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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

James Levine, Music Director Bernard Haitink, Conductor Emeritus Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Laureate 127th Season, 2007-2008

CHAMBER TEA

Friday, February 1, at 2:30

COMMUNITY CONCERT IV

Sunday, February 3, at 3, at St. James Church, Boston This free concert is generously supported by The Lowell Institute.

HAWTHORNE STRING QUARTET RONAN LEFKOWITZ, violin; 2nd viola in Mozart SI-JING HUANG, violin MARK LUDWIG, viola SATO KNUDSEN, cello JAY WADENPFUHL, horn

GESSENEY-RAPPO L'Aube derobee for string quartet

Allegretto

And ante-affettuoso Presto, playful Lento—agitato—molto lento

HEIDEN Quintet for Horn and String Quartet Molto moderato Vivace Andantino Allegro

KALABIS String Quartet No. 5, Op. 63, In Memory of Marc Chagall Molto Vivo Adagio. Con serieta Allegro molto. Gaiamente

MOZART Quintet in E-flat for horn, violin, two violas, and cello, K.407(386c) Allegro Andante Rondo

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v -. Notes on the Program

Swiss composer DOMINIQUE GESSENEY-RAPPO (b.1953) holds degrees in cello performance and music education, and has spent much of his career involved in choral music as a composer, director, and singer. He teaches at Lausanne Conser- vatory, and has written a number of works for chorus in various combinations, in- cluding a setting of Psalm 81 for mixed chorus and tambourine and Benedic anima mea for a cappella choir. Instrumental music has figured more prominently in his output in recent years, with a particular focus on brass ensembles. The Hawthorne Quartet met Gesseney-Rappo in 2003 through a mutual friend and collaborator, the Rhodesia-born Swiss painter Dessa. Gesseney-Rappo was al- ready familiar with the group's work through its CDs of music associated with the Terezin concentration camp and other recordings, and determined to write a piece for the ensemble. He wrote L'Aube derobee ("Naked Dawn") in 2005 on a commis- sion from the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation and the Hawthorne String Quartet, to whom he dedicated the piece. The present performance will be the first public reading of this music, although the ensemble will perform the "offi- cial" world premiere this coming April. The quartet is in four movements: a moderately paced opening movement, slow movement, scherzo-like Presto, and a finale that begins slowly, builds to a

quicker central section, and ends as it began. Contrapuntal melodic lines of twelve-tone contour dominate the sonority, aligning the quartet stylistically with the mid-century Central European music, by such composers as Pavel Haas and Ervfn Schulhoff, that has been somewhat of a specialty of the Hawthorne Quartet.

The material of the first movement is presented in the contrasting figures of the first page—a balanced contrapuntal texture at the start that cedes to a sextuplet figure ending in a trill for each of the instruments. Both of these kinds of music make their appearances in later movements, with the fast gesture /trill figure re- turning strikingly in the finale. Although each of the four movements is distinct in character, the pitch contours and motifs present already in the first movement are found throughout the piece, lending a strong sense of unity to the whole.

