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New York Philharmonic 

Alan Gilbert conductor 

Wednesday 3 February 2010 7.30pm 

Barbican Hall 

Magnus Lindberg EXPO UK premiere 

Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 

Interval 

Sibelius Symphony No. 2 

Yefim Bronfman piano 

Thursday 4 February 2010 7.30pm 

Barbican Hall 

Haydn Symphony No. 49, ‘La Passione’ 

John Adams The Wound-Dresser 

Interval 

Chris Lee 

Schubert Symphony No. 8, ‘Unfinished’ 

Berg Three Orchestral Pieces 

Thomas Hampson baritone

Wednesday 3 February 

Magnus Lindberg (born 1958) 

EXPO (2009) UK premiere 

Magnus Lindberg, who is beginning a two-year 

appointment as the New York Philharmonic’s composer-inresidence, 

emerged on the international music scene in the 

1980s, one of a handful of Finnish composers of his 

generation that included Kaija Saariaho, Jouni Kaipainen, 

and Esa-Pekka Salonen. All four studied with the same 

teacher at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the renowned 

composer and pedagogue Paavo Heininen. Lindberg also 

worked with another senior eminence of Finnish music, the 

composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. 

Lindberg and Salonen were close colleagues during their 

student years, and together they founded Toimii, an 

instrumental ensemble that not only championed modern 

music but also helped both composers investigate novel 

instrumental possibilities and compositional procedures. 

Lindberg was also active as a pianist, appearing in concert 

and on recordings, especially in contemporary repertoire. In 

1981 he left Finland for Paris, where he studied with Vinko 

Globokar and Gérard Grisey. Other formative training 

came from Franco Donatoni (in Siena), Brian Ferneyhough 

(in Darmstadt), and at the EMS Electronic Music Studio (in 

Stockholm). His work has been honoured with such awards 

as the UNESCO International Rostrum for Composers (1982 

and 1986), the Prix Italia (1986), the Nordic Council Music 

Prize (1988), the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize (1993) and 

the Wihuri Sibelius Prize (2003). 

During the 1980s Lindberg’s music revealed its composer’s 

penchant for complexity, a trait that led him to be 

uncompromising in the difficulties he sets before his 

musicians. ‘Only the extreme is interesting’, Lindberg 

proclaimed. ‘Striving for a balanced totality is nowadays an 

impossibility … an original mode of expression can only be 

achieved through the marginal – the hypercomplex 

combined with the primitive.’ As the decade unrolled, 

Lindberg grew increasingly preoccupied with the intricacies 

of rhythmic interaction on multiple levels; this led to the 

composition, in 1983, of his Zona for solo cello and chamber 

ensemble. Zona – Lindberg favours short, single-word titles – 

brought his investigations of rhythmic complexity to the 

practical limit of the unaided human mind, so for his next 

major work, the award-winning Kraft (for orchestra plus an 

ancillary ensemble that plays on both traditional musical 

instruments and such ‘found’ objects as chair legs and car 

springs), he devised a computer program to assist in 

generating more meticulous calculations to fuel his 

composition. Other computer programs would follow, 

always keeping up with advances in technology. 

In the course of music history, composers drawn towards 

stylistic complexity have often arrived at a breaking-point 

and then moved on to a soundworld that (at least from the 

outside) appears far simpler. Similarly, following the intense 

difficulty of Zona and Kraft Lindberg proceeded to 

2


soundscapes that, in many cases, seem more relaxed and 

less insistently close to overload; some might even be 

described as smooth or spacious. That said, many of 

Lindberg’s scores, even those in the modern ‘classicist’ 

mode, remain generally vigorous, colourful, dense and 

kinetic and, despite the extreme refinement of his 

compositional method, his scores manage to sound very 

spontaneous. 

Although he has worked in a variety of genres, Lindberg has 

carved out a particular reputation as a composer of 

orchestral music. ‘The orchestra’, he has declared, ‘is my 

favourite instrument.’ Symphonic works of the past decade 

or so include Feria (whose American premiere was given by 

the New York Philharmonic in 1997, conducted by Jukka- 

Pekka Saraste), a Concerto for Orchestra (2002) and 

concertos for cello (1999), clarinet (2002) and violin (2006). 

Among his most recent works is Seht die Sonne (‘Behold the 

Sun’), jointly commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and 

the San Francisco Symphony, and described in the Financial 

Times as ‘an extravagant and glittering piece on a grand 

scale’. These scores reveal Lindberg’s increasing interest in 

presenting clear-cut melody, sometimes even of a folkish tint, 

underscoring that even after composing some 80 works he 

continues to develop an idiosyncratic path of personal 

creative discovery. 

About EXPO – Magnus Lindberg’s first work written for the 

New York Philharmonic and also the first piece that Alan 

Gilbert conducted as the Orchestra’s Music Director, on 

16 September 2009 – the composer has offered the 

following thoughts: 

‘The title is self-explanatory; it’s the exposition of Alan’s 

season. I work with extremely strong contrasts, setting up 

some contrasts between super-fast and super-slow music 

and then a strange amalgam between these poles. It’s a 

piece built on qualities I find so gorgeous in Alan’s way of 

making music – absolute technical and physical straightness, 

no mystery around the rational part of it, and then on top of 

that the highly irrational and mysterious part of how you 

actually put music together. 

