BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Seiji Ozawa, Music Director
One Hundred and Fourth Season, 1984-85
PRE-SYMPHONY CHAMBER CONCERTS
Thursday, 25 April at 6 Saturday, 27 April at 6
GERALD ELIAS, violin RONAN LEFKOWITZ, violin PATRICIA McCARTY, viola ROBERT RIPLEY, cello CRAIG NORDSTROM, clarinet MARTIN AMLIN, piano
STRAVINSKY Duo Concertant for violin and piano
Cantilene
Eclogue I
Eclogue II Gigue Dithyrambe
Mssrs. ELIAS and AMLIN
STRAVINSKY Three Pieces for clarinet solo
I. Sempre piano e molto tranquillo J = 52 1 II. J — 168 l III. J = 160
Mr. NORDSTROM
PROKOFIEV Overture on Hebrew Themes, Opus 34, for clarinet, string quartet, and piano
Mssrs. NORDSTROM, ELIAS and LEFKOWITZ, Ms. McCARTY, Mr. RIPLEY, and Mr. AMLIN
Baldwin piano
Please exit to your left for supper following the conce'rt.
The performers appreciate your not smoking during the concert. Week 22 Igor Stravinsky
Duo Concertant for violin and piano
Three Pieces for clarinet solo
Stravinsky composed his Violin Concerto in 1931 for the young Samuel Dushkin.
Although Stravinsky (as conductor) and Dushkin (as soloist) received invitations to play the concerto all over Europe, the composer realized that their performances were limited to cities with a capable orchestra. It occurred to him that concerts might be more easily arranged if he wrote something for piano and violin, so that he and Dushkin could perform it almost anywhere. The result was the Duo Concertant, composed between December
1931 and mid-July 1932. In his later years, Stravinsky recalled that the work was in part inspired by a book on the Italian poet Petrarch, which led him to aim at a kind of lyrical treatment related in some way to pastoral poetry. Though some passages in the Duo
Concertant suggest the spirit of pastoral life, it is at least as likely that Stravinsky was concerned with the technical problem of combining the percussive sound of the piano with the continuously produced sound of bowed strings. Despite the composer's apparent desire to make the work appear to be little more than a compositional exercise, he exploits various features of both piano and violin to produce an effective concert piece.
The three solo clarinet pieces are a kind of graceful thank you note written by
Stravinsky in 1919 for presentation to Werner Reinhart, who had financed the first production of L'Histoire du Soldat {The Soldier's Tale) the preceding year. The choice of medium for the piece was simple: Reinhart himself played the clarinet, and so naturally his own instrument was called for. Stravinsky had already demonstrated his predilection for the clarinet and his ability to write wonderfully imaginative parts for that instrument in The Soldier's Tale, not to mention the earlier Berceuses du Chat (Cat's Cradle Songs), for contralto and three clarinets. Stravinsky's work brilliantly exploits various charac- teristic features of the clarinet: the first piece emphasizes the lower register in a tranquil mood, the second moves with rhythmic freedom to elaborate arabesques, and the third is rhythmically lively in the manner of his earlier "Ragtime" and "Tango" movements in Tlie Soldier's Tale.
-Steven Ledbetter
Sergey Prokofiev Overture on Hebrew Themes, Opus 34
Prokofiev composed his Overture on Hebrew Themes in the United States in 1919, the beginning of the three-year period that saw his hopes for success with his fairy-tale opera
Love for Three Oranges first raised, then dashed, as he discovered the effect of his reputation for "barbarism and bolshevism" in America. While he was working on the opera, he received a commission from a sextet of Jewish musicians with whom he had been friendly in St. Petersburg and who had arrived in New York in October 1918. They presented him with a notebook full of Jewish themes and asked if he would use them as the basis of a sextet for them. Apparently feeling that the offering of melodic ideas was an insult to the fecundity of his imagination, Prokofiev rejected the commission. But the notebook stayed on his piano. A few months later, in an idle moment, he began leafing through it and improvising around some of the themes he found there. Within two days the so-called "Overture" was completed; a dozen years later, after his return to Russia, he also prepared a version for full orchestra.
