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The Los Angeles Philharmonic is widely regarded as one of the most contemporary and innovative orchestras in America. Dudamel made his U.S. conducting debut with the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2005. In April 2007, during a guest conducting engagement with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dudamel was named the LA Phil’s next Music Director as of the 2009-2010 season, succeeding Esa-Pekka Salonen. “For me, this is really so exciting to be starting my first season as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” says Dudamel. “First, this is a beautiful challenge and second, it’s a wonderful opportunity to make great music with my new LA Phil family. The most important thing is to enjoy our time together.”

On the program for his inaugural concert are Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major (“Titan”) and the world premiere of that latest work by Pulitzer Prize-winning music composer John Adams, City Noir. “As the title suggests, ‘City Noir’ is a symphony inspired by the peculiar ambience and mood of Los Angeles ‘noir’ films, especially those produced in the late forties and early fifties,” reveals Adams, newly appointed LA Phil Creative Chair. “My music is an homage not necessarily to the film music of that period but rather to the overall aesthetic of the era.”

Gustavo Dudamel is the product of the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, or more popularly known as El Sistema (the System), created in 1975 by José Antonio Abreu, a Venezuelan conductor, petroleum economics professor and former congressional deputy. Targeting mostly children living in slums, the System gives a musical instrument and instruction to many underprivileged and at-risk Venezuelan youth as an alternative to gang life and crime. “Music changed my life,” Dudamel told the British Herald newspaper. “I can look back now and see that many of the boys from my class went on to become involved in drugs and crime. Those who played music did not.”

Before he even begins his directorship at the LA Phil, Dudamel has been instrumental in creating the American version of El Sistema, YOLA or Youth Orchestra Los Angeles. The program, modeled after the Venezuelan prototype, began in 2007 with youth between the ages of seven and 16 from a disadvantaged district in south central Los Angeles, but its ultimate goal is to provide a musical instrument and a place in a youth orchestra for every Los Angeles county young person who wants one.

News of Gustavo Dudamel’s talent first spread worldwide after his triumph at the inaugural Bamberger Symphoniker Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in May 2004. Just three years later, Dudamel was awarded the Premio de la Latindad, an honor given for outstanding contributions to Latin cultural life. In 2008, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra was granted Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, given annually by the Prince of Asturias Foundation in Spain. Dudamel was awarded the 2007 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for Young Artists and, most recently, along with his mentor Dr. Abreu, the 2008 “Q Prize” from Harvard University for extraordinary service to children.

The national PBS telecast of Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic: The Inaugural Concert is being produced by Bernhard Fleischer Moving Images, THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG, ZDF-ARTE, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Directed for television by Brian Large, the concert will be telecast in South America and Asia as well.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. Major funding is also provided by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, with additional funding from the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.

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A coveted ticket, the popular annual concert is set among the enchanting surroundings of the Schönbrunn Palace grounds, with the musical repertory selected on the theme “Night.” Concert highlights include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “A Little Night Music,” Johann Strauss’ “A Thousand and One Nights” Waltz and Modest Mussorgsky’s “A Night on Bald Mountain.” In addition to conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, Barenboim–equally known for his masterful skills as a piano soloist–took center stage to perform Spanish composer Manuel De Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain” to thunderous applause. The 90-minute television concert captures the glorious Baroque Park in all its atmospheric moods, from early morning dewdrops to mid-day sunshine to a foggy, mysterious nightfall. “There is no one quite like Daniel Barenboim today in the music world,” raves the New York Times.

Barenboim’s current appointments include serving as the general music director of the Berlin State Opera and its orchestra, as well as the Berlin Staatskapelle. He is also principal guest conductor of the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan. Formerly music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris, Barenboim has been a regular guest of the Vienna Philharmonic since his debut with the orchestra in 1989. Most recently on PBS, viewers will recall Barenboim as guest conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concert, which aired on Great Performances on January 1, 2009.

