WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)
Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550 (1788)
In 1788, with Mozart’s career and reputation in decline, his finances in shambles, and with support from noble patrons non-existent, he and his family were forced to move away from the center of Vienna to a cheaper apartment, but one that had a quiet garden attached. (We read heartbreaking letters to his fellow-Mason, Michael Puchberg begging for money.) It was there that Mozart created his three remarkable final symphonies—his “Triple Crown.” He completed the haunting 40th Symphony just one month after his 39th, and the subsequent 41st an astonishing 16 days thereafter. This symphony is one of only two Mozart composed in a minor key—both in G Minor—with the No. 25 always referred to “The Little G Minor” and the 40th as “The Great G Minor.” Though it has often been suggested that these symphonies were written purely for personal, not practical (i.e., financial) reasons, this has been largely discounted, as has the related notion that they were not performed during the composer’s lifetime. One bit of proof lies in the fact that two versions exist: one without, one with clarinets and rewritten oboe parts, indicating that Mozart had, in fact, heard them and rescored them for a second edition. It is possible that he composed them for planned subscription concerts in Vienna (that never took place) and may even have toured them to Germany in 1789. The K. 550 is a pouring out of passion, an utterance of extreme urgency, full of agitation with only slim respite in the exquisite, spiritual slow movement. Yet commentators disagree as to whether this work exhibits “Grecian lightness and grace” (Robert Schumann) or “plunge[s] to the abyss of the soul” (Mozart expert Alfred Einstein). But there is agreement on this: that the Symphony No. 40 speaks in Mozart’s most personal voice and nearly 225 years after its completion, this masterpiece continues to have a profound emotional impact on listeners.

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)
Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) (1901-1904)
The German poet Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) penned 428 Songs on the Death of Children, after losing two children to scarlet fever. Gustav Mahler began his haunting song cycle Kindertotenlieder by setting three of the poems (Nos. 1, 3, and 4) in 1901; it was the same summer he met Alma Schindler, whom he would marry the following year and who would bear him their first daughter, Maria-Anna, in November 1902. (Mahler noted that Rückert’s son was named Ernst, like the composer’s beloved younger brother, who died when Mahler was just 14.) A second daughter, Anna, was born in 1904, and shortly thereafter, the composer completed Nos. 2 and 5 of the cycle, much to Alma’s distress. “I can understand composing such terrible texts if you don’t have children, or if you’ve lost children. After all, Rückert didn’t invent these shattering verses, but wrote them down after the most harrowing loss of his life. But I can’t understand how you can sing about the death of children when—happy and healthy—just a half hour before, you were hugging and kissing them…I said immediately: ‘For God’s sake, you are tempting fate!’” Just three years later, 4-year-old Maria died of scarlet fever and diphtheria. Later Mahler wrote to musicologist Guido Adler: “I placed myself in the situation that a child of mine had died. When I really lost my daughter, I could not have written these songs any more.” The selected texts emphasize finding light in the darkness—solace for unbearable sorrow; and the sonorities for each song are beautifully matched to those themes: mournful, wailing, plaintive, dark, or explosive with anger. And in the final song, as D Minor is transformed into a shimmering D Major, it is as if Mahler had come to terms with his loss, and he sees the children safe in God’s sheltering hand.

THOMAS ADÈS (b. 1971)
In Seven Days (Concerto for Piano with Moving Image) (2008)
This abstract retelling of the Genesis story was a collaboration between one of Britain’s hottest musical voices and his partner, video artist Tal Rosner; it was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and London’s Southbank Centre, with the world premiere given by the London Sinfonietta and then by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Daily Telegraph raved that it was “a technical tour de force that took your breath away…The pianist…had to summon up every kind of texture—minimalist, star-like patterning, vast tempestuous chorales, gentle almost Ravel-like musings—while coping with rhythms of staggering complexity derived from the number seven.” The work, which mixes Rosner’s high-tech imagery with Adès’s score—was ingeniously crafted: in one half, Adès composed the music first, and Rosner created the images thereafter; for the other half, the process was reversed. Rosner’s videography will be shown across six large screens above the orchestra. In Seven Days is based on the Hebrew version of Genesis, rather than on the King James. In an interview with Peter Culshaw, Adès explains: “The original [text] starts with chaos rather than the void, which is better from a musical point of view.” The images represent the 7-day creation story, including chaos, the dividing of sky from the sea, the creation of plants and trees, the sun, moon, and stars, then the animals and man. Rosner shot footage in L.A., at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, and at London’s Royal Festival Center as it was being reconstructed—the metro, air conditioning ducts, scaffolding, traffic. The images, he says “are very abstract, but they have all been manipulated.…each minute took about a week.” The visuals are as dazzling as the music: “one left the hall lost in a kaleidoscope of colour, touched by an exquisitely decorative experience.” (The Sunday Times)

In September 2009 Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, the first native New Yorker to hold the post.

