Blumine began its life as a movement of Mahler’s now-lost suite of incidental music Der Trompeter von Säkkingen, which the composer wrote for a dramatic poem by Joseph Victor von Scheffel; it was later repurposed as the second movement of his Symphony No. 1 before being jettisoned during a subsequent revision. Blumine was only rediscovered in 1966, and has since begun receiving occasional performances as a stand-alone concert piece.
The shimmering, mysterious opening of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto marks the beginning of the new symphonic world the Finnish composer was to continue exploring the rest of his career. Composed concurrently with the Valse triste and just after the Second Symphony—in which Sibelius made dramatic formal and expressive advances over his traditional, late-Romantic First—the Violin Concerto features the same combination of warm lyricism and icy grandeur that came to characterize Sibelius’s mature works.
In Mahler’s life and work, superstition and premonition are striking and abundant, as is the composer’s preoccupation with death. This ever-present sense of mortality is made painfully explicit in the Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), and, sadly, the songs would also eventually come to be revealed as tragic premonitions of the composer’s own grief. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Kindertotenlieder is their tranquility: The songs capture not the hysterical panic and agony of the initial loss, but the constant struggle against the paralyzing undertow that follows, always threatening new submersions in grief.
Especially influential to contemporary music composition is Sibelius’s ability to build epic structures from tiny motifs, a technique that began with Beethoven but reached an apotheosis in Sibelius’s final symphony, the Seventh. In this single-movement symphony, everything evolves from a few thematic scraps, building through what musicologists view as hidden fragments of traditional symphonic form toward a final upward sweep. The hymn-like motifs, shivering strings, ambiguous wind chords, and ephemeral dances sound like procedures from earlier Sibelius symphonies that have been miraculously distilled.
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
as many as seven times a week in repertory that this season encompasses 26 operas.
In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of concert
performances. Arturo Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with The
MET Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who have appeared
with the orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo
Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moriz 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 six world premieres: Milton Babbitt's Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998),
William Bolcom's Symphony No. 7 (2002), Hsueh-Yung Shen's Legend (2002), Charles
Wuorinen's Theologoumenon (2007) and Time Regained (2009), and John
Harbison's Closer to My Own Life (2011).
Esa-Pekka Salonen's restless innovation drives him constantly to reposition classical
music in the 21st century. He is currently the principal conductor and artistic advisor for
London's Philharmonia Orchestra and the conductor laureate for the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, where he served as music director from 1992 until 2009. The 2016-2017 season
is his second of three as the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York
Philharmonic, and his first of five years as artist in association at the Finnish National
Opera and Ballet. Additionally, Mr. Salonen is artistic director and cofounder of the
annual Baltic Sea Festival, now in its 14th year, which invites celebrated artists to
promote unity and ecological awareness among the countries around the Baltic Sea. He made
his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2009 leading the Met premiere of Janáček's From the
House of the Dead and returned in 2016 for a new production of Richard Strauss's
Elektra.
As a composer, Mr. Salonen's works move freely among contemporary idioms, combining
intricacy and technical virtuosity with playful rhythmic and melodic innovations. He has
composed a number of pieces for symphony orchestra, and this season, his cello concerto for
Yo-Yo Ma premiered with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was subsequently performed by
the New York Philharmonic. He is the recipient of many major awards, including a Grammy
Award, the UNESCO Rostrum Prize, the Siena Prize, the Royal Philharmonic Society's Opera
and Conductor Awards, the Litteris et Artibus medal, the rank of Officer of the Ordre des
Arts et des Lettres from the French government, the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the
Lion of Finland, the Helsinki Medal, the Nemmers Prize in Music Composition, and seven
honorary doctorates in four different countries. Musical America named him
its Musician of the Year in 2006, and he was elected an honorary member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.
Christian Tetzlaff has been one of the most exciting and sought-after violinists on the
classical music scene for decades. His concerts often become an existential experience for
interpreter and audience alike. In addition to familiar works suddenly appearing in an
entirely new light, he frequently turns his attention to forgotten masterpieces and
attempts to establish important new works in the repertoire. He has an unusually extensive
repertoire and gives approximately 100 concerts every year. Essential to this approach are
the courage to take risks, technical brilliance, openness, and alertness to life.
Significantly, he played in youth orchestras for many years. His teacher at the Lübeck
University of Music was Uwe-Martin Haiberg, for whom musical interpretation is the key to
violin technique.
In 1994, Mr. Tetzlaff founded his own string quartet; chamber music is still as important
to him as his work as a soloist with and without orchestra. The Tetzlaff Quartet has
received such awards as the Diapason d'Or, and his trio with his sister Tanja Tetzlaff and
pianist Lars Vogt was nominated for a Grammy Award. Since 2004, he has performed with The
MET Orchestra four times. He served as artist in residence with the Berliner
Philharmoniker, and he appears regularly as a guest with such ensembles as the Vienna
Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and London's
leading orchestras, working with conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Robin Ticciati, and
Vladimir Jurowski. During the 2016-2017 season, he performs on four continents, including
appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London
Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and as artist-in-residence with the
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in Amsterdam. Tours take him with the Scottish Chamber
Orchestra and Robin Ticciati to East Asia, and with Lars Vogt to the United States. With
the Tetzlaff Quartet or in trio with Tanja Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt, he performs in Paris,
London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and other European cities. He plays a violin made by the German
violin maker Peter Greiner and teaches regularly at the Kronberg Academy.
Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter is one of today's most recorded
artists, with an unrivaled discography built across a career that spans more than three
decades at the very top of her profession. She made her debut at the Met as Octavian in
Der Rosenkavalier in 1990, and has also appeared with the company as Idamante in
Idomeneo, Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, Mélisande in Pelléas et
Mélisande, and Countess Geschwitz in Lulu. This season's highlights include a
US and European tour with trailblazing string quartet Brooklyn Rider, as well as
performances as Countess Geschwitz at Staatsoper Hamburg and Leonora Palma in Thomas Adès's
The Exterminating Angel at Covent Garden--a role she created in the work's 2016
world premiere at the Salzburg Festival.
An ever-evolving repertoire has played a key role in sustaining Ms. von Otter's
international reputation as an operatic force. She has appeared in many of the world's
greatest opera houses, including the Opéra de Paris, Zürich Opera, Vienna State Opera,
Bayerische Staatsoper, Salzburg Festival, Paris's Théâtre du Châtelet, Dutch National
Opera, Teatro Real de Madrid, Theater an der Wien, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Staatsoper
Hamburg, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. A busy concert
schedule takes her to all corners of the world, while recent guest appearances include
performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, the New York
Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Daniele Gatti,
Washington's National Symphony Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach, the Swedish Radio
Symphony Orchestra and Marc Minkowski, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir
Jurowski, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Sakari Oramo. Ms. von Otter
appeared with tenor Jonas Kaufmann and the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by the late
Claudio Abbado for a televised performance of Das Lied von der Erde on the 100th
anniversary of Mahler's death, and last season, she appeared with the Finnish Radio
Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu in a performance of newly commissioned arrangements of
Sibelius songs on the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth.