Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Season 126, 2006-2007
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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA James Levine, Music Director Bernard Haitink, Conductor Emeritus Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Laureate 126th Season, 2006-2007 &^- CHAMBER TEA III Friday, January 26, at 2:30 COMMUNITY CONCERT III Sunday, January 28, at 3, at Cambridge Vineyard, Cambridge This free concert is generously supported by the State Street Foundation. HAWTHORNE STRING QUARTET RONAN LEFKOWITZ and SI-JING HUANG, violins MARK LUDWIG, viola SATO KNUDSEN, cello MARTINU String Quartet No. 6 Allegro moderato Andante Allegro KRASA String Quartet, Opus 2 (1921) Moderato Prestissimo—Molto calmo—Volgare Molto lento e tranquillo Week 14 Notes on the Program Both of the composers on this program were Czech by birth, although Hans Krasa (1899-1944) was German-Jewish by heritage. Krasa remained primarily in his hometown of Prague, where he was very active in the artistic life of that city. He was deported to the Terezin concentration camp in 1942 and was killed in Auschwitz in October 1944. Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) moved from Policka, the small town of his birth, first to Prague for study and to perform in the Czech Philharmonic, then in 1923 to France. He would never return to live in his homeland. He left France for the United States to wait out the war, having been blacklisted by the Nazis for trying to help his Czech compatriots, and later moved between the United States and Europe, but was unwilling to return to Czechoslovakia because of the Soviet occupation. He lived his last years in Switzerland. Krasa conceived of a performance of his work to be "accompanied" by the real- time creation of a work of visual art. In keeping with his interdisciplinary artistic interests, the Hawthorne Quartet approached the Berkshires-based painter Jim Schantz to create a work inspired by Krasa's piece. Mr. Schantz will talk about this collaboration and the resulting painting as part of today's concert presentation. Bohuslav Martial: Quartet No. 6 Martial moved to Paris in 1923 specifically to study with Albert Roussel, one of the country's most important composers from the generation of Debussy and Ravel. Roussel was a fine craftsman with a strong exotic streak, and his style incorporated elements of both impressionism and neoclassicism. Martini's first works of signifi- cance date from this time, when he was already in his early thirties, and show the undeniable influence of Parisian style. Once he had gained confidence as a com- poser, he was very prolific in a wide range of genres, including the smallest chamber music works all the way up to symphonies and operas. He became acquainted with Stravinsky and Les Six, and also experienced jazz, imported from the U.S. after World War I, and which had a major impact on his musical language. By the later 1920s Martina had achieved a great deal of local and international success. His compositional style has the clarity and rhythmic vitality of neoclassicism, with, later, specific reference to Baroque models such as the concerto grosso. In the 1930s Martini's love for his homeland resulted in greater identification with the indige- nous music of Bohemia, including rhythms based on traditional dances and certain scale and melodic patterns. In November 1927, Serge Koussevitzky had conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of Martini's tone-poem La Bagarre ("Tumult"), which was the start of the composer's long relationship with the orchestra. The BSO, under both Koussevitzky and later Charles Munch, remained a stalwart proponent of Martini's music, giving the first performances of nine orchestral works (the last Tanglewood BOSTON POPS THE BSO ONLINE Boston Symphony and Boston Pops fans with access to the Internet can visit the orchestra's official home page (http:/ /www.bso.org ). The BSO web site not only provides up-to-the-minute information about all of the orchestra's activities, but also allows you to buy tickets to 1350 and Pops concerts online. In addition to program listings and ticket prices, the web site offers a wide range of information on other BSO activities, biographies of BSO musicians and guest artists, current press releases, historical facts and figures, helpful telephone numbers, and information on audi- tions and job openings. Since the BSO web site is updated on a regular basis, we invite you to check in frequently. under Munch in 1959). When Martina was in need of support while living in the U.S. during World War II, Koussevitzky arranged for the commission of the com- poser's Symphony No. 1 and for teaching positions at the Berkshire Music Center (now the Tanglewood Music Center). His Fantasies symphoniques (Symphony No. 6) was a BSO 75th anniversary commission. While at Tanglewood in 1946, Martina suffered