For more than 160 years since 1842, there is perhaps no other musical ensemble more closely associated with the history and tradition of European classical music than the Vienna Philharmonic. Richard Wagner described the orchestra as being one of the most outstanding in the world, and Richard Strauss summed it all up by saying, “All praise for the Vienna Philharmonic reveals itself as an understatement.”

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. Exclusive corporate funding for this telecast is provided by Rolex. Additional support is provided by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund and Vera von Kuffner Eberstadt. For Great Performances, John Walker is producer, Bill O’Donnell is series producer and David Horn is executive producer.

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Featuring extensive performance sequences from rehearsals and concerts, as well as rare archival material, this performance documentary is the first film to truly penetrate Karajan’s regal façade. Supplementing the extraordinary performances are candid and revealing comments by some of the era’s leading artists who accompanied him on his path to legendary status.

Directed by Robert Dornhelm (director of the acclaimed 2007 mini-series adaptation of War and Peace, as well as GP’s upcoming big-screen adaptation of La Boheme starring Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón), the film features forthright commentary by such Karajan friends and colleagues as Evgeny Kissin, Mariss Jansons, Christa Ludwig, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle, Elisabeth Scharzkopf, Sir George Solti and many others, along with personal insights from Karajan’s wife and daughters, as well as the maestro himself. “I don’t just want it to sound beautiful,” said Karajan, “I want it to look beautiful as well—for music is an embodiment of beauty.” The film’s final effect is a multi-faceted portrait that sheds new light on the full spectrum of a profoundly mesmerizing and contradictory personality.

Karajan, or Beauty as I See It is a production of Unitel and MR Film in co-production with ORF, ZDF, SF, SMG and Classica, with support from Fernsehfonds Austria. Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Major funding is also provided by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund and the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust. For Great Performances, John Walker is producer and Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

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Mezzo soprano Elīna Garaňca, who played Rosina in another one of Rossini’s operas, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, now claims the role of the title heroine in La Cenerentola; her Prince Charming is played by Lawrence Brownlee. “It’s actually a coincidence that I’m returning in another of Rossini’s works,” admits Garaňca. Of the opera’s most memorable coloratura showpiece, “Nacqui alľ affanno,” Garaňca says “for me it’s the Olympics – adrenaline at its highest. To get through it, I must switch on all the buttons in the computer in my head and body.”

Italian opera in the early 19th century focused heavily on the range, inflection, and tone of the human voice; this style became known as “bel canto,” or “beautiful singing.” While many opera singers tried to wow audiences by improvising with this technique and adding trills and lilts to their singing, Rossini’s operas, especially La Cenerentola, had bel canto already built right into the scores.

Great Performances at the Met: La Cenerentola is the tenth of 11 productions airing this season on the series. The performance is sung in Italian with English surtitles. Maestro Maurizio Benini conducts, as veteran baritone Alessandro Corbelli demonstrates his impeccable comic timing to match the gravitas of Met favorite John Relyea; the librettist is Jacopo Ferretti.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers.

Briccetti and Victoria Warivonchik are Producers. Peter Gelb is Executive Producer. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is Series Producer; David Horn is Executive Producer.

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“What a joy to return to Vienna, which has always been a magical place for me,” Andrews says. “And to go at holiday time makes it very special indeed. You’ve never really heard The Blue Danube Waltz until you’ve heard it played by the very orchestra Strauss once led.”

Ms. Andrews carries on for longtime host Walter Cronkite, who relinquishes the post with this telecast. “Though ending this tradition comes with some sadness for me, I am very much looking forward to resuming the long-held custom of spending the holidays with my family and friends,” notes the venerable newsman, who hosted the first international telecast in 1985. “I am also deeply honored that Julie Andrews has been chosen to carry on what has become a holiday high point for millions across America.”

