Mahler Symphony No. 3 New York...

New York Philharmonic

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New York Philharmonic Alan Gilbert, Music Director

Mahler Symphony No. 3Petra Lang, mezzo-sopranoWomen of the Westminster Symphonic ChoirThe American Boychoir

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The 2009–10 season — Alan Gilbert’s first as Music Director of the Philharmonic — introduces his vision for the Orchestra, one that both builds on its rich legacy and looks to the future and reflects the diver-sity of his interests. He sees the Orchestra as a place that both celebrates the great-est of the classical repertoire and nurtures today’s composers and tomorrow’s music. The season’s programming reflects his belief in the importance of artistic collabo-ration, his commitment to raising audience awareness and understanding of music, and his interest in making the Philharmon-ic a destination for all.

“I’d like to develop a special kind of rapport and trust with our audience,” Mr. Gilbert says. “The kind of belief that would make them feel comfortable hearing anything we program simply because we programmed it. Looking ahead, I hope my performances with the Orchestra will consist of our tightly combined human chemistry, a clear persona that is both identifiable and enjoyable.”

About This SeriesIn Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season, the New York Philharmonic breaks new ground by being the first orchestra to offer a season’s worth of recorded music for download. Offered exclusively through iTunes, this series brings the excitement of Alan Gilbert’s first season to an interna-tional audience.

The concert you have purchased is one of 30 available through the iTunes Pass, which comprises new music (including New York Philharmonic commissions) and magnificent selections from the orches-tral repertoire, performed by many of the world’s top artists and conductors. The subscrip tion also features bonus content, such as Alan Gilbert’s onstage com-mentaries, and exclusive extras, including additional performances, encores, and lectures.

For more information about the series, visit nyphil.org/itunes.

Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season

Executive Producer: Vince Ford

Producer, Recording and Mastering Engineer: Lawrence Rock

Performance photos: Chris Lee

Alan Gilbert portrait: Hayley Sparks

Gustav Mahler portrait: New York Philharmonic Archives

Mahler: Symphony No. 3 used by arrangement with Universal Edition A.G., Vienna.

Major funding for this recording is provided to the New York Philharmonic by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser.

Petra Lang's appearance is made possible through the Hedwig van Ameringen Guest Artists

Endowment Fund.

Programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural

Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Instruments made possible, in part, by The Richard S. and Karen LeFrak Endowment Fund.

Steinway is the Official Piano of the New York Philharmonic and Avery Fisher Hall.


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Alan Gilbert, ConductorPetra Lang, Mezzo-SopranoWomen of the Westminster Symphonic Choir

Joe Miller, DirectorThe American Boychoir

Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Director

Recorded live September 17–18 & 22, 2009, Avery Fisher Hallat Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

MAHLER (1860–1911)

Symphony No. 3 in D minor (1895–96; rev. through 1906) 1:35:44Part One

1. Forcefully. Decisively. 33:16

Part Two

2. Tempo di minuetto. Moderately. 9:20

3. Comodo. Scherzando. Unhurriedly. 17:05

4. Very slow. Misterioso. Pianississimo throughout. 8:33

5. Joyous in tempo and jaunty in expression. 4:16

6. Slow. Calm. Deeply felt. 23:14

PETRA LANG

WOMEN OF THE WESTMINSTER SYMPHONIC CHOIR

THE AMERICAN BOYCHOIR

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Notes on the ProgramBy James M. Keller, Program Annotator

Symphony No. 3 in D minor

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler once wrote to a music critic who was trying to understand his Third Symphony:

I find it quite strange that people talking

about nature only make mention of flow-

ers, birds, and fresh air. But nobody seems

to know Pan, the god Dionysos. Nature is

able to show all those phenomena, both

pleasant and horrible, and I wanted to

put these things in a kind of evolutionary

development in my work.

Mahler’s Third Symphony is indeed a towering monument to nature, but it is not so entirely reassuring a work as its subject might lead one to expect. Nonetheless, this longest of Mahler’s symphonies is one of his most approachable, most relaxed, and least haunted by nightmares and apocalyptic visions.

