Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Benjamin Zander, Conductor

Overview

Passionate music-making without boundaries - this is the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the charismatic Ben Zander.  This season their program is a virtual riot of musical color, verve, and virtuosity.  Opening with an evocation of Latin American musical styles, continuing with Ginastera's spectacular Harp Concerto - full of Argentinean dance rhythms - and climaxing with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.  This has to be the hottest program that the BPO has ever presented!  Maestro Zander's pre-concert talks are legendary and not to be missed.

Guest soloist Gwyneth Wentink is a Dutch harp virtuoso and has come to be regarded worldwide as the finest harpist of her generation.

Tickets:  $46, $43, students $20

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STUDENT "RUSH" SEATS AT DOOR $15.

Program

PROGRAM

Revueltas    Sensemaya - a compressed rhythmically intoxicating, 7-minute evocation of Latin American musical styles.

Ginastera     Harp Concerto - pounding Argentinean dance rhythms for which he is so famous.

Stravinsky     The Rite of Spring - its power to astonish and overwhelm is undiminished after a century.

About the Artists

In 1979, ninety-six enthusiastic players, amateurs, students, and professionals and a dynamic and probing conductor named Benjamin Zander joined together to found the Boston Philharmonic. Today, the musicians represent the original spirited blend, and account for the passion, high level of participation, and technical accomplishment for which this ensemble is celebrated. The professionals maintain the highest standard, the students keep the focus on training and education, and the gifted amateurs-including doctors, lawyers, teachers, and computer programmers-remind everybody that music-making is an expression of enthusiasm and love. The Boston Philharmonic message rings loud and clear- music making is a privilege and a joy, and above all, a collaborative adventure.

 The orchestra’s season includes performances at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Sanders Theatre at Harvard University and often Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall. The Philharmonic performs with a wide range of soloists from highly gifted performers at the start of their international careers such as Stefan Jackiw, Gabriela Montero and Caitlin Tully, to world-famous artists like Yo-Yo Ma, Alexander Baillie, Russell Sherman, Jon Kimura Parker and Kim Kashkashian and legendary masters such as Ivry Gitlis, Denes Zsigmondy, Georgy Sandor, Leonard Shure and Oscar Shumsky.

 The Philharmonic has released five critically acclaimed recordings, including works by Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mahler, Shostakovich and Ravel. Among many other reviews of extravagant praise, Classic CD magazine gave the Boston Philharmonic’s recording of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring the highest rank of all available recordings. Of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, American Record Guide wrote: “This joins the Rattle and the two Bernstein recordings as the finest on record…All the glory to Zander and his semi-professional orchestra, for the sixth is probably Mahler’s most difficult and complex symphony…All things considered, when I reach for a recording of the sixth to play for my own pleasure, it will must likely be this one.” 

Boston Philharmonic concerts have long been a two-part experience; each performance is preceded by one of Benjamin Zander’s pre-concert lectures, which prepare listeners to understand the ideas and the structure of the music they are about to hear.

Benjamin Zander started his early musical training under the guidance of his father, in his native England, with lessons in cello and composition. When he was nine, Benjamin Britten, England's leading composer, took an interest in his compositions and invited the family to spend three summers in Aldeburgh in Suffolk where he lived. This led to a long association with Britten and lessons in theory and composition from Britten's close associate Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav Holst.  He left school when he was fifteen, to study in Florence with the great Spanish cello virtuoso, Gaspar Cassadó, who was his teacher and mentor for the next five years. He completed his cello training at the State Academy in Cologne, travelling extensively with Cassadó and performing recitals and chamber music.  In 1964 Benjamin Zander completed a degree at London University, winning the University College Essay Prize, and a Harkness Commonwealth Fellowship for post-graduate work at Harvard. Boston has been his home ever since.

In 1967 Mr. Zander joined the Faculty of the New England Conservatory, where he teaches the Interpretation Class, conducts the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra and regularly conducts the Conservatory's orchestras. Twenty-three years ago he became the Artistic Director of the joint program between NEC and Walnut Hill, a boarding school for the Performing Arts. During his thirty-five year tenure as conductor of the New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic he has taken the orchestra on 13 international tours, made five commercial recordings and several television documentaries for PBS.