Mr. Barenboim and Ms. Andrews are both longtime Great Performances favorites. He last appeared on the series in 2007’s Barenboim on Beethoven, she in 2004 introducing her 1957 performance in a special digitally remastered encore of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. She also hosted the Emmy Award-winning series Broadway: The American Musical in 2004.

Musical highlights of From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2009 include Strauss Jr.’s Gypsy Baron Overture, Thunder and Lightning Polka and The Blue Danube Waltz, danced in the hall by children selected from the Ballet School of the Vienna State Opera.

“Since we first presented this concert 25 years ago, we are proud and delighted it’s become a beloved broadcast tradition at holiday time,” says David Horn, Executive Producer of the telecast and Great Performances. “Needless to say, we look forward to the next 25 years of high spirits and irresistible melody.”

From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2009 is directed by Brian Large, with John Walker as producer/writer.

Major corporate funding for this telecast was provided by Rolex. Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Major funding for this telecast was also provided by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund and Vera von Kuffner Eberstadt.

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Recorded last December by KQED Public Television to help commemorate the company’s 75th anniversary, the work is choreographed by Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson and features sets and costumes by, respectively, Michael Yeargan and Martin Pakledinaz, both repeat Tony Award-winning designers. “Striking, elegant and beautiful,” assessed The New York Times.

Introduced by Olympic champion figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, a native of the Bay Area and winner of this year’s Dancing with the Stars, the production premieres in high definition and 5.1 surround sound Wednesday, December 17 at 8 p.m. (ET) on GREAT PERFORMANCES on PBS (check local listings). San Francisco Ballet Music Director and Principal Conductor Martin West conducts Tchaikovsky’s sprightly score.

“I have grown up with this wonderful company,” says Yamaguchi. “It was with them that my mom, Carole, took me to my first Nutcracker. Pretty impressive for a little girl, with all that magic and sparkle, thrilling music and those costumes! I think that’s when I fell in love with performing. Next year, I’ll be taking my little girls, 5 and 3, to their first production.”

In addition to the Russian-trained Kochetkova, a recent recruit from English National Ballet, as the adult Clara and the athletic yet lyrical Armenian-born Karapetyan as her cavalier prince, the large cast includes Damian Smith as Uncle Drosselmeyer and Pierre-François Vilanoba and Yuan Yuan Tan as the Snow King and Snow Queen. Vanessa Zahorian is the Sugar Plum Fairy. Dance in America viewers will remember Yuan Yuan Tan for her stunning portrayal of Desdemona in Lar Lubovitch’s Othello from San Francisco Ballet (2002).

The ballet, which was first performed in Russia in 1892, holds a special significance for San Francisco Ballet, America’s oldest professional ballet company. It had its U.S. premiere there in 1944.

Tchaikovsky’s beguiling score is one of the most popular pieces of music ever written. Think “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Waltz of the Snowflakes.” Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’s 1816 story, The Nutcracker and The Mouse King, it was first proposed to Tchaikovsky by legendary choreographer Marius Petipa as a follow-up to Tchaikovsky’s other successful ballets at Russia’s famed Mariinsky Theatre: Swan Lake (1877) and The Sleeping Beauty (1890). The composer began work on it in 1891.

The work premiered at the Mariinsky in December of the following year, with choreography by Lev Ivanov, taking over for an indisposed Petipa. The ballet completed a double bill, appearing with Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta. Reviews were disappointing for both. While Tchaikovsky thought much of Iolanta, he felt the ballet score was not among his best work. Some 115 years, countless performances, and myriad LPs and CDs later, many would disagree.

San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker was recorded on stage in performance at the War Memorial Opera House December 19 and 21, 2007. It is a co-production of San Francisco Ballet and KQED Public Television San Francisco, in association with Thirteen/WNET New York. Past co-productions of the triad include San Francisco Ballet’s The Tempest, A Song for Dead Warriors, Cinderella, and Lar Lubovitch’s Othello.