Given the brevity of the piece – 9 or 10 minutes – I thought a 

pithy word such as “EXPO” would make a fitting title; 

besides, I like the sound of the word. A work of any length 

must have a trajectory, a sense of direction and logic about 

the way it evolves. I have tried to establish a musical 

language to communicate this drama. As short as EXPO is, 

there are more than 10 tempo markings, resulting in a 

feeling of great tension and energy in the orchestra.’ 

Programme note © James M. Keller, New York Philharmonic 

Program Annotator 

3


Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953) 

Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16 (1912–13) 

1 Andantino 

2 Scherzo: Vivace 

3 Intermezzo: Allegro moderato 

4 Allegro tempestoso 


Prokofiev was a born show-off and a born competitor, and 

his music demonstrates that time and again – not necessarily 

in aggressive or unpleasant ways, though that side of his 

nature certainly surfaced from time to time, but rather in his 

fondness for telling stories, for casting magic spells, for 

demonstrating gymnastic, sporty and especially balletic 

prowess. Those are all qualities calculated to hold an 

audience in thrall, and they combined to make him a natural 

for the concerto medium. 

His Second Piano Concerto gives the fullest possible rein to 

all these gifts. He composed it in 1912–13, just before his 

graduation from the St Petersburg Conservatoire, primarily 

as a vehicle for his own virtuosity, and many would rate it by 

some distance the most technically demanding of all 

concertos in the standard repertoire. Though Prokofiev never 

admitted as much, it would not be surprising had he been 

deliberately aiming to outdo Rachmaninov’s massive Third 

Concerto, which was published and first performed in Russia 

in 1910. Prokofiev’s score was destroyed by fire at the time of 

the 1917–21 Civil War in the early days of Bolshevik rule. He 

reconstructed and reorchestrated it in his voluntary exile, 

during a stay in Bavaria in 1923. 

The deceptively lulling first theme is marked narrante 

(narrating), just as Rachmaninov’s plainer opening theme 

could easily have been. But this story proves to be not one of 

Rachmaninovian nostalgia and longing, nor of heroism and 

triumph, nor even one in which the soloist becomes 

emotionally embroiled. Rather it is in essence a fairytale, 

populated by larger- and stranger-than-life characters, 

unfolding in a world of mythical castles, potentates, 

hobgoblins and sundry grotesques. It asks us to suspend 

disbelief and look on in childlike awe. 

4


The pianist is cast in the role of spell-master and illusionistin-chief, 

conjuring up undreamt-of beings and making 

them dance to his tunes, sometimes commanding the whole 

charade to cease so that he can take every role himself, as in 

the hypertrophic first-movement cadenza. Like the massive 

cadenza in the original version of Rachmaninov’s Third, this 

one occupies the structural place of a sonata recapitulation. 

The opening theme then closes the narrative frame, 

providing just a few seconds of calm for the soloist to 

regain composure. 

Then we are straight into a two-and-a-half-minute perpetualmotion 

Scherzo, consisting of no fewer than 1504 continuous 

semiquavers, challengingly laid out in parallel motion 

between the hands. Here the soloist doubles, in effect, as 

juggler and contortionist. The third movement is nominally an 

Intermezzo, but in character it comes across more like a 

grotesque march. Its extravagant gestures reminded 

Sviatoslav Richter of ‘a dragon devouring its young’, though 

when all is said and done perhaps this is only a pantomime 

dragon. 

For all the hand-flinging antics in the finale’s early stages, it 

contains more reflective episodes than the previous two 

movements. Two of these episodes have the makings of solo 

cadenzas, but neither grows to the monstrous dimensions of 

their counterpart in the first movement. Prokofiev was rarely 

one to strain himself unduly over such matters as structural 

transition, but the way he lets the second solo episode 

edge back towards the main theme is a compositional 

masterstroke. However, there is nothing particularly subtle 

about the last few pages, which return us to the main business 

of neo-Lisztian acrobatics. 

Programme note © David Fanning 

INTERVAL 

5


Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) 

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 (1901–2) 

1 Allegretto 

2 Tempo andante, ma rubato 

3 Vivacissimo – 

4 Finale: Allegro moderato 

Sketches for the Second Symphony date back to Sibelius’s 

visit to Italy in early 1901. At the time he was contemplating 

various ambitious projects, none of which would come to 

fruition, including a four-movement tone-poem based on the 

Don Juan story and a setting of Dante’s Divina Commedia. 

His sketched ideas found their way instead into the slow 

movement of the symphony. 

The trip to Italy had come about at the suggestion of 

Sibelius’s friend, the amateur musician Axel Carpelan, who 

around this time raised money to allow Sibelius to relinquish 

his duties at the Helsinki Conservatoire and devote himself 

to the composition of the Second Symphony. When the 

composer returned to Finland for the summer and autumn 

of 1901, he still found the task an arduous one, but the work 

was essentially complete by November. Extensive revisions 

delayed the first performance (in Helsinki under the 

composer’s direction) first to January the following year, then 

again to 8 March. From that moment on, however, the 

symphony enjoyed unparalleled success in Finland, and it 

was soon to provide Sibelius with a major breakthrough in 

Germany, the kind of thing many Scandinavian composers 

(including Sibelius’s exact contemporary in Denmark, Carl 

Nielsen) craved, yet never achieved. 

Early reactions to the symphony read into it a portrayal of 

Finnish resistance to Russification. The country had indeed 

been under Russian rule since 1809, and the dispensation 

under the last of the Romanov tsars was far from liberal. 

