Back to Press Release List > 09/24/2007 - UPDATED: Lucerne Festival Orchestra Opens Carnegie Hall's 117th Season, 10/3/07

Conductor David Robertson and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra open Carnegie Hall’s 117th season with a gala benefit concert on Wednesday, October 3 at 7:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage. This performance marks the Orchestra’s North American debut and features an all-Beethoven program that includes Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major with Murray Perahia as soloist, and Symphony No. 9 in D Minor. Soprano Melanie Diener, contralto Anna Larsson, tenor Jonas Kaufmann, bass Reinhard Hagen, and the Westminster Symphonic Choir, led by Joe Miller, join the Orchestra for Symphony No. 9. Mr. Robertson replaces Claudio Abbado, one of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra’s co-founders and its Chief Conductor, who withdrew from this performance due to health reasons, following his doctors’ strict advice. The Opening Night Gala of Carnegie Hall’s 117th Season is sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Carnegie Hall’s Opening Night Gala is an historic testament to the Hall’s long-standing commitment to presenting the world’s preeminent orchestras, conductors, and soloists. The October 3 performance is part of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra’s seven-concert, five-day residency, during which members of the ensemble appear at Carnegie Hall as the full Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and various chamber configurations.

The Opening Night Gala of Carnegie Hall’s 117th Season is co-chaired by Mercedes and Sid Bass; Clarissa and Edgar Bronfman, Jr.; Susan and Ed Forst; Marybeth and Jay Petschek; Laura and John Pomerantz; Annette and Oscar de la Renta; Judith and Burton Resnick; Elizabeth and Felix Rohatyn; Joan and Sanford I. Weill; Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn; and Judy Francis Zankel. The benefit includes a Gala Dinner at The Waldorf=Astoria’s Grand Ballroom following the Carnegie Hall concert. Gala benefit tickets—priced at $2500, $1500, and $1000—include concert seating and the post-concert dinner at The Waldorf=Astoria. Tickets, priced at $500, include the concert and a pre-concert cocktail reception, which begins at 5:30 p.m. in Carnegie Hall’s Rohatyn Room. All gala benefit tickets are available by calling 212-903-9682.

Concert tickets for Opening Night are now available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, 154 West 57th Street, or can be charged to major credit cards by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or by visiting the Carnegie Hall website, www.carnegiehall.org .

David Robertson is the Music Director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He is recognized as one of the leading conductors of his generation, and is well regarded for his interpretations of standard orchestral repertoire. Over the last two decades, Mr. Robertson has held numerous posts abroad and his international credits are extensive. He served as the Music Director of the Orchestre National de Lyon and Artistic Director of that city’s Auditorium from 2000 to 2004. His tenure in Lyon marked the first time that one artist has held both of these musical appointments. Mr. Robertson was Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris from 1992 to 2000, and from 1985 to 1987, he was resident conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Robertson appears as guest conductor throughout the world and has led such ensembles as The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, and The Cleveland Orchestra.

Born in Santa Monica, California, Mr. Robertson was educated at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied horn and composition before turning to conducting. He was a recipient of the 1997 Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award, the premier prize of its kind, given to exceptionally gifted American conductors. In 2000, Mr. Robertson was named Musical America’s Conductor of the Year, and during Carnegie Hall’s 2005–2006 season he was featured as a Perspectives artist. The recipient of Columbia University’s 2006 Ditson Conductor’s Award, he and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra received the ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming for the 2005–06 season from the American Symphony Orchestra League. In May 2007, Mr. Robertson was granted an honorary doctorate from Maryville University.

Soprano Melanie Diener made her stage debut in Idomeneo at the Garsington Opera Festival in 1996, and has since appeared at the Bayreuth Festival; Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Berlin Staatsoper; Vienna Staatsoper; and the Metropolitan Opera. A graduate of the Stuttgart Music Academy, Ms. Diener has studied with Sylvia Geszty and Rudolf Piernay, and has participated in master classes with Sena Jurinac and Brigitte Fassbaender. A prizewinner in the Salzburg Mozart Competition, she was also awarded the Kirsten Flagstad prize at the Queen Sonja International Music Competition in Oslo. Ms. Diener has made solo appearances with top orchestras throughout Europe and the US, and has worked with many leading conductors including Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Chailly, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, and Riccardo Muti.

