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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Seiji Ozawa, Music Director
Grant Llewellyn arcrf Robert Spano, Assistant Conductors One Hundred and Eleventh Season, 1991-92
SUPPER CONCERT IX
Thursday, April 23, at 6 Tuesday, April 28, at 6
SHEILA FIEKOWSKY, violin OWEN YOUNG, cello THOMAS MARTIN, clarinet JEROME ROSEN, piano
HAYDN Trio in D minor for piano, violin, and cello, Hob. XV:23 Andante molto Adagio ma non troppo Finale: Vivace
Mr. ROSEN, Ms. FIEKOWSKY, and Mr. YOUNG
BRAHMS Trio inJET minor for clarinet, cello, and piano, Opus 114 Allegro Adagio Andante grazioso Allegro
Messrs. MARTIN, YOUNG, and ROSEN
Baldwin piano Please exit to your left for supper following the concert. The performers appreciate your not smoking during the concert.
Week 24 Joseph Haydn Trio in D minor for piano, violin, and cello, Hob. XV:23
Haydn's visits to London produced not only the great dozen symphonies that capped his output in that medium, but also a large number of works for piano trio, a form of music-making that had once been the casual province of amateurs making do at home (many early "trios" consisted essentially of a piano part with optional violin and cello lines which could be performed if players were at hand, but lost nothing in the omission). But Haydn had created the modern piano trio, in which all three participants function in important ways; he composed ten such works in 1794 and 1795 alone! Most of these were published in groups of three. The D minor trio is the third in a group of works registered for copyright at Stationer's Hall, London, in May 1795. He dedicated the set to the Princess Marie
Hermenegild Esterhazy, wife of Nicolaus II, for whose name day he was also to compose his last six masses (one each year between 1796 and 1802). Though ostensibly in the key of D minor, the trio actually dispenses with the minor mode rather early, and most of it is clearly in the major. This is a far cry from the emphatic minor-key works of the 1770s, the period often referred to as "Sturm und Drang." Haydn writes a double variation form for his first movement, alternating materials in D minor and D major. The movement ends with a version of the second idea, clearly in the major. The slow movement is in B-flat, a common choice of key for a work in D minor, but here there is a delicate ambiguity with the sound of D major from the end of the first movement ringing in our ears. The slow movement involves elements of eccentricity, veering toward extravagance in rhythmic shifts, ornamentation, and chromatic lines. The finale, firmly in D major, is a bustling movement in spare two-part counterpoint, one of Haydn's characteristically energetic modes of expression, allowing the pianist a touch of bravura and all three players the vigor of his sense of wit and dramatic timing.
Johannes Brahms Trio in A minor for clarinet, cello, and piano, Opus 114
Brahms hinted to his publisher, when sending him the string quintet in G, Opus 111, that no further works were to be expected from his pen. He did not actually go so far as to say that he was written out, but the implication was clear nonetheless. That he continued to compose is largely due to the artistry of a single clarinetist, Richard Muhlfeld, whom Brahms had heard play during March of 1891, while visiting the ducal court of Meiningen. As if to repay Muhlfeld for his unexpected role as muse, Brahms wrote no fewer than four major works featuring the clarinet, permanent and welcome expansions of the repertory for that instrument. The first of these was the present trio, followed in close succession by the Opus 115 quintet for clarinet and strings and soon after by the two clarinet- and-piano sonatas of Opus 120. Brahms wrote the trio during the summer of 1891, but he was not ready to release it to the world before hearing the reaction of his friend Eusebius Mandyczewski. He sent the score off to Mandyczewski in July, and when the reply came back marveling at the blending of the clarinet and cello ("It is as though the instruments were in love with each other"), Brahms confessed publicly that he was, in fact, composing again and that the trio was "twin to a far greater folly." He was referring to the Clarinet Quintet, which was also completed the same summer. Miihlfeld naturally played both works at their first performance, which took place at a Berlin concert in December.
