CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 8:00 PM

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Mariss Jansons, Chief Conductor

DEBUSSY La mer
BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique

Encores:
GRIEG "Solveig’s Song" from Peer Gynt
BERLIOZ "Marche Hongroise" from La damnation de Faust

Program Notes:

By Robert Markow

Mon, Feb 4, 2008 at 8 PM
CLAUDE DEBUSSY La mer
Born August 22, 1862, in St. Germain-en-Laye; died March 25, 1918, in Paris.

Composed between 1903 and 1905, La mer was first performed on October 15, 1905, in Paris, by the Lamoureux Orchestra with Camille Chevillard conducting. It received its New York and Carnegie Hall premiere on March 21, 1907, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karl Muck.

Scoring: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets in A, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 cornets à pistons, 3 trombones, tuba, triangle, glockenspiel, timpani, cymbals, tam-tam, bass drum, 2 harps, and strings.

The sea has exerted an irresistible attraction on man’s mind and has been a stimulus to his creative instincts since the dawn of the human race. This fascination with the sea has impelled almost countless composers and songwriters to evoke it in their music. Debussy’s La mer may be the best known work of this title, but there are “La mer”s also by the Belgian Paul Gilson (symphonic poem), the American Charles Griffes (two different songs with this title), and the contemporary Ukrainian Leonid Hrabovsky (for narrator, chorus, large orchestra, organ, electric guitar, and four percussion groups). There are “Ocean” symphonies or “Sea” symphonies by Vaughan Williams, Gösta Nyström, Sheng Lihong, Jacques Ibert, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Hakon Borresen, and Anton Rubinstein. And there are other works from the four corners of the earth about the seven seas: from England (Frank Bridge’s symphonic suite) to Australia (Barry Conyngham’s ballet movement) and from Canada (Jean Piché’s electronic La mer à l’aube) to Russia (Glazunov’s orchestral fantasy).

Few works so richly and evocatively portray the sea as Debussy’s contribution to this repertory. Oddly enough, though, the composition was not written anywhere near the sea, but rather in various inland locations, including the Burgundian mountains and Paris. “I have always retained a passionate love for the sea,” Debussy wrote to his friend André Messager. “You will say that the ocean does not exactly wash the Burgundian hillsides, and my seascapes might be studio landscapes; but I have an endless store of memories.”

The first part, “From dawn to noon on the sea,” begins very quietly, with slow, mysterious murmuring. Through sonority itself, Debussy evokes the sensation of peering into the very depths of the dark, mysterious sea. As the sea awakens, the orchestral colors brighten and motion quickens. A mosaic of melodic fragments fills the music in constantly changing sonorities. Near the end, a noble chorale-like passage appears and slowly grows to paint a majestic picture of the sea under the blazing noonday sun.

The second movement, “The play of the waves,” is full of sparkle and animation. Like the first sea picture, melodic fragments are developed in an ever-changing mosaic of orchestral hues. The range and delicacy of Debussy’s scoring fascinate at every turn. Even the ‘ping’ of the triangle has evocative power. To quote Debussy’s biographer Oscar Thompson, “on the sea’s vast stage is presented trance-like phantasmagoria so evanescent and fugitive that it leaves behind only the vagueness of a dream.”

The final seascape opens restless, gray, and stormy, the music suggesting the mighty surging and swelling of the water. Melodic fragments from the first movement return. The activity subsides, and out of the mists comes a haunting, distant call, like that of the sirens, high in the woodwinds. The music again gathers energy. Finally, we hear once more the grandiose chorale motif from the first sketch, and La mer ends in a frenzy of whipping wind and dashing waves.

HECTOR BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Born December 11, 1803 in La Côte-Saint-André (near Grenoble); died March 8, 1869 in Paris.

Composed in 1830, the Symphonie fantastique was first performed on December 5, 1830 in Paris, conducted by François-Antoine Habeneck. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on March 17, 1899, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Emil Paur.

Scoring: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones 2 tubas, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, bells, 2 harps, and strings

“All modern programmists have built upon him—Liszt, Richard Strauss, and Tchaikovsky. Wagner felt his influence ... He is the real beginner of that interpenetration of music and poetic idea which has transformed modern art.” Thus did Ernest Newman eulogize Hector Berlioz, whose Symphonie fantastique stands at the pinnacle of the genre known as the “program symphony.” By the composer’s own admission, Goethe’s Faust contributed to the inspiration that produced the Symphonie fantastique. The power and originality of Beethoven’s symphonies, especially the Eroica, and the depth of vision embodied in the Shakespeare plays also fed Berlioz’s emotional and psychic appetite.

