9fi Natl ess *£ IH f iMMHHl BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS Sunday, February 5, 1989, at 3:00 p.m. at Jordan Hall BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS Malcolm Lowe, violin Harold Wright, clarinet i j Burton Fine, viola Sherman Walt, bassoon Jules Eskin, cello Charles Kavalovski, horn M Edwin Barker, double bass Charles Schlueter, trumpet SH gK£*!S Doriot Anthony Dwyer, flute Ronald Barron, trombone m Wm Alfred Genovese, oboe Everett Firth, percussion with guest artists GILBERT KALISH, piano LAWRENCE ISAACSON, trombone clarinet PRESS, percussion PETER HADCOCK, ARTHUR ^flilHH lH mi* '^.v.' RICHARD PLASTER, bassoon FRANK EPSTEIN, percussion Ml . TIMOTHY MORRISON, trumpet ROSEN, celesta JEROME JH H Hi BSS LEON KIRCHNER, conductor Hi PISTON Quintet for Wind Instruments aflMnCc HH H #Bt«3P'j Hi HI Animato Con tenerezza Scherzando Allegro comodo Ms. DWYER, Mr. GENOVESE, Mr. HADCOCK, Mr. WALT, and Mr. KAVALOVSKI KIRCHNER Concerto for Violin, Cello, Ten Winds, and Percussion (in two movements) Messrs. LOWE and ESKIN; Ms. DWYER; Messrs. GENOVESE, HADCOCK, WALT, PLASTER, KAVALOVSKI, SCHLUETER, MORRISON, BARRON, ISAACSON, FIRTH, PRESS, EPSTEIN, and ROSEN LEON KIRCHNER, conductor HI Hi^HB OTH INTERMISSION HHHH FAURE Quartet No. 1 in C minor for piano and strings, Opus 15 WtmHHSSm Allegro molto moderato Scherzo: Allegro vivo Adagio Allegro molto I Messrs. KALISH, LOWE, FINE, and ESKIN -BHHHflntflElflfli • <&& Baldwin piano Nonesuch, DG, RCA, and New World records tSHHIS WHliHill The Boston Symphony Orchestra gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Endow- &<- ment for the Arts, and of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, a state agency. Walter Piston Quintet for Wind Instruments Early in his career, Walter Piston began a woodwind quintet that he left unfinished in frustration at the inherent technical problems of the medium—the recalcitrant indi- viduality of the five voices, with their different techniques and their very different sonorities, which could never quite be made to blend. Some decades later, as the experienced master composer of a half-dozen symphonies and as author of a classic text on orchestration, Piston tried again, and created one of his most endearing chamber music compositions. The Woodwind Quintet was commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in the Library of Congress and received its first performance on January 24, 1957. The players for whom it was written called themselves the Boston Woodwind Quintet, but their names are very familiar ones: Doriot Anthony Dwyer, flute; Gino Cioffi, clarinet; Ralph Gomberg, oboe; James Stagliano, horn; and Sherman Walt, bassoon. At the time, all five were principal players in the Boston Symphony Orchestra (indeed, two of them still are), so in a sense the work was first performed by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, though that ensemble did not take formal shape until seven years later. The Quintet represented neither the first nor the last time that Piston wrote for the Boston Symphony Orchestra or its members: the BSO gave no fewer than eight Piston world premieres, a record unsurpassed by any other composer and matched only by a Boston composer of an earlier generation, George W. Chadwick. Having spent his entire adult life in Boston (most of it as a distinguished professor of theory and composition at Harvard), Piston felt that the ensemble in Symphony Hall was "his" orchestra, and he composed most of his works with the sounds of BSO players in his mind; the Woodwind Quintet and its immediate predecessor, the Sixth Symphony, commissioned by the BSO for its seventy-fifth anniversary, both fall resolutely in that category. Almost all of Piston's music is instrumental, cast in abstract genres. The Woodwind Quintet is typical in that respect, consisting of four movements to which he gave Italian designations that can be translated "animated," "with tenderness," "jokingly," and "comfortably cheerful." Characteristically, he resisted saying anything about his music beyond the hints contained in these designations, trusting the listener to follow without further guidance. But it is certainly worth pointing out the masterly treat- ment of the ensemble, the kaleidoscope of instrumental color, the ease with which leadership passes from one part to another, and the abiding spirit of fun. —Steven Ledbetter Leon Kirchner Concerto for Violin, Cello, Ten Winds, and Percussion Brooklyn-born Leon Kirchner turned seventy on January 24. His family settled in California when he was a child, and he received most of his education there. Cultural life in Los Angeles was marked in those years by the presence of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and a host of writers and other cultured emigrees from Europe. Kirchner attracted the attention of Ernst Toch, who suggested that he study composition with Schoenberg at UCLA. He later went on to do work with two of the other great composer-teachers of this century, Ernest Bloch in Berkeley, and