezzo-Soprano CHRISTIANNE STOTIJN and Baritone SIMON KEENLYSIDE
In Their New York Philharmonic Debuts
Program Also To Include
BEETHOVEN’s Symphony No. 1 and
BERLIOZ’s Les Francs-juges Overture
March 12–14, 2015
Composer-conductor Thomas Adès will make his New York Philharmonic conducting debut
leading the U.S. Premiere of his Totentanz, featuring mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn and
baritone Simon Keenlyside, both in their Philharmonic debuts; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1;
and Berlioz’s Les Francs-juges Overture, Thursday, March 12, 2015, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, March
13 at 7:30 p.m.; and Saturday, March 14 at 8:00 p.m.
Thomas Adès and his works have appeared frequently at the Philharmonic in recent seasons. The
Philharmonic commissioned and premiered his America (A Prophecy) in November 1999 as one
of the “Messages for the Millennium,” led by then Music Director Kurt Masur. In January 2011
Mr. Adès made his Philharmonic debut as soloist in his work In Seven Days (Concerto for Piano
with Moving Image), led by Music Director Alan Gilbert. In 2012 Alan Gilbert conducted Mr.
Adès’s Polaris, a Philharmonic co-commission, in its New York Premiere and later in its U.K.
Premiere during the Philharmonic’s Barbican Centre International Associate residency as part of
the EUROPE / WINTER 2012 tour. Most recently, in December 2013, the Philharmonic
performed his Three Studies from Couperin, led by David Zinman.
Speaking about the composer, Alan Gilbert has said: “Tom Adès has absolute control over what
he puts on the page and how it translates into actual sound in the concert hall. For me, the
measure of a real composer is someone who is able to manipulate sounds in a very controlled
way. Tom has an incredible ear and sense of rhythm, so the complexity in his score is always
there for a reason, and he knows how to express feelings through his craft.”
Thomas Adès conducted the World Premiere of his Totentanz with Christianne Stotijn, Simon
Keenlyside, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in July 2013 during the BBC Proms. The other
works on the program — Beethoven’s First Symphony and Berlioz’s Les Francs-juges Overture
— have become staples of Mr. Adès’s conducting career.
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Related Events
 Philharmonic Free Fridays
The New York Philharmonic is offering 100 free tickets for young people ages 13–26 to the
concert Friday, March 13 as part of Philharmonic Free Fridays. Information is available at
nyphil.org/freefridays. Philharmonic Free Fridays offers 100 free tickets to 13–26-year-olds
to each of the 2014–15 season’s 18 Friday evening subscription concerts; it is part of Share
the Music!, a new initiative to support expanded access to the New York Philharmonic.
 Pre-Concert Insights
Author Fred Plotkin will introduce the program. Admission/Tickets to Pre-Concert Insights
are $7; discounts are available for multiple talks, students, and groups. These events take
place one hour before performances, and are held in the Helen Hull Room, unless otherwise
noted. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org/preconcert or (212) 8755656.
Artists
Composer, conductor, and pianist Thomas Adès studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music
and Drama, and read music at King’s College, Cambridge. His first opera, Powder Her Face
(1995), was televised by London Weekend Television for Channel 4 and has been performed
worldwide. The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, commissioned his second opera, The
Tempest, which the composer led in the 2004 World Premiere; it was revived in 2007, again to a
sold-out house, and has since been seen in several major opera houses, including The
Metropolitan Opera (where it was recorded for a Deutsche Grammophon DVD, which
subsequently won a Grammy Award). He is currently working on his third opera, based on Luis
Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel. He has a close association with Simon Rattle, who led Mr.
Adès’s work Asyla (1997) at his final concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
and his first as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as Tevot (2007) with the Berlin
Philharmonic. In 2011 Thomas Adès’s orchestral work Polaris (co-commissioned by the New
York Philharmonic) was premiered by the New World Symphony, led by Michael Tilson
Thomas. Mr. Adès’s most recent work, Totentanz, was premiered at the 2013 BBC Proms by the
BBC Symphony Orchestra. His numerous honors have included the Grawemeyer Award, of
which he is the youngest-ever recipient. From 1999 to 2008 Mr. Adès was artistic director of the
Aldeburgh Festival, and he coaches piano and chamber music annually at the International
Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove.
