THE PHIIHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY 1842 OF NEW YORK CONSOLIDATED 1928 1952 ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH SEASON 1953 Musical Director: DIMITRI MITROPOULOS Guest Conductors: BRUNO WALTER, GEORGE SZELL, GUIDO CANTELLI Associate Conductor: FRANCO AUTORI For Young People’s Concerts: IGOR BUKETOFF CARNEGIE HALL 5176th Concert SUNDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 19, 1953, at 2:30 Under the Direction of DIMITRI MITROPOULOS Assisting Artist: ARTUR RUBINSTEIN, Pianist FRANCK-PIERNE Prelude, Chorale and Fugue SCRIABIN The Poem of Ecstasy, Opus 54 Intermission SAINT-SAËNS Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, No. 2, G minor, Opus 22 I. Andante sostenuto II. Allegretto scherzando III. Presto Artur Rubinstein FRANCK Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra Artur Rubinstein (Mr. Rubinstein plays the Steinway Piano) ARTHUR JUDSON, BRUNO ZIRATO, Managers THE STEINWAY is the Official Piano of The Philharmonic-Symphony Society COLUMBIA AND VICTOR RECORDS THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK BOARD OF DIRECTORS •Floyd G. Blair........ ........President •Mrs. Lytle Hull... Vice-President •Mrs. John T. Pratt Vice-President ♦Ralph F. Colin Vice-President •Paul G. Pennoyer Vice-President ♦David M. Keiser Treasurer •William Rosenwald Assistant Treasurer •Parker McCollester Secretary •Arthur Judson Executive Secretary Arthur A. Ballantine Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Mrs. William C. Breed Mrs. Arthur Lehman Chester Burden Mrs. Henry R. Luce •Mrs. Elbridge Gerry Chadwick David H. McAlpin Henry E. Coe Richard E. Myers Pierpont V. Davis William S. Paley Maitland A. Edey •Francis T. P. Plimpton Nevil Ford Mrs. David Rockefeller Mr. J. Peter Grace, Jr. Mrs. George H. Shaw G. Lauder Greenway Spyros P. Skouras •Mrs. Charles S. Guggenheimer •Mrs. Frederick T. Steinway •William R. Herod Robert H. Thayer Mrs. Robert L. Hoguet, Jr. John A. Warner Medley G. B. Whelpley • Members of Executive Committee TRUSTEES Floyd G. Blair David M. Keiser Ralph F. Colin David H. McAlpin Paul G. Pennoyer THE AUXILIARY BOARD OF THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Mrs. Lytle Hull............................................................................................................Chairman Mrs. Charles S. Guggenheimer ............................................................. First Vice-Chairman Mrs. Elbridge G. Chadwick ................................................................Second Vice-Chairman Mrs. Frederick T. Steinway .......................................................................................Secretary Mrs. George H. Shaw .................................................................................................. Treasurer Mrs. Edward R. Wardwell .Chairman, Young People's Concerts Committee Mrs. Bartlett Arkell . Chairman, Committee for Public Schools and Colleges Mrs. William C. Breed ....................Chairman, Subscription Committee Mrs. John T. Pratt ......................Chairman, Membership Committee of The Philharmonic-Symphony Society Miss Frances Flack ..............................Chairman, Junior Committee Mrs. Barrett Andrews Mrs. Edgar M. Leventritt Mrs. J. Myer Schine Mrs. Walter S. Fischer Mrs. William Maguire Mrs. Hokan B. Steffanson Mrs. Elizabeth N. Graham Mrs. Ira Nelson Morris Miss Jean Tennyson Mrs. Robert L. Hoguet, Jr. Mrs. Joseph Neff Mrs. Edwin C. Vogel Mrs. Walter Cowen Korn Mrs. I. Masters Rogers Mrs. George K. Weeks Mrs. Peter I. B. Lavan Mrs. William Rosenwald Mrs. Sumner Welles Mrs. Arthur Lehman Mrs. Melvin E. Sawin PENSION FUND — It is requested that subscribers who are unable to use their tickets kindly return them to the Philharmonic-Symphony Offices, (Monday through Friday) 113 West 57th Street, or to the Box Office, Carnegie Hall, for resale for the benefit of the Society’s Pension Fund. All tickets received will be acknowledged. Such donations of tickets constitute income tax deductions, as provided by law. PHILHARMONIC FORECASTS—Lectures on current Philharmonic programs are given by Marion Rous in Carnegie Recital Hall Lounge on Fridays at 11:00 A.M. For Thursdays, inquire WAtkins 9-2170 or write to 58 Charles Street, New York 14, New York. NOTES ON THIS PROGRAM may not be reprinted in their entirety without the written consent of the Society. Excerpts from the notes may be quoted if due acknowledgment is given to the author and to the Society. NOTES ON THE PROGRAM By Herbert F. Peyser Prelude, Chorale and Fugue CÉSAR Franck (Born in Liège, December 10, 1822; died in Paris, November 8, 1890) (Arranged for orchestra by Gabriel Pierné) The first New York hearing of Pierné’s orchestral version of Franck’s piano composition took place at a concert of the Symphony Society under Walter Damrosch in Aeolian Hall, January 16, 1914. Gabriel Pierné was not only a pupil of César Franck but his master’s successor as organist of St. Clothilde, in Paris; and the conductor of the Colonne Orchestra upon the death of its director. A prolific composer his works included nine operas, nine ballets, a number of choral works (including The Children’s Crusade') and at least four orchestral suites in addition to pieces smaller in scale. Franck composed the Prelude, Chorale and Tugue for piano solo in 1884. Its first performance was on a program of the Société Nationale, Janu­ ary 24, 1885, when the pianist was a Mme. Poitevin, to whom the piece is dedicated. Franck’s original intention was simply to write a prelude and fugue in the style of Bach, which might form a sort of becoming counter­ part to one of the forty-eight in the Well-Tempered Clavier. According to Vincent d’Indy in his study of Franck, the master "soon took up the idea of linking these two movements together by a chorale, the melodic spirit of which should brood over the whole work. Thus it came about that he pro­ duced a work which was purely personal, but of which none of the con­ structive details was left to chance or improvisation; on the contrary, the materials all serve, without exception, to contribute to the beauty and the figure and rhythm of the complementary phrase of the Prelude return solidity of the structure. "The Prelude is modelled in the same form as the prelude of the classi­ cal suite. Its sole theme is first stated in the tonic, then in the dominant, and ends in the spirit of Beethoven with a phrase which gives to the theme a still more complete significance. The Chorale, in three parts, oscillating be­ tween E flat minor and C minor, displays two distinct elements: a superb and expressive phrase which foreshadows and prepares the way for the sub­ ject of the Fugue, and the Chorale proper, of which the three prophetic words roll forth in sonorous volutions, in a serene, religious majesty. The Fugue presents its successive expositions, after the development of which once more. The rhythm alone persists, and is used to accompany a strenu­ ous restatement of the theme of the Chorale. Shortly afterwards the subject of the Fugue itself enters in the tonic, so that the three chief elements of the work are combined in a superb peroration.” Saint-Saëns criticized the Fugue when he first heard it, remarking that "it soon ceased being a fugue.” What he meant, remarks Norman Demuth in the César Franck, "was that the writing is not consistently contrapuntal. On the second page for example, the subject appears underneath ’chop-stick’ chords and later there is some arpeggio writing which in academic groves is not considered good fugal technique. The purist likes to regard it as a 'Prelude, Chorale, and Fugato’ because the fugue does not conform to the basic textbook idea of what such a thing should be. Apart from the semi- tonal left-hand octaves in the Prelude, it is singularly free from Franck’s chromaticism. The one element it avoids is the cantabile melody. The themes do not sing as much as they progress, for their basis is mainly chordal.” The Poem of Ecstasy, Opus 54 Alexander Nicolaevich Scriabin (Born in Moscow, January 6, 1872; died there, April 27, 1915) Scriabin completed The Poem of Ecstasy at the house of his father in Lausanne, January, 1908. Directly on the heels of this work he wrote in the space of four days his Fifth Piano Sonata. These two compositions, according to A. Eaglefield Hull, are "closely related in conception and in style.” They represent, according to that writer, "perhaps even better than any other the boundary line between his older style and his new.” The Poem of Ecstasy was first performed by the Russian Symphony, New York, December 10, 1908, Modest Altschuler conducting. Belaieff had pub­ lished the score the same year. About that time Leon Conus arranged it as a piano duet. On the occasion of the first performance in Moscow the critic of the Russkoye Slovo, who had attacked Scriabin’s mystic titles of certain of his compositions comparing them to “beer-bottle labels” charged the com­ poser with deliberately "ignoring all that nationally Russian undying art created by Glinka, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakoff” besides describing Scria­ bin’s music as "the outcome of all that was worst in Wagner and Strauss.” To this reviewer’s mind Scriabin was "a Germanophile in the worst sense of the term and a wilful scorner of Russian culture.” The prize Belaieff granted the composer for the score amounted to 700 roubles. The other winners of awards from the publisher were Rachmaninoff, Spendiaroff and Taneieff. When The Poem of Ecstasy was performed by the Boston Symphony in Boston, November 9, 1928, Philip Hale wrote in the program book that Mr. Altschuler had in 1910 supplied him with the following information about the work: "While I was in Switzerland during the summer of 1907 at Scriabin’s villa, he was all taken up with the work, and I watched its progress with keen interest. The composer of the Poeme de I’Extase has sought to express therein something of the emotional (and therefore musically communicable) side of his philosophy of life. Scriabin is neither a pantheist nor a theoso- phist, yet his creed includes ideas somewhat related to each of these schools of thought. There are three divisions in his Poem: 1. His soul in the orgy of love; 2. The realization of a fantastical dream; 3.