Time: 19:30, Saturday, 1 May  2010
Conductor  Vladimir Ashkenazy

PROGRAMME
Beethoven  Coriolan Overture,Op.62
Beethoven  Symphony No.4
Rachmaninov  Symphony No.2

Philharmonia Orchestra

The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the world’s great orchestras. Acknowledged as the UK’s foremost musical pioneer, with an extraordinary recording legacy, the Philharmonia leads the field for its quality of playing, and for its innovative approach to audience development, residencies, music education and the use of new technologies in reaching a global audience. Together with its relationships with the world’s most sought-after artists, most importantly its Principal Conductor Christoph von Dohnányi, the Philharmonia Orchestra is at the heart of British musical life.

Today, the Philharmonia has the greatest claim of any orchestra to be the UK’s National Orchestra. It is committed to presenting the same quality, live music-making in venues throughout the country as it brings to London and the great concert halls of the world. In 2007/08 the Orchestra is performing more than 200 concerts, as well as presenting chamber performances by the Soloists of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and recording scores for films, CDs and computer games. For more than 12 years now the Orchestra’s work has been underpinned by its much admired UK and International Residency Programme, which began in 1995 with the launch of its residencies at the Bedford Corn Exchange and London’s South bank Centre. During 2007/08 the Orchestra not only returns to South bank Centre’s refurbished Royal Festival Hall, but also celebrates its 11th year as Resident Orchestra of De Montfort Hall in Leicester, its eighth year as Orchestra in Partnership at the Anvil in Basingstoke and the first year of a major new residency in Kent and the Thames Gateway, based in Canterbury. The Orchestra’s extensive touring schedule this season also includes a week long residency at the Musikverein in Vienna, and appearances at more than twenty of the finest international concert halls.

During its first six decades, the Philharmonia Orchestra has collaborated withmost of the great classical artists of the 20th century. Conductors associated with the Orchestra include Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, Toscanini, Cantelli, Karajan and Giulini. Otto Klemperer was the first of many outstanding Principal Conductors, and other great names have included Lorin Maazel (Associate Principal Conductor), Riccardo Muti (Principal Conductor and Music Director) and Giuseppe Sinopoli (Music Director). As well as Christoph von Dohnányi, current titled conductors are Sir Charles Mackerras (Principal Guest Conductor), Kurt Sanderling (Conductor Emeritus) and Vladimir Ashkenazy (Conductor Laureate). At the beginning of 2008/09 season, Esa-Pekka Salonen will take up the position of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra; Christoph von Dohnányi will become Honorary Conductor for Life.

The Philharmonia Orchestra continues to pride itself on its long-term collaborations with the finest musicians of our day, supporting new as well as established artists. This policy extends into the Orchestra itself, where many of the players have solo or chamber music careers as well as their work with the Orchestra. The Philharmonia’s Martin Musical Scholarship Fund has for many years supported talented musicians at the start of their careers and a new Orchestral Award, inaugurated in 2005, allows two young players every year to gain performing experience within the Orchestra.

The Orchestra is also recognised for its innovative programming policy, at the heart of which is a commitment to performing and commissioning new works by leading composers, among them the Artistic Director of its Music of Today series, Julian Anderson. Since 1945 the Philharmonia Orchestra has commissioned more than 100 new works from composers including Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Mark-Anthony Turnage and James MacMillan. The Philharmonia Orchestra’s joint series with SBC, Clocks and Clouds: The Music of Gyorgy Ligeti, won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Best Concert Series Award in 1997 and Related Rocks: The Music of Magnus Lindberg, was nominated for an RPS Award. Other recent awards for the Orchestra include the RPS Large Ensemble Award and two Evening Standard Awards for Outstanding Artistic Achievement and Outstanding Ensemble. In May 2007 PLAY. Orchestra, a “virtual Philharmonia Orchestra” created in partnership with South bank Centre and Central St Martin’s College of Art, won the RPS Education Award.

