2017–18 Season Week 15 “Leipzig Week in Boston” J.S. Bach Schumann

2017–18 season andris nelsons music director

week 15 “leipzig week in boston” j.s. bach schumann shepherd mendelssohn

february 11 chamber music at symphony hall haydn ligeti foss mendelssohn

Season Sponsors seiji ozawa music director laureate bernard haitink conductor emeritus supporting sponsorlead sponsor supporting sponsorlead thomas adès artistic partner Better Health, Brighter Future

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Takeda is proud to support the Boston Symphony Orchestra Table of Contents | Week 15

7 bso news 13 on display in symphony hall 1 4 bso music director andris nelsons 16 the boston symphony orchestra 18 the bso/gho alliance 19 this week’s programs

Notes on the Program

25 Introduction to the Program 29 J.S. Bach 35 Robert Schumann 45 Sean Shepherd 55 Felix Mendelssohn 65 To Read and Hear More…

Guest Artists

69 Kirill Gerstein 71 Jean-Yves Thibaudet 73 Thomas Adès 75 David Kravitz 76 Tanglewood Festival Chorus 78 James Burton

80 Boston Symphony Chamber Players/ Gewandhaus-Quartett Concert of Sunday, February 11, 2018

92 sponsors and donors 104 future programs 106 symphony hall exit plan 107 symphony hall information

The background of this week’s program cover is a photo of the second Gewandhaus concert hall in Leipzig, which was home to the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig from 1884 until it was destroyed in 1944 (see larger image on page 25 of this program).

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, MA 02115-4511 (617) 266-1492 bso.org

andris nelsons, ray and maria stata music director bernard haitink, lacroix family fund conductor emeritus seiji ozawa, music director laureate thomas adès, deborah and philip edmundson artistic partner thomas wilkins, germeshausen youth and family concerts conductor 137th season, 2017–2018 trustees of the boston symphony orchestra, inc.

Susan W. Paine, Chair • Susan Bredhoff Cohen, Co-President • Robert J. Mayer, M.D., Co-President • George D. Behrakis, Vice-Chair • Cynthia Curme, Vice-Chair • John M. Loder, Vice-Chair • Theresa M. Stone, Treasurer

William F. Achtmeyer • David Altshuler • Gregory E. Bulger • Ronald G. Casty • Richard F. Connolly, Jr. • William Curry, M.D. • Alan J. Dworsky • Philip J. Edmundson • Thomas E. Faust, Jr. • Levi A. Garraway • Michael Gordon • Nathan Hayward, III • Brent L. Henry • Susan Hockfield • Barbara W. Hostetter • Stephen B. Kay • Edmund Kelly • Tom Kuo, ex-officio • Martin Levine, ex-officio • Joyce Linde • Nancy K. Lubin • Joshua A. Lutzker • Carmine A. Martignetti • Steven R. Perles • John Reed • Carol Reich • Arthur I. Segel • Wendy Shattuck • Caroline Taylor • Sarah Rainwater Ward, ex-officio • Roberta S. Weiner • Robert C. Winters • D. Brooks Zug life trustees

Vernon R. Alden • Harlan E. Anderson • J.P. Barger • Gabriella Beranek • Jan Brett • Peter A. Brooke • Paul Buttenwieser • John F. Cogan, Jr. • Diddy Cullinane • Mrs. Edith L. Dabney • Nelson J. Darling, Jr. • Deborah B. Davis • Nina L. Doggett • William R. Elfers • Nancy J. Fitzpatrick • Charles H. Jenkins, Jr. • Mrs. Béla T. Kalman • George Krupp • Richard P. Morse • David Mugar • Robert P. O’Block • Vincent M. O’Reilly • William J. Poorvu • Peter C. Read • Edward I. Rudman • Roger T. Servison • Richard A. Smith • Ray Stata • John Hoyt Stookey • John L. Thorndike • Stephen R. Weber • Stephen R. Weiner • Dr. Nicholas T. Zervas other officers of the corporation

Mark Volpe, Eunice and Julian Cohen Managing Director • Evelyn Barnes, Chief Financial Officer • Bart Reidy, Clerk of the Board overseers of the boston symphony orchestra, inc.

Tom Kuo, Co-Chair • Sarah Rainwater Ward, Co-Chair

Nathaniel Adams • Noubar Afeyan • James E. Aisner • Holly Ambler • Peter C. Andersen • Bob Atchinson • Lloyd Axelrod, M.D. • Liliana Bachrach • Judith W. Barr • Linda J.L. Becker • Paul Berz • William N. Booth • Mark G. Borden • Partha Bose • Karen Bressler • Thomas M. Burger • Joanne M. Burke • Bonnie Burman, Ph.D. • Richard E. Cavanagh • Miceal Chamberlain • Yumin Choi • Michele Montrone Cogan • Roberta L. Cohn • RoAnn Costin • Sally Currier • Gene D. Dahmen • Lynn A. Dale • Anna L. Davol • Michelle A. Dipp, M.D., Ph.D. • Peter Dixon • Dr. Ronald F. Dixon • Sarah E. Eustis • Beth Fentin • Peter Fiedler • Sanford Fisher • Stephen T. Gannon • Zoher Ghogawala, M.D. • Cora H. Ginsberg • Robert R. Glauber • Todd R. Golub • Barbara Nan Grossman • Ricki Tigert Helfer • Rebecca M. Henderson • James M. Herzog, M.D. • Stuart Hirshfield •

week 15 trustees and overseers 3 When it Comes to Dependability, One Stands Alone. a d Commonwealth Worldwide has been the premier choice of discerning clientele in Boston and beyond for more than 35 years. Discover why we are a seven-time Best of Boston® winner by Boston magazine.

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Albert A. Holman, III • Lawrence S. Horn • Jill Hornor • Valerie Hyman • George Jacobstein • Stephen J. Jerome • Darlene Luccio Jordan, Esq. • Mark Jung • Karen Kaplan • Steve Kidder • John L. Klinck, Jr. • Sandra O. Moose • Kristin A. Mortimer • Cecile Higginson Murphy • John F. O’Leary • Peter Palandjian • Donald R. Peck • Wendy Philbrick • Randy Pierce • Lina S. Plantilla, M.D. • Irving H. Plotkin • Jim Pollin • William F. Pounds • Esther A. Pryor • James M. Rabb, M.D. • Ronald Rettner • Robert L. Reynolds • Robin S. Richman, M.D. • Dr. Carmichael Roberts • Graham Robinson • Patricia Romeo-Gilbert • Michael Rosenblatt, M.D. • Sean C. Rush • Malcolm S. Salter • Dan Schrager • Donald L. Shapiro • Phillip A. Sharp, Ph.D. • Carol S. Smokler • Anne-Marie Soullière • Michael B. Sporn, M.D. • Nicole Stata • Margery Steinberg, Ph.D. • Katherine Chapman Stemberg • Jean Tempel • Douglas Dockery Thomas • Mark D. Thompson • Albert Togut • Blair Trippe • Sandra A. Urie • Edward Wacks, Esq. • Linda S. Waintrup • Vita L. Weir • Dr. Christoph Westphal • June K. Wu, M.D. • Patricia Plum Wylde • Marillyn Zacharis overseers emeriti