Sibelius was certainly a good patriot and happy to voice his 

solidarity with national aspirations; and the defiant-heroic 

tone of his finale seems to invite extra-musical interpretation 

on these lines. Yet when Finnish commentators persisted as 

late as 1945 in writing of this as a ‘Liberation Symphony’, he 

issued emphatic disclaimers. 

What defines the originality of the work, and arguably has 

helped it retain its extraordinary popularity, is something 

more abstract, yet ultimately more potent, than any 

hypothetical political message, namely its exploratory 

6


attitude to musical motion. This is at its most striking in the 

moderately paced first movement, which poses all sorts of 

questions and therefore offers conductors considerable 

latitude in interpretation. Is the very opening an 

accompaniment or a theme, for example? Is its basic pulse 

defined by the steadily throbbing crotchets or by their 

broader melodic ascent? As the music unfolds, where are the 

main points of structural articulation, apart from the 

extremely characteristic theme (first heard on declamatory 

woodwind) beginning with a long held note and ending in 

a flurry of short ones? Leaving all these issues undecided, 

the music evolves in an improvisatory succession of moods, 

rarely emotional or dramatic on the surface, but all in a 

state of becoming and carried along as though by forces 

of nature. 

The two central movements are again remarkable for their 

economy of means and concealed structural energy. The 

dark-hued slow movement is built around an introspective 

melody for bassoons (marked ‘lugubriously’) and quiet, 

chorale-like phrases in the strings, those ideas being spaced 

by more of the accelerations that have already marked the 

first movement. 

The scherzo then contrasts a whirlwind of agitated stringwriting 

with a heartfelt trio section led off by the oboe; 

displaying a fine instinct for symphonic proportion, Sibelius 

curtails this trio, so that its recurrence after the repeat of the 

scherzo will not sound jaded. Even more effectively, this 

recurrence leads straight on to the finale rather than back to 

a final statement of the scherzo – in broad terms following 

the model of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Now the 

redemptive tone promised by the quasi-religious ideas of the 

slow movement at last comes out into the open. And while the 

finale itself may be open to criticism for its relatively 

conventional imagery and structure, it is nothing if not bold in 

its attempt to measure up to Beethovenian (and other) 

precedents. 

Programme note © David Fanning 

7

Thursday 4 February 

Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) 

Symphony No. 49 in F minor, ‘La Passione’, Hob. I:49 (1768) 

1 Adagio 

2 Allegro di molto 

3 Menuet 

4 Finale: Presto 

Dated 1768, ‘La Passione’ is one of the most famous of a 

whole series of minor-mode Haydn symphonies from around 

1770. Some commentators have postulated – with no 

biographical evidence – that this outbreak of minor-key 

angst was prompted by a ‘romantic crisis’. In any case, 

Haydn was the least confessional of composers. Far more 

convincing is the notion that, like other composers, including 

J. B. Vanhal, Carlo d’Ordoñez (Austrian, despite his name) 

and the teenage Mozart (in his ‘little’ G minor Symphony, 

K183), Haydn was eager to explore the potential for tragic or 

stormy expression in a symphonic language that, thanks 

above all to Haydn himself, was rapidly developing in 

complexity and expressive power. This proliferation of minorkey 

symphonies has spawned the term Sturm und Drang 

(literally ‘Storm and Surge’, but more commonly rendered as 

‘Storm and Stress’), after a blood-and-thunder play on the 

American Revolution by Maximilian Klinger – a convenient 

enough stylistic label, though the official Sturm und Drang 

literary movement, kickstarted by Goethe’s rampaging 1773 

drama Götz von Berlichingen and his sensational novel Die 

Leiden des jungen Werther, lay in the future. 

‘La Passione’ is the last of Haydn’s symphonies to adopt the 

old sonata da chiesa (church sonata) pattern – ie, beginning 

with a slow movement. It is also his only symphony to retain 

the minor mode for each of the four movements; this, 

together with its lean, acerbic orchestral palette (strings plus 

oboes and horns, the latter used as a sombre or ominous 

backdrop), gives the work an almost unremitting bleakness. 

As with so many Haydn symphonies, the origins of the 

nickname are obscure, though one story has it that the work 

was first performed on Good Friday in the Esterházys’ 

Eisenstadt palace. Certainly, the title fits the opening Adagio, 

with its mournful, burdened tread evocative of the via crucis. 

The initial motif (C–D flat–B flat–C) pervades each of the four 

movements, a pointer to Haydn’s growing interest in cyclic 

integration. The unexpected entry of the recapitulation, 

quietly reasserting F minor when the preceding bar led us to 

expect a chord of C minor, is paralleled by the underprepared 

recapitulations in both the second movement and 

the finale – all instances of Haydn’s sophisticated and (here) 

disquieting play with his listeners’ expectations. 

In the hectic, angular Allegro di molto, even more than in the 

Adagio, thematic development and variation spill far beyond 

the so-called ‘development’; as so often with Haydn, the 

recapitulation is not so much a restatement as a fiercely 

compressed reinterpretation of earlier events. The gravely 

beautiful Menuet has its own formal surprise in the 12-bar 

coda, which introduces a new sighing figure that deepens the 

mood of sorrowful resignation. By contrast, the trio, with its 

gleaming high horns, provides the one point of repose – and 

the sole appearance of F major – in the whole symphony. 

The driving, desperate finale revives the second movement’s 

Sturm und Drang with a laconic explosiveness of its own. 

