Sunday Afternoon, October 25, 2015, at 3:00

Pre-concert lecture by Michael Beckerman at 1:45in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse

Symphonic Masters

London Symphony OrchestraValery Gergiev, ConductorYefim Bronfman, Piano

ALL-BARTÓK PROGRAM

Dance Suite (1923) Moderato Allegro molto Allegro vivace Molto tranquillo Comodo Finale: Allegro

Piano Concerto No. 2 (1930–31) Allegro Adagio—Presto—Più adagio Allegro molto

Intermission

Concerto for Orchestra (1943/45) Introduzione Giuoco delle coppie Elegia Intermezzo interrotto Finale

This program is supported by the Leon Levy Fund for Symphonic Masters.

Symphonic Masters is made possible in part by endowment support from UBS.

This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center.

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Please make certain all your electronic devices are switched off.

Steinway PianoDavid Geffen Hall

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We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper mightdistract the performers and your fellow audience members.

In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who mustleave before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces. The takingof photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building.

BNY Mellon is Lead Supporter of Great Performers

Support is provided by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser, The Florence Gould Foundation,Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, Great Performers Circle, Chairman’s Council, andFriends of Lincoln Center.

Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Endowment support for Symphonic Masters is provided by the Leon Levy Fund.

Endowment support is also provided by UBS.

MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center.

UPCOMING SYMPHONIC MASTERS EVENTSIN DAVID GEFFEN HALL:

Wednesday Evening, January 6, 2016 at 8:00Cincinnati Symphony OrchestraLouis Langrée, ConductorAlexander Gavrylyuk, PianoALL-TCHAIKOVSKY PROGRAMPiano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minorSymphony No. 5 in E minor

Sunday Afternoon, March 13, 2016 at 3:00 Los Angeles PhilharmonicGustavo Dudamel, ConductorTamara Mumford, Mezzo-sopranoConcert Chorale of New YorkJames Bagwell, DirectorBrooklyn Youth ChorusDianne Berkun-Menaker, DirectorMAHLER: Symphony No. 3 in D minorPre-concert lecture by Christopher H. Gibbs at 1:45 in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse

Monday Evening, March 14, 2016 at 8:00 Los Angeles PhilharmonicGustavo Dudamel, ConductorSergio Tiempo, PianoJOHN WILLIAMS: Soundings (New York premiere)GINASTERA: Piano Concerto No. 1 ANDREW NORMAN: New work (New York premiere)COPLAND: Appalachian Spring

For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit LCGreatPerformers.org. Call the Lincoln Center InfoRequest Line at (212) 875-5766 to learn about program cancellations or to request a GreatPerformers brochure.

Visit LCGreatPerformers.org for more information relating to this season’s programs.

Join the conversation: #LCGreatPerfs

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Sna

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For much of his career, Bartók earned his liv-ing as a virtuoso pianist and a teacher, sinceperformances of his music were few and farbetween. Despite his passionate interest inthe genuine folk music of the Hungarian andRomanian peoples—music that he studied as a scholar and absorbed into his own musi-cal language—his early mature pieces weregenerally regarded as acerbic and difficult to comprehend.

On the one hand, he employed complexdevices of thematic organization that were insome ways similar to the approaches ofSchoenberg with his 12-tone style (thoughorganized differently). On the other, he bor-rowed striking rhythms and thematic ele-ments from the folk music he had internal-ized until it became a part of his native musi-cal language.

Works like the Dance Suite explicitly evokedfolk dance styles without quoting any actualpieces. The Second Piano Concerto featuredrhythmic and thematic devices that Bartókhad learned from early piano studies of Bachand Scarlatti. Both works were more accessi-ble to listeners than the early string quartets,for example, and both seem in retrospect like stepping stones to the great success ofhis final years, the Concerto for Orchestra.There he found a means of uniting the“Hungarianness” of his folk-song studies, hispassion for overarching shapes in both indi-vidual movements and whole works, and thepossibilities of a highly skilled orchestra ableto play whatever he wrote to produce themost immediate success of his life, and themost lasting.

—Copyright © 2015 by Lincoln Center for the Per -forming Arts, Inc.

1923Bartók’s Dance SuiteWilliam Butler Yeats isawarded the Nobel Prize forLiterature.

1930–31Piano Concerto No. 2Salvador Dalí produces hisiconic painting ThePersistence of Memory.

1943Concerto for OrchestraAyn Rand’s The Fountainheadis published.

1923Engineer Gustave Eiffel dies.

