BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS Sunday, 6 April 1986 at 3:00 p.m. at Jordan Hall BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS Malcolm Lowe, violin Harold Wright, clarinet Burton Fine, viola Sherman Walt, bassoon Jules Eskin, cello Charles Kavalovski, horn Edwin Barker, double bass Charles Schlueter, trumpet Doriot Anthony Dwyer, flute Ronald Barron, trombone Ralph Gombcrg, oboe Everett Firth, percussion with assisting artists Gilbert Kalish, piano Pascal Verrot, conductor MENDELSSOHN Concertsttick No. 2 in F, Opus 114, for clarinet, bassoon, and piano Mssrs. WRIGHT, WALT, and KALISH COPLAND Quartet for Piano and Strings Adagio serio Allegro giusto Non troppo lento Mssrs. KALISH, LOWE, FINE, and ESKIN INTERMISSION BOULEZ Derive, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano Ms. DWYER; Mssrs. WRIGHT, LOWE, ESKIN, FIRTH, and KALISH PASCAL VERROT, conductor SCHUBERT Quintet in A for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, D.667, Trout Allegro vivace Andante Scherzo: Presto Theme and Variations: Andantino—Allegretto Finale: Allegro giusto Mssrs. KALISH, LOWE, FINE, ESKIN, and BARKER records Baldwin piano RCA, New World, DG, and Nonesuch Felix Mendelssohn Concertstiick No. 2 in F, Opus 114, for clarinet, bassoon, and piano Mendelssohn wrote this little piece (and a second one listed as Opus 113) in early 1833, when he was a few weeks short of his twenty-fourth birthday. The title Concertst'uck was borrowed from Carl Maria von Weber, whose F minor Concertst'uck for piano and orchestra was one of the most popular works of the day. The title in German is ambiguous, in that "Concert'" (or, in the standard modern German spelling, "Konzert") could mean either "concert" or "concerto" — hence, a "Concertst'uck" could be simply a "concert piece" or a "concerto piece," the latter awkward term implying that it was perhaps too freewheeling to be a full-fledged concerto, though it resembled one in certain respects. Perhaps the most accurate translation of the title —though too infor- mal for a program listing! — is "something like a concerto." In any case, Mendelssohn composed his Concertst'uck for clarinet and basset horn with orchestral accompaniment; later he published it, but only with piano accompaniment. And the basset horn, a low- pitched member of the clarinet family now regarded as obsolete, has been replaced in recent editions of the work by a bassoon. The Concertst'uck has distinguished siblings in Mendelssohn's output: he hadjust finished the Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) Overture in London the preceding summer, and he was hard at work completing the Italian Symphony even as he turned out this little display piece for two wind instruments and accompaniment. Like Weber's Concertst'uck before it, Mendelssohn's suggests the normal three-movement layout of a concerto (fast-slow-fast), but in abbreviated form, with sections that follow one another directly: the opening Presto, a contrasting Andante, and an Allegretto grazioso that culminates in the brilliant coda marked "Presto e confuoco." Aaron Copland Quartet for piano and strings The Quartet for Piano and Strings, dedicated to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, was begun during Copland's residency at Tanglewood in 1950 and completed on 20 October that year in Sneden's Landing, New York. Of this piece, the composer has written: A barn in Richmond, Massachusetts, with a beautiful view of open meadow and distant mountains housed me during the summer of 1950, and it was there that I first consciously tried my hand, in my piano quartet, at twelve-tone composition. I found this approach to be liberating in two respects: it forces the tonal composer to have less conventional thoughts in respect to chord structure and it tends to have a refreshing influence so far as melody and figuration are concerned. The first three notes of the row (B-flat, A-flat, G-flat) could easily be part of a major scale, and what follows suggests at first a whole-tone scale. The fact that the com- poser's twelve-tone row is so nearly diatonic lends to the work a songfulness not always found in twelve-tone music. Copland uses this material with considerable freedom and imagination, not at all concerned to follow the "rules" of twelve-tone writing, though still deriving the principal ideas from manipulations of the basic row—and remaining recognizably himself at all times. Pierre Boulez Derive, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano In recent years, Pierre Boulez has concentrated his activity as a composer largely on the combination of live instruments with computers and tape recorders in a complex technological web. Derive, however, was composed solely for normal acoustical instru- ments without electronic intervention or computer-generated electronics. The score luars the date 8 June 1984 and a dedication to William Glock, who was, from 1959 to 1973, in charge of