Programme note © Richard Wigmore 

8


John Adams (born 1947) 

The Wound-Dresser (1988) 

Thomas Hampson baritone 

John Adams may have started out as a minimalist, but it has 

been a long time since he graduated from that description 

to become one of America’s most widely performed 

composers of concert music, a distinction he achieved thanks 

to a style in which musical richness and stylistic variety are 

deeply connected to the mainstream impetuses of classical 

music. He grew up studying clarinet and became so 

accomplished that he occasionally performed with the 

Boston Symphony Orchestra. At Harvard he studied 

composition with a starry list of teachers that included Leon 

Kirchner, Earl Kim, Roger Sessions, Harold Shapero, and 

David Del Tredici. After that, armed with a copy of John 

Cage’s book Silence (a graduation gift from his parents), he 

left the ‘eastern establishment’ for the relative aesthetic 

liberation of the West Coast. He arrived in California in 1971 

and has been based in the Bay Area ever since. During his 

first decade there Adams explored an evolving fascination 

with the repetitive momentum of minimalism, but by 1981 he 

was describing himself as ‘a minimalist who is bored with 

minimalism’. 

Among Adams’s most internationally acclaimed works are 

his operas, which characteristically address the personal 

stories behind momentous political or historical events: Nixon 

in China (1987, which considers Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 

meeting with Mao Tse-tung), The Death of Klinghoffer (1990, 

inspired by the hijacking, five years earlier, of the cruise ship 

Achille Lauro), I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw 

the Sky (1995, a ‘song play’ set in the aftermath of the 1994 

Los Angeles earthquake), and Doctor Atomic (premiered in 

2005, involving the testing of the first atomic bomb, and 

which Alan Gilbert led to great acclaim at the Metropolitan 

Opera in 2008). Adams’s most recent opera, A Flowering 

Tree (2006), returns to more classic operatic territory, setting 

a South Indian folktale that involves personal transformations 

and moral choices. In some of these scores, as in many of his 

instrumental compositions, one finds the confluence of 

popular and classical styles, the mixing of high and low 

aesthetics, which reflects the breadth of his inspiration and his 

comprehensive language. 

In 2003 Adams succeeded Pierre Boulez as composer-inresidence 

at Carnegie Hall, remaining in the post until 2007, 

and in 2009 he became creative chair of the Los Angeles 

Philharmonic. In addition to his activities as a composer, he 

has grown increasingly active as a conductor, and has led 

9


many of the world’s most distinguished orchestras in 

programmes that mix his own works with compositions by 

figures as diverse as Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Zappa, Ives, 

Reich, Glass and Ellington. The New York Philharmonic 

spotlighted him in a Composer’s Week dedicated to his music 

in 1997, but for many listeners his most memorable 

connection with the orchestra was the unveiling of his On the 

Transmigration of Souls, a meditation on the attacks of 11 

September, 2001, which the orchestra co-commissioned and 

then premiered at the outset of the 2002 season, and whose 

subsequent recording won three Grammy awards, while the 

work itself garnered a Pulitzer Prize for its composer. 

In 2008 John Adams published Hallelujah Junction, a 

compelling book of memoirs and commentary on American 

musical life. There, we read that The Wound-Dresser ‘began 

as a plan to set prose cameos from Walt Whitman’s account 

of his Civil War days in [his prose collection] Specimen Days’. 

The texts, which involved Whitman’s service in military 

hospitals, ‘made me think of the stories I had heard from San 

Francisco friends, many of them gay, who had lost partners 

and loved ones to the plague of AIDS that, in 1989, was still 

devastating the country’. They also related to ‘the memory of 

a more personal story, that of the long, slow decline of my 

father from Alzheimer’s disease … [and] my mother’s 

struggle and the devotion with which she nursed him’. 

‘Instead of setting Specimen Days’, he reported, ‘I chose The 

Wound-Dresser, a poem that is both graphic and tender, 

perhaps the most intimate recollection of what Whitman 

experienced in his years of selfless work as a nurse and 

caregiver in the hospitals that surrounded wartime 

Washington.’ 



INTERVAL 

10


The Wound-Dresser 

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, 

Straight and swift to my wounded I go, 

Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in, 

Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground, 

Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d 

hospital, 

To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return, 

To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do 

I miss, 

An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, 

Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and 

fill’d again. 

I onward go, I stop, 

With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, 

I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable, 

One turns to me his appealing eyes – poor boy! I never 

knew you, 

Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that 

would save you. 

On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) 

The crush’d head I dress (poor crazed hand tear not the 

bandage away), 

The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and 

through I examine, 

Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, 

yet life struggles hard, 

(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death! 

In mercy come quickly.) 

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep, 

But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted 

and sinking, 

And the yellow-blue countenance see. 

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the 

bullet-wound, 

Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, 

so sickening, so offensive, 

While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray 

and pail. 

I am faithful, I do not give out, 

The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, 

These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my 

breast a fire, a burning flame.) 

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections, 

Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals, 

The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, 

I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young, 

Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad, 

(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d 

and rested, 

Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.) 

Walt Whitman (1819–92) 

From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, 

I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter 

and blood, 

Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and 

side-falling head, 

His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the 

bloody stump, 

And has not yet look’d on it. 

11


Franz Schubert (1797–1828) 

Symphony No. 8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’, D759 (1822) 

1 Allegro moderato 

2 Andante con moto 

The years 1818 to 1822–3 were critical ones for Schubert, 

creatively and personally. Between February 1818, the month 

he completed his Sixth Symphony, and November 1822, 

when he embarked on the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy, he began 

and abandoned nearly a dozen large-scale instrumental 

works, including the Quartettsatz, D703, and four 

symphonies. The most celebrated of these, and the world’s 

most famous symphonic torso, is the so-called ‘Unfinished’, 

begun in the autumn of 1822 and then set aside at the 

beginning of November. 