Matthew Diamond (Dance in America’s Emmy Award-winning Swan Lake with American Ballet Theatre; GREAT PERFORMANCES’ Crazy for You) directs; Judy Flannery (GREAT PERFORMANCES’ Emmy Award-winning A Streetcar Named Desire From the San Francisco Opera) produced. Michael Isip is Executive Producer for KQED.

An expanded version of San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker, featuring additional behind-the-scenes interviews with the production’s creators and a background piece on the 1915 World’s Fair, is available on DVD from Opus Arte/Naxos of America.

Major corporate funding for this telecast was provided by First Republic Bank, a division of Merrill Lynch Bank & Trust, Co.

GREAT PERFORMANCES is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS.  Special funding for the telecast was provided by Jim and Cecilia Herbert & Family. Additional support was provided by The Flora Family Foundation and members of the San Francisco Ballet’s 75th Anniversary Sponsors Council: major sponsors include the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, The Hellman Family, and Yurie and Carl Pascarella; with additional sponsors including Stuart Francis and Diana Stark; Stephen and Margaret Gill Family Foundation; Cecilia and Jim Herbert; George Frederick Jewett Foundation, Lucille Jewett, Trustee; Barbara Ravizza and John Osterweis; Kathleen Scutchfield; The Smelick Family; The Swanson Foundation; Ms. Susan A. Van Wagner; E.L. Wiegand Foundation; Diane B. Wilsey; and Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang.

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Airing in high definition and 5.1 surround sound, the evening, recorded September 24, marked the opening salvo of the four-month Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds, a New York City-wide salute to the composer, conductor and educator presented by Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic celebrating the 90th anniversary of his birth and 50th anniversary of his appointment as New York Philharmonic Music Director.

“Jazzy energy and the Jets,” hailed The New York Times, while The Newark Star-Ledger called the program “a dizzying sampler of the composer’s wit and poetry.”

Featuring selections ranging from the 1944 ballet Fancy Free through West Side Story (1957) to his final opera A Quiet Place (1983), the telecast offers a virtual sound portrait of Leonard Bernstein’s life. “His music is intensely biographical,” says Tilson Thomas, a close friend and colleague of Bernstein, who first met the maestro in 1968 and, in 1971, succeeded him as conductor of the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts on national TV. “The pieces do reflect his early, middle and late years,” Tilson Thomas says, “optimistic, reflective and then the concern that somehow all the disparate themes will come out in the end, that there will be some kind of resolution and peace.”

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, certainly Bernstein’s most famous work, opens the program, followed by selections from A Quiet Place, with Hampson and Upshaw as an estranged father and daughter. On the lighter side, Ebersole scores with the randy “I Can Cook Too” from On the Town, then joins Upshaw, Hampson and Ma for “Ya Got Me” from the same show.

Other highlights: Meditation No. 1 from Mass (Ma), “What a Movie!” from Trouble in Tahiti (Upshaw), “To What You Said” from Songfest (Hampson and Ma), and “Gee, Officer Krupke” from West Side Story (students of The Juilliard School). The orchestra itself gets another chance to shine with the slinky, hip-swaying Danzon from Fancy Free.

Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969 and Laureate Conductor from 1969 to 1990, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) brought his own particular New World sensibility to classical music. Equally at home in a Broadway theater or concert hall, the beloved ‘Lenny’ – who performed at Carnegie Hall more than 400 times during his career – had an enthusiasm for an understanding of music far beyond his classical realm, extending into jazz, world music, American song, and 1960s pop and rock.

A popular presence on television – his Young People’s Concerts introduced an entire generation to classical music – he was a particular favorite of GREAT PERFORMANCES audiences. Beginning with the series’ first full season in 1973-74, when Mass became GP’s first music program, through 1988’s Bernstein at 70 from Tanglewood, he was never far from a series camera. More recently, his Candide in Concert was a highlight of the 2004-5 season.

