VAN ZWEDEN CONDUCTS MENDELSSOHN
New York Philharmonic Igor Levit, piano - Christopher Martin, trumpetVan Zweden returns to lead the Philharmonic in two contrasting Russian works: Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 and Shostakovich’s Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, featuring Principal Trumpet Christopher Martin and the Bravo! Vail debut of pianist Igor Levit. Concluding the program is Mendelssohn’s cherished Symphony No. 3.
Did you know?
Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, inspired a visit to that land, sounds ever-so-Scottish to us, but Robert Schumann, wearing his critic’s hat, somehow got this confused with Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony and found the Scottish to harbor “melodies sung in lovely Italy.” Oops.
Featured Artists
Jaap van Zweden
Christopher Martin
Igor Levit
Jaap van Zweden
conductor
Jaap van Zweden began his tenure as the 26th music director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2018. He also serves as music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, a post he has held since 2012, and becomes music director of the Seoul Philharmonic in 2024. He has conducted orchestras on three continents, appearing as guest with, in Europe, the Orchestre de Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestra, and, in the United States, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and other distinguished ensembles.
In 2023–24, Jaap van Zweden’s New York Philharmonic farewell season will celebrate his connection with the Orchestra’s musicians as he leads performances in which six principal players appear as concerto soloists. He also revisits the oeuvres of composers he has championed at the Philharmonic, ranging from Steve Reich and Joel Thompson to Mozart, conducting the Requiem, and Mahler, leading the Symphony No. 2, Resurrection.
By the conclusion of his Philharmonic tenure, which has included the reopening of the transformed David Geffen Hall, he will have led the Orchestra in world, US, and New York premieres of 31 works. Among them are pieces commissioned through Project 19 — which marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment with new works by 19 women composers, among them Tania León’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Stride. During the 2021–22 season, when David Geffen Hall was closed for renovation, he conducted the Orchestra at other New York City venues — including his first-ever Philharmonic appearances at Carnegie Hall — and in the residency at the Usedom Music Festival, where the New York Philharmonic was the first American orchestra to perform abroad since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic inaugurated the new David Geffen Hall in October 2022 with HOME, a monthlong housewarming for the Orchestra and its audiences. Other 2022–23 season highlights include SPIRIT, a musical expression of the trials and triumphs of the human spirit featuring performances of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie and J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and EARTH, a response to the climate crisis that includes Julia Wolfe’s unEarth and John Luther Adams’s Become Desert. Over the course of David Geffen Hall’s inaugural season, he conducted repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Bruckner to premieres by Marcos Balter, Etienne Charles, Caroline Shaw, and Carlos Simon, in addition to the works by Wolfe and Adams.
Jaap van Zweden’s New York Philharmonic recordings include the World Premiere of David Lang’s prisoner of the state (2020), and Wolfe’s GRAMMY-nominated Fire in my mouth (2019), both released on the Decca Gold label. He conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic in first-ever performances in Hong Kong of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, released on the Naxos label. His acclaimed performances of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal — the last of which earned him the prestigious Edison Award for Best Opera Recording in 2012 — are available on CD and DVD.
Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden, at age 19, was appointed the youngest-ever concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and began his conducting career almost 20 years later, in 1996. In April 2023, van Zweden receives the Concertgebouw Prize, for exceptional contributions to that organization’s artistic profile. He remains conductor emeritus of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and honorary chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, where he was chief conductor (2005–13); he also served as chief conductor of the Royal Flanders Orchestra (2008–11), and as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (2008–18). Under his leadership, the Hong Kong Philharmonic was named Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year in 2019. He was named Musical America’s 2012 Conductor of the Year and was the subject of an October 2018 CBS 60 Minutes profile on the occasion of his arrival at the New York Philharmonic.
In 1997 Jaap van Zweden and his wife, Aaltje, established the Papageno Foundation to support families of children with autism. The Foundation has grown into a multifaceted organization that focuses on the development of children and young adults with autism. The Foundation provides in-home music therapy through a national network of qualified music therapists in the Netherlands; opened the Papageno House in 2015 (with Her Majesty Queen Maxima in attendance) for young adults with autism to live, work, and participate in the community; created a research center at the Papageno House for early diagnosis and treatment of autism and for analyzing the effects of music therapy on autism; develops funding opportunities to support autism programs; and, more recently, launched the app TEAMPapageno, which allows children with autism to communicate with each other through music composition.
Christopher Martin
trumpet
Christopher Martin is one of the leading classical trumpet voices on the world stage. He joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Trumpet, The Paula Levin Chair, in September 2016. He served as principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) for 11 seasons and enjoyed a distinctive career of more than 20 years in some of America’s finest orchestras, including as principal trumpet of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and associate principal trumpet of The Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his New York Philharmonic solo debut in October 2016, performing Ligeti’s The Mysteries of the Macabre, led by then Music Director Alan Gilbert.