1930–31Astronomical objects arefound to emit radio waves.

1943J. Robert Oppenheimer’sgroup works on the atomicbomb in New Mexico.

1923City begins dismantling oldelevated railways.

1930–31The Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art opens on West8th Street.

1943Frank Lloyd Wright is askedto design the GuggenheimMuseum.

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Great Performers I Notes on the Program

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Dance Suite, BB 86a (1923)BÉLA BARTÓKBorn March 25, 1881, in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary Died September 26, 1945, in New York

Approximate length: 17 minutes

The Dance Suite was Bartók’s earliest commission and he was already inhis forties when he got it. All his earlier work had been composed “onspec” in hopes of getting a performance. The commission came from theBudapest City Council for three works—one from each of the leadingHungarian composers of the day (Kodály and Dohnányi were the othertwo)—in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the unification of the citiesof Buda and Pest into the metropolis of Budapest. At the celebratory con-cert it was Kodály’s Psalmus hungaricus that was the great hit. Bartók’spiece did not go well (he blamed lack of sufficient rehearsal time). But at aperformance in Prague a year later, the audience demanded—and got—animmediate encore.

Bartók devised the work as a collection of dance-type movements in thestyles of all the areas where he had collected folk music. The work is con-structed in six sections played without pause and linked by a ritornello.

Bartók himself identified the first section as Arabic in character, and it showssome melodic links to his ballet The Miraculous Mandarin. The ritornello ispastoral in sound with dreamy muted violins and later a clarinet. The secondsection was Hungarian; dominated by the interval of the minor third, particu-larly in trombones slides, a sound that also recalls the Mandarin. A harp glis-sando brings in the clarinet for the ritornello again. The third dance, a rondointroduced by the bassoon, is an Allegro vivace movement that suggestsbagpipe drones. Next comes a mysterious night scene of Arabic character,with unison woodwinds sounding the exotic melody and muted strings soundscreating an atmospheric effect. The fifth section is short, mostly an assertionof a rhythmic idea; the Finale is the most elaborate part, including quotationsfrom most of the earlier sections of the work and ending in the high spiritsentirely suitable to the celebratory purpose for which it was written.

Piano Concerto No. 2, BB 101 (1930–31)BÉLA BARTÓK

Approximate length: 26 minutes

By 1930 Bartók must have felt the need for a new showpiece for his concertappearances. He had played his First Piano Concerto in Frankfurt, London,Prague, Warsaw, New York, Boston, Budapest, Cologne, and Berlin. (America

Great Performers I Notes on the Program

proved far from ready for it; Musical America gave a particularly virulent reviewto the Boston Symphony Orchestra performance in February 1928: “[T]his workfrom first to last was one of the most dreadful deluges of piffle, bombast andnonsense ever perpetrated on an audience.”) A new concerto would giveBartók another choice of repertory fororchestral bookings. He worked mostintently on the piece during the sum-mer of 1931.

Bartók composed this concertobetween the Fourth and Fifth StringQuartets, and like those works, itmakes extensive use of arch form, hisfavorite structural approach. Thework’s basic harmonic plan is far sim-pler than that of his earlier music, andthe large and small arcs of musical organization help make it more easily under-stood by listeners. The last movement grows out of material from the first, varied in its rhythmic shape. The second movement, too, which has its own,simpler arch shape, consists of a hushed Adagio surrounding a demonic Presto.

The opening movement is unique in color, for the strings sit it out entirely.(There is an obvious model in Stravinsky’s 1924 Piano Concerto with winds andpercussion.) The first section is an ABA arch; the last part offers the same the-matic ideas played upside down and backwards. The ear may well sense thesimilarity without knowing exactly why.

The second movement contrasts the strings, appearing three times, with adialogue between solo piano and timpani. The middle section is a demonicPresto, buzzing with energy and racing to a halt on a sustained trill, where-upon the Adagio returns, with the piano, strings, and timpani now comment-ing simultaneously. The finale is a complex rondo balancing the work as awhole in that it is built largely out of themes and textures from the openingmovement.

Concerto for Orchestra, BB 123 (1943/45)BÉLA BARTÓK

Approximate length: 40 minutes

Early in the 1940s, with a war raging in Europe, Bartók immigrated to the UnitedStates, where he had a temporary position doing research on recordings of east-ern European folk songs housed at Columbia University. His morale was lowboth because he had begun to have a series of high fevers that the doctorswere unable to diagnose (but which turned out to be leukemia) and becauseAmericans seemed to show little interest in his music. He insisted that henever wanted to compose again. The medical men were unable to do much,

Did you know?