It is a curious coincidence that the Opus 114 trio is in the same key as the Double Concerto for violin and cello, Opus 102, a fairly recent work that also pitted the
cello against a higher instrument. The trio, though, is far more elegiac than the impetuous concerto, and the heavy emphasis on the minor mode almost throughout the first movement underlines the autumnal quality of the score. The
second movement is a fantasy of richly elaborated lines, whether in delicate dialogue or impassioned octaves. From the very first notes its bright D major lends a welcome warmth. The third movement has, in place of a scherzo, a graceful and delicate A major waltz akin to some of the more pensive sections of the Liebeslieder sets. The finale returns to the minor mode to end the trio in a typically Brahmsian alternation of 2/4 and 6/8 meters with energy and drive.
-Notes by Steven Ledbetter
A violinist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1977, Sheila Fiekowsky also maintains an active career as a soloist and chamber musician. Recent solo engagements have included appearances with the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Newton Symphony, the Mystic Valley Orchestra, and the North Shore Philharmonic. Born in Detroit, Ms. Fiekowsky began studying the violin when she was nine. At sixteen she appeared as soloist with the Detroit Symphony and won the National Federation of Music Clubs Biennial Award. Ms. Fiekowsky attended the Curtis Institute of Music and holds a master's degree in music from Yale University; she has studied violin with Emily Mutter Austin, Ivan Galamian, Jaime Laredo, and Joseph Silverstein. Ms. Fiekowsky's chamber music experience includes performances at the Marlboro Music Festival, the Norfolk Festival, and the Aspen Festival. In 1981, as a member of the Cambridge Quartet, she was invited to teach and perform at a music festival in Fairbanks, Alaska. She has been heard in both chamber music and solo performances throughout the Boston area, including Symphony Hall, the Gardner Museum, the Harvard Musical Association, Northeastern University, and the Berkshire Museum.
Cellist Owen Young graduated cum laude from Yale University with bachelor's and master's degrees in music. A student of Aldo Parisot, he served as principal cellist with the Yale Symphony Orchestra and was a soloist on that orchestra's 1985 European tour. For the 1986-87 season he was third-chair cellist with the New Haven Symphony. A Tanglewood Music Center Fellow in 1986 and 1987, and a participant also in the Banff and Aspen summer music festivals, Mr. Young is a frequent performer of chamber music and recitals in the United States and abroad. He has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Yale Symphony, and the Eastern Connecticut Symphony. Mr. Young played as an Orchestra Fellow with the Atlanta Symphony in 1988 and with the Boston Symphony for the 1988-89 season. From 1989 to 1991 he was a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony; from 1990 to 1991 he was a member of the music faculty of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Mr. Young joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in August 1991. He is currently Resident Tutor of Music and Director of Concerts in Dunster House at Harvard University. Thomas Martin became the Boston Symphony Orchestra's assistant principal clarinet and E-flat clarinet in the fall of 1990, having joined the orchestra in the fall of 1984 as second clarinet. He is also principal clarinet of the Boston Pops Orchestra. Before joining the Boston Symphony he was principal clarinet of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Mr. Martin graduated from the Eastman School of Music, where he was a student of Stanley Hasty and former BSO clarinetist Peter Hadcock. He also participated in master classes with Guy Deplus of the Paris Conservatory. Mr. Martin performs frequently as a recitalist and chamber musician and has been heard on "Morning Pro Musica" on WGBH radio. He has also appeared on the Supper Concerts series at Symphony Hall, on the Friday Preludes at Tanglewood, at the Longy School of Music, and at the Gardner Museum.
BSO violinist Jerome Rosen is a musician, poet, and mathematician. Introduced to music at an early age, he began violin lessons at five with his father and took piano lessons when he was six. After studying mathematics and physics at Western Reserve in Cleveland, he studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and at the Cleveland Institute of Music. His teachers included Ivan Galamian, Josef Gingold, and Rafael Druian. A native of Detroit, Mr. Rosen has been associate concert- master of the Detroit Symphony and conductor and music director of the Oak Park Symphony in Michigan. He was with the Cleveland Orchestra for seven seasons as a violinist, keyboard player, and conductor and was a member of the Casals Festival Orchestra for eight seasons. Since joining the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1972, Mr. Rosen has performed both piano and violin solos with the BSO and Boston Pops Orchestra and has written some of their arrangements. Mr. Rosen teaches chamber music at the Tanglewood Music Center.
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