Roger Sessions in New York. After military service, Kirchner finished his M.A. degree at Berkeley, then spent the years 1948-50 in New York on a Guggenheim Fellowship, a time that marked the beginning of wide acclaim for his music. From 1950 to 1961 he lived again in California, teaching at the University of Southern California and at Mills College. He moved to Harvard in 1961, where he is now emeritus Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music. He remains active especially as a composer, and as the conductor of the Harvard Chamber Orchestra and Friends, which has considerably enriched the repertory of orchestral music performed in the Boston area. Though he has composed in virtually every genre, Kirchner has been especially honored for his chamber music. Kirchner's first two string quartets (1949 and 1958) were given the New York Critics Circle Award and his Third String Quartet (with electronic tape, 1966) the Pulitzer Prize. His chamber output also includes a superb piano trio (1954), Musicfor Twelve (1985)—a BSO centennial commission for the Boston Symphony Chamber Players—and a recent duo for cello and violin. The Concerto for Violin, Cello, Ten Winds, and Percussion was composed in 1960 on a commission from the Chamber Music Society of Baltimore. It was first per- formed in New York on September 6, 1961, at a remarkable concert of new American works performed for the first international musicological conference to be held in the United States. (In addition to Kirchner's work, which ended the program, that evening also included the premieres of Milton Babbitt's Vision and Prayer and Elliott Carter's Double Concerto.) Much of Kirchner's chamber music—the string quartets and the Piano Trio, for example—are for traditional ensembles that have a long history in the classical tradition, a history involving abstract formal structures and an avoidance of program- matic elements. While his chamber music does not tell stories, it always tends toward the dramatic, bursting the normal confines of chamber music genres and mixing tempi and characters from moment to moment. The present Concerto's unusual instru- mentation distinguishes it at once from other chamber works. The two string parts stand out instantly by virtue of their unique sonority in a world of winds and percussion, a clear differentiation heightened by their long, flowing lines against the crisp punctuating figures of the wind parts. The strings' dramatic, lyrical, expressive, Romantic gestures provide the main thread through the piece (indeed, they play virtually throughout). Like the earlier Piano Trio and the later Musicfor Twelve, the Concerto consists of two movements, linked together. The link here is a single sustained chord. The first movement begins Allegro ma non troppo and the second Adagio, but the character of each changes frequently, so a characterization of "fast" and "slow" movements is accurate only in a very general sense. The effect is rather of a kaleidoscopic back- ground casting ever-new reflections on the dialogue of the principals, with swiftly changing moods and characters acutely heard and captured. —S.L. Gabriel Faure Quartet No. 1 in C minor for piano and strings, Opus 15 Faure, born May 12, 1845, in Pamiers in the south of France (about halfway between Toulouse and Andorra), received an uncommonly broad musical education at the Ecole de Musique Religieuse et Classique in Paris, getting not only a thorough grounding in Renaissance and Baroque music, both ignored at the more conventional Conservatoire, but also in contemporary developments including the works of Liszt and Wagner. That latter touch of enlightenment came about thanks to Saint-Saens, who, at twenty-six, became director of the school. At fifteen, Faure attained some modest celebrity with his song "Le Papillon et lafleur" and indeed by 1879, the year of this quartet, he was still known primarily as a composer of songs. For many years he Vr made his living as an organist, and he became a distinguished teacher of composition, numbering among his pupils Ravel, Enesco, and Nadia Boulanger (who was to become, with Arnold Schoenberg, the most illustrious teacher of her generation). He lived until 1924, composing masterfully and originally to the end. His reputation is that of a composer of elegant, understated music. The C minor piano quartet is of characteristic finesse and charm, and it certainly hasn't the weight of sound of the more or less contemporary pieces for the same combination by Brahms. Still, it is robust, full of energy and brio, and superbly laid out for the instruments, with the melodies in its Adagio among the most glowingly passionate of Romantic inspiration. —Michael Steinberg I I Sunday, April 2, 1989, at 3:00 Haydn Divertimento in G for flute, violin, and cello, Opus 100, No. 4 (Hob. IV:9) Sheng Three Chinese Love Songs, for soprano, viola, and piano with LISA SAFFER, soprano Schubert Octet in F, D.803, for winds and strings Tickets at $14.50, $11, and $8 are available at the Symphony Hall box office..