LiveNote® 2018-19 Season
We are excited to invite you, our valued and loyal patrons, to join us as we continue to feature the LiveNote app during the concert season. We will employ this concert enhancement initially on select subscription concerts in an effort to engage concertgoers and learn more about the collective appetite for the use of new technology in the concert hall across many different types of Orchestra concerts.
LiveNote will be featured on certain pieces only on select dates during the following performances in the 2018-19 season:
Celebrate 10 years of music-making between Yannick and the Philadelphians. André Watts soloed at Yannick's Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2008; he celebrates the 10th anniversary with Grieg's stirring Piano Concerto. With the Metropolitan Opera giving the U.S. premiere of Nico Muhly's sensational opera Marnie, based on Winston Graham's book and Alfred Hitchcock's film, we present the world premiere of the companion orchestral suite (a Philadelphia Orchestra commission).
Lisa Batiashvili returns for Tchaikovsky’s spectacular Violin Concerto with Yannick at the podium.
Yannick and Lisa Batiashvili have enchanted concert audiences all over the world; she returns to the Orchestra with Tchaikovsky's spectacular Violin Concerto anchoring two different programs over two weekends. In this concert, Lisa reprises the Tchaikovsky Concerto, bookended by Dvorák's Othello Overture (a moving musical exploration of Shakespeare's tragedy) and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, the composer's final piece, written expressly for The Philadelphia Orchestra.
This first program features two Stokowski orchestrations: “Adoramus te Christe” by Palestrina (a composer Barnes felt affinity for) and Debussy's “The Sunken Cathedral.” Concertmaster David Kim solos in Chausson's elegant Poème, and Debussy's La Mer paints an indelible picture of the sea.
In this second program, we witness The Creation of the World, courtesy of Frenchman Darius Milhaud, who was energized by the jazz he heard on a visit to Harlem. Francis Poulenc's Organ Concerto is a dazzling showpiece for the marvelous Fred. J. Cooper Memorial Organ. The Rite of Spring—first brought to America by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphians— remains a primal, shattering musical masterpiece. Albert Barnes once wrote about the strong link he saw between the works of Henri Matisse and Stravinsky's compositions. This program reveals the intellectual and artistic zeal Barnes and Stokowski shared, which resonates to this day.
A pair of Philadelphia Orchestra debuts, by two rapidly rising stars: David Afkham on the podium and Seong-Jin Cho at the keyboard. Cho brings his prize-winning technique to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20. Beethoven's stirring Coriolan Overture was inspired by a play about war and peace in ancient Rome. Brahms was daunted by Beethoven's towering legacy; that may be why it took him so long to finish his majestic Symphony No. 1. For almost 150 years, audiences have agreed it was worth the wait.
Yannick teams up with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, one of the biggest vocal talents in the world, a rare combination of exceptional skills and winning personality. She'll shine in Chausson's musical poem about love, death, and the sea. The Philadelphians take center stage in Wagner's Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin and Respighi's Fountains of Rome. And we are eager to welcome back American composer Mason Bates after the resounding success of his fascinating and futuristic Alternative Energy in 2017.
You may think you know Appalachian Spring, but the newly completed version performed here is the complete chamber ballet score orchestrated for a large ensemble. (Eugene Ormandy himself asked Copland to expand the orchestration a half century ago.) Consider it our “simple gift” to you! Our good friend Cristian Macelaru leads this all-American program. He's arranged a suite from Jake Heggie's opera Moby Dick (“a masterpiece of clarity and intensity”—San Francisco Chronicle).
The breadth and depth of Tchaikovsky's musical genius are on display in this dazzling celebration of his music, led by our dynamic Assistant Conductor Kensho Watanabe. Inspired by a trip to sunny Italy, Tchaikovsky transforms the sounds he heard all around him into a delightful “Italian Fantasia” (his original title for Capriccio italien). He turns to Mozart for inspiration in his Rococo Variations, the closest Tchaikovsky came to writing a cello concerto, performed by rising star Edgar Moreau.
We welcome back Esa-Pekka Salonen for a program of music that's sure to win hearts, minds, and ears. There's more to Richard Strauss's Zarathustra than the few notes heard in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey: It's a unique experience in the concert hall with orchestra and the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ. The Viola Concerto was one of Bartók's last compositions.
Soloist James McVinnie cut his teeth in the great British cathedrals (he played for William and Kate's wedding at Westminster Abbey) and consistently wows the critics (“musically and technically immaculate”—Los Angeles Times). He joins the Orchestra in the East Coast premiere of Nico Muhly's Organ Concerto, a co-commission with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In McVinnie's hands, hear the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ in all its glory.
Hannibal completes his tenure as composer-in-residence with the world premiere of Healing Tones, a hymn for the City of Brotherly Love. He's spent the past two years immersing himself in Philadelphia, collecting inspiration, texts, and music from all walks of life. Given his past triumphs here (including One Land, One River, One People), Hannibal's new piece is sure to enthrall. Yannick continues his complete cycle of the Sibelius symphonies with the Second.
Jonathan Biss once declared himself “a fanatic for every note Schumann wrote.” Reap the benefits as he performs the composer's only piano concerto, strongly championed by his wife, Clara, who played the work's premiere in 1846. From its indelible opening theme to its thundering finale, the “Eroica” Symphony is one of Beethoven's most popular works. It simply must be experienced live; no one does it better than the Fabulous Philadelphians!
With a premiere performance by Fritz Kreisler, and a premiere recording by a teenaged Yehudi Menuhin, Elgar's Violin Concerto was no doubt destined to become a staple of the violin repertoire. Our soloist, Nikolaj Znaider, is internationally renowned as a violinist. And he has a special connection to the Elgar Concerto: He plays Kreisler's Guarneri violin! Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 is among his most popular works, with its stirring evocation of “fate,” from somber to triumphant.
With LiveNote you can:
- Follow along during the performance with real-time program notes including text and translations for vocal works.
- Watch the slides of information automatically advance with the music on your phone’s screen during the concert.
- Enjoy key highlights, engaging details, and images relating to the composition.
- Access a musical glossary, a digital version of the traditional program notes, and information about The Philadelphia Orchestra.
- Adjust the font size and brightness for optimal viewing during a performance in Verizon Hall.
A critical feature of LiveNote is that it has been developed to have minimal impact on concertgoers in the hall and thoroughly tested in rehearsals and postlude performances. The application is designed with grey text on a black background specifically to minimize light and disruption. The content is custom designed for each piece to optimize the experience of hearing the work without distraction. It can be used throughout Verizon Hall, and its use is optional. LiveNote will be a companion to Playbill, which will continue to be distributed at performances when LiveNote is available.
“Today, we all are finding ways to merge technology with the things that we love in our lives, including listening to music. I welcome the opportunity to facilitate this in the concert hall in a thoughtful manner, providing listeners with the choice to use the LiveNote application, or not. It is yet another option for our audiences to appreciate and enjoy the music differently.”
-- Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin
We are committed to providing you the best possible concert experience. We are excited to bring this new concert enhancement to Verizon Hall and plan with you the next steps for this technology. Please share your thoughts with us via the contact form.
LiveNote was funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and the William Penn Foundation.
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