Helaine B. Allen • Marjorie Arons-Barron • Diane M. Austin • Sandra Bakalar • Lucille M. Batal • James L. Bildner • William T. Burgin • Hon. Levin H. Campbell • Carol Feinberg Cohen • Mrs. James C. Collias • Charles L. Cooney • Ranny Cooper • Joan P. Curhan • James C. Curvey • Tamara P. Davis • Mrs. Miguel de Bragança • Paul F. Deninger • JoAnne Walton Dickinson • Phyllis Dohanian • Alan Dynner • Harriett Eckstein • Ursula Ehret-Dichter • George Elvin • Pamela D. Everhart • Judy Moss Feingold • Steven S. Fischman • John F. Fish • Myrna H. Freedman • Mrs. James Garivaltis • Dr. Arthur Gelb • Robert P. Gittens • Jordan Golding • Mark R. Goldweitz • Michael Halperson • John Hamill • Deborah M. Hauser • Carol Henderson • Mrs. Richard D. Hill • Roger Hunt • Lola Jaffe • Everett L. Jassy • Paul L. Joskow • Martin S. Kaplan • Stephen R. Karp • Mrs. Gordon F. Kingsley • Robert I. Kleinberg • David I. Kosowsky • Robert K. Kraft • Peter E. Lacaillade • Benjamin H. Lacy • Mrs. William D. Larkin • Robert J. Lepofsky • Frederick H. Lovejoy, Jr. • Diane H. Lupean • Mrs. Harry L. Marks • Jay Marks • Joseph B. Martin, M.D. • Joseph C. McNay • Dr. Martin C. Mihm, Jr. • Robert Mnookin • Paul M. Montrone • Robert J. Morrissey • Joseph Patton • John A. Perkins • Ann M. Philbin • May H. Pierce • Claudio Pincus • Irene Pollin • Dr. John Thomas Potts, Jr. • Dr. Tina Young Poussaint • Claire Pryor • Robert E. Remis • John Ex Rodgers • Susan Rothenberg • Alan W. Rottenberg • Joseph D. Roxe • Kenan Sahin • Roger A. Saunders • Lynda Anne Schubert • L. Scott Singleton • Gilda Slifka • Christopher Smallhorn • Patricia L. Tambone • Samuel Thorne • Diana Osgood Tottenham • Joseph M. Tucci • David C. Weinstein • James Westra • Mrs. Joan D. Wheeler • Margaret Williams-DeCelles • Richard Wurtman, M.D.

week 15 trustees and overseers 5 WEALTH IS MORE THAN ACCUMULATING ASSETS.

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A Special “Leipzig Week in Boston” Chamber Concert with the Boston Symphony Symphony Chamber Players and Gewandhaus-Quartett This Sunday, February 11, at 3 p.m. in Symphony Hall Celebrating the new alliance between the BSO and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and the Gewandhaus-Quartett join forces for a special chamber music performance on Sunday afternoon, February 11, at 3 p.m. in Symphony Hall. The program includes Haydn’s String Quartet in D, Op. 64, No. 5, The Lark; Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet; Foss’s For Aaron, for chamber ensemble; and Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat for strings, Op. 20. Tickets at $38, $29, and $22 are available at the Symphony Hall box office, at bso.org, or by calling SymphonyCharge at (617) 266-1200. For complete information including performers and program notes, see page 80 of this week’s program book.

A New BSO Archives Display Examining Historical Connections Between the BSO and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig A BSO Archives display case in the Brooke Corridor near the Massachusetts Avenue entrance to Symphony Hall examines historical connections between the BSO and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. The display focuses on figures connected to the history of both orchestras—BSO founder Henry Lee Higginson, as well as conductors Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Max Fiedler, Emil Paul, Karl Muck, and Charles Munch—and also includes documents relevant to the architecture and design of Symphony Hall as related to that of the second Gewandhaus in Leipzig, which opened in 1884 (three years after the BSO was founded), and which Major Higginson visited while touring Europe, then instructed his architects to use as a model for Symphony Hall, which opened in 1900. The display includes materials from the BSO Archives along with some materials made available by our Gewandhausorchester colleagues.

BSO Community Chamber Concerts in February and March The BSO continues its series of free, hour-long Community Chamber Concerts this season in venues throughout the greater Boston area on Sunday afternoons at 3 p.m. (followed by a coffee-and-dessert reception for the audience and musicians), and at Northeastern University’s Fenway Center on Friday afternoons at 1:30 p.m., offering chamber music

week 15 bso news 7 performances by BSO musicians. This Friday, February 9, at the Fenway Center, Sunday, February 11, at The Footlight Club in Jamaica Plain, and Sunday, February 18, at Bunker Hill Community College, BSO string players Glen Cherry, Leah Ferguson, Rebekah Edewards, and Mickey Katz, and BSO horn player Rachel Childers, perform music of Mozart and Irving Fine. On Friday, March 16, at the Fenway Center, Sunday, March 18, at the Pao Arts Center in Chinatown, and Sunday, March 25, at Nevins Hall in Framingham, BSO string players Si-Jing Huang, Victor Romanul, Michael Zaretsky, and Owen Young play music of Beethoven, Sibelius, and Brahms. For further details, please visit bso.org and go to “Edu- cation & Community” on the home page. The BSO’s 2017-18 Community Concerts are sponsored by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. individual tickets are on sale for all concerts in the bso’s 2017-2018 season. for specific information on purchasing tickets by phone, online, by mail, or in person at the symphony hall box office, please see page 107 of this program book.

The John F. Bok Memorial Concert which he became chairman shaped Boston Saturday, February 10, 2018 between 1960 and 2000; these included the Boston Ballet, Boston Children’s Museum, Saturday evening’s performance by the Bos- the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, the ton Symphony Orchestra has been named Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the by a gift from Joan Bok in memory of her late Citizen’s Housing and Planning Associa- husband, John Fairfield Bok (1930-2014). tion, the Boston Harbor Association, the John was a lifelong Boston resident, attor- Community Builders, and the Beacon Hill ney, and civic leader who helped preserve Civic Association. Finally, John was a strong Boston’s history and shape its development. believer that keeping Boston a world-class He cared deeply about preserving the best city included actively supporting its great of Boston, as the general counsel of the performing arts organizations, such as the Boston Redevelopment Authority under Ed Boston Symphony Orchestra. Logue in the 1960s and then as a partner at Csaplar & Bok on such redevelopment proj- ects as Quincy Market, Lewis Wharf, Old BSO Broadcasts on WCRB Boston City Hall, Union Wharf, and the Fort BSO concerts are heard on the radio at 99.5 Point building that now houses the Boston WCRB. Saturday-night concerts are broad- Children’s Museum. John figured out, along cast live at 8 p.m. with host Ron Della Chiesa, with his partners, how to accomplish all this and encore broadcasts are aired on Monday through federal historic rehabilitation tax nights at 8 p.m. In addition, interviews with credits and other government programs. As guest conductors, soloists, and BSO musi- he passionately believed in Boston’s remain- cians are available online at classicalwcrb. ing a residential city, he also worked on org/bso. Current and upcoming broadcasts many large and small housing developments include this Saturday’s “Leipzig Week in in Boston, and played a critical role in creat- Boston” program led by Andris Nelsons of ing the state’s affordable housing financing music by J.S. Bach, Schumann, Sean Shep- agencies, MassHousing and the Massachu- herd, and Mendelssohn, with pianists Thomas setts Housing Partnership. Adès, Kirill Gerstein, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet John F. Bok chaired many groups he was (February 10; encore February 19); and involved with because he was willing to next week’s Ravel-focused program led by do the hard work behind the scenes and Jacques Lacombe featuring pianist Jean- was skilled at bringing people together and Yves Thibaudet and the Tanglewood Festival inspiring service in others. The groups of Chorus (February 17; encore February 26).