But by far the strongest and most direct influence on the composition of the symphony was a young Shakespearean actress, Harriet Smithson, who appeared in Paris as Ophelia and Juliet in productions by a touring company from England. When Berlioz first saw her on stage on September 11, 1827, he was so overwhelmed and consumed with passion for her that he became like a man possessed. His physical and mental turmoil are extravagantly expressed in numerous letters, from which the following excerpt is characteristic: “I am again plunged in the anguish of an interminable and inextinguishable passion, without motive, without cause ... I hear my heart beating, and its pulsations shake me as the piston strokes of a steam engine. Each muscle of my body shudders with pain. In vain! ‘Tis terrible! Oh unhappy one!” All this, three years after he had first laid eyes on Harriet, and Berlioz still hadn’t met her face to face!

In a heroic gesture designed to attract her attention to his burning love, this most romantic of Romantics wrote his Fantastic Symphony: Episode in the Life of the Artist to prove to her that he too was a dramatic artist. The performance took place on December 5, 1830, though Harriett apparently was unaware of the event. Two years later, Berlioz revised the symphony and created a long sequel, Lélio, or the Return to Life, preceded by an extended spoken monologue. He mounted a production of this triple bill, contriving through friends to have Harriet in attendance this time. This event took place on December 9, 1832. The ruse worked: Berlioz eventually met Harriet and married her a few months later, but it was not a happy union; they separated after a decade, by which time Berlioz already had a mistress.

The most prominent autobiographical element of the score is the use of the idée fixe, a melody that recurs throughout each of the five movements in varying guises—fervent, beatific, distant, restless, devilish, and so on, depending on the changing scene. This idée fixe (a term borrowed not from music but from the then-new science of psychology) actually operates on two levels, for it can also be regarded as a quasi-psychological fixation which possesses the music as it possesses the thoughts of the artist of the program.

The drug-induced fantasy world of the symphony is only one of its unusual and original aspects. Not just the content, but the degree of detail Berlioz provided paved the way for the tone poems of Liszt and Strauss. Another novelty was the use of the orchestra as a giant virtuoso instrument for the conductor to play upon. (The concept of conducting as a role apart from instrumental participation was still in its infancy.) But above all, it is the myriad examples of orchestral effects and tonal colors that make this work so endlessly fascinating: the otherworldly wisps of sound high in the violins in the slow introduction; the distant, plaintive oboe and English horn calls, and the threatening thunderstorm heard on four differently-tuned timpani in the third movement; the terrifying brass and drum effects in the March; the grisly scrapings and twitterings in the introduction of the last movement, followed by the diabolical parody of the idée fixe in the high E-flat clarinet accompanied by a galloping figure on four bassoons; then comes the Dies irae theme in the tubas, accompanied by deep bells.

Here are some of Berlioz’s own descriptive comments about each movement:

I. “A young musician of morbidly sensitive temperament and fiery imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of lovesick despair. [It] plunges him into a deep slumber during which his sensations, his emotions, his memories are transformed in his sick mind into musical thoughts and images. He recalls first that soul-sickness ... then the volcanic love, his frenzied suffering, his jealous rages, his returns to tenderness.”

II. “He encounters the loved one at a dance.”

III. “One summer evening in the country ... the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees all concur in affording his heart an unaccustomed calm.”

IV. “He dreams he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to the scaffold.”

V. “He sees himself in the midst of a frightful troop of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries. The beloved melody appears again ... it is she, coming to join the Sabbath. She takes part in the devilish orgy.”


Tues, Feb 5, 2008 at 8 PM
OTTO KETTING De aankomst (“The Arrival”)
Born September 3, 1935, in Amsterdam; now living in The Hague.

Composed in 1992, De aankomst was first performed by the Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam on September 11, 1993, conducted by Lev Markiz. This evening’s performance marks the work’s Carnegie Hall premiere.

Scoring: flute, 2 oboes, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, tuba, marimba, glockenspiel, and strings.