Dutch mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn studied violin and voice at the Conservatorium van
Amsterdam; after obtaining her solo violin diploma she continued her vocal studies with Udo
Reinemann, Jard van Nes, and Dame Janet Baker. Her numerous awards include the ECHO
Rising Stars Award 2005–06, the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2005, the Nederlands
Muziekprijs in 2008, and being selected as a BBC New Generation Artist in 2007. Bernard
Haitink has had a profound influence on her career; Ms. Stotijn has performed under his
direction with orchestras including Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw and the Boston,
Chicago, and London symphony orchestras. She has also worked with Claudio Abbado, Ivan
Fischer, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Dudamel, Mark
Elder, and Jaap van Zweden, performing repertoire including Berlioz’s La Mort de Cléopâtre
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and Les Nuits d’été, Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Britten’s Phaedra, Musorgsky’s Songs and Dances of
Death, Mahler’s Rückert Lieder and Kindertotenlieder, Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs,
Henze’s Fünf neapolitanische Lieder, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, and Berg’s Seven Early
Songs. Ms. Stotijn also performs art song in recital and appears regularly on the operatic stage.
She has participated in numerous World Premieres, including Michel van der Aa’s Spaces of
Blank, jointly dedicated to Ms. Stotijn and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in
2009. In 2013 she sang the World Premiere of Thomas Adès’s Totentanz at the BBC Proms. Ms.
Stotijn has released several recordings on Onyx, including the 2010 recording of Tchaikovsky
songs (BBC Music Magazine Award); for MDG, she recorded Frank Martin’s Die Weise von
Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (2008 ECHO Klassik Award). Ms. Stotijn recently
signed with Warner Classics and released her first album for them, If the Owl Calls Again, in
November 2014. These performances mark her New York Philharmonic debut.
Baritone Simon Keenlyside has a particularly close association with The Metropolitan Opera;
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and the Bavarian and Vienna Staatsoper companies, where
his roles have included Prospero (in Thomas Adès’s The Tempest), Posa (Verdi’s Don Carlo),
Germont Père (Verdi’s La Traviata), Papageno (Mozart’s The Magic Flute), Count Almaviva
(Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro), and the title roles in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Tchaikovsky’s
Eugene Onegin, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Berg’s Wozzeck, Britten’s Billy Budd,
Thomas’s Hamlet, and Verdi’s Macbeth and Rigoletto. In 2015 he travels to Tokyo with the
Royal Opera House for Macbeth, and returns to the Vienna Staatsoper (for Don Giovanni,
Macbeth, and Rigoletto), Bavarian Staatsoper (for Verdi’s Falstaff, La Traviata, Don Carlo, and
Un ballo in maschera), and The Met. In 2007 he was given the ECHO Klassik award for male
singer of the year, and in 2011 he was named Musical America’s Vocalist of the Year. Mr.
Keenlyside sings extensively in concert, appearing with The Cleveland and Philharmonia
Orchestras and the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras, among others. He also appears
regularly in major international recital venues in partnership with Graham Johnson, Malcolm
Martineau, and Emanuel Ax; he has recorded a disc of Schumann Lieder with Johnson and four
recital discs with Martineau, featuring works by Schubert, Richard Strauss, and Brahms, as well
as an English song disc, Songs of War (Solo Vocal Award/Gramophone Awards 2012). Other
recordings include Britten’s War Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mahler’s Des Knaben
Wunderhorn, the title roles in Macbeth, Don Giovanni, and Billy Budd, as well as Orff’s
Carmina burana, Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème, Papageno in The Magic Flute, Count
Almaviva in Rene Jacobs’s award-winning recording of The Marriage of Figaro, and Prospero
in Thomas Adès’s The Tempest (Best Opera Recording/Grammy Awards 2014 and Music DVD
Recording of the Year/Echo Klassik Awards 2014). Simon Keenlyside was named a Commander
of the British Empire in 2003. These performances mark his New York Philharmonic debut.
