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— — 19 8 4 Tanglewnnd Thursday, 12 July at 8:30 CHRISTOPH ESCHENBACH and JUSTUS FRANTZ, duo-pianists MOZART Sonata in D for two pianos, K.448(375a) Allegro con spirito Andante Allegro molto RAVEL Ma Mere Yoye (Mother Goose) Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty Tom Thumb Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas Conversations of Beauty and the Beast The Fairy Garden INTERMISSION STRAVINSKY Capriccio Presto Andante rapsodico Allegro capriccioso, ma tempo giusto STRAVINSKY Circus Polka Mssrs. Eschenbach and Frantz play Steinway pianos. 1 Week HI UNIVERSITY GREEN Live in a Place as Special As Harvard Square Itself. University Green, a new residential decorating interiors await the early community, beckons you to share the purchaser, who may choose a vitality of Harvard Square. Echoing fireplace from among the special the classic design of Harvard College, options. Prices range from $150,000 University Green is a handsome to $575,000. blend of traditional materials and contemporary finishes. A 19th Available units are limited so please century village with gardens forms an contact marketing director Nancy imaginative entryway to these 54 Chadbourne at 492-6003 to arrange extraordinary homes. to visit our decorated model. Spacious homes, ranging from 688 to 2500 sq. ft., feature large private University Green. Sharing the magic outdoor terraces. Many choices for of Harvard Square. A development of Hines Industrial Marketed by On-Site Dynamics wm m^HH Notes After Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, he made his living in part by giving piano lessons; one of his pupils, Josepha von Auernhammer, was, according to the composer, seriously in love with him, even to the point of spreading the word, it seems, that they were to be married. Mozart's own description of the girl, in a letter to his father recounting this situation, is nothing short of brutal: If a painter wanted to portray the devil to the life, he would have to choose her face. She is as fat as a farm-wench, perspires so that you feel inclined to vomit, and goes about so scantily clad that really you can read as plain as print: "Pray, do look here." True, there is enough to see, in fact, quite enough to strike one blind; but—one is thoroughly well punished for the rest of the day if one is unlucky enough to let one's eyes wander in that direction— tartar is the only remedy! So loathsome, dirty and horrible! Faugh, the devil! Nonetheless she was a talented pianist of more than mediocre attainments; Mozart dedicated a set of six violin and piano sonatas (published as Opus II) to her, played his two-piano concerto in E-flat, K.365, with her, and wrote the two- piano sonata in D, K.448(375a) specifically to play with her. The sonata, com- posed in November 1781, is one of Mozart's liveliest and most brilliant creations, artfully playing off the two piano parts in dialogue with one another, like a comic opera composed for two keyboards. As an adult Ravel could and did penetrate the world of childhood as few com- posers before or since. It may be that his empathy came through a shared passion for toys—especially the mechanical kind—or simply because Ravel, who was always painfully sensitive about his small stature, felt more comfortable with persons still smaller than himself. His sensitivity to the child's point of view is especially apparent in his masterly and charming opera L'Enfant et les sortileges, which deals with the experience of a naughty child whose long-mistreated toys come to life to teach him a lesson. It is also revealed in his response to a series of illustrations of French fairy tales, which he used as the basis of a suite of simple four-hands piano pieces called Ma Mere Voye (Mother Goose) designed as a gift for Mimi and Jean Godebski, the children of his friends Ida and Cipa Godebski. The children were fairly accomplished pianists, but the work Ravel wrote for the two of them to play together risks slighrness of substance in its simplicity of technique. Nonetheless it is charming and clearly characterized throughout. Most of the fairy tales drawn upon as subjects for the suite are by Perrault, the French master of the genre. The Pavane de la belle au bois dormant (Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty) is a graceful dance, exceedingly brief and almost totally diatonic (this is surprising, considering Ravel's reputation for chromaticism). Petit Poucet (Tom Thumb) is a bit of a narrative of little Tom Thumb lost in the forest and casting out breadcrumbs to leave a trail for himself, only to find that the birds have eaten them all up. This movement is filled with ingenious invention, as in the melody representing poor Tom, which proceeds from 2/4 to 3/4 to 4/4 to 5/4 in meter as he gets progressively more bewildered and lost. Laideronnette , imperatrice des pagodes (Laideronnette , Empress of the Pagodas), after a tale by Mme. d'Aulnoy, indulges in a bit of orientalism (the upper part being written entirely for the black keys of the piano, producing automatically a pentatonic melody), with repetitive figures lending a genuinely Eastern air. Les Entretiens de la belle et de la bete (Conversations Week III DESIGNER SHOES. NON- DESIGNER PRICES. MAXINE FEME FOOTWEAR 110 Wolf Road, Albany Telephone (518) 438-4490 OPEN: Mon.