Otto Ketting is one of the leading Dutch composers of our time and the son of another prominent Dutch composer, Piet Ketting (1904–1984). Ketting’s professional musical career began as a trumpet player, in which capacity he served as a member of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague. But by his mid-twenties, he had changed direction to composition and conducting. His catalogue of works is primarily instrumental, though it includes three operas: Dummies, 1974; O, gij, Rhinoceros (O, thou, Rhinoceros), 1977; and Ithaka, which opened the new opera house in Amsterdam in 1986. To date, he has written four symphonies, the most recent of them completed just last year. Among his most successful compositions is Time Machine (1972) for wind ensemble, also the title of a book about and by the composer published by Donemus in 1997.

Time, memory, and journeys are themes that run through a number of Ketting’s compositions. “What is a journey,” he asks, “other than a concentrated passage of time—the awareness of time changes; things which happen during the journey are often only meaningful afterwards?” In the early 1990s, Ketting wrote a loosely related series of works whose four separate parts are entitled The Passage, The Delay, The Arrival, and Come, Over the Seas, although he claims that the titles were created afterwards (“I did not seek them out; they found me.”)

The Arrival (De aankomst) was commissioned by the Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam and first performed by that ensemble. Ketting then slightly adjusted the instrumentation by replacing two trumpets with a tuba and timpani with glockenspiel and marimba. The work consists of relatively fast, outer sections framing a slower central one in which the marimba continues at the original tempo, “like a steamship which has docked and the machines are still heard running softly,” as the composer explains. Ketting used a portion of The Passage for much of the material in The Arrival, in which “everything evolves from the harmony”; hence, there is little in the way of melodic ideas.

Busily energetic string writing in De aankomst evokes the chugging, motoric elements in some of John Adams’s early works, while the sense of sustained growth brings to mind the more masterly scores of Sibelius. Virtuosic writing for the horns and tuba in the extended ostinato passages near the end is another feature of De aankomst.

SERGEI PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26
Born April 27, 1891, in Sontsovka (today Krasnoye Selo), Department of Ekaterinoslav, Ukraine; died March 5, 1953 in Moscow.

Composed between 1917 and 1921, the concerto was first performed on December 16, 1921 with Frederick Stock conducting the Chicago Symphony and the composer as soloist. It received its New York and Carnegie Hall premiere on January 26, 1922, with the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates, with Prokofiev on piano.

Scoring: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, bass drum, castanets, tambourine, cymbals, strings, and solo piano.

Performance time: approximately 28 minutes

Like many of the great composers, Sergei Prokofiev showed his talents early. He was composing before he was six, had produced an opera by 12, and at 13, for his application to the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he submitted four operas, two sonatas, a symphony, and several piano works. As a pianist he was no less remarkable. For his final examination at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, in place of a traditional classical or romantic concerto he played his own First Piano Concerto before a panel of judges, each of whom had the published score in his hands. Likewise, Prokofiev was also the soloist in his fiendishly difficult Second Concerto (1913) and years later, his Third and Fifth. (The Fourth, for left hand alone, was performed only posthumously.)

Prokofiev began working on his Third Piano Concerto in Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was known at the time) in 1917, and, after a long interruption to concertize in America, completed it in October of 1921. He incorporated into the concerto ideas he had jotted down earlier, some going back as far as 1911. The first performance took place not in the composer’s native land but in Chicago. Neither in Chicago nor in subsequent New York performances did the concerto arouse much enthusiasm. Prokofiev said the American public “did not quite understand the work.” Nevertheless, it went on to become one of the half dozen or so most popular piano concertos of the entire 20th century. Audiences and soloists alike love it for its humor, knife-edged sonorities, acerbic harmonies, deeply-felt lyricism, and (especially) its undisguised virtuosic brilliance. The concerto is, in a sense, a reflection of its composer’s own profile both as a pianist and as a person. The late Mstislav Rostropovich noted that “listening to his music I am always reminded of his manner of speaking—witty, candid, at times brusque, but often gentle.”
JOHANNES BRAHMS Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73
Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, in Vienna.

Composed in 1877, Symphony No. 2 in D Major first performed in Vienna on December 30, 1877. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on February 3, 1893, with the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch.

Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings.

After the massiveness and severity of the First Symphony, the idyllic, pastoral Second, with its wealth of singable melodies, made a strong popular appeal. Whereas Brahms had toiled for 15 years over his First Symphony, the Second was written in the space of a mere three months—one year before and in the same place (the Wörthersee) as the Violin Concerto. The warmly lyrical and relaxed character, the gracefulness of the many melodies, and a positive outlook are all attributable in some measure to the charms of the south Austrian countryside. In its pastoral quality, many listeners find a parallel to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony which, like Brahms’s Second, followed a grim, darkly serious and heroic symphony in C minor.