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H student of at the Berlin first BERNARD HEIDEN (1910-2000) was a Hindemith movement one virtually always finds the instruments in straight homophony, Hochschule fur Musik in the early 1930s and in 1935 emigrated permanently to the that is, playing the same rhythms at the same time. The piece begins high and in Detroit United States. He taught at the Arts Center Music School and became a quickly rises higher, with the cello silent for the first eighteen bars. The meter, a U.S. Army bandmaster during World War II before furthering his studies at Cornell, quick three-beat measure, is once briefly interrupted by a series of sharp, maybe where he earned a master's degree in musicology. His most important teaching post heartbeat-like chords—what could this mean? Balance among the four parts pre- was at Indiana University, where he joined the faculty in 1946 and ultimately be- vails in this movement. came chair of the composition department. He retired in 1981, and in 1985 the school One commentator has suggested a connection in the first movement to Chagall's re- established a scholarship in his name. His opera The Darkened City was produced at current icon—not present in "Over Vitebsk"—of a flying or floating figure playing the IU in 1963; his numerous orchestral works include symphonies, several concertos violin, but it's the second, slow movement in which this conceit seems especially apt, (among them works for tuba and for horn), vocal works, and chamber pieces of stan- with the first violin soaring high above a mostly figurative accompaniment. The start dard and non-standard configurations, such as the Horn Quartet and the Variations of the finale returns to interleaved pattern-figures, but the movement undergoes sev- for tuba and nine horns. His Sonata for alto saxophone and piano is an important eral shifts of tempo and mood, including references to the first movement. A change to repertoire piece. triple meter from the prevailing 2/2 brings back the music of the start of the piece in Heiden's music is essentially neoclassical, not derivative of Hindemith so much the closing minutes, but a more aggressive development and sudden increase in tempo as arising from the same sound-world. He wrote the Quintet for Horn and String push the music to a new height of intensity. in for composer Barrows, who played in the Quartet 1952 the hornist and John —Robert Kirzinger horn sections of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, New York City Opera, and of the famous York New York City Ballet. He was also a founder New Woodwind WOLFGANG AMADE MOZART (1756-1791) composed his Quintet in E-flat for Quintet. Horn and Strings in Vienna, probably toward the end of 1782, for the horn player Joseph Leutgeb (1732-1811), for whom he also wrote his horn concertos. Leutgeb had VIKTOR KALABIS (1923-2006) was one of the most significant Czech com- become a member of the Salzburg court orchestra by 1763 and in 1777 moved with posers whose generation was professionally active beginning in the years follow- his wife to Vienna, where, besides continuing his musical career, he ran a cheese ing the Soviet Union's dominant and oppressive influence in Czechoslovakian na- shop (perhaps inherited from his father-in-law). He and Mozart remained close tional politics. He studied at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Musical friends to the end of the composer's life, Leutgeb often serving as the butt of Arts and was for many years a producer at Czechoslovak Radio. He left that posi- tion following the 1968 "Prague Spring" and subsequent Soviet occupation in order to compose full time. Kalabis worked with many of the important Czech musicians of his generation, including the cellist Janos Starker and the violinist Josef Suk, and was commissioned by such orchestras as the Czech Philharmonic, the Dresden Philharmonic, and Camerata Zurich. He was made president of the Bohuslav Martinu Foundation in 1989 and later established the Bohuslav Martinu Institute. He was active in nearly all genres of concert music. Along with his seven string quartets, he wrote five symphonies, two piano concertos, two violin concertos, and concertos for trumpet, cello, and harpsichord. He wrote his harpsichord concerto Chamber Players and the first of his piano concertos for his wife, Zuzana Ruzickova, who is herself well-known as a performer of works from Bach to Martinu, and who was a teacher Mozart: Chamber Music of conductor-keyboardist Christopher Hogwood. Ruzickova is Hawthorne Quartet for Winds and Strings I founder Mark Ludwig's tie to Kalabis; during World War II she was interned in the concentration camp at Terezm, which has been the focus of the musical and histori- $16.99 tax cal research and outreach of the Terezm Chamber Music Foundation, of which plus Ludwig is director. More information on the composer can be found at the website NEW Boston Symphony Chamber of the Kalabis Foundation, www.kalabismusic.org. J Players CD on the BSO's own label, Kalabis's lovely String Quartet No. 5, Opus 63, In Memory of Marc Chagall, was BSO Classics, is available now. written in 1984, evidently inspired by Chagall's painting "Over Vitebsk." Chagall was, in fact, still alive when Kabalis wrote the quartet, but died in March 1985; the of BSO Chamber Players CD available exclusively: quartet was premiered a year later, on March 12, 1986, in Prague. "Over Vitebsk" is a Purchase your copy work found in two versions, a painting of 1914 and a somewhat more cubist version • at the Symphony Shop from 1920. Its central feature is one of Chagall's flying figures, a bearded man in • online at www.bso.org/chamberplayerscd heavy coat with a bundle on his shoulder and a cane. A strong characteristic of Kabalis's piece is its use of short figures of a measure • via SymphonyCharge at (888) 266-1200 or less, which accumulate horizontally into chains and vertically into strata. In the Orchestra, and a 1994 disc of string Mozart's jokes—as reflected, for example, in the composer's oft-quoted inscription Concerto for String Quartet and Chamber quartets Krasa that was awarded Belgium's Cecilia on the manuscript