-Fri. 10-9 • Sat. 'til 6 • Sun. noon-5 The Mews 413-298-4436 Stockbridge Open Seven Days RIVERBROOK A private residential facility designed to meet the needs of moderately mentally handicapped girls. The gracious estate houses twenty-five students in a warm family atmosphere. Antique and Period jewelry ^leo^Uel^e, <JlaAtevc/utAe4tb 04262 For Lasting Pleasure. (443) 298-4926 DALE CHIHULY July 1 31 ho sten W ga leries PALM BEACH. FLA STOCKBRIDGE. MASS ELM STREET STOCKBRIDGE, MASS 01262 (413) 298-3044 of Beauty and the Beast) has generally been regarded as the favorite movement of the suite, if only because of the unchanging popularity of the fairy tale that in- spired it. Beauty has a graceful waltz, to which the Beast contributes some inevi- table growling. Le Jardin feeriaue (The Fairy Garden) concludes the suite with the same kind of quiet and utter simplicity as characterized the opening. Of all the composers in the Russian tradition, Stravinsky felt closest to Tchaikovsky. This feeling was only confirmed when, in 1928, he composed his ballet The Fairy's Kiss, based on the music of Tchaikovsky. After completing that task, which he found to be a sympathetic and delightful one, Stravinsky wished to write some of his own music with the melodic quality and charm of Tchaikovsky's. He also felt the need of a new piano concerto, since he had already performed his Piano Concerto of 1924 many times in Europe and America. The result was the Capriccio for piano and orchestra, composed between December 1928 and September 1929. In addition to the full score of the work, Stravinsky also published his own reduction for two pianos, which had actually been the original form of the piece preceding the stage of orchestration. The Capriccio is a charming bow to the convention of the Baroque concerto grosso, in which the ' body of strings contains its own solo ensemble within itself, adding another measure of variety to the color of the score. He composed what became the last movement, the Allegro capriccioso, first. It became the germ of the entire com- position and eventually dictated the title of the whole. Throughout the work the piano has a less percussive part than had been the case in the earlier concerto. Though no one would ever confuse Stravinsky's music with Tchaikovsky's, the influence of the earlier master as Muse makes itself everywhere felt. Surely the most unusual commission that choreographer George Balanchine ever received was to direct a dance for the elephants of the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1942. Balanchine was told that he could have any music he chose for this act. He evidently called Stravinsky on the telephone and asked him to com- pose music for a dance. "What kind of music?" asked the composer. "A polka." "For whom." "Elephants." "How old?" "Young." "If they are very young, I'll do it." And so Stravinsky's delightful jeu d'esprit came to be written for its most un- likely audience. The Circus Polka maintains a strict 2/4 meter throughout (some- thing that is otherwise rare in Stravinsky, but perhaps he thought the elephants would have trouble counting!), and he quotes a familiar phrase from Schubert's Marche militaire as a contrasting theme. The premiere took place in Madison Square Garden in the spring of 1942 and highlighted Modoc, the "premiere bal- lerina" of the pachyderms. The act was given some 425 times! Though it was originally performed by the Barnum & Bailey circus band, Stravinsky composed the score (as he did all his music) at the piano and published his own piano reduc- tion of the music. —Steven Ledbetter Week III i v ' — G&2i -Ttr v Bra MB .•--, \< w%jHBrjgj v*V Vi * H9B92 SSBSKbP fealHitu ^t±l*&r 4kar~ * *"-*^" Weekend Prelude Friday, 13 July at 7 GILBERT KALISH, piano HAYDN Sonata in E-flat, Hob. XVI:49 Allegro Adagio e cantabile Finale: Tempo di Minuet SCHUBERT Drei Klavierstucke, D.946 Allegro assai Allegretto Allegro Baldwin piano Week III Notes The span of Haydn's music for keyboard, from the earliest tiny pieces roughly in the style of the Baroque suite to the last piano sonatas, traces a stylistic develop- ment that is nothing short of dramatic.

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