week 15 bso news 9 YOUR GATEWAY TO THE INTERNATIONAL AUCTION MARKETPLACE

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bonhams.com/boston Prices shown include buyer’s premium. Details can be found at bonhams.com © 2017 Bonhams & Butterfields Auctioneers Corp. All rights reserved. Principal Auctioneer: Matthew Girling, NYC License No. 1236798-DCA New England Conservatory Students Good Measure for Flute and Piano, after a Perform Complete Piano Music of poem by Malcolm Guite. Tickets are $20 Maurice Ravel, February 12 and 22 ($15 seniors, $10 students and groups), available by phone at (978) 867-4085 or In connection with next week’s BSO program online at www.web.ovationtix.com/trs/ of February 15-17 marking the 90th anniversa- pe.c/10204328. ry of Ravel’s conducting the BSO at Symphony Hall while touring America in 1928, the New England Conservatory will present Maurice Those Electronic Devices… Ravel’s complete piano music in two free As the presence of smartphones, tablets, piano recitals, on Monday, February 12, and and other electronic devices used for com- Thursday, February 22, at 7:30 p.m. in Jordan munication, note-taking, and photography Hall. Both concerts are free and open to the has increased, there have also been continu- public, with unreserved seating available on ing expressions of concern from concertgoers a first-come, first-served basis. For further and musicians who find themselves distracted details, please visit www.necmusic.edu. not only by the illuminated screens on these devices, but also by the physical movements BSO Members in Concert that accompany their use. For this reason, and as a courtesy both to those on stage and The Muir String Quartet—BSO violinist Lucia those around you, we respectfully request Lin and BSO principal violist Steven Ansell, that all such electronic devices be completely violinist Peter Zazofsky, and cellist Michael turned off and kept from view while BSO per- Reynolds—performs Schulhoff’s String formances are in progress. In addition, please Quartet No. 1, Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D, also keep in mind that taking pictures of the K.285, with flutist Carol Wincenc, and Bee- orchestra—whether photographs or videos— thoven’s E minor string quartet, Op. 59, No. 2, is prohibited during concerts. Thank you very on Monday, February 12, at 7:30 p.m. in the much for your cooperation. Nazarian Center at Rhode Island College, 600 Mt. Pleasant Avenue, Providence. Gen- eral admission is $35 (discounts for seniors Comings and Goings... and students). For more information, visit Please note that latecomers will be seated ric.edu/pfa or call (401) 456-8144. by the patron service staff during the first On Friday, February 23, at 8 p.m. at Phillips convenient pause in the program. In addition, Recital Hall, Gordon College, 255 Grapevine please also note that patrons who leave the Road in Wenham, BSO members John Ferrillo, auditorium during the performance will not oboe, Thomas Martin, clarinet, and Elizabeth be allowed to reenter until the next conve- Ostling, flute, join with pianist Alina Polyakov nientpause in the program, so as not to dis- for music of Handel, Beethoven, Brahms, turb the performers or other audience mem- and Saint-Saëns, plus the premiere by bers while the music is in progress. We thank Ms. Ostling and Jeremy Begbie of the latter’s you for your cooperation in this matter.

week 15 bso news 11 AA standing standing ovationovation toto TheThe BostonBoston SymphonySymphony OrchestraOrchestra fromfrom one one masterpiecemasterpiece toto another. another.

61 STORIES. BOSTON’S PREMIER ADDRESS. 61 STORIES. BOSTON’S PREMIER ADDRESS. on display in symphony hall Using archival materials displayed on the orchestra and first-balcony evelsl of Symphony Hall, this season’s BSO Archives exhibit recognizes three significant anniversaries. celebrating the bernstein centennial Anticipating the 100th anniversary on August 25, 2018, next summer of Leonard Bernstein’s birth, the Archives has assembled materials documenting Bernstein’s Boston roots and his deep, lifelong connection with the BSO, Tanglewood, and the Tanglewood Music Center. • An exhibit in the Brooke Corridor focuses on Bernstein’s early connections with Boston and the BSO. • An exhibit case on the first balcony, audience-right, is devoted to the world premiere of Bernstein’s opera Trouble in Tahiti on June 12, 1952, as part of a Creative Arts Festival at Brandeis University in which many BSO members performed. • An exhibit case on the first balcony, audience-left, documents BSO performances of Bee- thoven’s Missa Solemnis at Tanglewood in 1951, 1955, and 1971 led by Leonard Bernstein in memory of his mentor, BSO conductor Serge Koussevitzky. • A display in the Cabot-Cahners Room of photographs, musical scores, and memorabilia documents the BSO premieres of works by Leonard Bernstein and BSO-commissioned works by Bernstein himself. marking the 100th anniversary of the bso’s first recordings in 1917 One hundred years ago the BSO traveled to Camden, New Jersey, to make its very first recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Co. (later RCA Victor). • An exhibit near the backstage door in the Brooke Corridor focuses on the turbulent World War I era during which the BSO’s first recordings were made. • A display on the first balcony, audience-left, documents the BSO’s first recording sessions of October 2-5, 1917. marking the 60th anniversary of the boston youth symphony orchestras (byso) • In the Hatch Corridor, material on loan from the BYSO Archives documents both its own history and its ongoing partnership with the BSO.

TOP OF PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Leonard Bernstein and his mentor Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood, c.1946 (photo by Heinz H. Weissen- stein, Whitestone Photo) Label from one of the BSO’s first commercial recordings, the Prelude to Act III of “Lohengrin” led by Karl Muck BYSO’s founding music director, Dr. Marvin J. Rabin, with members of the orchestra, c.1960 (courtesy BYSO)

week 15 on display 13 Marco Borggreve

Andris Nelsons

In October 2017, BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons was named Musical America’s 2018 Artist of the Year. In 2017-18, his fourth season as the BSO’s Ray and Maria Stata Music Director, Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in twelve wide-ranging subscription programs at Symphony Hall, repeating three of them at New York’s Carnegie Hall in March. Also this season, in November, he and the orchestra toured Japan together for the first time, playing concerts in Nagoya, Osaka, Kawasaki, and Tokyo. In addition, in February 2018 Maestro Nelsons becomes Gewandhaus- kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, in which capacity he will bring both orchestras together for a unique multi-dimensional alliance; under his direction, the BSO celebrates its first “Leipzig Week in Boston” that same month. In the summer of 2015, following his first season as music director, his contract with the Bos- ton Symphony Orchestra was extended through the 2021-22 season. Following the 2015 Tanglewood season, he and the BSO undertook a twelve-concert, eight-city tour to major European capitals as well as the Lucerne, Salzburg, and Grafenegg festivals. A second European tour, to eight cities in Germany, Austria, and Luxembourg, took place in May 2016.

The fifteenth music director in the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons made his BSO debut at Carnegie Hall in March 2011, his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, and his BSO subscription series debut in January 2013. His first CD with the BSO—live recordings of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture and Sibelius’s Sym- phony No. 2—was released in November 2014 on BSO Classics. April 2017 brought the release on BSO Classics of the four Brahms symphonies with Maestro Nelsons conducting, recorded live at Symphony Hall in November 2016. In an ongoing, multi- year collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon initiated in 2014-15, he and the BSO are making live recordings of Shostakovich’s complete symphonies, the opera Lady

14 Macbeth of Mtsensk, and other works by the composer. The first release in this series (the Symphony No. 10 and the Passacaglia from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance and Gramophone Magazine’s Orchestral Award. The second release (symphonies 5, 8, and 9, plus excerpts from Shostakovich’s 1932 incidental music to Hamlet) won the 2017 Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance. Also for Deutsche Grammophon, Andris Nelsons is recording the Bruckner symphonies with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Beetho- ven symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic.

In 2017-18, Andris Nelsons is artist-in-residence at the Konzerthaus Dortmund and continues his regular collaboration with the Vienna Philharmonic, leading that orchestra on tour to China. He also maintains regular collaborations with the Royal Concert- gebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Sym- phony Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Maestro Nelsons has also been a regular guest at the Bayreuth Festival and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he conducts a new David Alden production of Lohengrin this season.

Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Andris Nelsons began his career as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra before studying conducting. He was music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 2008 to 2015, principal conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany, from 2006 to 2009, and music director of Latvian National Opera from 2003 to 2007. Mr. Nelsons is the subject of a 2013 DVD from Orfeo, a documentary film entitled “Andris Nelsons: Genius on Fire.” Marco Borggreve

week 15 andris nelsons 15 Boston Symphony Orchestra 2017–2018

andris nelsons bernard haitink seiji ozawa thomas adès Ray and Maria Stata LaCroix Family Fund Music Director Laureate Deborah and Philip Edmundson Music Director Conductor Emeritus Artistic Partner endowed in perpetuity endowed in perpetuity thomas wilkins Germeshausen Youth and Family Concerts Conductor endowed in perpetuity