Praised as “brilliant, impeccable” by The New York Times and as a musician of “effortless understated virtuosity” by The Chicago Tribune, Christopher Martin has appeared as soloist multiple times nationally and internationally with the CSO and music director Riccardo Muti. Highlights of Martin’s solo appearances include the 2012 World Premiere of Christopher Rouse’s concerto Heimdall’s Trumpet; Panufnik’s Concerto in modo antico, with Muti; a program of 20th-century French concertos by André Jolivet and Henri Tomasi; and more than a dozen performances of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. Other solo engagements have included Martin with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa’s Saito Kinen Festival, Atlanta and Alabama Symphony Orchestras, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. Christopher Martin’s discography includes a solo performance in John Williams’s score to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) and two recordings of a concerto Martin co-commissioned: John Mackey’s Antique Violences.
Dedicated to music education, Martin is a professor of trumpet at The Juilliard School and has given master classes and seminars around the world. He has served on the faculty of Northwestern University and coached the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for 11 years. In 2010 he co-founded the National Brass Symposium with his brother Michael Martin, a trumpeter in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in 2016 he received the Edwin Franko Goldman Memorial Citation from the American Bandmasters Association for outstanding contributions to the wind band genre.
Christopher Martin is a Yamaha Performing Artist. He and his wife, Margaret — an organist and pianist — have two young children who both prefer the piano over the trumpet.
Igor Levit
piano
With an alert and critical mind, Igor Levit places his art in the context of social events and understands it as inseparably linked to them. The New York Times describes Igor Levit as one of the “most important artists of his generation.”
In 2023-24, Igor Levit performs in recital at the Musikverein Vienna, Philharmonie Berlin, La Scala Milan, Carnegie Hall New York, London’s Wigmore Hall as well as in Seoul, Tokyo, Paris, Montréal, and Toronto among others. Highlights of Igor Levit’s orchestral season calendar are two cyclic projects – a Bartok cycle with the NDR Elbphilharmonieorchester and Alan Gilbert and a Brahms cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann. Also with the Vienna Philharmonic, Igor Levit joins forces for a European tour (Jakub Hrůša) and during the Mozartwoche in Salzburg (Joana Mallwitz). Further orchestral tours in the 2023/24 season see Igor Levit perform with the Orchestra dell’Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Sir Antonio Pappano as well as the Berliner Barock Solisten. Guest engagements include performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Staatskapelle Berlin with Elim Chan, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Joanna Mallwitz as well as with the New York Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden. Igor Levit reunites with long-time colleagues and friends, Markus Becker, Renaud Capuçon, and Julia Hagen for trio and duo concerts at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg in Berlin, London, Munich, and Vienna.
After a very successful launch of the Piano Fest in 2023, Igor Levit curates the festival’s second edition in May 2024 in collaboration with the Lucerne Festival. Since the 2022-23 season, Igor Levit is the co-artistic director of the Musikfestival Heidelberger Frühling.
Born in Nizhni Novgorod, Igor Levit moved to Germany with his family at the age of eight. He completed his piano studies in Hannover with the highest score in the history of the institute. His teachers included Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Matti Raekallio, Bernd Goetzke, Lajos Rovatkay, and Hans Leygraf. Igor Levit was the youngest participant in the 2005 International Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, where he won silver, the special prize for chamber music, the audience prize, and the special prize for the best performance of contemporary pieces.
In 2018 Igor Levit has been named the eigth recipient of the prestigious “Gilmore Artist Award” – conferred only every four years to a classical pianist and recognized as the largest and one of the world’s most distinguished music awards. In spring 2019 Igor Levit was appointed professor for piano at his alma mater, the University of Music, Theatre, and Media Hanover. Igor Levit’s 2019 highly acclaimed first recording of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas was awarded the Gramophone Artist of the Year Award as well as the Opus Klassik in autumn 2020. Igor Levit is Musical America’s Recording Artist of the Year 2020. In June 2022 his album On DSCH has been awarded the Recording of the Year Award as well as the Instrumental Award of the BBC Music Magazine. Igor Levit’s new solo album for Sony Classical Fantasia was released in September 2023. In spring 2021 Hanser published Igor Levit’s first book “House Concert,” co-authored by Florian Zinnecker followed in Fall 2022 by the release of the feature documentary Igor Levit – No Fear in cinemas and on DVD.
For his political commitment Igor Levit has been awarded the fifth International Beethoven Prize in 2019 followed by the award of the Statue B of the International Auschwitz Committee in January 2020.