Because responsibilities on the podium completely occupied him during concert seasons, Mahler largely relegated his composing to the summer months, which he invariably spent as a near hermit at one bucolic site or another in the Austrian countryside. When he came to write his Third Symphony, during the summers of 1895 and 1896, he was escaping the concert-season rigors connected to his directorship of the orchestra and opera in Hamburg. He had assumed that post in 1891, following a peripatetic career that

had already led him through increasingly prestigious music directorships at Bad Hall (his first professional appointment, which he obtained in 1880), Ljubljana, Olomouc, Kassel, Prague, Leipzig, and Budapest.

Mahler’s preferred summer retreat at that time was the village of Steinbach on

In ShortBorn: July 7, 1860, in Kalischt (Kalište), Bohemia, near the town of Humpolec

Died: May 18, 1911, in Vienna

Work composed: the summers of 1895 and 1896, at Steinbach am Attersee, in Upper Austria, drawing on material from earlier songs; revised through 1906

World premiere: the complete symphony, June 9, 1902, in Krefeld, Germany, with contralto Luise Geller-Wolter, Mahler conducting the orchestra and choruses of the Festival of the Allgemeiner deutscher Musikverein; individual movements had already been performed in 1896 and 1897

New York Philharmonic premiere: February 28, 1922, Willem Mengelberg, conductor, Julia Clausson, contralto, with the St. Cecilia Club and the Boys’ Choir of Father Finn’s Paulist Choristers; this was the work’s New York City premiere

the Attersee. Initially this symphony was to be called The Happy Life, a Summer Night’s Dream (not after Shakespeare ... reviewer’s notes), and each of its six movements was to carry an individual title: “What the Forest Tells Me,” “What the Twilight Tells Me,” “What Love Tells Me,” “What the Flowers of the Meadow Tell Me,” “What the Cuckoo Tells Me,” and “What the Child Tells Me.”

As Mahler worked on the symphony he revised his program and titles consider-ably. In 1896, just after completing the work, he enumerated the movements’ revised titles in a letter to his friend, the critic Max Marschalk:

Part One:

“Pan Awakes. Summer Marches In.

(Pan’s Procession)”

Part Two:

“What the Flowers of the Meadow

Tell Me”

“What the Animals of the Forest

Tell Me”

“What Man Tells Me”

“What the Angels Tell Me”

“What Love Tells Me”

The movements were separated into two uneven parts: the first movement (itself lasting just over a half hour, which is to say, a third of the symphony’s total running time) alone constituting the first part, and the remaining five movements, the second.

That’s how things stood until the piece was finally premiered in 1902, when

Sources and Inspirations

Mahler wrote his Third Symphony during two summers in the bucolic Upper Austrian village of Steinbach on the Attersee. Many of the mov-ers and shakers of the music industry were passing their summers at Bad Ischl, a dozen miles to the south, but not Mahler, who sought solitude. Apart from a couple of trips to Bad Ischl to visit Brahms, he spent the greater part of his time in Steinbach alone, in a cabin at the end of a field, near the shore of the lake itself.

The furnishings inside his “composing house” included a desk, a couple of chairs, a stove, and a baby grand piano. Mahler entered his composing house at seven in the morning and stayed there until at least mid-afternoon, sometimes on into the evening if his creative juices were really flowing. That Mahler’s Third Symphony is to a great extent a reflection of the landscape in which it was created cannot be doubted. When Bruno Walter visited the composer at Steinbach in July 1896, Mahler, seeing the young conductor survey the jaw-dropping scenery, said to him, “You need not stand staring at that; I have already composed it all.”

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Notes on the Program (continued)

Mahler suddenly decided to dispense with the programmatic titles along with most of the rather detailed programmatic markings he had previously placed within the course of the movements. Mahler wrote in a letter to the conductor Josef Krug-Waldsee:

Those titles were an attempt on my part

to provide non-musicians with something

to hold onto and with signposts for the

intellectual or, better, the expressive

content of the various movements and

for their relationship to each other and to

the whole. That it didn’t work (as, in fact,

it never could work) and that it led only to

misinterpretations of the most horrendous

sort became painfully clear all too quickly.

... Those titles ... will surely say something

to you after you know the score. You will

draw intimations from them about how I

imagined the steady intensification of feel-

ing, from the indistinct, unyielding, elemen-

tal existences (of the forces of nature) to

the tender formation of the human heart,

which in turn points toward and reaches a

region beyond itself (God).

This last comment goes to the heart of the Third Symphony perhaps more than any other, but one has trouble overcom-ing the lingering suspicion that the earlier titles in fact have a great deal to do with what this piece is about.