Bartók was booked to teachnear Salzburg in the summerof 1931, but only three studentsshowed up. This gave himplenty of free time to finish hisSecond Piano Concerto.

Great Performers I Notes on the Program

and powerful medicine that spring came not from a doctor, but rather from aconductor—Serge Koussevitzky.

Violinist Joseph Szigeti had told Koussevitzky of Bartók’s situation, warninghim that the proud composer would not accept charity. Koussevitzky there-fore offered work: $1,000 to write a new orchestral piece with a guaranteeof a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The commission wasa tonic for the ailing composer; at once he was filled with ideas, and he com-pleted his Concerto for Orchestra in just eight weeks—August 15 to October 8,1943—while resting under medical supervision. At the premiereKoussevitzky hailed the Concerto for Orchestra as the “best orchestra pieceof the last 25 years,” and demonstrated his confidence in the score byrepeating it only three weeks later. In the program book for the premiere,Bartók wrote that his work traced “a gradual transition from the sternness ofthe first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third, to thelife-assertion of the last one.” He chose the title Concerto for Orchestrabecause his work was designed to spotlight by turn each of the sections andmost of the principal players.

A slightly mysterious introduction eventually explodes into a vigorous Allegrovivace. The second movement, Giuoco delle coppie (Game of Pairs), is achain-like sequence of folk-like melodies presented by pairs of bassoons,oboes, clarinets, flutes, and trumpets. The third movement, Elegia, is one ofthose expressive “night music” movements that Bartók delighted in. TheIntermezzo interrotto (Interrupted intermezzo) alternates two very differentthemes: a rather choppy one first heard in the oboe, then a flowing, lush,romantic one that is Bartók’s gift to the viola section. Later there is a suddeninterruption in the form of a vulgar, simple-minded tune that descends thescale in stepwise motion: This is Bartók’s parody of a theme fromShostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, which so incensed him that he created anose-thumbing burlesque. The last movement begins with characteristicdance rhythms in an equally characteristic Bartókian perpetuo moto thatrushes on and on, throwing off various motives that gradually solidify intothemes, the most important of which appears in the trumpet and turns into amassive fugue, complicated and richly wrought, but building up naturally to asplendidly sonorous climax.

Steven Ledbetter was musicologist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from1979 to 1998, and writes regularly for musical institutions across the U.S. Hegraduated from Pomona College, earned a Ph.D in musicology at New YorkUniversity, and taught at Dartmouth College before joining the BSO. He livesin Worcester, Massachusetts.

—Copyright © 2015 by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.

Great Performers I Meet the Artists

Valery Gergiev has been principal conductor of the London SymphonyOrchestra since 2007, with performances at the Barbican Centre,BBC Proms, and Edinburgh International Festival, as well as exten-sive orchestra tours of Europe, North America, and Asia. As artisticand general director of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre since1988, he has takenthe Mariinsky Ballet, Opera, and Orchestra ensem-bles to more than 45 countries. Mr. Gergiev is principal conductor ofthe World Orchestra for Peace and assumed the role of principal con-ductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra this fall. His other rolesinclude founder and artistic director of the Stars of the White Nights,New Horizons, and Mariinsky International Piano festivals in St.Petersburg, as well as the Moscow Easter Festival, RotterdamPhilharmonic Gergiev Festival, and the Gergiev Festival Mikkeli.

Mr. Gergiev has led numerous composer-centered concert cycles inNew York, London, and other international cities, featuring works byBerlioz, Brahms, Dutilleux, Mahler, Prokofiev, Shostakovich,Stravinsky, Tchai kovsky, and Wagner, as well as introducing audi-ences around the world to several rarely performed Russianoperas. He serves as chair of the organizational committee of theInternational Tchaikovsky Competition, honorary president of theEdinburgh International Festival, and dean of the faculty of arts at theSt. Petersburg State University.

His recordings on LSO Live and the Mariinsky Label continually winawards in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. Recent releases on LSO Liveinclude Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3; Berlioz’s Harold en Italie, Lamort de Cléopâtre, and Symphonie fantastique; Brahms’s SymphoniesNo. 3 and 4; and Szymanowski’s entire symphonic works. Recentreleases on the Mariinsky Label include Rachmaninoff’s PianoConcerto No. 1, Shosta kovich’s Symphony No. 9 and Violin Concerto

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No. 1 featuring Leonidas Kavakos, and Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition,Dances of Death, and Night on Bald Mountain. Mr. Gergiev’s many awardsinclude the People’s Artist of Russia, the Dmitri Shostakovich Award, the PolarMusic Prize, Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, and the French Order of theLegion of Honor.

