London Symphony Orchestra Makes Kimmel Center Debut with Conductor Valery Gergiev, Feb. 22
FEBRUARY 1, 2011
“a performance of the Seventh Symphony as cohesive and powerful as I can remember. This was a blinder from start to finish…” –Financial Times
As part of Kimmel Center Presents Great Orchestras series, the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) makes their Kimmel Center debut with principal conductor Valery Gergiev at the helm on Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 8pm in Verizon Hall. LSO’s 2010-11 season includes performances of a Mahler Cycle in London, New York, Paris and Japan. Their program at the Kimmel Center is Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 (Song of the Night), which depicts the slow, dark melodic journey of dusk until dawn, ending with a lively portrayal of a blazing morning sun.
“Valery Gergiev's dark, pumped-up Seventh might prove to be the high-light of the cycle The playing is consistently assured; the sound powerfully immediate” –Gramophone
Tickets for the London Symphony Orchestra’s performance are available for $39- $113 and can be purchased by calling 215-893-1999, online at www.kimmelcenter.org, or at the Kimmel Center box office, open daily from 10am to 6pm and later on performance evenings. (Additional fees may apply.) For group sales call 215-790-5883.
“Right from the start, with those dark, dragging rhythms, there's a sense that something special is afoot here. …I can't think of another recording of this symphony that not only brings so many of its extraordinary features to life, but ultimately balances them so satisfyingly.” –BBC music magazine
Valery Gergiev has been praised for his electrifying, dynamic performances with some of the top orchestras of the world, including the Mariinsky, Vienna Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera orchestras. During the 2010-11 season he conducts Berlioz’s The Trojans in St. Petersburg, Valencia, Italy and New York. He also conducts the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a three-week Stravinsky Festival, presents a Mariinsky Shostakovich Cycle in Vienna, leads works of Henri Dutilleux with the London Symphony Orchestra and conducts Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera. Born in Moscow, Gergiev studied conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory. At age 24 he was the winner of the Herbert von Karajan Conductors’ Competition in Berlin and made his Mariinsky Opera debut one year later in 1978 conducting Prokofiev’s War and Peace. He has won a Grammy award, the Dmitri Shostakovich Award, the Golden Mask Award, People’s Artist of Russia Award, among many other honors and recognitions.
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is proud to be Resident Orchestra at the Barbican in London, presenting over 70 concerts a year in the U.K., and a further 70 concerts abroad on tour. LSO has a successful annual residency at the Lincoln Center in New York, which last season included a performance of a Prokofiev cycle. In addition, the Orchestra is the international resident orchestra of La Salle Pleyel in Paris, also appearing regularly in Japan and the Far East, as well as in all the major European cities. In 2010 it became the resident orchestra at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
LSO was founded in 1904 and became the first British orchestra to play overseas when it went to Paris in 1906 and the first to play in the United States in 1912. In 1956, the Orchestra appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Man Who Knew Too Much. Continuing the orchestra’s long association with film music, the LSO has recently recorded soundtracks for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1), Twilight: New Moon, and Tamara Drewe. The orchestra also features on radio, TV, computer games and in-flight music programmes, and has launched the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the world’s first-ever online orchestra.
Kimmel Center, Inc., a charitable, not-for-profit organization, owns, manages, supports and maintains The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, which includes Verizon Hall, Perelman Theater, Innovation Studio and the Merck Arts Education Center. Kimmel Center, Inc. also manages the Academy of Music, owned by the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, and the University of the Arts’ Merriam Theater. Our mission is to operate a world-class performing arts center that engages and serves a broad audience from throughout the Greater Philadelphia region.
The 2010/2011 season is sponsored by Citi, and the Broadway 2010/2011 season is sponsored by Verizon, and American Airlines. For additional information, visit kimmelcenter.org.
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