Instrumentation: four flutes (all doubling pic-colo), four oboes (one doubling English horn), four clarinets (one doubling E-flat clarinet and one doubling bass clarinet) plus another E-flat clarinet, four bassoons (one doubling contra-bassoon), eight horns, four trumpets, post horn (offstage), four trombones, tuba, timpani (two players), orchestra bells, snare drum (plus two offstage), triangle, tambourine, bass drum with attached cymbal, suspended cym-bals, tam-tam, rute, two harps, and strings, in addition to a mezzo-soprano soloist, women’s chorus, and boys’ chorus.

Texts and Translations

Fourth MovementO Mensch! Gib acht!Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?“Ich schlief, ich schlief — ,Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht: —Die Welt ist tief,Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.Tief ist ihr Weh — ,Lust — tiefer noch als Herzeleid;Weh spricht: Vergeh!Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit —— Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!”

Oh, man, give heed!What does deep midnight say?I slept! I slept!From a deep dream have I awakened.The world is deep,And deeper than the day had thought!Deep is its pain!Joy deeper still than heartbreak!Pain speaks: Vanish!But all joy seeks eternity,Seeks deep, deep eternity!

Fifth MovementEs sungen drei Engel einen süssen Gesang,Mit Freuden es selig im Himmel klang;Sie jauchzten fröhlich auch dabei,Dass Petrus sei von Sünden frei.

Und als der Herr Jesus zu Tische sass,Mit seinen zwölf Jüngern das Abendmal ass,Da sprach der Herr Jesus: “Was stehst du

denn hier?Wenn ich dich anseh’, so weinest du mir!”

“Und sollt’ ich nicht weinen, du gütiger Gott![Du sollst ja nicht weinen!]Ich hab’ übertreten die zehn Gebot.

Ich gehe und weine ja bitterlich,[Du sollst ja nicht weinen!]Ach, komm und erbarme dich über mich!”

“Hast du denn übertreten die zehn Gebot,

So fall auf die Knie und bete zu Gott.Liebe nur Gott in alle Zeit!So wirst du erlangen die himmlische Freud’.”

Die himmlische Freud’ ist eine selige Stadt,Die himmlische Freud’, die kein Ende mehr hat.Die himmlische Freude war Petro bereit’t,Durch Jesum und Allen zur Seligkeit.

Three angels were singing a sweet song:With joy it resounded blissfully in Heaven.At the same time they happily shouted with joyThat Peter was absolved from sin.

For as Lord Jesus sat at table,Eating supper with his twelve apostles,So spoke Lord Jesus: “Why are you

standing here?When I look upon you, you weep for me!”

“And how should I not weep, you kind God![No, you mustn’t weep!]I have trespassed against the Ten

Commandments.I go and weep, and bitterly.[No, you mustn’t weep!]Ah, come and have mercy on me!”

“If you have trespassed against the TenCommandments,

Then fall on your knees and pray to God.Only love God forever,And you will attain heavenly joy.”

Heavenly joy is a blessed city,Heavenly joy, that has no end.Heavenly joy was prepared for PeterBy Jesus and for the salvation of all.

— from Des Knaben Wunderhorn


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ViolinsGlenn Dicterow

Concertmaster The Charles E. Culpeper Chair

Sheryl Staples Principal Associate

Concertmaster The Elizabeth G. Beinecke Chair

Michelle Kim Assistant Concertmaster The William Petschek Family Chair

Enrico Di CeccoCarol WebbYoko Takebe

Minyoung ChangHae-Young Ham

The Mr. and Mrs. Timothy M. George Chair

Lisa GiHae KimKuan-Cheng LuNewton MansfieldKerry McDermottAnna RabinovaCharles Rex

The Shirley Bacot Shamel Chair

Fiona SimonSharon YamadaElizabeth ZeltserYulia Ziskel

Marc Ginsberg Principal

Lisa Kim* In Memory of Laura Mitchell

Soohyun Kwon The Joan and Joel I. Picket Chair

Duoming Ba

Marilyn Dubow The Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Chair

Martin EshelmanQuan GeJudith GinsbergMyung-Hi Kim+Hanna LachertHyunju LeeDaniel ReedMark SchmoocklerNa SunVladimir Tsypin