One of today’s most acclaimed andadmired pianists, Yefim Bronfman’scommanding technique, power, andexceptional lyrical gifts are consis-tently acknowledged by the pressand audiences alike. At the center ofthis season is a residency with theStaatskapelle Dres den that includesall the Beethoven concertos con-ducted by Christian Thielemann inDresden and on tour in Europe. Mr.Bronfman will also be performingBartók concertos with the London

Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev in Edinburgh, London, Vienna, andLuxembourg, in addition to their current Lincoln Center residency. In recital hewill perform the complete Prokofiev sonatas over three programs in Berlin,New York, and Berkeley, California. Mr. Bronfman also returns to the Vienna,New York, and Los Angeles philharmonics; Mariinsky, Cleveland, andPhiladelphia orchestras; and the symphonies of Boston, Montreal, Toronto, SanFrancisco, and Seattle.

Following the success of their first U.S. tour last spring, Mr. Bronfman willrejoin Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lynn Harrell in May for a European tour.Always keen to explore chamber music repertoire, his partners have alsoincluded Martha Argerich, Magdalena Kožená, Emmanuel Pahud, and PinchasZukerman. Mr. Bronfman works regularly with conductors such as DanielBarenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi,Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Simon Rattle, andFranz Welser-Möst. He has also given numerous solo recitals in the leadinghalls of North America, Europe, and Asia.

Mr. Bronfman has received the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, and was nomi-nated for a Grammy in 2009 for his Deutsche Grammophon recording of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto with Salonen conducting. In 1997 he won aGrammy for his recording of the three Bartók piano concertos with Salonenand the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His prolific catalog of recordings alsoincludes works for two pianos by Rachmaninoff and Brahms with Emanuel Ax,the complete Prokofiev concertos, and the 2014 Grammy-nominated Magnus

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Great Performers I Meet the Artists

Lindberg Second Piano Concerto, commissioned for him and performed bythe New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert on the Da Capo label.

London Symphony Orchestra

The London Symphony Orchestra is London’s oldest surviving orchestra and iswidely regarded as one of the world’s leading orchestras. The LSO performs120 concerts a year with a family of artists including Valery Gergiev, SimonRattle, Michael Tilson Thomas, Daniel Harding, Bernard Haitink, and AndréPrevin, and has long-standing relationships with some of the leading musiciansin the world. The orchestra is self-governing and made up of nearly a hundredtalented players who also perform regularly as soloists or in chamber concerts.

The LSO is proud to be Resident Orchestra at the Barbican Centre, and itshome has enabled the orchestra to establish a truly loyal audience and fulfillmany artistic aspirations. The LSO enjoys a successful residency in New York,and this year celebrates a decade of concerts with Gergiev as part of LincolnCenter’s Great Performers series. Other international residencies include Parisand Tokyo, and regular tour destinations include China, South Korea, and manymajor European cities.

The LSO is distinguished by the depth of its commitment to music education,reaching over 60,000 people each year. The many projects that make up LSODiscovery, the orchestra’s education and community program, offer people ofall ages the opportunity to get involved in music-making. LSO St Luke’s, theUBS and LSO Music Education Centre, is the home of LSO Discovery; it alsohosts chamber and solo recitals, dance, folk music, and more. The orchestra isa world leader in recording music for CD, film, television, and events. LSO Livehas over a hundred titles, all of which are available globally. The LSO hasrecorded music for hundreds of films, including four of the Harry Potter films,Superman, and six Star Wars movies.

Lincoln Center’s Great Performers

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Lincoln Center’s Great Performers offers clas-sical and contemporary music performances from the world’s outstandingsymphony orchestras, vocalists, chamber ensembles, and recitalists. Since itsinitiation in 1965, the series has expanded to include significant emergingartists and premieres of groundbreaking productions, with offerings fromOctober through June in Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, Alice Tully Hall,and other performance spaces around New York City. Along with liederrecitals, Sunday morning coffee concerts, and films, Great Performers offersa rich spectrum of programming throughout the season.

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Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: pre-senter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and com-munity relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter ofmore than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educa-tional activities annually, LCPA offers 15 programs, series, and festivals includ-ing American Songbook, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, LincolnCenter Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival,and the White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Award–winning Live FromLincoln Center, which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the LincolnCenter campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Centercomplex and the 11 resident organizations. In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billioncampus renovation, completed in October 2012.

