BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936)
Commissioned by Paul Sacher to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his Basel Chamber Orchestra, Bartók’s exuberant orchestral masterpiece engages your ears and eyes. The composer’s “seating plan” calls for two string orchestras placed on opposite sides of the stage, with harp, celesta, piano and a percussion battery (bass drum, cymbals, side drums with and without snares, tam tam, timpani, and xylophone) in between. Many consider this complex and demanding score to be Bartók’s finest. For example, the first movement is a fugue that increases in force as it progresses to its midpoint climax, then goes backwards, like a mirror reflection, with the various voices retreating and calm being restored. (Attention, mathematicians who can read a score: you will note that the sections of the first movement correspond to the Fibonacci number sequence.) The antiphonal exchanges between the two string complements create the driving energy of the second movement, punctuated by staccato rhythms from the piano and timpani. A change of mood ensues with the third movement, which offers the listener some typical Bartókian “night music”—atmospheric, evocative, and eerie with insistent xylophone notes and timpani slides (a pop culture note: this movement figures prominently in Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic, The Shining); and in the finale, the sounding out of a brilliant whirlwind of folk dances, mad strumming, and changing meters brings this tour de force of orchestral writing to a stunning conclusion.

JOHN HARBISON (b. 1938)
Milosz Songs for Soprano and Orchestra (2005)
One of America’s most prominent composers, John Harbison’s most recent successes was The Great Gatsby, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. And in January 2003 his motet Abraham was performed at Pope John Paul II’s Concert of Reconciliation, a high-profile event that garnered much acclaim. In this first commission for the Philharmonic, John Harbison sets texts by Nobel-crowned Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz (1911- 2004). “I believe the cycle will convey both the grand sense of history that is present in most of the Milosz poems, and also the sense of the individual’s private response.”

LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990)
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1961)
The thrilling dance episodes of West Side Story underscore the highly charged atmosphere that is Bernstein’s modern take on Romeo and Juliet. The gritty urban setting is the backdrop against which warring gangs play out their inevitable tragedy. Premiered by the Philharmonic, the Symphonic Dances take the familiar melodies and create a vibrant tapestry that recalls the stage action of the iconoclastic musical. Heartbreaking. Breathtaking.

Robert Spano is music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) and the 2006 Ojai Festival, and is the recipient of three Grammy Awards, including Best Classical Album. He served as director of the Festival of Contemporary Music at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2003 and 2004, and from 1996 to 2004 was music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Mr. Spano has conducted every major North American orchestra, and appeared with the opera companies of Chicago, Houston, Seattle, and Santa Fe, and at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and Welsh National Opera. Overseas he has led Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Czech Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester and New Japan Philharmonic.

Mr. Spano’s 2005–06 season includes conducting Wagner’s Ring Cycle for Seattle Opera, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar and La Pasión Según San Marcos in Atlanta. Additional Atlanta highlights include Verdi’s Requiem and Sibelius’s Kullervo with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. The ASO and Robert Spano appear as part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov, and at Carnegie Hall with Verdi’s Requiem. He also conducts The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Aspen Music Festival.

Robert Spano and the ASO have made five recordings for the Telarc label, including Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony (winner of three 2003 Grammy Awards, including Best Classical Album), Berlioz’s Requiem (2005 Grammy Award winner for Best Choral Album), and a disc featuring music by David Del Tredici, Christopher Theofanides, and Bernstein.

Mr. Spano was director of the Conducting Fellowship Program at the Tanglewood Music Center from 1998 to 2002, served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, and Bowling Green State University, and is associate professor of conducting at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, of which he is a graduate. His only previous appearance with the New York Philharmonic was in May 2003.

DAWN UPSHAW
Soprano
Soprano Dawn Upshaw, who has recorded Berio’s Folk Songs for Deutsche Grammophon, has achieved international celebrity as a singer of opera and concert repertoire that ranges from the sacred works of Bach to the freshest sounds of today. Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles as well as works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen. Her 2007–08 season opened at London’s Barbican Centre, where she created the role of Simone Weil in La Passion de Simone, an oratorio written for her by Kaija Saariaho. She will reprise her celebrated portrayal of Margarita Xirgu in Golijov’s Ainadamar with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Opera Boston, and at the Barbican Centre. She tours North America with Eighth Blackbird, and appears at the Kennedy Center in recital with pianist Gilbert Kalish and at London’s South Bank Centre with pianist Richard Goode. She begins a three-year association as artist partner with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with whom she performs both in Minnesota and at Carnegie Hall.

A four-time Grammy Award winner, Ms. Upshaw is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki; a dozen recital recordings; and several discs of music theater repertoire, on Nonesuch Records. Her discography also includes full-length opera recordings of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro; Messiaen’s St. Francoise d’Assise; Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress; John Adams’s El Niño; two volumes of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne; and a dozen recital recordings. Her most recent release, on Deutsche Grammophon, is Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra, the third in a series of acclaimed recordings of Osvaldo Golijov’s music.

Ms. Upshaw is a member of the faculty at the Tanglewood Music Center, and is artistic director of the Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. In the fall of 2007 she was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation. This five-year award, popularly known as the “genius grant,” noted her as “new model of a performer who is directly involved in the creation of contemporary music.”

Ms. Upshaw last appeared with the New York Philharmonic in February 2006, performing John Harbison’s Miłosz Songs for Soprano and Orchestra, a World Premiere–New York Philharmonic Commission written especially for her. Robert Spano conducted.