Although the Viennese liked it at its premiere, the symphony rode a rocky course towards acceptance in other cities. One smiles in amusement to read that in Leipzig, for example, where it was introduced in 1880, a critic felt it was “not distinguished by inventive power.” In Boston (1882), the Post called it “coldblooded,” and the Traveler proclaimed that the symphony lacked “a sense of the beautiful,” while in New York the Post (1887) called for a return of Anton Rubinstein’s Dramatic Symphony to replace Brahms’s “antiquated” music. So much for the perspicacity of critics!

From the very opening notes, the listener is caught up in the symphony’s gentle, relaxed mood. The first two bars also provide the basic motivic germs of the entire movement and much of the material in the other movements as well. The three-note motto in the cellos and basses and the following arpeggio in the horns are heard repeatedly in many guises—slowed down, speeded up, played upside down, buried in the texture or prominently featured. All the principal themes of the movement are derived from these motto-motifs. The second theme is one of Brahms’s most glorious, sung by violas and cellos as only these instruments can sing.

The second movement is of darker hue and more profound sentiment. The form is basically an A-B-A structure, with a more agitated central section in the minor mode. Throughout the movement, the listener’s attention is continually focused as much on the densely saturated textures as on the themes.

The genial, relaxed character returns in the third movement, not a scherzo as Beethoven would have written, but a sort of lyrical intermezzo, harking back to the gracious 18th-century minuet. The forces are reduced to almost chamber orchestra levels, and woodwinds are often the featured sonority. This movement proved so popular at its premiere that it had to be repeated.

The forthright and optimistic finale derives heavily from the melodies of the first movement, though as usual with Brahms, this material is so cleverly disguised that one scarcely notices. The coda calls for special comment. Brahms usually made scant use of trombones and tuba, writing for these instruments with skill but also with reserve. Yet from time to time he calls upon them for stunning effects. One such moment occurs in the Second Symphony’s coda, a passage as thrilling for audiences as it is for trombonists, every one of whom looks forward to a role in bringing this joyous work to its blazing conclusion.

Wed, Feb 6, 2008 at 8 PM
RICHARD STRAUSS Don Juan, Op. 20
Born June 11, 1864, in Munich; died on September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria.

Composed between 1888 and 1889, Don Juan was first performed on November 11, 1889 in Weimar, with Strauss conducting. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 10, 1898, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Gericke.

Scoring: 3 flutes and piccolo, 3 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel, harp, and strings.

The Romantics were fascinated with the Don Juan figure—the pleasure-seeking character who pursues women passionately and relentlessly, who reels from one to the next in the futile search for the woman who will embody all the ideal traits of womankind, and who remains oblivious to the trail of broken hearts he leaves behind. This legendary libertine— gallant, dashing, daring, and ruthless—first appeared in a play by the Spanish writer Tirso de Molina, El Burlador (1630). For nearly 400 years, Don Juan has held sway over the literary world: witness such authors as Shadwell, Molière, Kirkegaard, Byron, and Shaw. In music, he has been immortalized in Mozart’s great opera Don Giovanni, not to mention works by Gluck, Liszt, Delibes, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and many others. Clearly this was subject matter for the brave new composer Richard Strauss to tackle.

Up until his twenty-fourth year (1888), Strauss had been composing in an essentially conservative style highly reminiscent of Brahms and Schumann. With Don Juan, he broke out of this mold in a blaze of startlingly original creativity evident in his expressive harmony, in the incomparable verve of his themes, and especially in the phenomenally brilliant and virtuosic use of the orchestra. For his program, Strauss drew upon the Don Juan poem of Nikolaus Lenau (1802–1850), published in 1851 as an unfinished series of fragments. It is worth noting that Strauss was flush with romantic ardor of his own while composing Don Juan, having met and fallen in love with Pauline de Ahna, who would later become his wife.

Although Strauss’s music does not follow Lenau’s excerpts per se, he portrays recognizable dramatic events, including two passionate love scenes, a carnival, and a death scene. The very opening bars of the score give an instant character sketch of a vibrant, restless, and impetuous man. Even the most lethargic listener cannot fail to be jolted by the surge of electricity generated by the opening flourish. Just as remarkable is the wealth of musical material contained in this overwhelming flash of sound—most of Don Juan’s motivic fragments and melodic kernels are already exposed in the opening bars. Themes of dash and brilliance mix with those of yearning intensity and soaring beauty. The long oboe solo halfway through, with its gently rocking undercurrent in the strings, is surely one of Strauss’s most inspired ideas. This is followed by a proud, heroic theme played by all the horns in unison, reminding us of the composer’s affinity for this instrument.