In 1979, he became the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. In their twenty-eight seasons together they have performed an extensive repertoire, with an emphasis on late Romantic and early Twentieth Century composers, including a traversal of the complete cycle of symphonies of Gustav Mahler. To celebrate the orchestra's 25th Anniversary in 2003-2004, the BPO completed an all-Mahler season, including a concert of Mahler's Second Symphony in Carnegie Hall. The BPO has recorded five extremely succesful CDs, all of which are listed in the Penguin Guide of the Best recordings of the Past 20 years. Their recording of The Rite of Spring was named as one of the ten most important Musical Events of 1992 by the New York Times.

Benjamin Zander has established an international reputation as a guest conductor. He has conducted the Israel Philharmonic for three consecutive years, and conducted orchestras as diverse as the Bournemouth Symphony, the Scottish and Irish National Orchestras, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Malaysian Symphony, the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, and appeared with the National Youth Orchestra of New Zealand, and the Australian Youth Orchestra.  He has a unique relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London with whom he is recording a series of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies for the Telarc label. Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies, and Mahler's symphonies 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9 have been released thus far. The phenomenal success of these discs is in part due to the eloquent and informative discussion discs which accompany each disc. High Fidelity named his recording of Mahler 6th as the best classical recording of 2002. His recording of Mahler's 9th Symphony was nominated for a Grammy Award.

At seventeen, Dutch harpist GWYNETH WENTINK won First Prize in the 1999 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, the first solo harpist to win a place on the Young Concert Artists roster. Ms. Wentink was also awarded the Beracasa Foundation Prize for a performance at the Montpellier Radio-France Festival and the Mortimer Levitt Award for Women Artists, which sponsored her New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series at the 92nd Street Y in 2000. Ms. Wentink also debuted in Boston that year, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, as well as in Washington, DC.

During the 2000-2001 season, Ms. Wentink gave her New York concerto debut in the Young Concert Artists Series at Alice Tully Hall with the New York Chamber Symphony, and she performed at the Morgan Library in New York with YCA alumna flutist Eugenia Zukerman in a special series celebrating the 40th anniversary of Young Concert Artists. 

Ms. Wentink has been capturing First Prizes since the age of eleven. In 1998, she won the prestigious International Harp Competition in Israel and the Gulbenkian Prize for best performance of the new R. Murray Schafer Harp Concerto. The Victor Salvi Foundation has provided Ms. Wentink with generous sponsorship, including her debut recital at London’s Wigmore Hall, the gift of a new Salvi Harp, and a debut CD. Ms. Wentink also won First Prize in the 1998 Torneo Internazionale di Musica in Rome and First Prize in the 1996 International Harp Competition in Tokyo, Japan.  Ms. Wentink was awarded the 2001 Netherland-America Foundation Prize.   

Gwyneth Wentink has performed as soloist with I Fiamminghi in Brussels under the baton of Rudolph Werthen, the Lille Philharmonia in France, the Residentie Orkest in The Hague, the Nieuw Sinfonietta in Amsterdam, the Orquesta Sinfonica Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho in Caracas, Venezuela, and the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. She has given recitals at Wigmore Hall in London and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, as well as in Bucharest, Barcelona, Paris, Rome, Venice, Rotterdam, Prague and Tel Aviv.

Born in Utrecht in The Netherlands, Ms. Wentink had her first harp lesson on a Celtic harp at the age of five. At the age of eight she played Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp with The Netherlands National Youth Orchestra in Rotterdam, and at the age of ten she performed for Queen Beatrix. Gwyneth Wentink graduated cum laude from the Utrecht Conservatory in 2001, where she was a student of Erika Waardenburg, and she has performed in masterclasses for Maria Graf, Susann McDonald, Catherine Michel, Andree Laurens-King and Susanna Mildonian.

Gwyneth plays with great passion in a variety of chamber music ensembles all over the world and is dedicated to exploring new soundscapes and repertoire for the harp. A variety of compositions have been written for Gwyneth by, among others, Marius Flothuis, Sergei Natra and Roel van Oosten. Since 2005 she plays with the worldfamous Indian bansuri player Pt.Hariprasad Chaurassia in the “Kirwani Quartet”and brings the harp into the world of classical Indian music. In May 2005 they performed in New York where they made a live CD as well as a DVD recording of the concert.

In May 2006 she received the most prestigious award of the Ministry of Culture and Sciences: The Dutch Music Prize. This ceremony has officially taken place in April 2007. The VSCD Classical Musicprize `New Generation`has been awarded to Gwyneth in November 2007.