The symphony is shrouded in mystery. Schubert, whose fame 

as a writer of songs and partsongs was rapidly growing, 

composed it to no commission, with no immediate prospect 

of performance, and never mentioned it in his 

correspondence. The reasons why he abandoned the score 

after orchestrating two movements and sketching a scherzo 

and trio have been endlessly debated. Perhaps the 

symphony’s non-completion can be attributed to the creative 

crisis of 1818–22, when so many torsos testify to Schubert’s 

struggles to reconcile the challenge of Beethoven’s middleperiod 

works with his own increasingly daring, subjective 

vision. According to this theory, after finishing two sublime 

movements he was dissatisfied with the scherzo and daunted 

by the Beethovenian challenge of creating a finale worthy of 

the two completed movements. Or perhaps, as several 

biographers have argued, the answer lies in the syphilitic 

illness Schubert contracted during the winter of 1822–3 and 

its attendant physical and emotional traumas. What we do 

know is that in 1823 Schubert passed the manuscript to his 

friend Josef Hüttenbrenner, in gratitude for the Diploma of 

Honour awarded, at Hüttenbrenner’s behest, by the Styrian 

Music Society in Graz. The symphony remained in the 

possession of Josef and, subsequently, his brother Anselm, 

unknown to the world, until 1865, when the conductor Johann 

Herbeck gave the premiere in a concert of the Vienna 

Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. 

None of Schubert’s earlier instrumental works approaches 

the despairing, almost confessional tone of this, the first great 

Romantic symphony. The tragic atmosphere of the Allegro 

moderato is immediately established by the brooding ‘motto’ 

theme announced pianissimo by unison cellos and basses – 

a darkly haunting symphonic opening distantly presaged by 

Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, the ‘Drum Roll’. The mood 

brightens with the famous ‘second subject’, a transfigured 

waltz sounded on the cellos against repeated syncopations 

on violas and clarinets. But the idyll is quickly shattered by 

volcanic eruptions from the full orchestra and a passage of 

strenuous imitation on a phrase from the waltz theme. At the 

opening of the development Schubert works the motto into 

a protracted, yearning crescendo that generates the most 

apocalyptic climax in all his symphonies. The recapitulation 

omits the motto, which only returns, with inspired dramatic 

timing, at the start of the coda. 

After the first movement’s Stygian close, the luminous main 

theme of the E major Andante con moto, preceded and 

punctuated by a refrain for bassoons, horns and pizzicato 

basses, comes as a profound solace. Although the music is 

later threatened by tumultuous outbursts so characteristic of 

Schubert’s later slow movements, the dominant mood is one 

of mysterious serenity. In one of the composer’s most magical 

harmonic strokes, the coda conjures an unearthly vision of 

A flat major, ppp, before the music glides gently back to the 

home key for the tranquil close. 

Programme note © Richard Wigmore 

12


Alban Berg (1885–1935) 

Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6 (1913–15) 

1 Präludium: Langsam 

2 Reigen: Anfangs etwas zögernd – Leicht beschwingt 

3 Marsch: Mässiges Marschtempo 

Alban Berg did not get off to a promising start. A terrible 

student: he had to repeat two separate years of high school 

before he could finally graduate. Then, too, a fling with the 

family’s kitchen maid led to his becoming a father at the age 

of 17. Though passionate about music, he was clearly not cut 

out for academic success, and sensibly accepted a position 

as an unpaid intern in the civil service. 

The decisive step in his eventual career arrived in the 

autumn of 1904, when he and Anton Webern signed up for 

composition lessons with Arnold Schoenberg, who had 

taken out a newspaper advertisement in the hope of 

attracting pupils. Schoenberg, who was a little more than 

10 years older than Berg and not yet famous, stopped 

offering formal classes after a year, frustrated that most of 

his pupils showed no aptitude for composition. However, 

the talented students – including both Webern and Berg – 

stuck with him. Schoenberg seems not to have insisted that 

his students adopt his own compositional methods; in 

the event, both Webern and Berg developed strikingly 

individual 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 … 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 

reference to his pupil’s work arises organically from the work 

itself; he never has recourse to extraneous theoretical 

maxims.’ 

Berg’s formal studies with Schoenberg continued through 

1911. Writing to his publisher in 1911, Schoenberg remarked: 

‘Alban Berg is an extraordinarily gifted composer, but the 

state he was in when he came to me was such that his 

imagination apparently could not work on anything but 

Lieder … He was absolutely incapable of writing an 

instrumental movement or inventing an instrumental theme.’ 

13


That shortcoming had been rectified by the time Berg 

composed his Three Orchestral Pieces in 1913–15, a work 

that demonstrates his fluency in manipulating a huge 

orchestra toward an expressive end. The direct inspiration 

seems to have come from the premiere of Mahler’s Ninth 

Symphony in June 1912, at which Berg was present. One 

might fairly say that he picked up where Mahler left off; 

Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces takes Mahlerian 

transformation and exaggeration to an extreme, all overlaid 

on a structure of traditional dance-types, such as ländler, 

waltz and march. 

Everything is meticulously organised in these complex 

movements, which are unified by the careful interweaving of 

thematic material. The combined duration of the first two 

pieces perfectly balances that of the third. In fact, the first two 

movements were premiered as a pair, with the March only 

joining them in performance seven years later; even the 

printed score allows that the first two movements may be 

presented without the third. 

