RICHARD STRAUSS (1864 -1949)
Don Juan (1888)
The legend of the notorious lover, Don Juan, has been grist for literary and musical mills for centuries. But the brilliant score by the then-just-24-year-old Richard Strauss, already at the top of his game, shows us a Don who is different from other literary or musical versions of him. Unlike Mozart’s more traditional image of the libertine in Don Giovanni, Strauss based his depiction on an unfinished verse-play by Nikolaus von Lenau, in which the world-weary hero tires of his search for the ideal of womanhood. In the brief span of around 16 or 17 minutes of intense music, Strauss depicts Don Juan’s character in a flurry of upward-rushing notes—as if he were setting out on yet another quest. Exquisitely beautiful music shows him in two sensuous love scenes. And in eerily scored, shuddering gestures he allows himself to be killed in a duel—an unceremonious demise for the iconic lover. Strauss always demands extraordinary virtuosity from orchestras, and players love to perform his works. The composer wrote to his father (himself a horn player) about the challenges of this tone poem for the Weimar orchestra, which “huffed and puffed…One of the horn players sat there, out of breath, sweat pouring from his brow, asking ‘Good God, in what have we sinned that you should send us this scourge!’ …I was really sorry for the wretched brass. They were quite blue in the face; the whole affair was so strenuous.” Think of that, as you listen to the Don’s brilliant signature horn calls.

RICHARD WAGNER (1813-1883)
“Prelude and Liebestod” (“Love-Death”) from Tristan und Isolde (1857-59)
From the achingly beautiful yearning of the long Prelude to its harmonic resolution some four hours later in the final moments of Wagner’s iconoclastic masterpiece, the opera Tristan und Isolde delves into the mysteries of love and death. Tristan and Isolde are doomed lovers destined for one another with the drinking of a love potion; but only in death, at the moment of a voluptuous climax, can their longing find fulfillment. Standing over the body of her beloved Tristan, Isolde sings herself into rapturous oblivion in the Liebestod, the last scene of the opera, “…in the vast wave of the world’s breath—to drown, to sink, unconscious, supreme bliss”—one of the most transcendent passages in all of music. Though sopranos may perform the Liebestod in concert as an operatic excerpt, these performances feature the orchestral transcription without singing. The notorious ambiguity of the “Tristan chord,” played by oboes, bassoons, and English horn in the Prelude, symbolizes the unfulfilled yearning of the lovers; with it Wagner set the stage for his “music of the future”: the revolutionary dissolution of harmony as it had been known and practiced for two centuries.

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 4 (1885)
“God forbid, it is nothing so aristocratic—I’ve merely put together another collection of polkas and waltzes,” Brahms wrote to his friend Max Kalbeck about his Fourth Symphony, in the typically deprecating way he had when he was about to give birth to a masterpiece. It is Brahms’s farewell to the symphony—his final great work in the genre, whose supreme master he was (despite his initial dread of standing in Beethoven’s shadow). It is nothing less than a summing up of what he had learned about composing for orchestra. This symphony did not easily find a place in the orchestral repertoire—it is austere and tragic, although defiant. Even Brahms’s more ardent and loyal admirers were reluctant to praise it. When Brahms heard a performance of the Fourth in Vienna many years later, he was accorded a tumultuous ovation. As he stood to receive it, tears streamed down his face. At last his work had received the recognition it deserved. The composer died less than a month later. Though a Romantic at heart, Brahms chose the classical modes of expression he had inherited, reaching back to Bach and beyond for techniques like counterpoint and the Baroque passacaglia form (he masterfully varies an 8-note motif 30 times in the finale). Speaking with deepest emotion and resignation in this autumnal work Brahms had reached the pinnacle of his magnificent symphonic output.

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.

Learn More about Alan Gilbert