first violins Wendy Putnam* Cathy Basrak Blaise Déjardin* Robert Bradford Newman chair, Assistant Principal Oliver Aldort* Malcolm Lowe endowed in perpetuity Anne Stoneman chair, endowed Concertmaster in perpetuity Charles Munch chair, Xin Ding* basses endowed in perpetuity (position vacant) Glen Cherry* Lois and Harlan Anderson chair, Edwin Barker Tamara Smirnova Lisa Ji Eun Kim* endowed in perpetuity Principal First Associate Concertmaster Harold D. Hodgkinson chair, Helen Horner McIntyre chair, Rebecca Gitter endowed in perpetuity endowed in perpetuity second violins Michael Zaretsky* Lawrence Wolfe Alexander Velinzon Haldan Martinson Mark Ludwig*° Assistant Principal Associate Concertmaster Principal Maria Nistazos Stata chair, Robert L. Beal, Enid L., and Rachel Fagerburg* Carl Schoenhof Family chair, endowed in perpetuity Bruce A. Beal chair, endowed endowed in perpetuity Daniel Getz* in perpetuity Benjamin Levy Julianne Lee° Leith Family chair, endowed Elita Kang Rebekah Edewards* Assistant Principal in perpetuity Assistant Concertmaster Charlotte and Irving W. Rabb Danny Kim* Edward and Bertha C. Rose chair, chair, endowed in perpetuity Dennis Roy endowed in perpetuity Leah Ferguson* Sheila Fiekowsky Joseph Hearne Yuncong Zhang Shirley and J. Richard Fennell James Orleans* John and Dorothy Wilson chair, chair, endowed in perpetuity cellos endowed in perpetuity Todd Seeber* Nicole Monahan (position vacant) Eleanor L. and Levin H. Campbell Lucia Lin David H. and Edith C. Howie Principal chair, endowed in perpetuity Dorothy Q. and David B. Arnold, chair, endowed in perpetuity Philip R. Allen chair, endowed Jr., chair, endowed in perpetuity in perpetuity John Stovall* Ronan Lefkowitz§ Ikuko Mizuno Sato Knudsen Thomas Van Dyck* Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro chair, Vyacheslav Uritsky* Acting Principal Mischa Nieland chair, endowed endowed in perpetuity Nancy Bracken* in perpetuity flutes Bo Youp Hwang Aza Raykhtsaum* Mary B. Saltonstall chair, Mihail Jojatu Elizabeth Rowe endowed in perpetuity Bonnie Bewick* Sandra and David Bakalar chair Principal Walter Piston chair, endowed Martha Babcock Jennie Shames* James Cooke* in perpetuity Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser Vernon and Marion Alden chair, chair Victor Romanul* endowed in perpetuity Clint Foreman Myra and Robert Kraft chair, Catherine French* Owen Young* Valeria Vilker Kuchment* endowed in perpetuity Kristin and Roger Servison chair Jason Horowitz* John F. Cogan, Jr., and Mary L. Cornille chair, endowed Elizabeth Ostling § Tatiana Dimitriades* Ala Jojatu* in perpetuity Associate Principal Donald C. and Ruth Brooks Marian Gray Lewis chair, Bracha Malkin* Mickey Katz* Heath chair, endowed endowed in perpetuity in perpetuity Stephen and Dorothy Weber chair, endowed in perpetuity Si-Jing Huang* violas piccolo Ronald G. and Ronni J. Casty Alexandre Lecarme* Steven Ansell chair Nancy and Richard Lubin chair Cynthia Meyers Principal Evelyn and C. Charles Marran Charles S. Dana chair, endowed Adam Esbensen* chair, endowed in perpetuity in perpetuity Richard C. and Ellen E. Paine chair, endowed in perpetuity

16 photos by Winslow Townson and Michael Blanchard oboes contrabassoon bass trombone voice and chorus John Ferrillo Gregg Henegar James Markey James Burton Principal Helen Rand Thayer chair John Moors Cabot chair, BSO Choral Director and Mildred B. Remis chair, endowed in perpetuity Conductor of the Tanglewood endowed in perpetuity Festival Chorus horns Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Mark McEwen tuba chair, endowed in perpetuity James and Tina Collias chair James Sommerville Principal Mike Roylance John Oliver Keisuke Wakao Helen Sagoff Slosberg/ Principal Tanglewood Festival Chorus Assistant Principal Edna S. Kalman chair, Margaret and William C. Founder and Conductor Farla and Harvey Chet endowed in perpetuity Rousseau chair, endowed Laureate Krentzman chair, endowed in perpetuity in perpetuity Richard Sebring Associate Principal librarians Margaret Andersen Congleton timpani english horn chair, endowed in perpetuity D. Wilson Ochoa Timothy Genis Principal Robert Sheena Rachel Childers Sylvia Shippen Wells chair, Lia and William Poorvu chair, Beranek chair, endowed John P. II and Nancy S. Eustis endowed in perpetuity endowed in perpetuity in perpetuity chair, endowed in perpetuity Mark Fabulich Michael Winter percussion clarinets Elizabeth B. Storer chair, endowed in perpetuity J. William Hudgins associate William R. Hudgins Peter and Anne Brooke chair, conductor Principal Jason Snider endowed in perpetuity Ann S.M. Banks chair, Ken-David Masur Jonathan Menkis Daniel Bauch endowed in perpetuity Anna E. Finnerty chair, Jean-Noël and Mona N. Tariot Assistant Timpanist endowed in perpetuity Michael Wayne chair Mr. and Mrs. Edward H. Linde chair Thomas Martin assistant Associate Principal & trumpets Kyle Brightwell E-flat clarinet Peter Andrew Lurie chair, conductor Thomas Rolfs Stanton W. and Elisabeth K. endowed in perpetuity Principal Moritz Gnann Davis chair, endowed Roger Louis Voisin chair, in perpetuity Matthew McKay endowed in perpetuity orchestra Benjamin Wright harp manager and bass clarinet director of Thomas Siders Craig Nordstrom Jessica Zhou orchestra Associate Principal Principal personnel Kathryn H. and Edward M. Nicholas and Thalia Zervas bassoons Lupean chair chair, endowed in perpetuity Lynn G. Larsen by Sophia and Bernard Gordon Richard Svoboda Michael Martin Principal Ford H. Cooper chair, endowed assistant Edward A. Taft chair, endowed in perpetuity personnel in perpetuity managers Suzanne Nelsen trombones Bruce M. Creditor John D. and Vera M. MacDonald Toby Oft chair Andrew Tremblay Principal Richard Ranti J.P. and Mary B. Barger chair, Associate Principal endowed in perpetuity stage manager Diana Osgood Tottenham/ * participating in a system Stephen Lange John Demick Hamilton Osgood chair, of rotated seating endowed in perpetuity §on sabbatical leave ˚ on leave

week 15 boston symphony orchestra 17 The BSO/GHO Alliance

“I am incredibly grateful to all my colleagues at the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhausorchester for coming together with me in a spirit of great camaraderie to create a new and absolutely unique partnership in music-making.”

Andris Nelsons, BSO Ray and Maria Stata Music Director, and GHO Gewandhauskapellmeister-designate

Under the direction of Andris Nelsons, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (GHO) Alliance is a new, multidimensional collaboration designed to create opportunities for these two orchestras and their respective audiences to explore each ensemble’s unique world of music-making and discover the great traditions and historic accomplishments that have played an important role in building their reputations as two of the world’s great orchestras. In addition, the programs of the BSO/ GHO Alliance will celebrate the shared mutual heritage of these two orchestras, while also shedding light on the overall culture of each ensemble and the cities they are proud to call home.

Taking place over a five-year period starting in 2017-18, the BSO/GHO Alliance will feature an extensive co-commissioning program, educational programs designed to spotlight each orchestra’s culture and history, and tour performances by the BSO at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig and the GHO at Symphony Hall in Boston—providing an extraor- dinary opportunity for orchestra musicians and audiences alike. This new alliance will also include musician exchanges between the two orchestras and their respective acclaimed academies for advanced music studies. One of the major highlights of the BSO/GHO Alliance, to take place annually over the five-year period of the collaboration, will be a focus on complementary programming, through which the BSO will celebrate “Leipzig Week in Boston” and the GHO will celebrate “Boston Week in Leipzig,” thereby highlighting each other’s musical traditions through uniquely programmed concerts, chamber music performances, archival exhibits, and lecture series.

To learn more about the BSO/GHO Alliance, please visit www.bso.org/leipzigweek.

