Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Friday, February 12th 2010 | 7:30p.m.
Northland Performing Arts Center, Longwood
Map & Directions | Seating Chart
Program
Peter Mennin, Concerto for Orchestra (Moby Dick)
Samuel Barber Cello Concerto op. 22
Rachmaninoff Symphony no. 2, op. 27 in e minor
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1914 when ten young Detroit society women each contributed $100 and pledged to find 100 additional subscribers to donate $10 to support the symphony. They organized quickly, hiring Weston Gales, a 27-year-old church organist from Boston, as music director. The orchestra’s first concert took place at the old Detroit Opera House on February 26, 1914.
Gales left his position in 1917 and was succeeded the following year by renowned Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch. A friend to composers Gustav Mahler and Sergei Rachmaninov, and son-in-law of famed American writer Mark Twain, Gabrilowitsch brought instant credibility to the DSO. Insisting the orchestra needed a home of its own, Gabrilowitsch oversaw the building of Orchestra Hall, which was designed by noted architect C. Howard Crane. The hall opened on October 23, 1919.
During the early 1920’s, the DSO fast became one of the finest and most prominent orchestras in the country. Over the next two decades, the orchestra performed with spectacular guest artists such as Enrico Caruso, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, Marian Anderson, Sergei Rachmaninov, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Jascha Heifetz, Pablo Casals, and others.
In 1922, Gabrilowitsch led the orchestra and guest pianist Artur Schnabel in the world’s first radio broadcast of a symphonic concert on WWJ-AM. The DSO performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall for the first time in 1928 and also made their first recording that year. In 1934, the DSO became the nation’s first official radio broadcast orchestra, performing for millions of Americans over the airwaves on the Ford Symphony Hour national radio show until 1942.
Following Gabrilowitsch’s death in 1936, the DSO entered into a troubled time in which financial difficulties forced the orchestra to disband twice and move from Orchestra Hall to a succession of three different Detroit venues. The final move, in 1956, was to Ford Auditorium, which remained their permanent hall for the next 33 years. By this time, Paul Paray was Music Director and the orchestra was enjoying a golden era in which they had become one of the country’s most recorded orchestras, making 70 records over 11 years (many award-winning) for the Mercury label.
Paray stepped down as Music Director in 1963 and was followed by a number of internationally renowned directors including Sixten Ehrling, Aldo Ceccato, Antal Doráti and Günther Herbig. In the 1970’s, a group of concerned citizens rallied to save a neglected and run-down Orchestra Hall from the wrecking ball while the Orchestra continued to perform at Ford Auditorium. Following nearly 20 years of restoration, the DSO moved back into the Hall in 1989. With Neeme Järvi’s appointment as Music Director the following year, the DSO entered into a new era of reinvigorated performance and commitment to the city of Detroit.
In the 1999-2000 season, the DSO released a new CD recording of works by African-American composers, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the DSO/Unisys African-American Composer Residency Program. In the 1997-98 season, the DSO released four new recordings including two on the Chandos label plus Encore Live! From Orchestra Hall (a disc of encores performed by the DSO at various concerts in recent years), and Joy! A Celebration of Holiday Music (a collection of modern and classical holiday music). Between January 1991 and May 1998, 27 new DSO/Neeme Neeme Järvi recordings were released on the Chandos label, including ten in the acclaimed American Series, with two devoted exclusively to the works of African-American composers.
Conductor Leonard Slatkin
The prominent American conductor, Leonard (Edward) Slatkin, was born in Los Angeles into a family of musicians. His parents were founding members of the Hollywood String Quartet (his father is Felix Slatkin). He received musical training in his youth, studying violin, viola, piano, and conducting, as well as composition with Castelnuovo-Tedesco after attending Indiana University (1962) and Los Angeles City College (1963). He first studied conducting with his father and later received valuable advice from Walter Susskind at the Aspen (Colorado) Music School (1964). He then studied conducting with Jean Morel at the Juilliard School of Music in New York (Mus.B., 1968).
Leonard Slatkin was music adviser of the New Orleans Philharmonic from 1977 to 1980. From 1979 he was also music director of the Minnesota Orchestra summer concerts. In 1979 he became music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; took it on a major European tour in 1985. In 1990 he became music director of the Great Woods Performing Arts center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, the summer home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. From 1991 to 1999, he was the Director of the Blossom Music Center, the summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra. In October 1991 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in New York, conducting La Fanciulla del West. In 1992 he was awarded the Elgar Medal. He was named music director designate of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., in 1994. After completing his tenure with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1996, he thereafter served as its Conductor Laureate. In 1996 he assumed his new post as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra. Leonard Slatkin also conducts the New York Philharmonic each season and regularly appears in Japan with the NHK Symphony Orchestra.