Berg had hoped to present the set on Schoenberg’s 40th 

birthday, which fell on 13 September, 1914. But the work 

progressed slowly. ‘I keep asking myself, again and again’, 

he wrote to his mentor, ‘whether what I express [in this 

piece], often brooding over certain bars for days on end, 

is any better than my last things.’ At least the first and 

third pieces were ready in time, and Berg offered them to 

his teacher along with a letter that speaks volumes about 

their relationship: 

‘My hope to write something … I could dedicate to you 

without incurring your displeasure has been repeatedly 

disappointed for several years … I cannot tell today whether I 

have succeeded or failed. Should the latter be the case, then 

in your fatherly benevolence, Mr Schoenberg, you must take 

the goodwill for the deed.’ 



14

about the performers 

About the performers 

Hayley Sparks 

Alan Gilbert conductor 

Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music 

Director of the New York Philharmonic 

in September 2009, the first native 

New Yorker to hold the post. For his 

inaugural season he has introduced a 

number of new initiatives and artistic 

partners: The Marie-Josée Kravis 

composer-in-residence, held by 

Magnus Lindberg, and artist-inresidence, 

held by Thomas Hampson; 

an annual three-week festival; and 

CONTACT!, the New York 

Philharmonic’s new-music series. This 

season he led the orchestra on a major 

tour of Asia, with debuts in Hanoi and 

Abu Dhabi, and he gives world, 

American and New York premieres. 

Also this season he takes up the first 

William Schuman Chair in Musical 

Studies at the Juilliard School, a 

position that includes coaching, 

conducting and performance 

masterclasses. 

Highlights of last season with the 

New York Philharmonic included the 

Bernstein anniversary concert at 

Carnegie Hall and a performance 

with the Juilliard Orchestra. In May last 

year Alan Gilbert conducted the world 

premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The 

World in Flower, a New York 

Philharmonic commission, and in July 

he led the New York Philharmonic 

Concerts in the Parks and Free Indoor 

Concerts, as well as giving concerts at 

the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival 

in Colorado. 

In June 2008 he became conductor 

laureate of the Royal Stockholm 

Philharmonic Orchestra, following his 

final concert as its chief conductor and 

artistic advisor. He has been principal 

guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR 

Symphony Orchestra since 2004. He 

regularly conducts other leading 

orchestras in America and 

internationally, including the Boston, 

Chicago and San Francisco Symphony 

orchestras, the Cleveland and 

Philadelphia orchestras, the Berlin 

Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bavarian 

Radio Symphony Orchestra, 

Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw 

Orchestra, and Orchestre National de 

Lyon. In 2003 he was named the first 

music director of Santa Fe Opera. 

Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard 

University, the Curtis Institute of Music 

and the Juilliard School. He was 

assistant conductor of the Cleveland 

Orchestra from 1995 to 1997. 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 Symphony 

Orchestra was nominated for a 

Grammy Award in 2008, while his CD 

of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 received 

acclaim from the Chicago Tribune and 

Gramophone magazine. 

15


Dario Costa 


Yefim Bronfman is widely regarded 

as one of the leading virtuoso pianists 

performing today. His commanding 

technique and exceptional lyrical gifts 

have won him consistent critical 

acclaim and enthusiastic audiences 

worldwide, whether for his solo 

recitals, his orchestral engagements 

or his rapidly growing catalogue 

of recordings. 

Orchestral highlights this season 

include two performances at the 

Tanglewood Festival with the Boston 

Symphony Orchestra under James 

Levine and Michael Tilson Thomas; an 

appearance at the Lucerne Festival 

with the Philharmonia Orchestra and 

Esa-Pekka Salonen, followed by 

concerts with the Philharmonia and 

Christoph von Dohnányi performing 

both Brahms piano concertos; multiple 

concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic 

with Zubin Mehta and the Lucerne 

Academy Orchestra with Pierre 

Boulez; ‘Artiste Étoile’ at the Lucerne 

Festival; a recital tour throughout 

Japan; and subscription concerts with 

the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles 

Philharmonic and Philadelphia and 

Cleveland orchestras. 

Recitals and duos in 2009–10 include 

appearances at New York’s Carnegie 

Hall; a recital tour of 10 American cities 

and performances in Rome, Vienna 

and Warsaw. 

Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union in 

1958, Yefim Bronfman emigrated to 

Israel with his family in 1973, where he 

studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of 

the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv 

University. In the USA, he studied at the 

Juilliard School, Marlboro, and the 

Curtis Institute of Music, and with 

Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher and 

Rudolf Serkin. Yefim Bronfman 

became an American citizen in 1989. 

16


Dario Costa 

Thomas Hampson baritone 

This season Thomas Hampson serves 

as both artist-in-residence and 

Leonard Bernstein scholar-in-residence 

at the New York Philharmonic. In these 

roles he will sing three programmes 

with the orchestra, appear on the 

orchestra’s current European tour, 

give a recital in Alice Tully Hall, and 

present three lectures as part of the 

Orchestra’s ‘Insights’ Series. 

The renowned American baritone has 

performed in the world’s pre-eminent 

concert halls and opera houses and 

with many of today’s leading musicians 

and orchestras; he also maintains an 

active interest in teaching, music 

research and technology. An important 

interpreter of German Lieder, he is also 

known as a leading proponent of the 

study of American song through his 

Hampsong Foundation, which he 

founded in 2003. 