18 andris nelsons, ray and maria stata music director bernard haitink, lacroix family fund conductor emeritus seiji ozawa, music director laureate thomas adès, deborah and philip edmundson artistic partner Boston Symphony Orchestra 137th season, 2017–2018

Thursday, February 8, 8pm | sponsored by hemenway & barnes llp Saturday, February 10, 8pm | the john f. bok memorial concert andris nelsons conducting

“Leipzig Week in Boston” j.s. bach concerto in d minor for three pianos, bwv 1063 [Allegro] Alla Siciliana Allegro kirill gerstein, piano jean-yves thibaudet*, piano thomas adès, piano *BSO 2017-18 Artist-in-Residence schumann “nachtlied,” opus 108, and “neujahrslied,” opus 144, for chorus and orchestra tanglewood festival chorus, james burton, conductor david kravitz, baritone (in “Neujahrslied”)

Texts and translations begin on page 41.

{intermission}

Program continues...

In consideration of the performers and those around you, please turn off all electronic equipment during the performance, including tablets, cellular phones, pagers, watch alarms, messaging devices of any kind, anything that emits an audible signal, and anything that glows. Thank you for your cooperation. Please note that the use of audio or video recording devices, or taking pictures of the artists—whether photographs or videos—is prohibited during concerts.

week 15 program 19 bravo to

Hemenway & Barnes is proud to be a Boston Symphony Orchestra corporate sponsor.

For over 150 years, we’ve served as trusted counsel, financial advisors and trustees to the region’s high net worth families, businesses and nonprofit organizations. Expect seasoned partners who listen well, understand your situation personally and deliver performance custom-tailored to your needs.

Copyright © 2018 Hemenway & Barnes LLP www.hembar.com Sean shepherd “express abstractionism” (2017) (world premiere; co-commissioned by the boston symphony orchestra, andris nelsons, music director, through the generous support of catherine and paul buttenwieser, and the new works fund established by the massachusetts cultural council, a state agency) I. dense bubbles, or: Calder, or: the origin of life on earth II. Richter, or: the rainbow inside a bolt of lightning III. Kandinsky, and: marble, and: Krasner IV. the sun, or: the moon, or: Mondrian mendelssohn symphony no. 3 in a minor, opus 56, “scottish” Introduction and Allegro agitato Scherzo assai vivace Adagio cantabile Allegro guerriero and Finale maestoso

the boston symphony orchestra and gewandhausorchester leipzig alliance is supported by a leadership gift from the gregory e. bulger foundation/ gregory bulger & richard dix. thursday evening’s performance of bach’s concerto in d minor for three pianos, bwv 1063, is supported by a gift from eric and sarah ward in memory of mrs. karen van scoyoc ward. this week’s performances by the tanglewood festival chorus are supported by the alan j. and suzanne w. dworsky fund for voice and chorus. bank of america and takeda pharmaceutical company limited are proud to sponsor the bso’s 2017-18 season.

These concerts will end about 10:20 Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe performs on a Stradivarius violin, known as the “Lafont,” generously donated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra by the O’Block Family. First associate concertmaster Tamara Smirnova performs on a 1754 J.B. Guadagnini violin, the “ex-Zazofsky,” and James Cooke performs on a 1778 Nicolò Gagliano violin, both generously donated to the orchestra by Michael L. Nieland, M.D., in loving memory of Mischa Nieland, a member of the cello section from 1943 to 1988. Steinway & Sons Pianos, selected exclusively for Symphony Hall. The BSO’s Steinway & Sons pianos were purchased through a generous gift from Gabriella and Leo Beranek. Special thanks to Fairmont Copley Plaza, Delta Air Lines, and Commonwealth Worldwide Executive Limousine. Broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are heard on 99.5 WCRB.

week 15 program 21 andris nelsons, ray and maria stata music director bernard haitink, lacroix family fund conductor emeritus seiji ozawa, music director laureate thomas adès, deborah and philip edmundson artistic partner Boston Symphony Orchestra 137th season, 2017–2018

Friday, February 9, 8pm | the william and helen pounds concert (“Casual Friday” concert, including introductory comments from the stage by BSO associate principal horn Richard Sebring) “casual friday” series sponsored by arbella insurance foundation

andris nelsons conducting

“Leipzig Week in Boston”

j.s. bach concerto in d minor for three pianos, bwv 1063 [Allegro] Program note Alla Siciliana begins on Allegro page 29. kirill gerstein, piano jean-yves thibaudet*, piano thomas adès, piano *BSO 2017-18 Artist-in-Residence

A 1723 map of Leipzig, from the time of J.S. Bach’s residency there.

22 Sean shepherd “express abstractionism” (2017) (world premiere; co-commissioned by the boston symphony orchestra, andris nelsons, music director, through the Program note generous support of catherine and paul buttenwieser, and begins on the new works fund established by the massachusetts page 45. cultural council, a state agency) I. dense bubbles, or: Calder, or: the origin of life on earth II. Richter, or: the rainbow inside a bolt of lightning III. Kandinsky, and: marble, and: Krasner IV. the sun, or: the moon, or: Mondrian mendelssohn symphony no. 3 in a minor, opus 56, “scottish” Introduction and Allegro agitato Program note Scherzo assai vivace begins on Adagio cantabile page 55. Allegro guerriero and Finale maestoso

Please note that there is no intermission in this concert, which will end about 9:30.

the boston symphony orchestra and gewandhausorchester leipzig alliance is supported by a leadership gift from the gregory e. bulger foundation/ gregory bulger & richard dix.

bank of america and takeda pharmaceutical company limited are proud to sponsor the bso’s 2017-18 season.

Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe performs on a Stradivarius violin, known as the “Lafont,” generously donated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra by the O’Block Family. First associate concertmaster Tamara Smirnova performs on a 1754 J.B. Guadagnini violin, the “ex-Zazofsky,” and James Cooke performs on a 1778 Nicolò Gagliano violin, both generously donated to the orchestra by Michael L. Nieland, M.D., in loving memory of Mischa Nieland, a member of the cello section from 1943 to 1988. Steinway & Sons Pianos, selected exclusively for Symphony Hall. The BSO’s Steinway & Sons pianos were purchased through a generous gift from Gabriella and Leo Beranek. Special thanks to Fairmont Copley Plaza, Delta Air Lines, and Commonwealth Worldwide Executive Limousine. Broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are heard on 99.5 WCRB. In consideration of the performers and those around you, please turn off all electronic equipment during the performance, including tablets, cellular phones, pagers, watch alarms, messaging devices of any kind, anything that emits an audible signal, and anything that glows. Thank you for your cooperation. Please note that the use of audio or video recording devices, or taking pictures of the artists—whether photographs or videos—is prohibited during concerts.

“casual friday” program 23

An Introduction to This Week’s Program by Christoph Wolff

When classical concert audiences experience the world premiere of a new work, they ordinarily don’t realize that the other pieces on the same program, more often than not established works from the musical past, were likewise once performed and listened to for the first time. Concertgoers are usually even less aware of the role orchestras have played in the creation of new symphonic works they premiere or commission. Therefore, one of the main goals in the new alliance formed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig is making audiences aware not only of what these two distinguished performing organizations have contrib- uted to the history of music over many generations, but, indeed, how they continue to do so.

The Gewandhaus Orchestra as the older of the two was the major commissioning orchestra in 19th-century Europe and premiered such important works as Beetho- ven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (the Emperor), Schubert’s Great C major symphony, three of Schumann’s four symphonies, Brahms’s Violin Concerto, and many more. In some respect, the BSO took over this function and became a world leader for the 20th century not only by commissioning works from most, if not all notable American composers, among them Copland, Carter, Sessions, Bernstein, Cage, and Schuller, but by casting a wide net and going deliberately international with such commissions as Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Hindemith’s Konzertmusik for strings and brass, Ibert’s Mouvement symphonique, Respighi’s Metamorphoseon modi XII, and Tippett’s The Mask of Time. Tonight’s program features the world premiere of Sean Shepherd’s Express Abstractionism, to be followed next month by the American premiere of Jörg Widmann’s Partita. Both were co-commissioned by the BSO and GHO, thereby signaling the launch of an extended and unparalleled series of joint commissions that will give the newly written music a special boost on both sides of the Atlantic when presented in Boston and Leipzig.