ViolasCynthia Phelps

Principal The Mr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Rose Chair

Rebecca Young*+Irene Breslaw**

The Norma and Lloyd Chazen Chair

Dorian Rence

Katherine GreeneThe Mr. and Mrs. William J. McDonough Chair

Dawn HannayVivek KamathPeter KenoteBarry LehrKenneth MirkinJudith NelsonRobert Rinehart

The Mr. and Mrs. G. Chris Andersen Chair

CellosCarter Brey

Principal The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Chair

Eileen Moon*The Paul and Diane Guenther Chair

Qiang TuThe Shirley and Jon Brodsky Foundation Chair

Evangeline Benedetti

Eric BartlettThe Mr. and Mrs. James E. Buckman Chair

Elizabeth DysonMaria KitsopoulosSumire KudoRu-Pei YehWei Yu

BassesEugene Levinson

Principal The Redfield D. Beckwith Chair

Orin O’BrienActing Associate Principal The Herbert M. Citrin Chair

William BlossomThe Ludmila S. and Carl B. Hess Chair

Randall ButlerDavid J. GrossmanSatoshi Okamoto

FlutesRobert Langevin

Principal The Lila Acheson Wallace Chair

Sandra Church*Renée SiebertMindy Kaufman

PiccoloMindy Kaufman

OboesLiang Wang

Principal The Alice Tully Chair

Sherry Sylar*Robert Botti

English HornThomas Stacy

The Joan and Joel Smilow Chair

ClarinetsMark NuccioActing Principal

The Edna and W. Van Alan Clark Chair

Pascual MartinezForteza

Acting Associate Principal The Honey M. Kurtz Family Chair

Alucia Scalzo++Amy Zoloto++

E-Flat ClarinetPascual Martinez

Forteza

Bass ClarinetAmy Zoloto++

2009–2010 SeasonALAN GILBERT Music DirectorDaniel Boico, Assistant ConductorLeonard Bernstein, Laureate Conductor, 1943–1990Kurt Masur, Music Director Emeritus

BassoonsJudith LeClair

Principal The Pels Family Chair

Kim Laskowski*Roger NyeArlen Fast

ContrabassoonArlen Fast

HornsPhilip Myers

Principal The Ruth F. and Alan J. Broder Chair

Erik Ralske Acting Associate Principal

R. Allen SpanjerHoward Wall

TrumpetsPhilip Smith

Principal The Paula Levin Chair

Matthew Muckey*Ethan BensdorfThomas V. Smith

TrombonesJoseph Alessi Principal The Gurnee F. and

Marjorie L. Hart Chair

Amanda Stewart*David Finlayson The Donna and

Benjamin M. Rosen Chair

Bass TromboneJames Markey

TubaAlan Baer Principal

TimpaniMarkus Rhoten

Principal The Carlos Moseley Chair

PercussionChristopher S. Lamb

Principal The Constance R. Hoguet Friends of the Philharmonic Chair

Daniel Druckman* The Mr. and Mrs. Ronald J. Ulrich Chair

HarpNancy Allen Principal

The Mr. and Mrs. William T. Knight III Chair

Keyboard In Memory of Paul Jacobs

HarpsichordLionel Party

PianoThe Karen and Richard S. LeFrak Chair

Harriet WingreenJonathan Feldman

OrganKent Tritle

LibrariansLawrence Tarlow Principal

Sandra Pearson**Sara Griffin**

Orchestra PersonnelManagerCarl R. Schiebler

Stage RepresentativeLouis J. Patalano

Audio DirectorLawrence Rock

* Associate Principal** Assistant Principal+ On Leave++ Replacement/Extra

The New York Philharmonic uses the revolving seating method for section string players who are listed alphabetically in the roster.

Honorary Membersof the SocietyPierre BoulezStanley DruckerLorin MaazelZubin MehtaCarlos Moseley

New York PhilharmonicGary W. Parr Chairman

Zarin Mehta President and Executive

Director

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The Music Director

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 has introduced a number of new initiatives: the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in- Residence, held by Magnus Lindberg, and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, held by Thomas Hampson; an annual three-week festival; and CONTACT, the New York Philharmonic’s new-music series. He leads the Orchestra on a major tour of Asia in October 2009, with debuts in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi; on a European tour in January–February 2010; and in performances of world, U.S., and New York premieres. Also in the 2009–10 season, Mr. Gilbert becomes the first person to

hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies at The Juilliard School, a position that will include 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, featuring Bernstein’s Kad-dish Symphony. In May 2009 he conducted the World Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a New York Philhar-monic Commission, and in July 2009 he led the New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks and Free Indoor Concerts, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, and four 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. Mr. Gilbert regularly conducts other leading orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, including the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco sym-phony orchestras; The Cleveland Orches-tra; Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Amsterdam’s Royal Concert-gebouw Orchestra; and Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2003 he was named the first music director of the Santa Fe Opera, where he served for three seasons.

