New Philharmonic Concert Lakeside

The New York Philharmonic, officially the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc., globally known as New York Philharmonic Orchestra (NYPO) or New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, is a symphony orchestra based in New York City. It is one of the leading American orchestras popularly referred to as the "Big Five". The Philharmonic's home is David Geffen Hall, located in New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Founded in 1842, the orchestra is one of the oldest musical institutions in the United States and the oldest of the "Big Five" orchestras. On May 5, 2010, the New York Philharmonic performed its 15,000th concert, a milestone unmatched by any other symphony orchestra in the world. The orchestra was founded by Ureli Corelli Hill in 1842 as the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York and played its first concert on December 7 of that year, when Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was performed. There had been other orchestras in New York before, but none of them had survived for very long. The Philharmonic, however, became successful, and grew in popularity and size throughout the 19th century. By the end of that century, there were several other orchestras in New York competing with it, as well as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which made regular visits to New York. In 1921 the Philharmonic merged with New York's National Symphony Orchestra (no relation to the present Washington, D.C. ensemble). With this merger it also acquired the imposing Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg. For the 1922/23 season Stránský and Mengelberg shared the conducting duties, but Stránský left after the one shared season. For nine years Mengelberg dominated the scene, although other conductors, among them Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Igor Stravinsky, and Arturo Toscanini, led about half of each season's concerts. During this period, the Philharmonic became one of the first American orchestras to boast an outdoor symphony series when it began playing low-priced summer concerts at Lewisohn Stadium in upper Manhattan. In 1920 the orchestra hired Henry Hadley as "associate conductor" given specific responsibility for the "Americanization" of the orchestra: each of Hadley's concerts featured at least one work by an American-born composer. In 1924, the Young People's Concerts were expanded into a substantial series of children's concerts under the direction of American pianist-composer-conductor Ernest Schelling. This series became the prototype for concerts of its kind around the country and grew by popular demand to 15 concerts per season by the end of the decade. Mengelberg and Toscanini both led the Philharmonic in recording sessions for the Victor Talking Machine Company and Brunswick Records, initially in a recording studio (for the acoustically-recorded Victors, all under Mengelberg) and eventually in Carnegie Hall as electrical recording was developed. All of the early electrical recordings for Victor were made with a single microphone, usually placed near or above the conductor, a process Victor called "Orthophonic"; the Brunswick electricals used the company's proprietary non-microphone "Light-Ray" selenium-cell system, which was much more prone to sonic distortion than Victor's. Mengelberg's first records for Victor were acousticals made in 1922; Toscanini's recordings with the Philharmonic actually began with a single disc for Brunswick in 1926, recorded in a rehearsal hall at Carnegie Hall. Mengelberg's most successful recording with the Philharmonic was a 1927 performance in Carnegie Hall of Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben. Additional Toscanini recordings with the Philharmonic, all for Victor, took place on Carnegie Hall's stage in 1929 and 1936. By the 1936 sessions Victor, now owned by RCA, began to experiment with multiple microphones to achieve more comprehensive reproductions of the orchestra. The year 1928 marked the New York Philharmonic's last and most important merger: with the New York Symphony Society. The Symphony had been quite innovative in its 50 years prior to the merger. It made its first domestic tour in 1882, introduced educational concerts for young people in 1891, and gave the premieres of works such as Gershwin's Concerto in F and Holst's Egdon Heath. The merger of these two venerable institutions consolidated extraordinary financial and musical resources. Of the new Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York, Clarence Hungerford Mackay, chairman of the Philharmonic Society, will be chairman. President Harry H. Flagler, of the Symphony Society, will be president of the merger.At the first joint board meeting in 1928, the chairman, Clarence Mackay, expressed the opinion that "with the forces of the two Societies now united... the Philharmonic-Symphony Society could build up the greatest orchestra in this country if not in the world." In 2000, Lorin Maazel made a guest-conducting appearance with the New York Philharmonic in two weeks of subscription concerts after an absence of over twenty years, which was met with a positive reaction from the orchestra musicians. This engagement led to his appointment in January 2001 as the orchestra's next Music Director. He assumed the post in September 2002, 60 years after making his debut with the Orchestra at the age of twelve at Lewisohn Stadium. In his first subscription week he led the world premiere of John Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls commissioned in memory of those who died on September 11, 2001. Maazel concluded his tenure as the Philharmonic's Music Director at the end of the 2008/09 season. The Philharmonic performed in Pyongyang at the invitation of the North Korean government on February 26, 2008. The event was the first significant cultural visit to the country from the United States since the end of the Korean War. The concert was held at East Pyongyang Grand Theatre, with a program including the national anthems of both North Korea (Aegukka) and the United States (The Star-Spangled Banner), the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin by Richard Wagner, Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World", George Gershwin's An American in Paris, Georges Bizet's Farandole, Leonard Bernstein's Overture to Candide, and the popular Korean folk song Arirang. The Dvořák, Gershwin, and Bernstein works were each originally premiered by the New York Philharmonic. The visit was anticipated as an opportunity to broaden relations with one of the world's most isolated nations. The U.S. State Department viewed the invitation as a potential softening of anti-U.S. propaganda. In response to initial criticism of performing a concert limited to the privileged elite, the New York Philharmonic arranged for the concert to be broadcast live on North Korean television and radio. It was additionally broadcast live on CNN and CNN International. It was also shown on South Korea's Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation to the entire nation of the Republic of Korea (ROK). In January 2016, the orchestra announced the appointment of Jaap van Zweden as its next Music Director, effective with the 2018/19 season, with an initial contract of five years. van Zweden is scheduled to serve as Music Director Designate for the 2017/18 season. The current president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the orchestra is Deborah Borda. Borda had previously held the same posts, as well as the post of managing director, with the orchestra. Music Directors 1842–1849 Ureli Corelli Hill, Henry Timm, Denis Etienne, William Alpers, George Loder, Louis Wiegers and Alfred Boucher 1849–1854 Theodore Eisfeld 1854–1855 Theodore Eisfeld and Henry Timm 1855–1856 Carl Bergmann 1856–1858 Theodore Eisfeld 1858–1859 Carl Bergmann 1859–1865 Carl Bergmann and Theodore Eisfeld 1865–1876 Carl Bergmann 1876–1877 Leopold Damrosch 1877–1878 Theodore Thomas 1878–1879 Adolf Neuendorff 1879–1891 Theodore Thomas 1891–1898 Anton Seidl 1898–1902 Emil Paur 1902–1903 Walter Damrosch 1906–1909 Wassily Safonoff 1909–1911 Gustav Mahler 1911–1923 Josef Stránský 1922–1930 Willem Mengelberg 1928–1936 Arturo Toscanini 1936–1941 John Barbirolli 1943–1947 Artur Rodziński 1947–1949 Bruno Walter (music advisor) 1949–1950 Leopold Stokowski (co-principal conductor) 1949–1958 Dimitri Mitropoulos 1958–1969 Leonard Bernstein 1969–1970 George Szell (music advisor) 1971–1977 Pierre Boulez 1978–1991 Zubin Mehta 1991–2002 Kurt Masur 2002–2009 Lorin Maazel 2009–2017 Alan Gilbert 2018– Jaap van Zweden