The other works on the program of this first “Leipzig Week in Boston” reflect something of a signature package characteristic of the first truly significant era in the history of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. All of them pertain

The second Gewandhaus concert hall in Leipzig, which opened its doors in to the thirteen years when Felix 1884, was chosen by BSO founder Henry Lee Higginson as a model for the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy served design of Symphony Hall, and was destroyed in 1944 during World War II

week 15 introduction to the program 25 as Gewandhauskapellmeister from 1835 until his untimely death in 1848—a period that also happened largely to overlap with the time his close friend Robert Schumann lived in Leipzig as music critic, pianist, and composer. It seems noteworthy that Men- delssohn in 1841 helped improve and then championed Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 in B-flat at the Gewandhaus concerts, less than a year before he premiered there in 1842 his own Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Scottish, actually the last of his symphonies to be composed. In the early 1840s, Leipzig audiences could experience quite a few major works by these two composers of the same age, including an early version of Schumann’s Piano Concerto (1841), his Opus 41 string quartets (from 1842, and dedicated to Mendelssohn), the Opus 44 Piano Quintet (also 1842), and his oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri (1843); Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2, Lobgesang (1840), Lieder ohne Worte, Opus 55 (1841), the oratorio Erste Walpurgisnacht, Opus 60, his Midsummer Night’s Dream music, Opus 61, the revised Piano Concerto in G minor, Opus 25 (all 1843), and his Violin Concerto (1845)—not to mention the many works by Beethoven, Weber, and other more or less contemporary composers, including premieres of new works such as Niels W. Gade’s First Symphony of 1843, all led and performed by the extremely busy Gewandhauskapellmeister and frequently touring piano virtuoso and conductor. No question, under Mendelssohn’s inspiring leadership, the Gewandhaus became an institution of fame.

Schumann’s late works for solo voices, choir, and orchestra, which date from after Mendelssohn’s death, did not have their premieres at the Gewandhaus, and were first

26 performed there only after their composer’s own death. Nevertheless, both Nachtlied, Opus 108 (1849), on a poem by Friedrich Hebbel, and Neujahrslied, Opus 144 (1849-50), on a text by Friedrich Rückert, are representative of the large repertoire of early and mid-19th-century secular vocal works that played an important role in programs of the early symphonic societies, and which gave room to their active and often large amateur choir affiliates. These two works have never been performed at Symphony Hall until the present concerts.

That is true as well of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in D minor for three keyboards, BWV 1063, which the BSO has previously played only at Tanglewood, decades ago. This is also a work of particular significance to the history of the Gewandhaus. Originally composed by Bach in the 1730s for performances with his sons and students at the Collegium Musicum concerts in Leipzig—forerunner of the “Grosses Concert” (“grand concert”) established in 1743, and relocated in 1781 to the “Gewandhaus” (“garment hall”)—it became the first Bach work ever performed at the Gewandhaus, on November 9, 1835. The three piano soloists were the sixteen-year-old Clara Wieck (later Clara Schumann), the young Louis Rakemann, and the twenty-six-year-old Mendelssohn, who only two months earlier had begun his tenure at the Gewandhaus. The Bach Triple Concerto, which Mendelssohn performed again five years later with Franz Liszt and Ferdinand Hiller, apparently inspired him to establish at the Gewandhaus what he called “Historische Concerte,” that is, concerts not only containing contemporary works but specifically featuring music of the 18th century with compositions by Bach, Handel, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and others. However, Mendelssohn did and could not anticipate that such an idea, revolutionary at the time, would spread like wildfire well beyond the Gewandhaus—with an impact that gradually but surely and forever changed the balance of typical concert programs, as testified by that of this week’s concerts. christoph wolff, Adams University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, is Artistic Advisor to the BSO/GHO Alliance. Born and educated in Germany, he joined the Harvard faculty in 1976, and from 2001 to 2013 headed the Leipzig Bach Archive, a research institute affiliated with the University of Leipzig. He has published extensively in many areas of music history from the 15th to 20th centuries, notably on Bach and Mozart.

week 15 introduction to the program 27

Johann Sebastian Bach Concerto in D minor for three keyboards, strings, and basso continuo, BWV 1063

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH was born in Eisenach, Thuringia, in central Germany, on March 21, 1685, and died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750. His Concerto in D minor for three harpsichords, strings, and continuo dates from about 1730 and, like many of his other keyboard concertos from this time, is likely an arrangement of an earlier concerto—in this case, for three violins—dating from the 1710s, about which we otherwise have no information. (A reconstructed version by Wilfried Fischer for three violins, BWV 1063R, and other similar arrangements by Fischer were published in 1970 as part of the New Bach Edition, and have since become part of the repertoire.) Scholars suggest that this was among works Bach wrote for himself and his older sons to perform in Leipzig’s “collegium musicum” concerts.

IN ADDITION TO THE THREE SOLOISTS, the score of the Concerto in D minor, BWV 1063, calls for string orchestra—violins and violas—plus continuo, played here by cellos and basses.

The genre of the concerto as we know it—a work combining a single or multiple solo instruments with a larger ensemble—only began to solidify in the late 1600s, although the term, the origin of which isn’t quite clear, had been in use for some time. The word itself is Italian, so it’s not surprising to find that the genre initially developed there; the most important solo concertos, and the first to appear in print (in the 1690s), were those by Giuseppe Torelli (1658-1709).

When Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) took up the solo concerto, it had only been around for a generation or so, and he, evidently one of the great violinists of his age, brought it to its first, revolutionary peak. His collections of violin concertos, among them L’estro armonico and the even more famous The Four Seasons, featured solo parts demanding virtuosity and independence, which helped radically distinguish the soloist(s) from the humbler ensemble parts. Vivaldi’s is the model for the concerto tradition passed down to us today, through Mozart and Brahms to Stravinsky to Unsuk Chin. Even if that model is explicitly rejected, it’s still the one composers need to reckon with.

week 15 program notes 29 Program page for the first Boston Symphony performances of Bach’s D minor concerto for three keyboards, BWV 1063, on July 18 and 27, 1948, Serge Koussevitzky conducting, with soloists Ralph Berkowitz, Lukas Foss, and Bernard Zighera (BSO Archives)

30 Johann Sebastian Bach, only four years younger than Vivaldi, began that reckoning immediately upon learning of his Italian colleagues’ work, transcribing Vivaldi’s and other composers’ concertos as a way of assimilating the best models of the age. Much of this self-education took place in Weimar, where Bach was employed between 1708 to 1717. The six Brandenburg Concertos, completed by 1721, were a culmination of these efforts, in which Bach synthesized and invented a variety of approaches to the combination of single or multiple soloists with ensembles of various sizes.

With the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Bach is said to have written the first concerto for keyboard and ensemble, in which the harpsichord, instead of its usual role as a member of the continuo accompaniment, is given a virtuosic obbligato part throughout, as well as an extended cadenza. Bach’s involvement with “pure” instrumental music was put aside for a time because of his move to Leipzig, where his duties composing cantatas for each week of the church year, as well as teaching and directing performances, left time for little else. His position as Kantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, beginning in 1723, came with concurrent duties as the director of music for the entire city, and was a position of great prestige. The post included overall responsibility for the music of the four principal churches, involving four choruses of boys drawn from the boarding students of the Thomasschule itself. Bach’s compositional activities focused on music for Sunday services, church feast days and special services, and other special occasions, such as weddings and funerals. The amount of music that Bach produced in this position is stag- gering. In his first two years he composed two complete church-year cycles fo cantatas, each cycle comprising more than sixty large-scale works. He completed two more cycles by 1729, and yet a fifth by the 1740s. Although in the first years at this post he wrote few independent instrumental works, many of the cantatas include concerto-like movements.

Having amassed a trove of cantatas by the end of the 1720s from which to draw for weekly performance, Bach was able to think about other kinds of music again. In 1729 he became director of Leipzig’s “collegium musicum,” a society of professional and amateur musicians founded by Georg Philipp Telemann in 1704. The society gave concerts weekly—Wednesdays outdoors during the summer, Fridays at Gottfried Zim- mermann’s coffee house during the winter months. The concerts were serious, and entertaining, events open to the public. In addition to performing music by other contemporary composers, the group of course played works by Bach himself, among them the Coffee and Peasant cantatas, chamber music, and concertos, including concertos for solo and multiple harpsichords with orchestral accompaniment, possibly written to display the talents of several of his musical sons.