Alan Gilbert studied at Harvard Univer-sity, The Curtis Institute of Music, and

The Juilliard School. He was a substitute violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra for two seasons and assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1995 to 1997. In November 2008 he made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Dr. Atomic. His recording of Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance.

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The Artists

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Born in

Frankfurt, Petra Lang

studied violin be- fore studying voice

with Gertie Charlent at the Music Academy of

Darmstadt; from 1989 to 2006 she studied with Ingrid Bjoner.

Her awards include first place in the s’Hertogenbosch, Robert-Stolz, and Girar-di international singing competitions, and two Grammy Awards (in 2002) for her interpretation of Cassandra on the Lon-don Symphony Orchestra’s live recording of Berlioz’s Les Troyens conducted by Sir Colin Davis. Ms. Lang has appeared at all of the major opera houses in Europe and in the United States, and at the festivals of Bayreuth, Salzburg, and Bregenz; she has also performed with the world’s major orchestras and leading conductors, in-cluding Abbado, Boulez, Bychkov, Chailly, Chung, Dohnányi, Eschenbach, Haitink, Harding, Inbal, Janowski, Jordan, Mehta, Muti, Saraste, Sawallisch, Rattle, Runni-cles, Tate, and Thielemann. She is sought out for her portrayals of such Wagnerian roles as Kundry, Sieglinde, Brangäne, Venus, Ortrud, and Adriano; Bartók’s Ju-dith; Berlioz’s Cassandra; and R. Strauss’s Ariadne, as well as for her interpretation of Mahler works and of Lieder. Petra Lang has given recitals in London’s Wigmore

Hall; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw; Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet and Louvre museum; Austria’s Schubertiade Feldkirch; New York’s Carnegie Hall; at the Edinburgh Festival; the Geneva, Brussels, and Ghent theaters; and throughout her native Germany. She has recorded songs by the conductor Clemens Krauss for Oehms Classics. Upcoming highlights include per-forming Kundry in Vienna; Ortrud in Berlin, Vienna, and San Francisco; Venus in Mu-nich; Eglantine and Erwartung in Toulouse; Judith in Paris and Cologne; Cassandra in Berlin; Ariadne in a gala performance in Mannheim; Mahler’s Second Symphony in Oslo, his Third Symphony in London, and songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn in Berlin; Wagner’s Wesendonck songs in Budapest, London, and Paris; and a BBC Lunchtime Recital in London.

The Westminster Symphonic Choir, composed of students at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, has recorded and performed with major or-chestras under virtually every internation-ally known conductor of the last 75 years. Recognized as one of the world’s leading choral ensembles, the choir has sung more than 300 performances with the New York Philharmonic alone.

In the 2009–10 season the choir performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony; Bach’s Magnificat and other works with Helmuth Rilling and The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Sir

Roger Norrington and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; and John Adams’s El Niño, also with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, conduct-ed by the composer. With conductor Joe Miller the ensemble will perform Brahms’s A German Requiem with the Westminster Festival Orchestra and Rachmaninoff’s Vespers and Kodály’s Missa Brevis.

Westminster Choir College is a division of Rider University’s Westminster Col-lege of the Arts. A professional college of music with a unique choral emphasis, Westminster prepares students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for careers in teaching, sacred music, and performance.

Con-ductor

of two of America’s most

renowned choral ensembles — the

Westminster Choir and the Westminster Symphonic Choir

— Joe Miller is also director of choral activities at Westminster Choir

College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey, where he oversees an exten-sive choral program that includes eight ensembles. Mr. Miller’s 2009–10 season includes collaborations with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and conductors John Adams and Sir Roger Norrington, The Chamber

Orchestra of Philadelphia and conductor Helmuth Rilling, and the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. In addition, Mr. Miller will conduct the Westminster Symphonic Choir in a performance of Brahms’s A German Requiem with the Westminster Festival Or-chestra. His season with the Westminster Choir includes the release of the group’s first recording, Flower of Beauty, a concert tour of California, and an annual residency at the Spoleto Festival USA. He will also conduct the Westminster Chamber Choir program in Princeton during the summer of 2010.

