Alan Gilbert

Alan Gilbert is an American conductor who served as music director of the New York Philharmonic and has gone on to lead orchestras in Europe as well. He conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in a program pairing violinist Augustin Hadelich in Bartók's Second Violin Concerto with a new work and Debussy's Images, showing his range across both standard and contemporary repertoire.

Gilbert built his New York Philharmonic tenure partly on championing new and rarely heard music alongside the core repertoire, and this program reflects that habit, pairing a substantial twentieth-century concerto with a newer work and an orchestral showpiece. Expect careful attention to rhythm and color in the Bartók, a work full of shifting meters and folk-inflected melody, and a transparent, detailed sound in the Debussy, whose Images calls for precise balance among many overlapping instrumental lines. His conducting is generally described as clear-headed and well-prepared rather than showy, letting the music's own structure carry the performance.