CARNEGIE HALL LAUNCHES ITS 2015–2016 125TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON WITH AN OPENING NIGHT GALA CONCERT BY ALAN GILBERT & THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC FEATURING PIANIST EVGENY KISSIN ON WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7

The opening night performance by Mr. Kissin marks the first of the pianist’s six Perspectives concerts at Carnegie Hall this season. The series celebrates 25 years since he launched the Hall’s centennial season in 1990 with a spectacular debut recital recorded live as a double album by BMG Classics. Mr. Kissin has since earned the veneration and admiration of audiences worldwide as one of the most gifted classical pianists of his generation.

For 125 years, Carnegie Hall has been a place where music history has been made, with premieres of masterworks such as Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony (by the New York Philharmonic in 1893) and Gershwin’s An American in Paris, and recent acclaimed new music like Steve Reich’s Octet and David Lang’s little match girl passion. Carnegie Hall celebrates its 125th anniversary by honoring the present and looking to the future with the launch of an ambitious commissioning project, beginning with the opening night premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s new fanfare Vivo. Between the 2015–2016 and 2019–2020 seasons, at least 125 new works will be commissioned from leading composers—both established and emerging—and premiered at the Hall.

For his new piece—a fast, rhythmically vibrant concert opener—Lindberg drew on his longstanding admiration of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, the closing work on the program, and incorporated several allusions to the distinctive harmonic pattern in that score. “That particular sequence of chords is one of my true favorites,” Lindberg says. “It is almost as sophisticated as Ravel’s harmony ever got.”

The black-tie event on October 7 will be the second Opening Night Gala to also be held above the concert hall with a post-concert dinner in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Terrace and Terrace Room located in its Resnick Education Wing on the Hall’s upper floors. Beatrice Santo Domingo is the Gala Lead Chairman, with Gala Chairs Mercedes T. Bass; Annette de la Renta; Bruce and Suzie Kovner; Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis; The Marc Haas Foundation; Ronald O. Perelman; Sana Sabbagh; Lauren and Andrès Santo Domingo; Sydney and Stanley S. Shuman; David M. Siegel and Dana Matsushita; Hope and Robert F. Smith; Margaret and Ian Smith; and Joan and Sanford I. Weill. PwC is the Opening Night Gala Sponsor for the 12th consecutive season, and Dennis M. Nally, Chairman, PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd., is the Corporate Chairman for the event.

The gala benefits Carnegie Hall’s artistic and education programs. Gala tickets for the concert and post-concert dinner start at $3000 and include premier concert seating and entry to the dinner in either the Weill Terrace or Terrace Room. Tickets for the concert and pre-concert cocktail reception in Carnegie Hall’s Rohatyn Room are priced at $1250. All Gala Benefit tickets are available by calling the Special Events office at 212-903-9679 or online at carnegiehall.org/openingnightgala.

A limited number of concert-only tickets, priced $68–$220, are currently available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, or online at carnegiehall.org.

The performance kicks off the fifth annual Carnegie Hall Live broadcast and digital series with a live radio broadcast on WQXR 105.9 FM in New York and online at wqxr.org and carnegiehall.org/wqxr. Produced by WQXR and Carnegie Hall and hosted by WQXR’s Jeff Spurgeon, select Carnegie Hall Live broadcasts feature live web chats, including Twitter commentary by the broadcast team, from backstage and in the control room, connecting national and international fans to the music and to each other.

About the Artists
Evgeny Kissin has appeared with the world’s great orchestras under many leading conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Carlo Maria Giulini, Herbert von Karajan, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, and Seiji Ozawa. He was a special guest at the Grammy Awards in 1992, broadcast live to an audience estimated at more than one billion people; three years later, he became Musical America’s youngest Instrumentalist of the Year. Also a prolific recording artist, his recording of works by Scriabin, Medtner, and Stravinsky (RCA Red Seal) received a Grammy Award in 2006 for Best Instrumental Soloist, and, in 2002, he was named ECHO Klassik’s Soloist of the Year. His most recent Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with orchestra) was awarded in 2010 for his recording of Prokofiev’s Second and Third piano concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy (EMI Classics). Mr. Kissin’s exceptional talent inspired Christopher Nupen’s documentary film Evgeny Kissin: The Gift of Music, which was released in 2000 on DVD by RCA Red Seal. Mr. Kisisn’s season long Perspectives series highlights his remarkable versatility, performing two grand concertos with two New York orchestras and a trio concert with distinguished performers, in addition to championing the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Albéniz, and Larregla in a solo recital performed twice within one week (the first pianist to do so at Carnegie Hall since Vladimir Horowitz in the 1970s). He also recites Yiddish poetry in a solo performance that celebrates Jewish musical traditions.