The music drives forward feverishly. At the height of the riotous carnival scene, a sudden and terrible silence arrives, followed by a grayness of instrumental tone color, indicating that all frivolity has ended. The hero, thoroughly disillusioned, even disgusted with life, has allowed himself to be run through with a rapier. He expires with a few final shudders, consumed by the fires of his own passion.
GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp Minor
Born July 7, 1860, in Kalischt (Kalištĕ), Bohemia; died on May 18, 1911, in Vienna.

Composed between 1901 and 1902, and revised in 1904, the Fifth Symphony was first performed on October 18, 1904, with Gustav Mahler conducting the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne. It received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on February 15, 1906, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Gericke.

Scoring: 4 flutes (two doubling piccolo), 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, bass drum with cymbals attached, snare drum, triangle, glockenspiel, tam-tam, slapstick, harp, and strings.

Concertgoers familiar with Mahler’s Fourth Symphony may recall that the first movement contains a trumpet call remarkably similar to that which opens the Fifth. This fact may be symbolically regarded as Mahler’s conscious effort to move ahead in a new direction in the Fifth, yet at the same time to show that the new must build on the foundations of the old.

What then is new? Mahler’s newfound and deep acquaintance with Bach probably had much to do with his new compositional style, a style that Bruno Walter called “intensified polyphony.” The orchestral fabric becomes more complicated— more instruments playing more different lines at the same time. His style becomes generally less lyrical, more angular and hard-edged. Hymns of love, childlike faith, and quasi-religious messages tend to be replaced by moods of tragic irony, bitterness, and cynicism. This new approach did not come easily to Mahler. The piano score was written during the summer months of 1901 and 1902, and was orchestrated during the fall of 1902, but thereafter Mahler continually revised the work. According to his wife Alma, whom he had met and married during the period in which the symphony was written, “from the Fifth onward, he found it impossible to satisfy himself; the Fifth was differently orchestrated for practically every performance.”

One is often reminded that the Fifth is a purely symphonic work—no vocal or choral movements are found here, no texts philosophizing about joy, love, death, or resurrection— in contradistinction to the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies, the so-called Wunderhorn symphonies, which take their texts from a collection of German folk poetry. The First may also be regarded as containing vocal elements in the form of extended passages orchestrated from previously written songs. Yet even in the Fifth, we find brief allusions to three songs— the first of the Kindertotenlieder in the first movement, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” in the Adagietto, and “Lob des hohen Verstandes” in the Finale.

The symphony opens with a funeral march, a type of music found in every one of Mahler’s ten symphonies except the Fourth and Eighth. To the ponderous, thickly-scored tread of the march is added a gentle lament in the strings. Suddenly the music erupts in wild, impassioned strains. The ever-changing, kaleidoscopic aspect of Mahler’s orchestration is heard in its fullest expression. Eventually the funeral march music reasserts itself, and after a nightmarish climax, the movement disintegrates in ghostly echoes of the trumpet call.

The second movement shares many qualities with the first, both emotionally and thematically. Easily identifiable variants and transformations of the first movement’s melodic material can be found. The turbulent, stormy mood continues and is elaborated. Titanic paroxysms of violent rage race uncontrolled in some of the most feverish music ever written. Quiet interludes recall the funeral lament of the first movement. Towards the end of the movement gleams a ray of hope—the brass proclaim a fragment of a victory chorale, an anticipatory gesture that will find its fulfillment in the symphony’s closing pages.

The despair and anguish of the first two movements (the symphony’s Part I) are abruptly dispelled in the life-affirming Scherzo (Part II)—the longest and most complex scherzo Mahler ever wrote. The tremendous energy that infuses the scherzo segments alternates with nostalgic and wistful interludes in waltz or Ländler rhythm. One is tempted to imagine Mahler’s Austrian landscapes, the peasant dances, and the bustle and joy of life. The role of the principal horn becomes nearly that of a concerto soloist.

