NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC CONCERTS IN THE PARKS
PRESENTED BY DIDI AND OSCAR SCHAFER
MAJOR CORPORATE SUPPORT BY METLIFE FOUNDATION

JUNE 13–18, 2017

Music Director ALAN GILBERT To Conduct Four
Free Concerts Throughout the Boroughs of New York City

FINALE OF THE NEW WORLD INITIATIVE
DVOŘÁK’s Symphony No. 9, FROM THE NEW WORLD, To Be Played on Every Concert
SHARE THE STAGE To Feature Participants in The New World Initiative Performing in Home Boroughs

New York Philharmonic Musicians To Give Free Indoor Concert in Staten Island

The 2017 New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, will return for the 52nd season with four free outdoor concerts, conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, at Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx (June 13); the Great Lawn in Central Park, Manhattan (June 14); Cunningham Park, Queens (June 15); and Prospect Park, Brooklyn (June 16). In addition, New York Philharmonic musicians will perform at the Free Indoor Concert at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden on June 18, 2017. Major corporate support for the 2017 New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks and the Free Indoor Concert has been provided by MetLife Foundation, Citi, and Emirates Airline.

Alan Gilbert will conduct Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World, on each of the Orchestra’s concerts. These performances mark the finale of The New World Initiative, the Philharmonic’s season-long, citywide project revolving around Dvořák’s New World Symphony and its theme of home on the occasion of the Philharmonic’s 175th anniversary season. Through performances, community outreach, and education projects, The New World Initiative honors the Orchestra’s hometown and its role as an adopted home. Dvořák wrote the New World Symphony while he was living here in New York City. The Philharmonic gave the World Premiere of the New World Symphony in December 1893, marking the Orchestra’s first World Premiere of a work written in New York City that would become part of the standard repertoire.

Alan Gilbert will also conduct music by two composers who were themselves New Yorkers — Symphonic Dances from West Side Story by Bernstein, who made New York his home, and An American in Paris, by Brooklyn native Gershwin — on June 13 (Van Cortlandt Park) and June 15 (Cunningham Park). He will conduct Dvořák’s Carnival Overture and violinist Maxim Vengerov as soloist in Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Ravel’s Tzigane, and Massenet’s Méditation from Thaïs on June 14 (Central Park) and June 16 (Prospect Park). The New York Philharmonic partners with Prospect Park Alliance for its annual performance in Prospect Park, in celebration of the Park’s 150th anniversary. The Free Indoor Concert in Staten Island will be a chamber concert featuring Musicians from the New York Philharmonic, with programming to be announced at a later date; tickets are free, but required for this event.

All performances begin at 8:00 p.m.; there will be fireworks by Bay Fireworks following the performances in the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn.

Share the Stage — in which local musicians perform on the stage in their home boroughs before the Orchestra’s performances, introduced in the summer of 2015, the 50th anniversary of the Concerts in the Parks — will return for the Concerts in the Parks. This summer’s Share the Stage performers will be select New York City musicians and ensembles who have participated in The New World Initiative by performing Dvořák’s New World Symphony, selections from it, arrangements of it, or reinterpretations of it during the 2016–17 season. More than 117 ensembles, together representing every borough, have joined the initiative to date. Share the Stage artists will be announced at a later date.

The New York Philharmonic’s free parks concerts have become an iconic New York summer experience since they began in 1965, transforming parks throughout the New York area into a patchwork of picnickers, and providing music lovers with an opportunity to hear the best classical music under the stars. More than 14 million listeners have been delighted by the performances since their inception.

“The 2017 Concerts in the Parks will be particularly meaningful to me,” said Music Director Alan Gilbert. “I have loved this series since I was a kid, and I was backstage with the musicians at a 2007 parks concert when they were told I would be the next Music Director. This summer exemplifies what our parks concerts should be: music by New York icons Bernstein and Gershwin; Dvořák’s New World Symphony, which is central to New York and Philharmonic history; and Maxim Vengerov, an astonishing virtuoso. Our magnificent tour of the city’s parks, in which we get to share our music with all of our fellow citizens in these beautiful, star-lit settings, is the ideal way to conclude my tenure in New York.”

“The Concerts in the Parks are the best possible way to round off our celebration of the New York Philharmonic’s 175 seasons as this great city’s hometown orchestra,” said Philharmonic Chairman Oscar Schafer, who, with his wife, Didi, presents the concerts. “This is the moment when the entire city comes together for the love of music and these beautiful parks. The same spirit of community is the inspiration for The New World Initiative, the citywide exploration of the theme of home through Dvořák’s New World Symphony, so it is perfect that it is in all the concerts this summer. Didi and I are happy to join with MetLife Foundation, Citi, and Emirates to help make this exciting project happen.”

Artists
As Music Director of the New York Philharmonic since 2009, Alan Gilbert has introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, and Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today’s music; and the New York Philharmonic Global Academy, partnerships with cultural institutions to offer training of pre-professional musicians, often alongside performance residencies. The Financial Times called him “the imaginative maestro-impresario in residence.”