Trained at the State School of Music in Karlsruhe, bass Reinhard Hagen began his stage career at the Dortmund Theatre. In the 1994–95 season, he was engaged by the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he has since interpreted the major roles in the serious bass repertoire. Mr. Hagen has appeared as soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Boston Symphony, the Dresden Staatskapelle, and the New York Philharmonic. His CD recordings include the role of Sarastro in The Magic Flute conducted by William Christie, and Bach Cantatas conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.

Tenor Jonas Kaufmann studied singing at the Munich College of Music, graduating with distinction in 1994. From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Kaufmann was a member of the ensemble at the Saarbrücken Staatstheater, where he sang the major parts in the lyrical tenor repertoire. He made his debut at the Salzburg Festival in 1999 in a production of Busoni’s Doktor Faust. Mr. Kaufmann has been a member of the Zurich Opera House since 2001, and he is a regular guest artist at the opera houses of Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Paris, London, and Chicago. In 2006 Mr. Kaufmann made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Alfredo in La traviata. He works regularly with the world’s leading conductors, including Riccardo Muti, Franz Welser-Möst, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Simon Rattle and Claudio Abbado, and has presented many lied recitals with Helmut Deutsch at the piano.

A native of Stockholm, contralto Anna Larsson completed her musical training there at the University College of Opera. Her operatic repertoire includes roles in Das Rheingold, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, and Orfeo ed Euridice, among others. In concert, she appears as soloist in works by Bach, Handel, Mahler, Bernstein, Brahms, Beethoven, and Verdi. Ms. Larsson has been a guest artist with orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the London Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, working with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur, Claudio Abbado, and Lorin Maazel.

In the more than 30 years he has been performing on the concert stage, pianist Murray Perahia has become one of the most sought-after performers of our time. Mr. Perahia performs in all of the major international music centers and with every leading orchestra. He is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, with whom he has recorded Bach concertos and toured as conductor and pianist throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and South East Asia. His extensive discography includes recordings of Schubert’s Late Piano Sonatas; Chopin’s complete Etudes, Op. 10 and Op. 25, for which he was awarded the 2003 Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance; and Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” which received two Grammy nominations. Mr. Perahia is an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, and he holds an honorary doctorate from Leeds University. In March 2004, he was awarded an honorary KBE by Her Majesty The Queen of England, in recognition of his outstanding service to music.

Founded by Claudio Abbado and Michael Haefliger, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra is composed of major European orchestral players and international soloists, hand-picked by Maestro Abbado, with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra forming its core. The creation of a resident orchestra for the Festival dates back to 1938, its founding year, when Arturo Toscanini summoned an orchestra of superb musicians for a legendary gala performance in front of Richard Wagner’s villa at Tribschen. This ensemble evolved into the Swiss Festival Orchestra, which played at the Lucerne Festival until 1993. The tradition was revived with the formation of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003. Since that time, Maestro Abbado and his musicians gather each August in Lucerne to rehearse and give the opening concert of the Lucerne Festival in Summer. For ten days, the orchestra performs varied programs of symphony concerts, chamber recitals, and late-night performances. Following its celebrated residencies in Rome (2005) and Tokyo (2006), the Lucerne Festival Orchestra appears at Carnegie Hall this fall as part of a seven concert, five day residency. The Lucerne Festival Orchestra also records for the newly-created “Lucerne Festival Edition” label.

Program Information
Wednesday, October 3 at 7:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
THE OPENING NIGHT GALA OF CARNEGIE HALL’S 117TH SEASON
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
David Robertson, Conductor
Murray Perahia, Piano
Melanie Diener, Soprano
Anna Larsson, Contralto
Jonas Kaufmann, Tenor
Reinhard Hagen, Bass
Westminster Symphonic Choir
Joe Miller, Conductor

THE OPENING NIGHT GALA OF CARNEGIE HALL'S 117TH SEASON

ALL-BEETHOVEN PROGRAM
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125

Opening Night Gala Sponsor: PricewaterhouseCoopers

Bank of America is the Proud Season Sponsor of Carnegie Hall.