Part III consists of the Adagietto—surely the most famous single movement in all of Mahler—and the Finale. In the Adagietto, scored only for strings and harp, we return to a romantic dream world familiar from Mahler’s earlier works, a world of quiet contemplation, benign simplicity, inner peace, and escape from harsh reality. The spiritual, textural, and harmonic relationships to Mahler’s song “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (“I am lost to the world ... I live alone in my heaven, in my loving, in my song”) are too close to be ignored. This oasis of innigkeit (“inwardness”) provides an extraordinary contrast to the sheer exuberance of the previous Scherzo and to the upcoming wildly extroverted Finale. Near the end of the symphony, the brass chorale is recalled, heard previously in the second movement, but now bursting forth in full glory and triumph. The metamorphosis from grief and death to joy and life is complete.

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Mariss Jansons, Chief Conductor
Soon after its establishment in 1888, the Concertgebouw Orchestra developed into one of the best orchestras in Europe. “Really magnificent, full of youthful vigor and enthusiasm” as Richard Strauss described it in 1897. The Orchestra was granted Royal status in 1988. It has made more than a thousand recordings and is regarded worldwide as one of the most prestigious symphony orchestras. The fact that it has been led by only a limited number of chief conductors has played a decisive role in this development.

The Musicians
The Orchestra has gained its unique international position with its “velvet” strings, “golden” brass, and the exceptional and personal timbre of the woodwinds. The musicians are the guardians of the playing culture that gives the Orchestra its unique sound and flexibility. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra consists of 120 virtuosos who perform together at the highest level.

The Composers
During the 50 years of Willem Mengelberg’s reign, a wide variety of composers such as Richard Strauss, Mahler, Debussy, and Stravinsky conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra several times. Celebrities such as Bartók, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev performed their own works as soloists. This crucial bond with contemporary composers was continued with Maderna, Schat, Berio, Henze, Nono, Adams, and many others.

Mahler and Bruckner
The Orchestra has gained international acclaim with its interpretations of the late Romantic repertoire. The Mahler tradition, embedded in the many performances Mahler conducted here personally, achieved great heights during the Mahler Festivals in 1920 and 1995. Bernard Haitink made a huge impression with his complete recording of the Mahler symphonies and with the Christmas matinees. Bruckner, too, is a vital part of the Orchestra’s repertoire. After the war, it was Eduard van Beinum in particular who drew attention to French music and the Bruckner symphonies. With his interpretations in the concert hall and on CD recordings, Riccardo Chailly made a major contribution to contemporary music and opera.

With Mariss Jansons, a new phase has just begun. The orchestra will continue to develop its wide repertoire, with special attention to the music of such composers as Mahler, Bruckner, and Strauss, and also for the works of Shostakovich whose 100th anniversary was celebrated in 2006 in a major project. In Mariss Jansons’s first two seasons as chief conductor, he has conducted a broad range of repertoire, extending from Haydn and Mozart to a new work by Henze.

The Guest Conductors
The Concertgebouw Orchestra has worked with many guest conductors, each of whom made a unique contribution to the development of the sound and the repertoire, including Arthur Nikisch, Karl Muck, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Pierre Monteux, Eugen Jochum, Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, George Szell, Carlos Kleiber, Leonard Bernstein, Colin Davis, Kurt Sanderling, Kirill Kondrashin, Carlo Maria Giulini, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Christian Thielemann, and honorary guest conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

The Concertgebouw
The Concertgebouw, designed by the architect A. L. van Gendt, was inaugurated on April 11, 1888. Six months later, on November 3, 1888, the Concertgebouw Orchestra performed its first concert. The building quickly became famous for its magnificent acoustics. It was renovated during the 1980s when a new wing was added. The interior of the Great Hall was recently fully restored. For over a century, it has been the center of classical music in the Netherlands. In 2005, attendance reached 814,158 visitors, making the Concertgebouw once again the world’s most well-attended concert venue.

RCO Live
RCO Live has been the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s own independent record label since 2004. RCO Live focuses on releasing live recordings made by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at its home, the Concertgebouw. The catalogue will consist of recordings conducted by principal conductor Mariss Jansons and leading guest conductors under whom the orchestra regularly performs. The works recorded will include symphonic staples of the orchestra’s repertoire, as well as new and lesser-known compositions. The RCO Live releases are distributed worldwide by Codaex (the Benelux countries and Germany), Harmonia Mundi (USA, UK, and France) and King International (Japan). Codaex Belgium handles exports to other countries.