Alan Gilbert, the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic since 2009, introduced the positions of Composer-in-Residence, Artist-in-Residence, and Artist-in-Association; CONTACT!, the new-music series; NY PHIL BIENNIAL; and New York Philharmonic Global Academy. In the 2015–2016 season, Alan Gilbert conducts R. Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben to welcome Concertmaster Frank Huang and five world premieres; co-curates the second NY PHIL BIENNIAL; and performs violin in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. He leads the orchestra as part of the Shanghai Orchestra Academy Residency and Partnership and appears at Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West. Philharmonic-tenure 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 (for which he is nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction), and Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake starring Marion Cotillard; 24 world premieres; The Nielsen Project; Verdi Requiem; the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside the film; Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; and nine tours around the world. In August 2015, he led the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in the US stage premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, co-presented as part of the Lincoln Center–New York Philharmonic Opera Initiative. Conductor laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, he regularly conducts leading orchestras nationally and internationally. This season, Mr. Gilbert makes debuts with four great European orchestras—Filarmonica della Scala, Dresden Staatskapelle, London Symphony, and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields—and returns to The Cleveland Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Juilliard’s Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies, his honors include election to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2014) and a Foreign Policy Association Medal (2015).

The New York Philharmonic plays a leading cultural role in New York City, the United States, and the world. This season’s projects will connect the Philharmonic with up to 50 million music lovers through live concerts in New York City and on its worldwide tours and residencies; digital recording series; international broadcasts on television, radio, and online; and as a resource through its wide range of education programs and Digital Archives. The orchestra has commissioned and premiered works by leading composers from every era since its founding in 1842—including Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony; John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning On the Transmigration of Souls, dedicated to the victims of 9/11; and Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Renowned around the globe, the Philharmonic has appeared in 432 cities in 63 countries—including the groundbreaking 1930 tour of Europe; the unprecedented 1959 tour to the USSR; the historic 2008 visit to Pyongyang, D.P.R.K., the first there by an American orchestra; and the orchestra’s debut in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2009. The New York Philharmonic serves as a resource for its community and the world. It complements its annual free concerts across the city—including the Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer—with a wide range of education programs, among them the famed, long-running Young People’s Concerts and Philharmonic Schools, an immersive classroom program that reaches thousands of New York City students. Committed to developing tomorrow’s leading orchestral musicians, the Philharmonic has established the New York Philharmonic Global Academy, collaborations with partners worldwide offering training of pre-professional musicians, often alongside performance residencies. These include the Shanghai Orchestra Academy and Residency Partnership and collaborations with Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West and The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. The oldest American symphony orchestra and one of the oldest in the world, the New York Philharmonic has made almost 2,000 recordings since 1917, including several Grammy Award winners, and its self-produced digital recording series continues in the 2015–2016 season. Music Director Alan Gilbert began his tenure in September 2009, succeeding a distinguished line of 20th-century musical giants that includes Leonard Bernstein, Arturo Toscanini, and Gustav Mahler.

Program Information
Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 7:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
CARNEGIE HALL’S OPENING NIGHT GALA
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
Alan Gilbert, Music Director and Conductor
Evgeny Kissin, Piano

MAGNUS LINDBERG Vivo (World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23
MAURICE RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2

Perspectives: Evgeny Kissin

Opening Night Gala Lead Sponsor: PwC

Major support for the 125 Commissions Project is provided by The Howard Gilman Foundation.

Bank of America is the Proud Season Sponsor of Carnegie Hall.

Image of Alan Gilbert at top of release by © Chris Lee. Photo of Evgeny Kissin by © Steve J. Sherman