Lincoln Center Programming DepartmentJane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic DirectorHanako Yamaguchi, Director, Music ProgrammingJon Nakagawa, Director, Contemporary ProgrammingJill Sternheimer, Director, Public ProgrammingLisa Takemoto, Production ManagerCharles Cermele, Producer, Contemporary ProgrammingKate Monaghan, Associate Director, ProgrammingMauricio Lomelin, Producer, Contemporary ProgrammingJulia Lin, Associate ProducerRegina Grande, Assistant to the Artistic DirectorLuna Shyr, Programming Publications EditorMadeleine Oldfield, House Seat CoordinatorTatiana Stola, Company ManagerKathy Wang, House Program Intern

Great Performers I Meet the Artists

London Symphony OrchestraValery Gergiev, Principal ConductorDaniel Harding, Michael Tilson Thomas, Principal Guest ConductorsAndré Previn, KBE, Conductor LaureateSimon Halsey, Choral Director

Violin IRoman Simovic,Leader

Carmine LauriLennox MackenzieClare Duckworth Nigel Broadbent Ginette Decuyper Gerald Gregory Jörg Hammann Maxine Kwok-Adams Claire Parfitt Elizabeth Pigram Harriet Rayfield Ian Rhodes Sylvain Vasseur Rhys WatkinsShlomy Dobrinsky

Violin IIDavid AlbermanThomas NorrisMiya Vaisanen David Ballesteros Richard Blayden Matthew Gardner Julian Gil Rodriguez William Melvin Iwona Muszynska Andrew PollockLouise Shackelton Oriana KrisztenKaterina NazarovaGordon Mackay

ViolaEdward VandersparGillianne HaddowAnna BastowGerman Clavijo Lander Echevarria Julia O’Riordan Robert TurnerHeather Wallington Jonathan Welch Elizabeth ButlerCarol Ella Francis Kefford

CelloTim HughAlastair BlaydenJennifer Brown Noel Bradshaw Eve-Marie Caravassilis Daniel Gardner Hilary Jones Amanda TrueloveJudith HerbertOrlando Jopling

BassColin ParisPatrick Laurence Matthew Gibson Thomas Goodman Joe Melvin Jani PensolaBen GriffithsSimo Vaisanen

FluteGareth DaviesAdam WalkerAlex Jakeman

PiccoloSharon Williams

OboeEmanuel AbbühlKatie Bennington

Cor AnglaisMaxwell Spiers

ClarinetAndrew MarrinerChris RichardsChi-Yu Mo

Bass ClarinetLorenzo Iosco

E-flat ClarinetChi-Yu Mo

BassoonRachel GoughDaniel Jemison Joost Bosdijk

ContrabassoonDominic Morgan

HornTimothy JonesJose GutierrezAngela Barnes Alexander EdmundsonJonathan Lipton

TrumpetPhilip CobbJason EvansGerald RuddockPaul Mayes

TromboneDudley BrightPeter Moore James Maynard

Bass TrombonePaul Milner

TubaPatrick Harrild

TimpaniNigel ThomasAntoine Bedewi

PercussionNeil PercyDavid Jackson Sam WaltonAntoine Bedewi

HarpBryn LewisNuala Herbert

Piano/CelestaElizabeth Burley

Celesta/Piano/OrganCatherine Edwards

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London Symphony Orchestra AdministrationKathryn McDowell CBE DL, Managing DirectorFrankie Hutchinson, Tours and Projects ManagerTim Davy, Tours and Projects ManagerJemma Bogan, Orchestra Personnel ManagerAlan Goode, Stage and Transport ManagerDan Gobey, Stage ManagerNik Brogan, Assistant Stage Manager

The orchestra extends thanks to the generous supporters of the AmericanLondon Symphony Orchestra Foundation: Jane Attias, Mercedes T. Bass,Francesca & Christopher Beale, David Chavolla, Mr. Neil and Dr. KiraFlanzraich, Barbara G. Fleischman, The Philip and Irene Toll Gage Foundation,Bruce and Suzie Kovner, Sir Michael Moritz KBE and Harriet Heyman, TheReidler Foundation, Elena Sardarova, Daniel Schwartz, Mrs. Ernest H.Seelhorst, and those who wish to remain anonymous.

Mr. Bronfman’s representation:Opus 3 Artistswww.opus3artists.com

Great Performers