- BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BOSTON Seiji Ozawa, Music Director SYMPHONY Bernard Haitink, Principal Guest Conductor ORCHESTRA, { One Hundred and Twentieth Season, 2000-2001 A SEIJI OZAV/Ay/ ,!t ,fc Music f.\ SYMPHONY HALL CENTENNIAL SEASON LJLff to, Director j$\| ,-^^y -^ CHAMBER MUSIC TEA II Friday, November 17, at 2:30 COMMUNITY CONCERT II Sunday, November 19, at 3, at Fisk Methodist Church, Natick This concert is made available free to the public through the generosity of State Street Corporation. ALEXANDER VELLNZON, viohn — CATHERINE FRENCH, violin BURTON FINE, viola JONATHAN MILLER, ceUo BEETHOVEN Trio in C minor for violin, viola, and cello, Opus 9, No. 3 Allegro con spirito Adagio con espressione Scherzo: Allegro molto e vivace Finale: Presto Messrs. VELINZON, FINE, and MILLER COPLAND Two Pieces for String Quartet Rondino (1923) Lento molto (1928) Mr. VELINZON, Ms. FRENCH, Messrs. FINE and MILLER DVORAK String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat, Opus 105 Adagio ma non troppo—Allegro appassionato Molto vivace Lento e molto cantabile Allegro non tanto Ms. FRENCH, Mr. VELINZON, Messrs. FINE and MILLER Week 6 NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) String Trio in C minor, Opus 9, No. 3 Though Beethoven's real instrument was the piano, he was also a string player; as a teenager he made his living playing viola in the opera orchestra of his native Bonn. After moving to Vienna, Beethoven held off composing a symphony or a string quartet, genres in which Haydn, with whom he studied briefly, was preeminent. But he approached the string quartet by way of the string trio. About 1795-96, after com- posing his Opus 3 trio for violin, viola, and cello (modeled on Mozart), he began sketching his Opus 9 trios and the Serenade for string trio published as Opus 8. It was through these that he worked out the problems of chamber music writing. The last of the Opus 9 trios is in C minor, the key often associated with Beethoven's more dramatic and forceful musical gestures. There is already the same energy that we know from the middle-period works, and the same lyrical counterfoil to the dramatic quality of the whole. The first four notes present the earliest version of one of Beethoven's basic musical ideas, a figure that lies at the heart of several of the late string quartets. The elaborate decorations of the second movement embellish what is in essence a melody of the greatest simplicity. The scherzo races along with splendid energy, with the instruments scored in such a way as to range from delicate chamber effects to a nearly orchestral sonority. The finale has a rhetorical force in which we can see Beethoven the young Turk, with all the characteristic impatience of youth, but also with something that promises future conquests beyond this remarkable early accomplishment. Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Two Pieces for String Quartet Aaron Copland sailed to France in the summer of 1921 to study at a new summer school established by the French government in gratitude for American assistance in freeing France from German occupation in the Great War; lessons were to be given in the palace of Fontainebleau. Copland, who had outgrown his worthy but conservative teacher Rubin Goldmark, had thought this summer course of ten weeks would be a good way to acclimate himself to France. On board the ship to Europe he made the acquaintance of the painter Marcel Duchamp, who tried to persuade him that he would be wasting his time hanging around a bunch of other Americans at Fontainebleau, particularly since he really did not know much about what the program would entail. "You would do better to take your chances in Paris," asserted Duchamp. Years later, Copland admitted that Duchamp had been correct—"except that he didn't know of the presence at Fontainebleau of a teacher named Nadia Boulanger. But then, neither did I." In fact, Copland was among the very first to undergo the experience of instruction from that extraordinary musician and teacher, known simply as "Mademoiselle" to her students, who influenced several generations of American composers. During the years he studied with Boulanger, Copland came to admire his teacher's favorite composer, Gabriel Faure. Many years later he commented, "It is strange that the musical public outside of France has never been convinced of his special charms, the delicacy, reserve, imperturbable calm—qualities that are not easily exportable." Copland wrote an article about Faure, whom he described as "a neglected master," for the October 1924 issue of the Musical Quarterly. But before in every respect. Opus 105 is not only Dvorak's last string quartet, but also his last that he had made a specifically musical homage that was intended to be played for work of chamber music in any medium. For the