a blow to his head during a fall from a height, with damage extensive enough to delay a planned return to Prague. (Political upheaval and the resultant seizure of government power by the Soviets in early 1948 put a definitive end to Martina's plans.) It was during his convales- cence in New York City, at a time when composition was particularly difficult, that he wrote the sixth of his seven numbered string quartets. This is a three-movement work that shows many of the composer's particular stylistic characteristics. The intense, closely spaced melody that begins the first movement has a modal, dark, almost exotic quality, not unlike some of Bartok's music (though less chromatic). The rhythms are driving, the motifs typically short and propulsive. The second movement has a more lyrical lilt, but also relies on a pithy figure of alternating neighboring pitches (much like a slow trill) as both accompaniment and foreground. A pretty, chorale-like passage provides repose. The finale is toccata-like, with a nearly constant mercurial pulsing partly countered by sustained melodic lines. Interplay between the opposed groups of viola/cello and the two violins adds textural interest, while metrical changes—listen for the smooth shifts to triple meter—help keep up the almost unceasing forward momentum. Hans Krasa: String Quartet, Opus 2 (1921) Krasa was an accomplished pianist and studied composition with Alexander von Zemlinsky, the friend, brother-in-law, and erstwhile mentor of Arnold Schoenberg. An important conductor and composer in his own right, Zemlinsky supported Krasa's efforts, conducting his Opus 1, Grotesques for baritone and orchestra, and later his Symphony for mezzo-soprano and orchestra. This latter work received considerable notice, being played not only in Prague and Paris but at the Interna- tional Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Zurich. Serge Koussevitzky conducted the first two movements (in which the singer doesn't appear) with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in November 1926. (Seiji Ozawa led performances of the complete three-movement work in Boston and New York in April 1995; the late Lorraine Hunt—not yet Lorraine Hunt Lieberson—was soloist in the last movement, a setting of Rimbaud in German translation.) Krasa also worked in opera, as a repetiteur in Prague and later briefly with Zemlinsky in Berlin. This was clearly a genre that appealed to him. He began his first opera, Verlobung im Traum ("Betrothal in a Dream") in 1928 (it was produced in 1933) and later wrote a children's opera Brundibar ("The Bumblebee"). After being interned at Terezfri, he was able to arrange for dozens of performances of Brundibcfr for the camp at a time when such activities were encouraged for propaganda purposes. A performance of the opera was immor- talized in a Red Cross film demonstrating the supposed humanity of the camps. In the past few years, this and others of Krasa's works have received renewed and deserved attention. Krasa's String Quartet is one of his earliest extant works. Although he had begun writing music as a child, none of his juvenilia has survived. He wrote the quartet in 1921, and the first performance evidently took place in Paris in 1923 at La Revue musicale during the composer's visit to that city. The style of the quartet already shows that Krasa was not unfamiliar with the musical happenings of Paris, notably the successes of Stravinsky and the young Parisian group of composers known as Les Six, which included Milhaud and Poulenc. On a deeper level, Krasa was apparently influenced by the impressionist textures and harmonies of Ravel and Debussy, as well as by the German tradition of his training, which shows in the careful development of motifs (particularly in the first movement). The second movement shows the influence of the anti-Romantic games of the Parisian and Berlin avant-garde. There are numerous references to less lofty musical styles, little musical jokes, and use of non-traditional touches like glissandi to add humor and unusual color to the music. The last movement is, unusually for a finale, largely subdued in mood, with a more active central section. —Robert Kirzinger Since its inception in 1986, the Hawthorne String Quartet has performed extensively throughout Europe, South America, Japan, and the United States, including such major festivals as Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Aspen. The quartet has a broad reper- toire ranging from the classics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to contem- porary 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 (Terezm). 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 Ervfn Schulhoff's Concerto for String Quartet and Chamber Orchestra), National Sym- phony, Juilliard Orchestra, and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie (with which it gave the German premiere of the same Schulhoff work).