Joe Miller earned a master’s degree and doctorate in choral conducting from the College Conservatory of Music, Univer-sity of Cincinnati. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music education and voice from the University of Tennessee.

The American Boychoir is regarded as the United States’ premier concert boys’ choir. Boys from grades 4 through 8 come from across the country and around the world to pursue a rigorous musical and academic curriculum at The American Boychoir School, the only non-sectarian boys’ choir school in the nation. The school was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1937, and has been located in Princeton, New Jersey, since 1950.

Maintaining an active national and inter-national touring schedule, The American Boychoir performs with world-class ensembles, including the New York Phil-harmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra,

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The Artists

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and Philadelphia Orchestra. The group also appears regularly with James Levine at the Tanglewood Music Festival and has performed with soprano Jessye Norman, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, pop singer Beyoncé, and Paul McCartney (at New York’s Carnegie Hall). Often called upon for boy soloists, members of The Ameri-can Boychoir have performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and at the Berkshire Music Festival.

The American Boychoir has been exten- sively recorded on its own label, Albemarle Records, and broadcast on radio and television; it has more than 45 commercial recordings to its credit.

Having served since

2000 as the choir’s associate music

director, in July 2004 Fernando Malvar-Ruiz was

appointed Litton-Lodal Music Director of The American Boychoir.

He has toured with the choir to all of the continental states, as well as internation-ally. He has prepared the group for per-formances at the 77th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony and the Tanglewood Music Festival; for the American premiere of Paul McCartney’s oratorio, Ecce Cor

Meum; and for appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orches-tra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and Berlin Staatskapelle, working with conductors such as James Levine, Pierre Boulez, Kurt Masur, and Christoph Eschenbach, among others. He also led the choir at the na-tionally televised U.S. Open Tennis Tournament Women’s Finals.

A widely sought-after guest conductor, lecturer, and clinician, Mr. Malvar-Ruiz served as artistic director and guest conductor for the 2005 World Children’s Choir Festival in Hong Kong. He has conducted honor choirs at American Choral Directors Association regional conventions and Organization of American Kodály Educators national conventions. For the last 12 summers he has been an instruc-tor in the master’s program in music education at the Kodály Institute at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches conduct-ing and musicianship. In 2008 Mr. Malvar-Ruiz joined the faculty of the Academia Internacional de Verano de Dirección Coral Y Pedagogía Musical in Las Palmas, Spain.

Fernando Malvar-Ruiz received bachelor’s degrees in piano performance and music theory from the Real Conservatorio Supérior de Música in Madrid. He also attended the Kodály Institute in Kécskemet, Hungary, where he was awarded the Sharolta Kodály scholarship by unanimous decision of the faculty. He gradu-ated from The Ohio State University with a master’s degree in choral conducting in 1996, and he is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in musical arts from the University of Illinois.

WOMEN OF THE WESTMINSTER SYMPHONIC CHOIRSOPRANOSAllison Albright Justine Claire Aronson Rachel Barker Alexandra Batsios Silky Carter Kathleen Echols Nadia Endara Miranda Fessler Melissa Gentles Fiona Gillespie Shanay Johnson Megan Larson Danielle Marchand Katherine Matheson Hannah Miller C. Paige Porter Ashley Ross Danyel Shiflet Emma Walker Di Zhao

ALTOSBriana Bakke Kendra Bodry Elise Brancheau Thomas Buckley Melissa Fajardo Lauren Frey Amanda Geller Meagan Johnson Drew (Liz) Johnston Mimi Lanseur Catharine Layton Zerrin MartinFelicia Moore Meredyth Morrison Meghan Murray Barbara Paterson Lindsay Pope Rebeckah So Kathryn Whitaker Moriah Wynkoop