rest of his life he concentrated on Faure himself, just two months before the French composer's death at seventy- symphonic poems and opera. eight. For this celebratory event, Copland made a string quartet arrangement of With all nine symphonies behind him and a series of tone poems ahead, Dvorak Prelude IX from Faure's piano preludes, Opus 103, and followed that by an origi- was still experimenting with the treatment of sonata form. The slow introduction nal Rondino in G minor for string quartet, composed in 1923, the theme of which to the first movement contains elements that anticipate the opening theme of the was derived from the letters of the composer's name, using both pitch-names and Allegro appassionato. There are two principal themes before the transition to the solmization syllables (do-re-mi, etc.): dominant E-flat brings in the secondary theme. The two principal themes form so G-A-B-(Re)-(sI)-E-(soL) F(#)-A-(G)-(Re)-E strikingly the basis of the development that Dvorak withholds them entirely from the recapitulation, moving directly to the secondary theme, now in the home key; For all its Francophile inspiration, the piece had little jazzy touches created from but the principal themes return evocatively as the basis of the coda. Copland's decision to parse the eight eighth-notes in the bar as 3+5, and there are The scherzo is widely regarded as one of Dvorak's very greatest, a brilliant occasional passages of polytonaHty. This pair of pieces—the Faure arrangement Czech dance of the type known as the furiant. The slow movement is cast in the and Copland's Rondino—was performed at Fontainebleau in September 1924. key of F major, a bright key in relation to the home A-flat; but its middle section is When the opportunity arose for an American performance, Copland decided to correspondingly dark when it sets off in A-flat minor. The return to the opening replace the Faure transcription that had served as the first movement with an material and the key of F is richly decorated. The spirited finale begins with a har- original piece. So, from February to April 1928, he composed the Lento molto, monic transition from the end of the third movement, arriving after eleven measures which became the first movement of Two Pieces for String Quartet, premiered in at the home key for a spirited jaunt in a dance rhythm that sounds like a rustic that form by the Lenox Quartet at an all-Copland concert in New York on May 6, polka, building a vigorous climax at the very end. 1928. (During the summer following the performance of the Two Pieces, Copland made an arrangement for string orchestra while staying at the MacDowell Colony; —Notes by Steven Ledbetter Serge Koussevitzky performed them with the Boston Symphony Orchestra that winter on December 14.) Though intended to go with the Rondino, the Lento molto Violinist Alexander Velinzon joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in January does not share its thematic tribute to Faure, though it does make use of the canonic 2000. Mr. Velinzon was presented in his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's treatment that characterized the earlier piece. Its texture is homophonic, harmo- Weill Recital Hall after winning the Artist International 1996 Young Artists Audi- nized by parallel chords. tions. Appearances as soloist with orchestra have included the Rondo Chamber Orchestra on its tour to Venezuela; the Absolute Ensemble, the Metamorphoses Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) Orchestra, and Chappaqua Symphony in New York; and the National Symphony of String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat, Opus 105 Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. He was heard at the New York City Cen- ter playing violin concertos of J.S. Bach for the Paul Taylor Dance Company and has On March 26, 1895, just three weeks before he was to depart from America for the performed Bruch's Violin Concerto with the Summit Symphony. A prizewinner in last time, Antonin Dvorak began to compose a string quartet in A-flat. He com- the Heida Hermann International Competition in the United States and in the pleted 100 measures before putting the piece aside and concentrating on his travel Tibor Varga International Competition in Switzerland, he has appeared in Italy, plans. Once he had arrived home, he found himself exhausted and unwilling to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Russia, as well as throughout the United compose. Other than the final revisions to his Cello Concerto, made as a memorial States. A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Mr. Velinzon began playing the violin at to his beloved sister-in-law, he wrote virtually nothing all summer and into the six and graduated from the Leningrad School for Gifted Children. After coming to autumn, when he began teaching in Prague.