The MET Orchestra

Performers

• The MET Orchestra
  James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
• Evgeny Kissin, Piano

Program

• WAGNER Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin
• BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major
• SCHUBERT Symphony No. 9, "Great"

Encore:
• BEETHOVEN Rondo a capriccio in G Major, Op. 129

Event Duration

Bios

• The MET Orchestra

  
  The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is regarded as one of the world's finest orchestras. From the time of the company's inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style. The MET Orchestra (as the ensemble is referred to when appearing in concert outside the opera house) maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during its 33-week New York season, when the company performs seven times a week in repertory that this season encompasses 28 operas.
  
  Arturo Toscanini conducted almost 500 performances at the Met, and Gustav Mahler, during the few years he was in New York, conducted 54 Met performances. More recently, many of the world's great conductors have led the orchestra: Walter, Beecham, Reiner, Mitropoulos, Kempe, Szell, Böhm, Solti, Maazel, Bernstein, Mehta, Abbado, Karajan, Dohnányi, Haitink, Tennstedt, Ozawa, Gergiev, Barenboim, and Muti. Carlos Kleiber's only US opera performances were with the MET Orchestra.
  
  In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with the Met Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moritz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. Since the orchestra resumed symphonic concerts in 1991, instrumental soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, and the group has performed five world premieres: Milton Babbitt's Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), William Bolcom's Symphony No. 7 (2002), Hsueh-Yung Shen's Legend (2002), and Charles Wuorinen's Theologoumenon (2007) and Time Regained (2009).
  
  The orchestra's high standing led to its first commercial recordings in nearly 20 years: Wagner's complete Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon over a period of three years, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung were winners of an unprecedented three consecutive Grammy Awards in 1989, 1990, and 1991 for Best Opera Recording. Other recordings under Maestro Levine include L'Elisir d'amore, Idomeneo, Le Nozze di Figaro, Der fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Erwartung, Manon Lescaut, and seven Verdi operas. Maestro Levine has also led the orchestra for recordings of Wagner overtures, Verdi ballet music, an all-Berg disc with Renée Fleming, and aria albums with Bryn Terfel, Kathleen Battle, and Ms. Fleming. The orchestra's first symphonic recordings are pairings of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition with Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps; Beethoven's "Eroica" with Schubert's "Unfinished" symphonies; and Richard Strauss's Don Quixote and Tod und Verklärung.

  
  James Levine

  
  Music Director James Levine has developed a relationship with the Metropolitan Opera that is unparalleled in its history and unique in the musical world today. Since his company debut in 1971, he has led nearly 2,500 performances of 85 operas at the Met, both in New York and on tour. Next season, he returns to the company to conduct the new production of Falstaff and revivals of Così fan tutte and Wozzeck. He also returns to Carnegie Hall for three concerts with the MET Orchestra.
  
  Maestro Levine inaugurated the Metropolitan Opera Presents television series for PBS in 1977, founded the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in 1980, and returned Wagner's complete Ring to the repertoire in 1989 (in the first integral cycles in 50 years at the Met). He and the MET Orchestra began touring in concert in 1991, and since then have performed around the world, including at Expo '92 in Seville, in Japan, across the United States and Europe, and regularly during and after the opera season here at Carnegie Hall.
  
  In addition to his responsibilities at the Met, Mr. Levine has been a distinguished pianist and an active and avid recital collaborator, especially in lieder and song repertoire. He began accompanying such artists as Jennie Tourel, Hans Hotter, and Eleanor Steber more than 50 years ago, and has since given recitals with most of the great singers of our time. He was music director of the Ravinia Festival (summer home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) from 1973 to 1993, chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra from 1999 to 2004, and music director of the Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra from 2000 to 2004. He was also music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 2004 to 2011. Between 1996 to 2000, Mr. Levine led more than a dozen concerts on the "Three Tenors" World Tour, and he was conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the soundtrack of Disney's Fantasia 2000. He has conducted every major orchestra in America and Europe.

   

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  Evgeny Kissin

  
  Born in Moscow, Evgeny Kissin began to play by ear and improvise on the piano at the age of two. At six years of age, he entered a special school for gifted children, the Moscow Gnessin School of Music, where he was a student of Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who has been his only teacher. At the age of 10, he made his concert debut, playing Mozart's Piano Concerto, K. 466; and one year later, he gave his first solo recital in Moscow.
  
  Mr. Kissin came to international attention in March 1984 when, at the age of 12, he performed Chopin's First and Second piano concertos in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow State Philharmonic. His first appearances outside Russia were in 1985 in Eastern Europe, followed by his first tour of Japan in 1986; in December 1988, he performed with Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker in a New Year's concert that was broadcast internationally. In 1990, Mr. Kissin made his first appearance at the BBC Proms in London and, in the same year, made his North American debut, performing both Chopin piano concertos with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta. The following week, he made his Carnegie Hall debut, opening its Centennial Season.
  
  Mr. Kissin was a special guest at the 1992 Grammy Awards, broadcast live to an audience estimated at more than one billion, and three years later became Musical America's youngest Instrumentalist of the Year. He is the recipient of several Grammy Awards, most recently in 2010 for his recording of Prokofiev's Second and Third piano concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy.
  
  Engagements this season include his fifth appearance with the MET Orchestra today at Carnegie Hall, as well as spring recital and orchestral appearances throughout the United States.

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