Alan Gilbert concludes his final season as Music Director with four programs that reflect themes, works, and musicians that hold particular meaning for him, including Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony alongside Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Wagner’s complete Das Rheingold in concert, and an exploration of how music can effect positive change in the world. Other highlights include four World Premieres, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, and Manhattan, performed live to film. He also leads the Orchestra on the EUROPE / SPRING 2017 tour and in performance residencies in Shanghai and Santa Barbara. Past highlights include acclaimed stagings of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson (2015 Emmy nomination), and Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake starring Marion Cotillard; 28 World Premieres; a tribute to Boulez and Stucky during the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL; The Nielsen Project; the Verdi Requiem and Bach’s B-minor Mass; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey, performed live to film; Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; performing violin in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time; and ten tours around the world.

Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and former principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, Alan Gilbert regularly conducts leading orchestras around the world. This season he returns to the foremost European orchestras, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He will record Beethoven’s complete piano concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Inon Barnatan, and conduct Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, his first time leading a staged opera there. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut conducting John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in 2008, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award, and he conducted Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles on a recent album recorded live at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard School, where he holds the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. His honors include Honorary Doctor of Music degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music (2010) and Westminster Choir College (2016), Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award (2011), election to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2014), a Foreign Policy Association Medal for his commitment to cultural diplomacy (2015), Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2015), and New York University’s Lewis Rudin Award for Exemplary Service to New York City (2016).

Grammy Award–winning violinist Maxim Vengerov enjoys international acclaim as a conductor and soloist. Born in 1974, he began his solo career at the age of five, won the Wieniawski and Carl Flesch international competitions at ages 10 and 15, respectively, and went on to record extensively for high-profile labels including Teldec and EMI. In 2007 Mr. Vengerov followed in the footsteps of his mentor, the late Mstislav Rostropovich, by turning his attention to conducting. In June 2014 he graduated with a Diploma of Excellence from the Moscow Institute of Ippolitov-Ivanov, studying with professor Yuri Simonov, and subsequently enrolled in a two-year opera conducting program. Mr. Vengerov is scheduled to conduct his first performances of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in Brisbane and Moscow in November and December 2017, respectively. Highlights of Maxim Vengerov’s 2016–17 season have included the season-opening concerts of the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, and beginning his tenure as the 2017 artist-in-residence with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. In May and August 2017 he tours Europe with the Toronto Symphony and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras. As guest conductor, his engagements include the RTE National Symphony Orchestra Dublin, Munich Philharmonic, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Vengerov is currently ambassador and visiting professor of the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland (IMMA) and the Polonsky Visiting Professor of Violin at the Royal College of Music London. He also holds the position of artist-in-residence with the Oxford Philharmonic. In 1997 Mr. Vengerov became the first classical musician to be appointed International Goodwill Ambassador by UNICEF. He plays the ex-Kreutzer Stradivari (1727). Maxim Vengerov made his New York Philharmonic debut in February 1991 performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst; he most recently joined the Orchestra for its 2016 Chinese New Year Concert, performing Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto and Kreisler’s Tambourin chinois, conducted by Long Yu.

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The New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks are presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer.

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MetLife Foundation, Citi, and Emirates Airline are Major Corporate Sponsors of Concerts in the Parks.

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Concerts in the Parks are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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Citi. Preferred Card of the New York Philharmonic.

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Emirates is the Official Airline of the New York Philharmonic.

2017 NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC CONCERTS IN THE PARKS
PRESENTED BY DIDI AND OSCAR SCHAFER
MAJOR CORPORATE SUPPORT BY METLIFE FOUNDATION

All concerts begin at 8:00 p.m.

Program I

Alan Gilbert, conductor

DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 9, From the New World
BERNSTEIN Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
GERSHWIN An American in Paris

Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx Tuesday, June 13, 2017

• Enter the park from Broadway, near West 251st Street. Concert site is north of the baseball fields.

Cunningham Park, Queens Thursday, June 15, 2017

• Enter at 193rd Street, near 81st Avenue or Union Turnpike. Concert site is at 193rd Street Field.

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Program II

Alan Gilbert, conductor
Maxim Vengerov, violin

DVOŘÁK Carnival Overture
SAINT-SAËNS Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso
RAVEL Tzigane 
MASSENET Méditation from Thaïs
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 9, From the New World

Great Lawn, Central Park, Manhattan Wednesday, June 14, 2017

• Westside entrances: West 81st or 86th Streets at Central Park West
• Eastside entrances: East 79th or 85th Streets at Fifth Avenue

Prospect Park, Brooklyn Friday, June 16, 2017

• Enter at Grand Army Plaza, Prospect Park West at 9th Street, or Bartel-Pritchard Circle at the intersection of Prospect Park West, Prospect Park Southwest, and 15th Street.

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FREE INDOOR CONCERT
PRESENTED BY DIDI AND OSCAR SCHAFER
MAJOR CORPORATE SUPPORT BY METLIFE FOUNDATION

Musicians from the New York Philharmonic

Program tba

Staten Island Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden Sunday, June 18, 2017