—S.L. Gerald Elias Ronan Lefkowitz
Gerald Elias joined the Boston Symphony Born in Oxford, England, violinist Ronan * Orchestra's violin section in 1975, after Lefkowitz joined the Boston Symphony attending Oberlin College and graduating from Orchestra in 1976. A graduate of Brookline Yale University. He began his private studies High School and Harvard College, his teachers at eight with A. William Liva; subsequent included Max Rostal, Gerald Gelbloom, Joseph teachers included Ivan Galamian of the Silverstein, and Szymon Goldberg. He was
Juilliard School, Gerald Gelbloom, and former concertmaster and a frequent soloist with the BSO concertmaster Joseph Silverstein. Mr. Greater Boston Youth Symphony, and he was Elias has performed extensively in the United concertmaster of the International Youth States and abroad, including solo perform- Symphony Orchestra under Leopold ances with the Boston Pops. A 1973 Tangle- Stokowski at St. Moritz, Switzerland, in
wood Music Center fellow, he is currently a August 1969, when he won first prize as the faculty member at the Boston University most promising young violinist at the Interna- Tanglewood Institute. He and violinist Ronan tional Festival of Youth Orchestras. A 1972 Lefkowitz have performed frequently as a winner of the Gingold-Silverstein Violin Prize violin duo throughout the eight years that they at the Tanglewood Music Center, Mr. Lefko- have been colleagues in the Boston Symphony witz has made numerous recital appearances Orchestra. in the Boston area.
Patricia McCarty Robert Ripley
Patricia McCarty is assistant principal violist In 1942, the summer before he joined the of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and prin- Cleveland Orchestra, Robert Ripley was prin-
cipal violist of the Boston Pops. Ms. McCarty cipal cellist of the Tanglewood Music Center earned M.B. and M.M. degrees at the Univer- Orchestra under Koussevitzky. From 1942-45 sity of Michigan, where she was a student of he played in the Glenn Miller Air Force Francis Bundra. A prizewinner in numerous Orchestra, rejoining the Cleveland Orchestra competitions, most notably the 1972 Geneva after the war and remaining there until he Concours, she has appeared as soloist with the came to the Boston Symphony in 1955. While
Houston Symphony, l'Orchestre de la Suisse in Cleveland, Mr. Ripley was an active quartet
Romande, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the player, taught at the Cleveland Music School Ithaca College Orchestra in Lincoln Center, Settlement from 1948-55, gave solo faculty
and many community orchestras in the United recitals, and played chamber music with the States. A student at Tanglewood in 1975, she Cleveland's then concertmaster Josef Gingold has also participated in the Marlboro and and pianist Leonard Shure. Born in Phila-
Interlochen festivals and performed before delphia, Mr. Ripley attended the Curtis Insti-
President Carter at the White House while on tute and, later, the Cleveland Institute of
tour with Music From Marlboro. She was a Music; his teachers included former BSO prin-
member of the Lenox Quartet in residence at cipal cellist Jean Bedetti, Felix Salmond, and
Ithaca College (N.Y.), and she held faculty Ernst Silberstein. Mr. Ripley is on the faculty positions at the University of Michigan and of the New England Conservatory of Music,
the Interlochen Center for the Arts before and he is Chamber Music Coordinator for the
joining the BSO in the fall of 1979. In the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Boston area, Ms. McCarty has been heard as
soloist with the Boston Pops, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Newton Symphony, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and in recitals at the Gardner Museum and on the Charles
River Concerts series. Craig Nordstrom
Born in Denver, Colorado, Craig Nordstrom where he studied with Anthony Gigliotti, Loren became bass clarinetist of the Boston Sym- Kitt, and Lawrence Bocaner. Before joining phony Orchestra in 1979. After graduating the Boston Symphony, Mr. Nordstrom per- from Northwestern University, where he stud- formed with the Colorado Philharmonic, the ied with Jerome Stowell and was a clarinetist Vancouver Symphony, the Cincinnati Sym- with the Chicago Civic Orchestra, he joined phony, and the Grand Teton Music Festival. the U.S. Marine Corps Band in Washington, He currently teaches at the New England D.C. While in Washington, he earned his mas- Conservatory of Music and at Boston ter of music degree from Catholic University, University.
Martin Amlin
Pianist and composer Martin Amlin holds the Young Composers, two ASCAP Standard degree Doctor of Musical Arts as well as the Awards, a Massachusetts Council for the Arts Performer's Certificate from the Eastman NEW WORKS grant, and a St. Botolph Club School of Music. His teachers have included Foundation grant. An active performer in the Frank Glazer at Eastman and Nadia Boston area, he has presented solo concerts at Boulanger, with whom he studied in Fon- the Gardner Museum and the Boston Shake- tainebleau and Paris, France. Mr. Amlin was speare Company and has collaborated with awarded fellowships to the Tanglewood Music soloists such as tenor Rolf Bjorling and flutist
Center for four summers; there he twice Doriot Anthony Dwyer. Mr. Amlin is on the received the CD. Jackson Award. He has faculties of the Phillips Exeter Academy and often been a resident at Yaddo and the Mac- Boston University, and he is pianist for the
Dowell Colony, and he was recently named a contemporary music group Alea III, based at Norlin Fellow by the MacDowell Colony. He Boston University. He has recorded for Sine has been the recipient of an ASCAP Grant to Qua Non and Folkways records.