New York Philharmonic: Alan Gilbert, the orchestra’s incoming music director, in Central Park on Tuesday evening.
Alan Gilbert, the incoming music director of the New York Philharmonic, has a markedly different idea of what that post should encompass than his predecessor, Lorin Maazel, did. In a recent interview with the news channel NY1, Mr. Gilbert, who will also teach and conduct at the Juilliard School this fall, said he felt “a very sincere hope that we can make connections to the city and mean something for individuals in the city.”
A balmy summer evening in Central Park on Tuesday presented Mr. Gilbert, 42, the first native New Yorker to hold the position, with the perfect opportunity to continue courting his hometown audience. He is certainly off to a populist start, conducting the first of several free programs he will lead in the city this month. (Mr. Maazel led only one concert in the parks during his seven-year tenure.)
The coming Philharmonic season has plenty of new music, including an opening-night premiere in September by the Finn Magnus Lindberg, the orchestra’s first composer in residence in nearly 20 years. Tuesday’s concert featured two popular repertory staples: Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony and the Beethoven Symphony No. 7.
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The huge crowd, estimated by the police at 80,000, applauded energetically between movements of both symphonies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/ar...html?ref=music
Courting the Hometown Audience in Central Park, With Mozart and Beethoven