For his inaugural season he introduced a number of new initiatives: the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, held by Magnus Lindberg, and Artist-in-Residence, first held by Thomas Hampson; an annual three-week festival; and CONTACT!, the New York Philharmonic's new-music series. In the 2009–10 season he led the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi. He also took the Philharmonic to nine cities on the EUROPE / WINTER 2010 tour in January–February 2010, and is conducting world, U.S., and New York premieres. Also in the 2009–10 season, Mr. Gilbert became the first person to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, a position that includes coaching, conducting, and hosting performance master classes.

Highlights of Mr. Gilbert's 2008–09 season with the New York Philharmonic included the Bernstein anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall and a performance with the Juilliard Orchestra, presented by the Philharmonic. In May 2009 he conducted the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson's The World in Flower, a New York Philharmonic Commission, and in July 2009 he led the Philharmonic's Concerts in the Parks and Free Indoor Concerts, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, and performances at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado.

In June 2008 Mr. Gilbert was named 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, and he has conducted other leading orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, including the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2003 he was named the first music director of the Santa Fe Opera.

Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard University, 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 Symphony 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, The Curtis Institute of Music awarded Mr. Gilbert an Honorary Doctor of Music degree.

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American baritone Thomas Hampson has performed in the world’s preeminent concert halls and opera houses and with many of today’s most renowned musicians and orchestras; he also maintains an active interest in teaching, music research, and technology. An important interpreter of German romantic song, he is known as a leading proponent of the study of American song through his Hampsong Foundation, which he founded in 2003 to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding. In the 2009–10 season Mr. Hampson becomes The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic as well as the Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence. In these roles he will perform three programs with the Orchestra, appear on the Orchestra’s European tour, give a recital in Alice Tully Hall, and present three lectures entitled “Listening to Thought” as part of the Orchestra’s Insights Series.

Much of Mr. Hampson’s 2009–10 season is devoted to his “Song of America” project. In collaboration with the Library of Congress, Mr. Hampson is performing recitals and presenting master classes, educational activities, exhibitions, and broadcasts across the country and through a new interactive online resource, www.songofamerica.net; as part of the project, he has just released a new album, Wondrous Free — Song of America II, on his own label, Thomas Hampson Media. Other engagements include Mendelssohn’s Elijah, led by 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 United States 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 released more than 150 albums that have received many honors, including a Grammy Award, two Edison Prizes, and the Grand Prix du Disque. 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. Other accolades include the Austrian Medal of Honor in Arts and Sciences (in 2004), and the Edison Life Achievement Award (2005). Mr. Hampson last appeared with the New York Philharmonic on September 20, 2001, in Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, led by Kurt Masur in memory of 9/11.

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THOMAS ADÈS, piano, born in 1971 in London
In addition to being a composer (see above), Thomas Adès is also a pianist and conductor. He studied piano with Paul Berkowitz at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and read music at King’s College, Cambridge. He won Second Prize (Piano Class) in the 1989 BBC Young Musician of the Year, an indication of a future performing career. When he was twenty-two in 1993 he gave his first public piano recital in London, which, according to the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, was “an occasion which not only mesmerized a packed Purcell Room, but set in motion a chain of events that has catapulted him to a position at the heart of the British musical scene, and of early international recognition. Although critics have differed in comparing him to Beethoven, Mozart, Purcell or Britten, there is an unusual consensus among them of his originality, musicality and importance.” Three years ago he held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair at Carnegie Hall, where he was featured not only as composer, but also as conductor and pianist throughout that season. He also has released a solo recital album of works by Stravinsky, Busoni, Janáček, Grieg, and Nancarro. Engagements in 2009-10 include piano recitals in Vancouver, at Carnegie Hall, and the Barbican where Adès performs the premieres of his new piano work Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face. He is the featured pianist in his composition In Seven Days being performed at these concerts.

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TAL ROSNER, video artist, born in 1978 in Jerusalem, Israel
Award-winning artist and filmmaker Tal Rosner’s work has been screened across the world and won him a British Academy Television Craft Awards (BAFTA) award for his title sequence for England’s Channel 4 series Skins (2008), a teen drama. He made his name with radical interpretations of musical compositions, and his work has been described as “hypnotic” and “strikingly different,” with his unique visual eye earning him the label of “choreographer of the moving image.” As he commented on the Web site for the University of the Arts London, he knew he wanted to be a designer when he “received my first set of calligraphy pens when I was about 10 years old and couldn’t let go of it, drawing Roman letters everywhere.” His most important creations include Lachen Verlernt (2009), composed by Esa-Pekka Salonen, with violinist Jennifer Koh; Without You (2008, for Animate Projects); Skins/Title Sequences, series 1-4 (2007-current); Stravinsky Concerto for Two Pianos (2006, for Katia and Marielle Labeque); Debussy En Blanc et Noir (2006, also for the Labeques); and of course the work being performed at these concerts, In Seven Days. Since 2005 he has been collaborating with musicians, combining multiple layers of sound and visuals to create a new language of classical/ contemporary music videos. His video for Lachen Verlernt premiered in Oberlin in October 2009 and will be toured in the US throughout 2010/11.A multi-channel video installation for the Tenderpixel Gallery in London was on exhibit in February 2010.

Find additional upcoming performances with Tal Rosner