Tilson Thomas, who also hosts Carnegie Hall Opening Night 2008: A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein, assumed his post as the 11th Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in 1995, consolidating a strong relationship with the orchestra that began some two decades earlier. In 1974, at age 29, he made his debut with the group leading Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. His tenure has been praised for innovative programming and for bringing the works of American composers to the fore, as well as attracting new audiences to Davies Symphony Hall. He last appeared on GREAT PERFORMANCES in 2004’s two-part examination and performance (with the SFS) of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, part of the orchestra’s groundbreaking PBS television series and multimedia project Keeping Score.

Now in its 97th season, the esteemed San Francisco Symphony includes among its music directors such distinguished conductors as Pierre Monteux, Seiji Ozawa, Edo de Waart, and Herbert Blomstedt.

Carnegie Hall Opening Night 2008: A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein inaugurates the hall’s 118th season and is a production of Carnegie Hall and Thirteen/WNET New York in association with San Francisco Symphony. Directed by Gary Halvorson, it is produced by John Walker and Mitch Owgang, with David Horn as Executive Producer.

GREAT PERFORMANCES is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Major funding for this telecast was provided by S. Donald Sussman, with additional special funding by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund and the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.

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Presented by Thirteen/WNET New York, the one-hour visit finds the artistic and general director of St. Petersburg’s legendary Mariinsky Theater in high spirits, particularly when discussing his favorite topic: the exhilaration of fine music making. “If musicians can enjoy it, most of the public will enjoy it too,” he says, taking a backstage break from recent conducting chores at the London Symphony, where he presides as principal conductor. “To create this atmosphere of everyone being involved and interested you really have to start with the orchestra.”

Or, in his case, orchestras. In addition to the St. Petersburg and London posts, he is principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (at least until he steps down this August) and has served as principal guest conductor at the Met. He also managed to found and lead the famous Stars of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg and the Moscow Easter Festival.

“I’m in complete awe,” says Rachel Gough, London Symphony principal bassoonist, who provides the haunting solo that opens Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and which also opens and concludes the telecast. “With complete concentration, focus and energy, he draws us all in like a magnet.” Adds Patrick Harrild, principal tuba, “He hears everything. I love it. And it’s plainly obvious that the whole orchestra love it.”

Singers, too, respond to the special Russian intensity. Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Renée Fleming, shown in highlights from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, bring white-hot passion to the work’s closing moments under the maestro’s tutelage from the Met podium. “He embraces your souls and your spontaneities easily,” says the superstar Siberian baritone. “He is unique.”

Other musical moments in Maestro: Portrait of Valery Gergiev include excerpts from Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Easter Festival Overture. Gergiev’s most famous protég´e, Mariinsky soprano Anna Netrebko, is seen seeking advice from her mentor, then offering a thrilling “Or sai chi l’onore” as Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

For a man conducting a performance nearly every day of the year, Valery Gergiev remains the calm center of the frenzied world of musicians, singers, administrators, politicians, and managers swirling around him. “He believes strongly in everything in Russian arts and culture,” says R. Douglas Sheldon, Gergiev’s manager of many years.

Concurring, Gergiev puts it more directly. “My first and most important goal is to continue the tradition.”

Special funding for this telecast was provided by Donald and Jeanne Kahn, Pierre de Labouchere, The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, Gloria and RJ Brandes, VTB Bank, Donald M Kendall, Elizabeth and Henry Segerstrom, Sibir Energy plc, Troika Dialog Group, Joan and Sandy Weill, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Gwendolyn and James Meyer, Dr. M. Lee Pearce and the Dr. M. Lee Pearce Foundation, Tishman Speyer, and Bialkin Family Foundation.

GREAT PERFORMANCES is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Special funding for this telecast was provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust and the Benjamin and Seema Pulier Charitable Foundation.

MAESTRO: PORTRAIT OF VALERY GERGIEV premiered Wednesday, May 28, 2008.

Related Web Sites

• White Knights Foundation
• Valery Gergiev’s Wikipedia Entry
• Valery Gergiev on Decca Classics