His 53 Twitter-streamed live house concerts during the lockdown in spring 2020 garnered a worldwide audience, offering a sense of community and hope in a time of isolation and desperation. In October 2020 Igor Levit was recognized with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In Berlin, where he makes his home, Igor Levit is playing on a Steinway D Grand Piano kindly given to him by the Trustees of Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells.
Program Highlights
- Jaap van Zweden, conductor
- Christopher Martin, trumpet
- Igor Levit, piano
PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 1, Classical
SHOSTAKOVICH Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and Strings
MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3, Scottish
Program Notes
Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical (1916-17)
SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)
Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical
Allegro
Larghetto
Gavotte: Non troppo allegro
Finale: Molto vivace
Sergei Prokofiev’s conducting professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Nikolai Tcherepnin, adored the music of the Classical era and encouraged his students to immerse themselves in the works of Haydn and Mozart to see what inspiration they could extract for their own compositions. A happy result was Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, meticulously worked out in 1916-17 and premiered the following year, just before the composer left his politically explosive homeland for a very extended residence in America and Western Europe. (The year of the Classical Symphony’s completion was also the year of the Czar’s abdication, the October Revolution, and Lenin’s ascent to political power.)
Prokofiev later explained that his intent was to translate musical Classicism into a specifically 20th-century idiom. “It seemed to me that if Haydn had lived into this era, he would have kept his own style while absorbing things from what was new in music. That’s the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the Classical style.” His decision to give the work its familiar nickname seems to have derived from two impetuses: on one hand, it is a logical reference to its sources; on the other, the composer explained that he “secretly hoped that in the course of time it might itself turn out to be a classic.”
This was the first major work that Prokofiev, a superb pianist, composed without the intermediary of the keyboard. “I was intrigued with the idea of writing an entire symphonic piece without the piano,” he recounted. “A composition written this way would probably have more transparent orchestral colors.” The Classical Symphony is transparent indeed, as transparent as a fine diamond. Set in the “sunny” 18th-century key of D major, it employs the forces of a Classical orchestra to crisp effect.
Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, Op. 35 (1933)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-75)
Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, Op. 35
Allegretto
Lento
Moderato
Allegro con brio
(Played without pause)
Shostakovich composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in the aftermath of the censure he received from Soviet apparatchiks for his opera The Nose following its staging in early 1930. Stung by the attack, he realized that he had no option but to atone, or at least behave in a way that could be interpreted as such; but his efforts seemed only to make things worse. During this period of turmoil he all but ceased appearing as a concert pianist, which had been an essential strand of his earlier musical persona, but in early 1933 he began focusing on the keyboard again, at first producing a series of Twenty-four Preludes (Op. 34) and, immediately on the heels of that cycle, his First Piano Concerto. At about this time he told a friend that he was considering giving up composing and returning to his career as a concert pianist, an understandable temptation in light of the problems his compositions had caused him. Fortunately, the Concerto proved to be wildly successful and quickly entered the repertoire as a must-play piece.
Shostakovich wisely refused to comment on the “inner meaning” of this work—not that he wasn’t asked. This left the delighted listeners to simply revel in its optimistic bonhomie and its understated references to Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Mahler, and various styles of popular music; and it left the critics without anything to attack, for a change. He did explain that when he started working on this piece he envisioned it as a trumpet concerto, that he gradually began imagining a supporting piano part, and that by the time he finished, the instruments’ roles had become reversed, making this a piano concerto with an unusually prominent role for the trumpet.
INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, Scottish
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, Scottish
Andante con moto — Allegro un poco
agitato
Vivace non troppo
Adagio
Allegro vivacissimo — Allegro maestoso
assai
Although Felix Mendelssohn did not begin focusing on his Symphony No. 3 until 1840, its genealogy dates back to 1829, when he made his first trip to the British Isles—his first of ten, it would turn out. After taking in the cultural swirl of London, he and a friend left for three weeks in Scotland, which Mendelssohn documented through drawings and sketches: Edinburgh, the Highlands, the islands of Staffa and Iona, Glasgow. On July 30, he visited the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh and wrote to his family in Berlin: “In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved. ... The chapel close to it is now roofless, grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything round is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I have found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.” Then he jotted down 16 measures of music in piano score with notations indicating instrumentation; and a decade later they would indeed grow into the Andante con moto introduction of the Scottish Symphony. Mendelssohn does not draw on Scottish melodies in his score, but listeners have been happy to hear its flavor as authentically Scottish in spirit, replete with pentatonic melodies, bass drones (suggesting bagpipes), parallel progressions of open-spaced chords, and sparkling rhythms (including so-called “Scotch snaps,” consisting of a quick note on an accented beat followed by a longer note on an unaccented one). The Caledonian association will be inalienable to many audiences today thanks to the work’s use in George Balanchine’s kilted ballet setting, under the title Scotch Symphony, a staple in the dance repertoire since it was unveiled in 1952.
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