music at the BBC. His role there proved to be of signal importance to English musical life through his imaginative program planning, "particularly in his ability to bring together old and new music to their mutual illumination" (to quote Peter Hey worth's article on Glock in The New Grove). It was William Glock who, in 1971, named Pierre Boulez as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, an appointment that has had many ramifications in the concert, broadcast, and recording worlds through the live and taped performances of that ensemble under Boulez's direction m a wide range of twentieth-century pieces. Derive is thus a tribute to a man who was at one time the composer's employer, but far more importantly, an activist visionary in music administration. Derive was premiered by members of the London Sinfonietta under the direction of Oliver Knussen at St. John's Church, London. It is an intensely concentrated score, presenting, in its time-span of roughly seven minutes, a single large expressive arch, of which the middle section derives from elements introduced in the opening section (hence, in part, the title Derive). The title of the work also suggests the French words "la rive" ("the river"), conjuring up a whole French tradition—including Debussy and Messiaen -of music evoking bodies of water. Aqueous imagery may be intended here, too, torthe instruments mostly utter delicate arabesques or extended trills over long- held tones, in a kind or shimmering reflection. The fluid and uncertain meter becomes elear tor a tune in the center section (in the piano), but it eventually disappears again. For the most part, Boulez pairs his instruments by family—the two woodwinds (flute and clarinet), the two strings (violin and cello), and the two percussion instruments (vibraphone and piano), but as the liquid shapes appear and disappear, the pairings become less systematic, and the various elements commingle in a richly colorful flux ot sound. Franz Schubert Quintet in A tor piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, D.667, Trout 1 )urmu the summer or 1819, Schubert took a vacation trip with his friend Johann Michael Vogl to Linz and Steyr in Upper Austria. Schubert was delighted to discover that his host in Stevr had eight daughters, "almost all pretty," as he wrote his brother. "You can see that there is plenty to do." In addition to being decorative, the girls were also musical, and many evenings were spent performing Schubert's songs and piano pieces. ( )ne particularly favored song, Die Forelle ("The Trout"), composed two years earlier, was so popular at these parlor concerts that when a local amateur cellist of some means, Sylvester Paumgartner, commissioned a quintet from Schubert for the same performing ensemble as Hummel's Opus 87 —piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass — he specifically requested a set of variations on Die Forelle as one of the movements. The work that resulted has long been Schubert's most popular chamber composi- tion — neither his most dramatic nor his most far-reaching, but certainly one of his most lovable (and that is saying a lot!). In a letter to his brother during this vacation, Schubert wrote, "The country round Steyr is unimaginably lovely." The compan- ionship was pleasant, too, and Schubert always delighted in casual music-making. All of these pleasures, natural and social, seem to have been captured in this frank and open-hearted score. So much satisfaction did he find in his circumstances and his composing that he produced not the usual four movements, but five. The triplet figure stated by the piano at the very beginning of the opening Allegro dominates the entire movement, bubbling along as a foil to the lyrical theme pre- sented immediately after in the strings. The Andante exploits a typically Schubertian indolence — laying out its slow-movement sonata-form plan (i.e., one without a development section) in such a way that the second half is simply a repetition of the first half at a different level, calculated to end in the home key. Thus, a tranquil first 1 theme in F major moves, with increasing decoration, to the second in the relatively bright key of D; an immediate restatement in the unexpected key of A-flat major proceeds in as nearly literal a repetition as possible to bring the second material back in the home key of F. The scherzo is vigorous and propulsive, becoming only slightly more relaxed in the Trio. The fourth movement, based on Die Forelle, is by far the best-known section of the quintet. Schubert's original song might conceivably have been a folk song imitation (if one considers only the opening stanzas), but when the poet described the trickery by which the fisherman finally catches the wily trout, the composer wrote a more elaborate, expressively modulatory stanza. For the variation set, however, Schubert chose to use only the version of the tune that might be considered most like folk song.