[On the Podium]
Former Music Directors and Advisors*
Lorin Maazel: A Look Back
Guest Conductors
Marin Alsop Andrey Boreyko Lionel Bringuier* Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos Gustavo Dudamel Charles Dutoit Alan Gilbert meeting the New York Christoph Eschenbach press for the first time as Music Delta David Gier Director Designate in July 2007 Alan Gilbert Gilbert Kaplan* Ton Koopman* Kurt Masur Nicholas McGegan Zubin Mehta In January 2009 the New York PhilLudovic Morlot harmonic will announce the programRiccardo Muti ming for 2009–10, Alan Gilbert’s debut David Robertson season as the Orchestra’s Music Director. Esa-Pekka Salonen A native New Yorker, Mr. Gilbert is * Philharmonic Debut currently principal guest conductor of Associate Conductor Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, (The Arturo Toscanini Chair) and recently completed his tenure as Xian Zhang chief conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. Since making his Philharmonic debut in October 2001, Mr. Gilbert’s relationship with the Orchestra has grown, leading to this new appointment.
Bernstein
Mahler
Toscanini
Hill
Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert
6
With Zarin Mehta (right) greeting the press after the concert at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre in 2008
Lorin Maazel became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2002, 60 years after making his debut with the Orchestra at Lewisohn Stadium, then the Orchestra’s summer venue. By the end of his tenure as Music Director, he will have conducted 10 World Premiere–New York Philharmonic Commissions — including John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize–winning On the Transmigration of Souls, the CD of which received three Grammy Awards — as well as cycles of works by Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. He has conducted every Opening Night Concert at the Philharmonic during his tenure, and will have led eight concerts broadcast nationally on Live From Lincoln Center. On September 11, 2002, Mr. Maazel led Philharmonic brass and percussion players in Battery Park at the evening’s ceremonial lighting of an Eternal Flame memorial in remembrance of September 11, 2001. On December 7 of the same year, he conducted the New York Philharmonic’s 160th Birthday Concert. Mr. Maazel, who has received high critical praise for his performances of Mahler symphonies, will have conducted all of them by the end of the 2008–09 season. Other highlights of past performances include
Leading Members of the Philharmonic on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater in 2003
Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette in October 2003; Verdi’s Requiem in spring 2006; and Ravel’s one-act opera, L’Enfant et les sortilèges, in October 2006, which he will reprise with the Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on February 17, 2009. The Philharmonic joined with Mr. Maazel on March 1, 2005, to celebrate his 75th birthday with a program of his own compositions — including Monaco Fanfares in its U.S. premiere, which he conducts again in the 2008–09 season. In a break from traditional venues, Mr. Maazel conducted Members of the New York Philharmonic in the Overture to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater on September 29, 2003, on The Late Show with David Letterman. Lorin Maazel led the Orchestra’s inaugural performances in the DG Concerts series — a groundbreaking initiative to offer downloadable New York Philharmonic concerts exclusively on iTunes. He has taken the Orchestra on numerous international tours and residencies, including the historic visit to Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in February 2008 — the first performance there by an American orchestra, and an event watched around the world.
Music Director Emeritus
1978–1991 Zubin Mehta 1971–1977 Pierre Boulez 1969–1970 George Szell 1958–1969 Leonard Bernstein
1969–1990, Laureate Conductor
1949–1958 Dimitri Mitropoulos 1949–1950 Leopold Stokowski 1947–1949 Bruno Walter 1943–1947 Artur Rodzinski 1936–1941 John Barbirolli 1928–1936 Arturo Toscanini
Alan Gilbert’s Season Highlights • Two concerts in Carnegie Hall during the citywide festival Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds – An all-Bernstein evening at Carnegie Hall (November 14) – A concert by the Juilliard Orchestra, presented by the Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, with works by Bernstein and Beethoven (November 24) • A program of works by Dvorˇák and Martinu ˚, as well as Saint-Saëns’s Violin Concerto No. 3 with Joshua Bell (April 30, May 1–2, and 5) • Three Hear & Now concerts featuring Peter Lieberson’s The World in Flower, a World Premiere–New York Philharmonic Commission (May 7–9)
1991–2002 Kurt Masur
1922–1930 Willem Mengelberg 1911–1923 Josef Stransky Mehta
1909–1911 Gustav Mahler 1906–1909 Wassily Safonoff 1902–1903 Walter Damrosch** 1898–1902 Emil Paur 1891–1898 Anton Seidl 1877–1891 Theodore Thomas 1876–1877 Leopold Damrosch** 1855–1876 Carl Bergmann 1848–1865 Theodore Eisfeld
Salonen
Alsop
1842–1847 Ureli Corelli Hill * In some years there was no designee for
these positions ** Conducted the New York Symphony Society, founded by Leopold Damrosch in 1877, which merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928
Dudamel
7