Repertoire
Although Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 (1799–1800, labeled by the composer as “Grande
Simphonie”) may not strike the modern listener as being as iconoclastic as the Eroica, this
symphony was certainly viewed that way by the Viennese audience who heard it in April 1800,
with the composer himself on the podium. Having chafed under the influence of his teacher
Joseph (aka “Papa”) Haydn, the “son” wanted to break free. Beethoven broke a number of
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taboos, including starting the work on a dissonant chord, atypical key changes, unusual
dynamics, and a third movement menuetto taken at an exuberant tempo (thereby inventing the
symphonic scherzo). Despite some critical outrage, he was well on his way to becoming the
Beethoven whom we continue to admire today. The Philharmonic’s first performance of the
work was in March 1854 at the Broadway Tabernacle, conducted by Theodore Elsfeld; Alan
Gilbert led the most recent performances in January–February 2014 in New York and on the
ASIA / WINTER 2014 tour.
Hector Berlioz (1803–69) composed the Les Francs-juges Overture in 1826, when he was only
23. The work is from his unfinished opera (the translation of the title means “The Judges of the
Secret Court”) utilizing a libretto by his friend Humbert Ferrand that follows a political prisoner
whose faithful fiancée saves him from a secret court, whose sentence is always death. Berlioz
ultimately abandoned the opera, but retained the now-popular overture, and used some of the
other material in later works. In Les Francs-juges Berlioz was already exploring the colors of
orchestral instruments and the feelings they can evoke; he added two piccolos, contrabassoon,
and two tubas to the upper and lower registers of the orchestra for extra layers of sound, and such
textures perfectly portray, for example, the chilling menace of the courts and the lurking dangers
of their forest location. Alfred Boucher led the first New York Philharmonic performance of the
work in March 1846; Andrew Davis conducted the most recent performances in June 2010.
Thomas Adès (b. 1971) dedicated his 2013 Totentanz for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and
orchestra to the memory of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski (1913–94) and his wife,
Danuta. The work utilizes the anonymous text that appeared under a 15th-century frieze at the
Marienkirche in Lübeck, Germany, which was destroyed by bombing in World War II. The
imagery on the cloth showed Death linking hands with various representations of humanity. The
baritone plays the role of Death, who addresses human beings in turn, working his way through
the Medieval hierarchy from Pope to Emperor, from maiden to child. The mezzo-soprano
expresses humanity’s attempts to escape, and the orchestra illustrates the futility of their
situation. The composer says that it is not an “optional” dance — it is “terrifying, leveling … no
one can escape it; it’s also funny … because of the total powerlessness of everyone.” The work
was premiered at the 2013 BBC Proms by Simon Keenleyside, Christianne Stotijn, and the BBC
Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.
***
These concerts are made possible with generous support by The Francis Goelet Fund and The
Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation.
***
Programs are supported, in part, by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural
Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the
New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the
New York State Legislature.
***
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Tickets
Tickets for these performances start at $33. Pre-Concert Insights are $7; discounts are available
for multiple talks, students, and groups (visit nyphil.org/preconcert for more information).
Tickets may be purchased online at nyphil.org or by calling (212) 875-5656, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00
p.m. Monday through Friday; 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturday; and noon to 5:00 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets may also be purchased at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office. The Box Office opens at
10:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and at noon on Sunday. On performance evenings, the
Box Office closes one-half hour after performance time; other evenings it closes at 6:00 p.m. A
limited number of $16 tickets for select concerts may be available through the Internet for
students within 10 days of the performance, or in person the day of. Valid identification is
required. To determine ticket availability, call the Philharmonic’s Customer Relations
Department at (212) 875-5656. [Ticket prices subject to change.]
For press tickets, call Lanore Carr in the New York Philharmonic Marketing and
Communications Department at (212) 875-5714, or e-mail her at [email protected].
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New York Philharmonic
Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center
Thursday, March 12, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Friday, March 13, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 14, 2015, 8:00 p.m.
Pre-Concert Insights (one hour before each concert) with author Fred Plotkin
Thomas Adès†, conductor
Christianne Stotijn*, mezzo-soprano
Simon Keenlyside*, baritone
BEETHOVEN
BERLIOZ
Thomas ADÈS
Symphony No. 1
Les Francs-juges Overture
Totentanz (U.S. Premiere)
† New York Philharmonic conducting debut
* New York Philharmonic debut
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ALL PROGRAMS SUBJECT TO CHANGE
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