THE AMERICAN BOYCHOIRMalachi Arndt Kelvin Boateng Joon-Sung Choe Jonathan Joseph Clarke Adam CromwellArnob Dam Noah John Daniecki Lesther Ramiro Flores Joshua Nicholas Flores Oscar Frank II Lorenzo Amadeo Gapud David Gindra Gabriel Greenwood William Kent Griffith Justin Guidone

Samuel HeaterNicholas Horne Jesse Malaika Johnson Martin Jones Samuel Juarez Brian Klein Naden Kreitz Henry Mayr Richard Colegate McShane III Armani Mendez Evan Mulhern Sean Murphy Curtis Newman Isaac Newman Malcolm Newman Donyul Paek

Soo Hwan ParkCole PrescottGeorge QuinnCharles Raynaud de Fitte Richard Graham Rogers Finnian Cooper Runyon William SangJohn Schoellkopff Parker Sellers Theodore Renzo Trevisan Nathaniel Wachtel Nicholas WildeRoderick Wilson Codi James Yhap Asher Wulfman

(Current as of September 8, 2009)


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The New York Philharmonic, founded in 1842 by a group of local musicians led by American-born Ureli Corelli Hill, is by far the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, and one of the oldest in the world. It currently plays some 180 concerts a year, and on December 18, 2004, gave its 14,000th concert — a milestone unmatched by any other symphony orchestra in the world.

Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music Director in September 2009, the latest in a distinguished line of 20th-century musical giants that has included Lorin Maazel (2002–09); Kurt Masur (Music Director from 1991 to the summer of 2002; named Music Director Emeritus in 2002); Zubin Mehta (1978–91); Pierre Boulez (1971–77); and Leonard Bernstein, who was appointed Music Director in 1958 and given the lifetime title of Laureate Conductor in 1969.

Since its inception the Orchestra has championed the new music of its time, commissioning or premiering many important works, such as Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World; Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3; Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F; and Copland’s Connotations. The Philharmonic has also given the U.S. premieres of works such as Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9 and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4. This pioneering tradition has continued to the present day, with works of major contemporary composers regularly scheduled each season, including John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize– and Grammy

Award–winning On the Transmigration of Souls; Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3; Augusta Read Thomas’s Gathering Paradise, Emily Dickinson Settings for Soprano and Orchestra; and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto.

The roster of composers and conductors who have led the Philharmonic includes such historic figures as Theodore Thomas, Antonín Dvorák, Gustav Mahler (Music Director, 1909–11), Otto Klemperer, Richard Strauss, Willem Mengelberg (Music Director, 1922–30), Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini (Music Director, 1928–36), Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Bruno Walter (Music Advisor, 1947–49), Dimitri Mitropoulos (Music Director, 1949–58), Klaus Tennstedt, George Szell (Music Advisor, 1969–70), and Erich Leinsdorf.

Long a leader in American musical life, the Philharmonic has over the last century become renowned around the globe, appearing in 429 cities in 61 countries on 5 continents. In February 2008 the Orchestra, led by then-Music Director Lorin Maazel, gave a historic performance in Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — the first visit there by an American orchestra, and an event watched around the world and for which the Philharmonic received the 2008 Common Ground Award for Cultural Diplomacy. Other historic tours have included the 1930 Tour to Europe, with Toscanini; the first Tour to the USSR, in 1959; the 1998 Asia Tour with Kurt Masur, featuring the first performances in

mainland China; and the 75th Anniversary European Tour, in 2005, with Lorin Maazel.

A longtime media pioneer, the Philharmonic began radio broadcasts in 1922 and is currently represented by The New York Philharmonic This Week — syndicated nationally 52 weeks per year, and available on nyphil.org and Sirius XM Radio. On television, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Philharmonic inspired a generation through Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on CBS. Its television presence has continued with annual appearances on Live From Lincoln Center on PBS, and in 2003 it made history as the first Orchestra ever to perform live on the Grammy Awards, one of the most-watched television events worldwide. In 2004, the New York Philharmonic was the first major American Orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live. Following on this innovation, in 2009 the Orchestra announced the first-ever subscription download series, Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season, available exclusively on iTunes, produced and distributed by the New York Philharmonic, and comprising more than 50 works performed during the 2009–10 season. Since 1917 the Philharmonic has made nearly 2,000 recordings, with more than 500 currently available.

On June 4, 2007, the New York Philharmonic proudly announced a new partnership with Credit Suisse, its first-ever and exclusive Global Sponsor.

Mahler Symphony No. 3 New York...

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