In addition to his work with the New 

York Philharmonic, much of Thomas 

Hampson’s 2009–10 season is devoted 

to his ‘Song of America’ project. 

Collaborating with the Library of 

Congress, he is giving recitals and 

broadcasts and presenting 

masterclasses, educational activities 

and exhibitions across the country and 

through a new interactive online 

resource, www.songofamerica.net. 

Other engagements include 

Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Kurt Masur 

in Leipzig; Verdi’s Ernani and 

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with 

Zurich Opera; Verdi’s La traviata at the 

Metropolitan Opera; solo recitals 

throughout the USA and in many 

European capitals; and the galas of 

the Vienna Staatsoper and the new 

Winspear Opera House in Dallas. 

Raised in Spokane, Washington, 

Thomas Hampson has an awardwinning 

discography of more than 

150 CDs. He has been named 

Kammersänger of the Vienna 

Staatsoper, Chevalier de l’Ordre des 

Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of 

France; and Special Advisor to the 

Study and Performance of Music in 

America by Dr James H. Billington, 

Librarian of Congress. 

17



Founded in 1842, the New York 

Philharmonic is the oldest symphony 

orchestra in the USA and one of the 

oldest in the world. Since its inception, 

the Philharmonic has played a 

leading role in American musical life, 

championing the new music of its time 

and commissioning or premiering 

many important works, from Dvořák’s 

Symphony No. 9 and Gershwin’s An 

American in Paris (1928) to John 

Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning On the 

Transmigration of Souls and Esa-Pekka 

Salonen’s Piano Concerto. 

Alan Gilbert became Music Director at 

the start of this season, succeeding 

Lorin Maazel in a distinguished line of 

musicians that has included Kurt 

Masur, Leonard Bernstein, Zubin 

Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Gustav Mahler, 

Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini. 

Over the past century the Philharmonic 

has become renowned around the 

globe, having appeared in 429 cities in 

61 countries on five continents. In 

February 2008 the Philharmonic made 

a historic visit to Pyongyang, 

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 

– the first performance there by an 

American orchestra and for which the 

Philharmonic received the 2008 

Common Ground Award for Cultural 

Diplomacy. 

Long a media pioneer, the orchestra 

began radio broadcasts in 1922, and is 

currently represented by The New York 

Philharmonic This Week, syndicated 

nationally 52 weeks per year, streamed 

on the orchestra’s website, nyphil.org, 

and carried on Sirius XM Radio. 

On television, in the 1950s and 1960s, 

the orchestra inspired a generation of 

music lovers through Leonard 

Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, 

telecast on CBS, and its presence on 

television has continued with annual 

appearances on Live from Lincoln 

Center. The internet has expanded the 

orchestra’s reach still further, and in 

2006 it became the first major 

American orchestra to offer 

downloadable concerts, recorded live; 

and in November 2009, became the 

first orchestra to offer an iTunes Pass. 

Credit Suisse, the exclusive global 

sponsor of the New York Philharmonic, 

supports the orchestra’s activities at 

home in New York, nationally in the 

USA, and around the world. The 

current European tour will be the fifth 

one under the aegis of Credit Suisse, 

and the second in Europe. 