Throughout its history, the Philharmonia Orchestra has been committed to finding new ways to bring its top quality live performance to audiences worldwide, and to using new technologies to achieve this. Many millions of people since 1945 have enjoyed their first experience of classical music through a Philharmonia recording, and in 2007 audiences can engage with the Orchestra through webcasts, podcasts, downloads, computer games and film scores as well as through its unique interactive music education website launched in 2005, The Sound Exchange (www.philharmonia.co.uk/thesoundexchange), which is now visited by almost 2 million people a year. In 2005 the Philharmonia became the first ever classical music organisation to be shortlisted for a BT DigitalMusic Award, and in the same year the Orchestra presented both the first ever fully interactive webcast and the first podcast by a UK orchestra. In September 2005 computer games with Philharmonia scores were at No. 1 and No. 2 in the national charts, while the Orchestra’s scores for the last two Harry Potter computer games have both been nominated for BAFTA Awards. Recording and live broadcasting both also continue to play a significant part in the Orchestra’s activities: since 2003 the Philharmonia has enjoyed a major partnership with Classic FM, as The Classic FM Orchestra on Tour, as well as continuing to broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

The Latest Press Quotes:

Every last semiquaver precisely in place, the result was sonically thrilling. -------------------The Independent

The Philharmonia sounded proud and imposing, a glowing ensemble built on the foundation of a firm bass line. We were evidently passing through the portals of a grand establishment... The full orchestra offered an exhibition of glamorous tone. --------------------Financial Times

Of all the ways to discover new music in London, the Philharmonia's "Music of Today" series is among the best. --------------------The Telegraph

One of the great virtues of the Philharmonia's free, early-evening Music of Today concerts is their variety and open-mindedness. ------------------------The Guardian

Ashkenazy’s music-making with the Philharmonia was hot. Short bowing, taut rhythms and a sense of seething nervous energy did more than justice to what Schumann himself described as the “capricious, refractory” character of the first movement – and to the scherzo that followed. ---------------------The Times

Conductor: Vladimir Ashkenazy

In the years since Vladimir Ashkenazy first came to prominence on the world stage in the 1955 Chopin Competition in Warsaw he has built an extraordinary career, not only as one of the most renowned and revered pianists of our times, but as an artist whose creative life encompasses a vast range of activities and continues to offer inspiration to music-lovers across the world.

Conducting has formed the largest part of his activities for the past 20 years. He took up the new position of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in January 2009 and collaborates with them on a number of exciting projects including composer festivals, major recording projects and international touring activities. He has previously held posts as Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic and Music Director of NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo.

Alongside these positions, Ashkenazy continues his longstanding relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra of which he was appointed Conductor Laureate in 2000. In addition to his performances with the orchestra in London and around the UK each season, he tours with them worldwide, and has developed landmark projects such as ‘Prokofiev and Shostakovich Under Stalin’ in 2003 (a project which he also took to Cologne, New York, Vienna and Moscow) and ‘Rachmaninoff Revisited’ in 2002 at the Lincoln Center, New York.

Ashkenazy also holds the positions of Music Director of the European Union Youth Orchestra, with whom he tours each year, and Conductor Laureate of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He maintains strong links with a number of other major orchestras with whom he has built special relationships over the years, including the Cleveland Orchestra (of whom he was formerly Principal Guest Conductor), San Francisco Symphony and Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin (Chief Conductor and Music Director 1988-96), as well as making guest appearances with many other major orchestras around the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to whom he has returned in recent seasons.

While conducting takes up a significant portion of his time each season, Ashkenazy maintains his devotion to the piano, these days mostly in the recording studio where he continues to build his extraordinarily comprehensive recording catalogue with releases such as the 1999 Grammy award-winning Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues, Rautavaara’s Piano Concerto No.3 (a work which he commissioned), Bach's Wohltemperierte Klavier and Rachmaninov Transcriptions and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. August 2009 saw the release of a piano duo disc with Vovka Ashkenazy, featuring French works.

Beyond his hectic and fulfilling performing schedule, Ashkenazy continues to be involved in some fascinating TV projects, often inspired by his passionate drive to ensure that serious music continues to have a platform in the mainstream media and is made available to as broad an audience as possible. Many will remember his programmes with the outstanding director Christopher Nupen, including in 1979 Music After Mao, filmed in Shanghai, and the extraordinary Ashkenazy in Moscow programmes which marked his first visit in 1989 to the country of his birth since leaving the USSR in the 1960s. More recently he has developed educational programmes with NHK TV including the 1999 Superteachers working with inner-city London school children, and in 2003-4 a documentary based around his ‘Prokofiev and Shostakovich Under Stalin’ project.