of his Horn Concerto No. 2, K.417: "Wolfgang Amade Mozart by Pavel Haas and Hans projects include performing and recording has taken pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox, and fool, at Vienna, 27 March 1783." But doubt- Grand Prix Special du Jury. Current the quartets, as well as the commissioning and less more to the point is a description of Leutgeb's playing in a 1770 concert in complete series of Kalabis string national release of a PBS documentary on Paris, where he impressed not only with his virtuosic technique in general, but performance of new chamber works, the educational programs spear- with his ability "to sing an adagio [on his instrument] as perfectly as the most mel- the history of artists incarcerated in Terezin, and String Quartet's low, interesting, and accurate voice." headed by the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation. The Hawthorne Though commentators have persisted in likening the Horn Quintet to a sort of concert tours in 2007 included chamber and solo appearances in both Europe and miniature concerto—presumably due to the melodic and motivic content so fa- the United States. Made up of members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the miliar from Mozart's horn concertos (a content determined not only by the horn's Hawthorne String Quartet includes Ronan Lefkowitz and Si-Jing Huang, violins; particular character, but also by the technical limitations of the valveless instru- Mark Ludwig, viola, and Sato Knudsen, cello. The quartet takes it name from the ment then in use)—this is unquestionably chamber music. Rather than use a stan- New England novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and in 1998 was appointed quartet- dard string quartet or (were this a concerto) a string orchestra, Mozart here cre- in-residence at Boston College. ates, by employing a second viola, a recognizably chamber-musical string texture that enables him quite specifically to enrich and complement the character and Born into a musical family, Jay Wadenpfuhl became a professional horn player at range of the horn. fifteen. Mr. Wadenpfuhl studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where The work moves from an opening Allegro to central slow movement to closing he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in music, majoring in horn and rondo; but despite this "standard" three-movement form, the work nevertheless minoring in composition. Before joining the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1981, displays Mozart's typically inventive manner of making every moment "speak" he was a member of the U.S. Army Band in Washington, D.C., the Florida Philhar- (whether in slow- or quick-moving passages) in a way that fully exploits the partic- monic, the Fort Worth Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra. He ular timbre, range, and character of the spotlighted horn. Following the instantly currently teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music and at the Tangle- engaging Allegro with its wealth of thematic ingenuity, the middle movement, a wood Music Center, where he also conducts. As a member of the NFB Horn Quartet, gentle if not always unclouded Andante in B-flat, exploits the warm, richly roman- Mr. Wadenpfuhl recorded an album in memory of John Barrows, released in 1989 tic timbre of the instrument in tones that can turn plaintive and melancholy. To and including Mr. Wadenpfuhl's Tectonica for eight horns and percussion. The NFB wind things up, the energetically good-natured finale includes the sort of contrast- Quartet's second album, recorded with internationally known horn player Barry ing minor-mode episode one expects in a rondo of this sort, as well as a not-so- Tuckwell, included the world premiere recording of Gunther Schuller's Five expected turn to fugal texture near the very end. Pieces for Five Horns with the composer conducting, as well as Wadenpfuhl's —Marc Mandel Textures for horn quartet. With John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra, he premiered the Huntington Horn Concerto, a piece written for him by William Since its inception in 1986, the Hawthorne String Quartet has performed exten- Thomas McKinley. Mr. Wadenpfuhl has made solo tours in the United States and sively throughout Europe, South America, Japan, and the United States, including South America, and has for many years given master classes, for students and such major festivals as Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Aspen. The quartet has a broad faculty, for the National Youth Festival Orchestra in Caracas, Venezuela. He also repertoire ranging from the classics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to continues to be an active composer of contemporary music and jazz. contemporary works. The group has distinguished itself internationally for championing the works of composers persecuted during the Nazi regime, with an emphasis on the Czech composers incarcerated in the Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezin). The ensemble has collaborated with such artists as Christopher Hogwood, Ned Rorem, Andre Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Lynn Harrell, Martha Argerich, and the Philobolus Dance Company It has made solo appearances with the Boston Symphony (giving the American premiere led by Seiji Ozawa of Ervm Schulhoff's Concerto for String Quartet and Chamber Orchestra), National Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra, and Deutsche Kammerphil- harmonie (with which it gave the German premiere of the same Schulhoff work). Produced by the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation, the quartet's recordings "Chamber Music from Theresienstadt" (winner of the 1991 Preis der Schallplatten- kritik) and "Silenced Voices" feature music of composers persecuted during World War II. The quartet has also recorded chamber music by Arthur Foote, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Thomas Oboe Lee. It can be heard on several motion picture and documentary soundtracks, and has performed on radio and television programs worldwide. For London /Decca's "Entartete Musik" series it recorded Schulhoff's