NEW YORK 

PHILHARMONIC 

18


Alan Schindler 

19



Music Director 

Alan Gilbert 

Assistant Conductor 

Daniel Boico 

Laureate Conductor 

1943–90 

Leonard Bernstein 

Music Director Emeritus 

Kurt Masur 

Violin 

Glenn 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 Cecco 

Carol Webb 

Yoko Takebe 

Minyoung Chang 

Hae-Young Ham 

The Mr and Mrs Timothy M. George 

Chair 

Lisa GiHae Kim + 

Kuan-Cheng Lu 

Newton Mansfield 

Kerry McDermott 

Anna Rabinova 

Charles Rex 

The Shirley Bacot Shamel Chair 

Fiona Simon 

Sharon Yamada 

Elizabeth Zeltser + 

Yulia Ziskel + 

Marc Ginsberg Principal 

Lisa Kim * 

In memory of Laura Mitchell 

Soohyun Kwon 

The Joan and Joel I. Picket Chair 

Duoming Ba 

Mark Schmoockler + 

Na Sun 

Vladimir Tsypin 

Stephanie Jeong ++ 

Shan Jiang ++ 

Marta Krechkovsky ++ 

Krzysztof Kuznik ++ 

Setsuko Nagata ++ 

Sarah O’Boyle ++ 

Suzanne Ornstein ++ 

Jungsun Yoo ++ 

Viola 

Cynthia Phelps Principal 

The Mr and Mrs Frederick P. Rose Chair 

Rebecca Young *+ 

Irene Breslaw ** 

The Norma and Lloyd Chazen Chair 

Dorian Rence 

Katherine Greene 

The Mr and Mrs William J. McDonough 

Chair 

Dawn Hannay 

Vivek Kamath 

Peter Kenote 

Barry Lehr 

Kenneth Mirkin + 

Judith Nelson 

Robert Rinehart 

The Mr and Mrs G. Chris Andersen Chair 

Maurycy Banaszek ++ 

Mark Holloway ++ 

Cello 

Carter Brey Principal 

The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Chair 

Eileen Moon * 

The Paul and Diane Guenther Chair 

Qiang Tu 

The Shirley and Jon Brodsky Foundation 

Chair 

Evangeline Benedetti 

Eric Bartlett 

The Mr and Mrs James E. Buckman Chair 

Elizabeth Dyson 

Maria Kitsopoulos 

Sumire Kudo 

Ru-Pei Yeh 

Wei Yu 

Susan Babini ++ 

Wilhelmina Smith ++ 

Double Bass 

Eugene Levinson Principal 

The Redfield D. Beckwith Chair 

Orin O’Brien 

Acting Associate Principal 

The Herbert M. Citrin Chair 

William Blossom 

The Ludmila S. and Carl B. Hess Chair 

Randall Butler 

David J. Grossman 

Satoshi Okamoto 

Joel Braun ++ 

Stephen Sas ++ 

Rion Wentworth ++ 

Marilyn Dubow 

The Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr Chair 

Martin Eshelman 

Quan Ge 

Judith Ginsberg + 

Myung-Hi Kim + 

Hanna Lachert 

Hyunju Lee 

Daniel Reed 

20


Flute 

Robert Langevin Principal 

The Lila Acheson Wallace Chair 

Sandra Church *+ 

Renée Siebert 

Mindy Kaufman 

Alexandra Sopp ++ 

Piccolo 

Mindy Kaufman 

Oboe 

Liang Wang Principal 

The Alice Tully Chair 

Sherry Sylar *+ 

Robert Botti 


Robert Botti 

Keisuke Ikuma ++ 

Cor Anglais 

Thomas Stacy 

The Joan and Joel Smilow Chair 

Clarinet 

Mark Nuccio Acting Principal 

The Edna and W. Van Alan Clark Chair 

Pascual Martinez Forteza 


The Honey M. Kurtz Family Chair 

Alucia Scalzo ++ 

Amy Zoloto ++ 

Jonathan Gunn ++ 

E flat Clarinet 

Pascual Martinez Forteza 

Bass Clarinet 

Amy Zoloto ++ 

Bassoon 

Judith LeClair Principal 

The Pels Family Chair 

Kim Laskowski * 

Roger Nye 

Arlen Fast 

Contrabassoon 

Arlen Fast 

Horn 

Philip Myers Principal 

The Ruth F. and Alan J. Broder Chair 

Erik Ralske 


R. Allen Spanjer 

Howard Wall 

Cara Kizer ++ 

David Smith ++ 

Chad Yarbrough ++ 

Trumpet 

Philip Smith Principal 

The Paula Levin Chair 

Matthew Muckey * 

Ethan Bensdorf 

Thomas V. Smith 

Trombone 

Joseph Alessi Principal 

The Gurnee F. and Marjorie L. Hart Chair 

Amanda Stewart * 

David Finlayson 

The Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen 

Chair 

Bass Trombone 

James Markey 

Tuba 

Alan Baer Principal 

Timpani 

Markus Rhoten Principal 

The Carlos Moseley Chair 

Peter Wilson ++ 

Percussion 

Christopher S. Lamb Principal 

The Constance R. Hoguet Friends of the 

Philharmonic Chair 

Daniel Druckman * 

The Mr and Mrs Ronald J. Ulrich Chair 

Erik Charlston ++ 

David DePeters ++ 

Joseph Tompkins ++ 

Harp 

Nancy Allen Principal 

The Mr and Mrs William T. Knight III Chair 

June Han ++ 

Keyboard section: 

In memory of Paul Jacobs 

Harpsichord 

Lionel Party + 

Paolo Bordignon ++ 

Piano 

The Karen and Richard S. LeFrak Chair 

Harriet Wingreen + 

Jonathan Feldman + 

Elizabeth DiFelice ++ 

Organ 

Kent Tritle + 

Librarians 

Lawrence Tarlow Principal 

Sandra Pearson **+ 

Sara Griffin ** 

Orchestra Personnel 

Manager 

Carl R. Schiebler 

Stage Representative 

Louis J. Patalano 

Stage Crew 

Fernando Carpio 

Joseph Faretta 

Robert W. Pierpont 

Michael Pupello 

Audio Director 

Lawrence 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. 

21



Honorary Members of the 

Society 

Pierre Boulez 

Stanley Drucker 

Lorin Maazel 

Zubin Mehta 

Carlos Moseley 

Chairman, Board of 

Directors 

Gary W. Parr 

President and Executive 

Director 

Zarin Mehta 

ADMINISTRATION 

Vice President, 

Communications 

Eric Latzky 

Vice President, 

Operations 

Miki Takebe 

Artistic Administrator 

John Mangum 

Orchestra Personnel 

Assistant/Auditions 

Coordinator 

Nishi Badhwar 

Tour Physician 

Dr John Cahill 

Operations Assistant 

James Eng 

Assistant to the Music 

Director 

Joliene R. Ford 

Associate Director, 

Information Technology 

Elizabeth Lee 

Operations Manager 

Brendan Timins 

Instruments made possible, in 

part, by The Richard S. and 

Karen LeFrak Endowment Fund. 

Programmes of the New York 

Philharmonic are supported, in 

part, by public funds from the 

New York State Council on the 

Arts, New York City Department 

of Cultural Affairs, and the 

National Endowment of the Arts. 

Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Sharp Print Limited; 

advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450) 

Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched off during the 

performance. In accordance with the requirements of the licensing authority, sitting or standing 

in any gangway is not permitted. Smoking is not permitted anywhere on the Barbican premises. 

No eating or drinking is allowed in the auditorium. No cameras, tape recorders or any other 

recording equipment may be taken into the hall. 

Barbican Centre 

Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS 

Administration 020 7638 4141 

Box Office 020 7638 8891 

Great Performers Last-Minute Concert 

Information Hotline 0845 120 7505 

www.barbican.org.uk 

22

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