In Europe, Leonard Slatkin has developed strong relationships with several major orchestras. In September 1997 his close association with the Philharmonia Orchestra was marked by his appointment as their Principal Guest Conductor for three years. During this time he has appeared with them at the BBC Proms, Edinburgh Festival, Symphony Hall Birmingham, and in numerous concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. He also performs with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra each season and in 1999 conducted four programmes in a two week American Festival at the Concertgebouw Hall. He also regularly conducts the Orchestre National de France with which he appeared at the Orange Festival in a production of Nabucco. Recent European engagements include the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Dresden Staatskapelle, and Santa Caecilia in Rome. He has also worked with the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Vienna Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, and the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Firenze. In 2004 he conducted the Danish Radio, NDR, WDR, BBC Philharmonic and Netherlands Radio Orchestras, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Orquesta Nacional de España and Orchestre National de Lyon.
Leonard Slatkin’s inaugural concert as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra took place in autumn 2000 when the orchestra celebrated its 70th birthday. He has developed a strong relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra over a number of years, including regular appearances at the BBC Proms and the European premiere of John Corigliano’s Second Symphony, A Dylan Thomas Trilogy, which he premiered very successfully in Washington and New York. Highlights of 2004 included a major European tour to Amsterdam, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Barcelona and Madrid and of course many more BBC Proms including the famous Last Night of the Proms.
Leonard Slatkin has made over 100 recordings which have been recognised with four Grammy awards and fifty Grammy nominations. He has recorded music ranging from Haydn to Shostakovich with the St. Louis Symphony, Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, London Symphony, and Bayerischer Rundfunk orchestras. There are also a number of discs devoted to American composers as well as the operas La fanciulla and Romeo and Juliet with Bavarian Radio. He has an exclusive contract with Chandos for recordings with the BBC Symphony. Their releases of Bernstein works were very well received. Upcoming releases include Samuel Barber’s opera Vanessa.
Cello Soloist Sol Gabetta
The cellist Sol Gabetta was born in Cordoba, Argentina in 1981, the daughter of French-Russian parents. She won her first competition in Argentina at the age of ten and has since won various competitions, including the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the Natalia Gutman Prize and the ARD competition in Munich. In 2004 she gained international attention at the Lucerne Festival by winning the “Crédit Suisse Young Artist Award” when she made her debut with the Vienna Philharmonic under Valery Gergiev.
From 1992 to 1994 Sol Gabetta was a recipient of a scholarship at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid and eventually went to Switzerland in order to intensify her studies with Ivan Monighetti at the Music Academy in Basel. She took her concert examination in 2006 after further years of studies with David Geringas at the Hanns Eisler College of Music in Berlin.
In recent years, Sol Gabetta has given guest performances with the Orchestre National de Radio France, Kremerata Baltica, the Munich Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic, the Vienna Chamber Philharmonic, the Basel Chamber Orchestra under Christopher Hogwood and Paul McCreesh, the Spanish National Orchestra, and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. In June 2008 she partnered Yo-Yo Ma in Leonard Slatkin’s “Dialogue for Two Cellos” with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington conducted by the composer. She was on tour with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Sol Gabetta frequently plays at summer festivals such as the one in Verbier (partnering Joshua Bell and Lars Vogt), at the Rheingau Music Festival, and the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival. Sol Gabetta founded the Solsberg Chamber Music Festival in Switzerland; every summer, she gives concerts there with her chamber music partners including Henri Sigfridsson, Mihaela Ursuleasa, the sisters Baiba and Lauma Skride, and Patricia Kopatschinkskaja.
Sol Gabetta’s first CD for SONY BMG featuring works by Tchaikovsky and Ginastera, recorded with the Munich Radio Orchestra under Ari Rasilainen, won her the 2007 Echo Klassik Award for Best Instrumentalist. Her second CD with concertos by Vivaldi, together with the Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, was released in September 2007 and went straight into the German classical music charts and stayed there for over six months. In September 2008 two new albums were released: one featuring Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2 with the Munich Philharmonic and the Sonata for Cello & Piano together with the pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa, and a CD entitled “Cantabile” with opera arias by composers like Offenbach, Bizet, and Tchaikovsky in new arrangements for cello and orchestra. Sol Gabetta is accompanied by the Prague Philharmonic under Charles Olivieri-Munroe in this latter edition.
