MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)
Le tombeau de Couperin (1917, orchestrated 1919)
Maurice Ravel wanted to serve his country in World War I but was found physically unfit; so he volunteered to drive a truck and to care for the wounded in a military hospital. It was during this time he first conceived of this suite. Tombeau (which means tombstone or tomb, and in Baroque times also carried the meaning of memorial or elegy) first saw the light of day as a piano piece (as was often the case with Ravel) in 1917. Two years later he orchestrated four of the movements, Prélude, Forlane, Menuet, and Rigaudon, to great effect. While this composition is less homage to the Baroque composer François Couperin than to French music of an earlier time in general, it also memorializes four friends Ravel lost in the war. His own war experiences, which also encompassed the death of his mother during those years, had been devastating, and they affected him his entire life. In an attempt to perhaps step back from the tragedy of war, the form of Tombeau is not unlike a set of Baroque dances and speak with Ravel’s characteristic grace, spirit, and clarity.

ESA-PEKKA SALONEN (born in 1958)
Piano Concerto (World Premiere, NYP commission)
To Esa-Pekka Salonen, the composer-conductor dichotomy is artificial. “That’s semantics. I’m a musician. Musicians do all kinds of things.” Still, to free himself for composing, he took a sabbatical from conducting in 2000, while realizing that he did “miss the energy of the meeting of a hundred people and the adrenaline of the concert experience. And the music, of course—I really missed the physical contact with Brahms, Stravinsky …the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music. I ended up going to a lot of concerts.” He has been influenced by his “musical grandfather Stravinsky, not Schoenberg, and I became more interested in composers who dealt with the idea of harmony, like Lutoslawski. … I’ve learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky. Ravel I admire especially; there are pages in Daphnis, for example, which are miraculous.” During 2000, he composed LA Variations for which he has been widely praised. “There is the sheer exhilaration of providing at least a thrill a minute during the [entire] 19-minute piece.” (Los Angeles Times) More recently he composed Wing on Wing, his gift to his orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, in honor of their new home, Walt Disney Concert Hall.

MODEST MUSORGSKY (1839-1881), orch. MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)
Pictures at an Exhibition (1867, rev. 1872, 1874)
For someone who struggled with alcohol and who was little respected even by his friends (Vladimir Stasov and Mily Balakirev agreed “Musorgsky is almost an idiot”), Modest Musorgsky left at least three masterpieces that have become revered parts of the symphonic and operatic repertoire: the tone poem Night on Bald Mountain (familiar from Walt Disney’s “Fantasia”), the opera Boris Godunov, and one of the most popular orchestral showpieces, Pictures at an Exhibition. The latter began as a virtuoso piano suite, written a few months after the death of the composer’s dear friend, artist and architect Viktor Hartmann. It was Hartmann whose drawings inspired the composition. And as happened to other Musorgsky works, fellow composers saw fit to “improve” or orchestrate them. And so it was with Pictures, best known in Maurice Ravel’s glittering, brilliant orchestration. (Ravel once said “For me, orchestration is more play than work.”) Pictures is the original gallery crawl: the music depicts the viewer’s musical encounter with each of the pictures…ten in all, plus “traveling music” in-between. Special highlights include the opening “Promenade,” when the composer strides into the exhibition; the “Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells” (a costume design for a ballet; listen for the little hatching chicks as they peck their way out of their shells); the eerie Parisian “Catacombs”; and the magnificent pealing of bells in the grand finale, “The Great Gate of Kiev.”

ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, conductor, born in 1958 in Helsinki, Finland
Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of a very few musicians today who has something unique to communicate to audiences as both conductor and composer. After 16 seasons as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he ended his tenure in 2009 (and was named the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate in April of that year) to devote himself more fully to composing and special projects. An example is his City of Dreams, an exploration over a nine-month period of the music and culture of Vienna between 1900 and 1935, undertaken with the Philharmonia Orchestra, whose principal conductor and artistic advisor he became in 2008. He is the only child of nurturing parents—a banker and a homemaker, who encouraged him without domineering. Though his mother started him on piano when he was just four, he was not interested in the instrument and instead tried the recorder at age nine and French horn at 15. Eventually he gave the piano another try. He studied at Finland’s Sibelius Academy, made his conducting debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1979, and his American debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1984. Among the many highlights of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s career with that orchestra have been world premieres of works by composers like John Adams, Magnus Lindberg, Witold Lutosławski, and Kaija Saariaho, the film soundtrack for The Red Violin by John Corigliano, with violinist Joshua Bell, as well as his own pieces. In October 2003, he and the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, and in 2006 they recorded their first CD together: the first live recording from the new hall. Musical America named Salonen as its Musician of the Year 2006.

“a mesmerizing conductor with catlike moves on the podium; a crowd pleaser with looks, charisma and flair; and a musician’s musician who enjoys a profound rapport with his orchestra.... He’s experimental, flexible, creative, approachable and understanding of his role [in LA] as head cheerleader, top fund raiser and reluctant matinee idol. Most of all, perhaps, he possesses that rare ability to pack ’em in no matter what’s on the program.” Los Angeles Magazine

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YEFIM BRONFMAN, piano, born in 1958 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Millions of people who may never have heard Yefim Bronfman in the concert hall did hear him perform Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at their local cineplex on the soundtrack of Disney’s Fantasia 2000, and later also live, at gala screenings of the film in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. Yefim Bronfman left his native Uzbekistan for Israel in 1973, where the 15-year-old auditioned for the Israel Philharmonic, the orchestra with which he then toured America under Leonard Bernstein and Zubin Mehta. With the help of Isaac Stern and the America-Israel Foundation he immigrated to the United States in 1976 and studied with piano virtuosos Rudolf Serkin, Rudolf Firkusny, William Masselos, and Leon Fleisher. He made his New York Philharmonic debut in May l978, and his Carnegie Hall debut in 1989 (that’s also the year he became an American citizen), and returned to Russia in 1991 for a series of acclaimed recitals with Isaac Stern. Among his many distinctions are the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize (1991), one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists, and a Grammy in 1996 for Best Instrumental Soloist for his recording of Bartók’s three piano concertos. His discography also includes the complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas; Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos Nos. 2 and 3; and numerous recital albums. Following the January 2010 concerts with the Philharmonic (Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, conducted by Alan Gilbert) he joined them on tour in Europe. He will appear with the London Philharmonia under Christoph von Dohnányi playing both Brahms concertos for a live recording. Yefim Bronfman received a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra) for his recording of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto with the composer conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic—about which The New York Times wrote that the soloist “plays the fiendishly difficult piano part with stunning virtuosity.”

“…warmly romantic sentiment and jaw-dropping bravura” Chicago Tribune

“He never puts himself ahead of the music, which is kind of refreshing. No matter what he plays, it’s always about the music and how he can best do justice to the score and realize the composer’s intentions. It’s never about him playing the piano. I think he can be relaxed about it because he can play better than most other people on the planet.” Esa-Pekka Salonen

Find additional upcoming performances with Yefim Bronfman