With the collegium musicum’s need for repertoire, Bach took the opportunity to revisit and rework his own or other composers’ older concertos for melodic instruments. Most of the other keyboard concertos—those for solo keyboard and accompaniment, BWV 1052–59, and those for multiple keyboards and accompaniment, BWV 1060–64—are based on earlier works by Bach himself, most of which are lost. The Concerto for Four Harpsichords, BWV 1065, is a reworking of a piece by Vivaldi for four violins and orchestra. The Concerto for Three Harpsichords and Orchestra, BWV 1063, was originally for three violins.

week 15 program notes 31

Bach’s process for transcribing the works to their new settings is fairly clear from comparisons between the handful of extant earlier concertos and manuscript copies of the Leipzig-era keyboard concerto transcriptions. He first wrote out the original solo part nearly in its entirety, then made changes, some of them rather extensive, to accom- modate the line for the harpsichord, filling in the left-hand parts as well. Given that the limit of the harpsichord’s upper register is lower than that expected of a violin, the key was lowered by a step. Modern musicologists have been able to arrive at convincing approximations of the lost source works. Wilfried Fischer’s reconstructions (with an “R” appending the BWV number, e.g., BWV 1052R) were included as part of the New Bach Edition, the most complete representation of the composer’s works today.

Scholars have not pinned down a definite composition or premiere date for the D minor concerto for three harpsichords, BWV 1063, here played on three Steinway concert grand pianos, as is a common practice these days. The concerto is in three movements, fast-slow-fast, the invariable outline of Bach’s solo concertos. The first movement opens with a stentorian theme in 3/8 time, stated in unison by the three keyboards and strings. For the most part, the three keyboards play together consistently, with the first generally taking the foreground music and having a couple of extended passages by itself. The strings usually double the keyboard lines in a limited, accompanimental role.

The F major second movement is marked “Alla Siciliana,” indicating a lilting character, with the main melody played by all three keyboards plus first violins. This is followed by a brief accompanied solo for the first keyboard. A second, longer melodic episode for the three keyboards and first violins is similarly offset by a longer solo passage for the first keyboard, ending in a brilliant flurry of notes. The movement cadences on an A major dominant-seventh chord, setting up the return to D minor for the finale. This quick movement begins with a fugue subject taken by the second keyboard and second violins, joined in order by first, then third keyboards. Each has an extended solo passage, and the movement ends with a restatement of the theme.

Robert Kirzinger

Composer/annotator robert kirzinger is Associate Director of Program Publications of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

EVERY PREVIOUS BSO PERFORMANCE OF THIS D MINOR CONCERTO FOR THREE KEY- BOARDS, BWV 1063, took place at Tanglewood: the first as part of an all-Bach program on July 18, 1948, with Serge Koussevitzky conducting and soloists Ralph Berkowitz, Lukas Foss, and Bernard Zighera. The program was repeated exactly on July 27 that same summer, and the same soloists returned later to play the piece under Charles Munch’s direction on July 4, 1959. Berkowitz, Zighera, and Irving Fine played the piece under Munch in July 1951. An earlier performance of the piece by the “Tanglewood Academy Orchestra” took place in Tanglewood’s West Barn on August 16, 1940, during the school’s first summer.

week 15 program notes 33

Robert Schumann “Nachtlied,” Opus 108, and “Neujahrslied,” Opus 144

ROBERT SCHUMANN was born in Zwickau, Saxony, on June 8, 1810, and died in an asylum at Endenich, near Bonn, on July 29, 1856. “Nachtlied” was composed in 1849, first performed on March 13, 1851, in Düsseldorf, and published in 1853. Schumann sketched “Neujahrslied” between December 27, 1849, and January 2, 1850, subsequently working on the instrumentation (after moving from Dresden to Düsseldorf) between September 27 and October 7, 1850. It was first performed on January 11, 1851, in Düsseldorf, but was not published until 1861, after Schumann’s death. The present performances are the first of each by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

“NACHTLIED,” Opus 108, on a poem by Friedrich Hebbel, is scored for mixed choir and an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani, and strings.

“NEUJAHRSLIED,” Opus 144, on a poem by Friedrich Rückert and a concluding chorale verse by Martin Rinckart, is scored for mixed choir, bass soloist, and an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, four trombones, timpani, and strings.

Robert Schumann made Leipzig his home in 1830, abandoning his study of law to con- centrate on music. Within the first two years of this residency he both adopted and then abandoned the piano as a career goal, having injured himself with a hand-strengthening device. In Leipzig he fell overwhelmingly in love with his piano teacher’s nineteen-year- old daughter, Clara, and there, too, he launched his famous Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which introduced his two literary aliases to the world: Florestan the bounding extrovert and the shadowy, internal Eusebius.

In “little Leipzig...more than one chapter of the world’s history has already been written,” Schumann declared in an excited review of Mendelssohn’s oratorio St. Paul. Schumann was responding to a model of combining music and drama triggered by their shared experience of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Mendelssohn’s 1829 Berlin revival of the St. Matthew not only revived Bach for the concert stage but also served as predecessor

week 15 program notes 35 TRIAL BY FIRE: JOAN OF ARC AND THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

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36 for such new compositions as Mendelssohn’s own oratorios and Schumann’s own masterful oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri (1843).

At the end of his Opus 68 piano collection Album für die Jugend (“Album for the Young”), Schumann wrote that “the highest expression possible in music comes from the chorus and orchestra.” This was something of a change for him. From 1830 to 1839 his published compositions consisted entirely of works for the piano. In 1840, just after he met Mendelssohn, and specifically in response to his falling in love with Clara, he erupted with songs, on which he concentrated almost exclusively for a full year. These were followed the next year by works for the Singakademie (the men’s singing club) and the beginnings of an oratorio. His success with these choral works led to appointments as a professional conductor, first in Dresden and then Düsseldorf; and once he had an orchestra and choir at hand, he began to write pieces for concert use.

Nachtlied (“Night Song”) and Neujahrslied (“New Year’s Song”) were both premiered in 1851, in Düsseldorf, during Schumann’s first season there as director of the Musikverein (“Music Society”). Neujahrslied, completed in 1850, was first performed on January 11, 1851; Nachtlied, composed in 1849, was premiered on March 13. Published in 1853, Nachtlied was a favorite of Schumann’s friends and has been performed regularly since its composition. Although several performances of Neujahrslied were planned, the only one on record before its 1861 publication was given at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, on January 1, 1857.

Of the two, “Nachtlied” is more intimate in scale, consisting of a single large movement, tightly woven and expressive. This is the voice of Eusebius, opening with a haunting prelude that immediately sets the darkened stage; voices then emerge from the murk. They paint the scene of glimmering stars with hushed winding lines and ask the poet’s question: what is awakened there? Alarming fanfares, accelerated tempo, and brilliant string tremolos give the answer: a frightening vision of gigantic life. The driving rhythm slows and the third stanza comes with melodic sighs. A descending theme is traded among the choral voices, warm with acceptance. Over and over again they repeat their request: “Sleep.”

If Nachtlied represents the voice of Eusebius, “Neujahrslied”—extroverted and bounding in the spirit of the new year—can be heard as a response from Florestan. Where Nachtlied dwelt on life and death in the dark of the night, here we exult in new potential, allowing only a few moments of doubt. Neujahrslied sprawls over seven movements, a joyous verbosity replacing Nachtlied’s sober concision. It begins with a robust orchestral introduction, leading to the bass soloist’s first instruction to the choir: “Greet the year that awakes!” Martial dotted rhythms evoke the French overture. Schumann teases this form, first conceived in the context of opera for the king’s entrance into the theater, as a playful response to the poem’s royal imagery. In this text, both the old and new year are kings. The introduction is followed immediately by a graceful duet between the choral altos and sopranos, thanking the old year as it passes. They are interrupted by a shout

week 15 program notes 37 ONE DAY UNIVERSITY® at Tanglewood register Sunday, August 26, 9:30am–1:15pm Ozawa Hall today! at General Registration: $159 Foreign Policy, Sleep and Climate Change event schedule for One Day University, the acclaimed lifelong learning series, returns to august 26, 2018 Tanglewood for the eighth year! Join these award-winning professors from three renowned schools, each presenting their best lecture in • lectures take place in ozawa hall • Ozawa Hall. Then join guest conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the BSO for the 2018 season finale performance of Beethoven’s Ninth 9:30–9:40am Introduction Symphony. 9:40–10:45am STEPHEN KOTKIN, Princeton University American Foreign Policy: Where Are We Headed? Stephen Kotkin, Professor of History and International Affairs, 10:45–10:55am Break Princeton University 10:55am–12pm JESSICA PAYNE, In examining the profound anxiety in the U.S. and abroad today, Professor University of Kotkin will look back to the uncertainties of the 1970s: Watergate and Notre Dame impeachment, Vietnam, inflation, a stagnant Soviet Union and intense 12–12:10pm Break poverty and mass violence in Communist China. 40+ years later, the Soviet Union is gone, China has become the world’s second largest 12:10–1:15pm DAVID HELFAND, economy and in some ways, America is more prosperous than ever, yet Columbia University in other ways we’ve moved in the wrong direction. Professor Kotkin will explore what happened, the real strengths and weaknesses of major

• koussevitzky music shed • powers in 2018, and how the world might look in another 40 years. 2:30 pm Boston Symphony Orchestra The Science of Sleep: How it Affects Creativity, Focus and Memory Christoph Eschenbach, conductor Jessica Payne, Professor of Psychology, University of Notre Dame Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, soprano Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano What’s going on in your head while you sleep? Professor Payne’s Joseph Kaiser, tenor research shows non-waking hours are incredibly valuable to our day- Thomas Hampson, baritone to-day lives. Many regions of the brain—especially those involved in Tanglewood Festival Chorus, learning, processing information, and emotion—are actually more active James Burton, conductor during sleep than when we’re awake, working together to help process BERNSTEIN Symphony No. 1, and sort information taken in during the day. Professor Payne will also Jeremiah outline practical information on how to control sleep habits to insure BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9 maximum productivity.

Registration includes: Climate Change: What We Know and What We Don’t Know • All three professor presentations David Helfand, Professor of Astronomy, Columbia University • One complimentary lawn Every planet’s temperature is controlled by a simple balance between the admission to the 2:30pm BSO energy it receives and the energy it radiates back into space. Professor concert, or a 10% discount on a Helfand will examine each of the main factors affecting balance, first by Shed ticket* exploring the astronomical phenomena that have driven climate change • VIP Parking in the past, then showing how the Earth’s atmosphere continues to change today. By examining the current energy balance and what we can • 10% off 8/26 Meals-to-Go expect in the next decades, Professor Helfand will provide a scientific analysis of what we know and don’t yet know about climate change.

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*One Day University lawn admissions have no dollar value and may not be used to upgrade for a ticket inside the Shed. All One Day University registrants are eligible for a 10% discount on 8/26 at 2:30pm (Beethoven 9) Shed tickets purchased in advance of the concert. Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863) Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866)

of “Hail!” from the chorus, who address the new year in sprawling grandeur worthy of a coronation: “All of us...bow before you to do as you please!”

The forward momentum of successive choruses is brought to a halt with the fourth- movement recitative; the prophetic bass commands the choir to look ahead to the new year with some foreboding. They reply in an echo of the first movement, the key now minor and dotted rhythms anxious instead of majestic, streaked through with anxiety by a rippling line in the cellos. Courage quickly sweeps aside anxiety with a turn to the major mode as chorus and soloist reassure themselves. March rhythm underlies the fifth movement, string pizzicati standing in for drums, as they vow to “sharpen the ickle”s and be prepared.

Martial sternness is succeeded by a hymn as the poem turns again to address the new year, a near-religious moment among the hectic clamoring. Schumann has by now moved far from the beginning in both key and mood, leaving the hymn tense despite its long lines and prayerful manner. Brief silence reigns at its conclusion, a question hang- ing in the air, to be shattered by the prophet’s return. With sharp shouts the orchestra wavers between two keys, and the choir echoes the prophet in fortissimo unison: “Close the circle, and let this be fulfilled!” Here Schumann sweeps into a glorious choral finale, weaving imitative sections with homophony, and introducing his final theme like a slowly unwrapped gift. It is the Lutheran chorale Nun danket alle Gott (“Let all give thanks to God”), first as a long-note theme in the basses and then in a massive choral statement. Celebratory triplets surround the chorale, together building to a final salute to the new year: “Hail!”

Joshua Anand Slater joshua anand slater is a member of the music staff at Trinity Wall Street in New York City.

week 15 program notes 39

SCHUMANN “Nachtlied,” Opus 108 Text by Friedrich Hebbel

Quellende, schwellende Nacht, Swelling, surging night, Voll von Lichtern und Sternen: full of lights and stars: In den ewigen Fernen, in the eternal distances, Sage, was ist da erwacht? say, what has awakened there? Herz in der Brust wird beengt; My heart in my breast is constricted; Steigendes, neigendes Leben, Life—rising, falling, Riesenhaft fühle ich’s weben, I feel it weave a gigantic web, Welches das meine verdrängt. Which squeezes mine out. Schlaf, da nahst du dich leis’, Sleep, you approach quietly, Wie dem Kinde die Amme, like a nurse to a child, Und um die dürftige Flamme and around the feeble flame Ziehst du den schützenden Kreis. you draw a protective circle. Trans. PAMELA DELLAL

SCHUMANN “Neujahrslied,” Opus 144 Text by Friedrich Rückert; final chorale verse by Martin Rinckart

Mit eherner Zunge da ruft es: Gebt Acht! With a ready tongue the cry comes: take note! Ein Jahr ist in Schwunge zu Ende gebracht. The course of a year is brought to an end. Ihr freudigen Zecher, hebt tönende Becher, You joyful seekers, raise ringing glasses, begrüsset das Junge, das Jahr, das erwacht. greet the newborn, the year that awakens. In Dunkel geboren, im nächtigen Schooß, Born in darkness, in a nocturnal womb, da’ tritt’s aus den Thoren des Lebens how gloriously it steps out of the gates wie gross! of life! Was führst du im Schilde? What do you bear on your shield? Was zeigst du im Bilde? What do you indicate in your herald? Was rüsten die Horen für wechselndes Loos? What sort of altered destiny do the hours muster? Blickt, Brüder, zum Alten! Look, brothers, at the old year! Wie schwindet’s so klein! How it shrinks into nothing! Es kriecht in die Spalten des Grabes hinein; It creeps into the fissures of the grave; die hängende Flöre, the drooping veils, die ziehenden Chöre: the accompanying choirs, der Schattengestalten weh’n hinter ihm d’rein. the shadowy figures blow after it. Du herrschtest noch eben mit mächtiger Just recently you governed with powerful Lust; joy; des Reiches begeben dich hast du gemusst. you required riches as your tribute. Wie streng du geschaltet, However harshly you governed, wie herb du gewaltet, however bitterly you ruled, du liessest uns Leben und Muth doch you still allowed our hearts some life der Brust. and spirit.

Please turn the page quietly.

week 15 program notes 41 Jetzt nimmst du den Zepter, das Now take the scepter, the royal robe, Königsgewand, legst von dir, verlebter Gebieter, das Pfand; the seal, exhausted ruler, and put them aside; der junge, nun mündig, the young one, now of age, erfasst es so bündig; seizes it decisively; der Stab, o wie schwebt er ihm frei in Oh, how freely he swings the staff in der Hand! his hand! Heil! Heil! Neuer Gebieter der harrenden Welt! Hail! Hail! New ruler of the expectant world! Ein Jahr lang uns wieder zum Amte bestellt! Placed in the office for another year! Wir alle, die deinen, We all, your own, wir kommen, erscheinen, We come, appear, und beugen die Glieder, zu thun, was gefällt. and bow our limbs, to do what is pleasing. Hebt, Brüder, die Blicke, auf muthiger Bahn Lift your gaze, brothers, upon the couragous path mit festem Genicke o schauet ihn an! with necks outstretched, behold him! Des Königes Mienen, The king’s expressions, was les’t ihr in ihnen? what do you read in them? was steht für Geschicke geschreibet daran? What fate is written there?

42 In dunkelen Zügen, in flammender Glut, In dark glances, in seething fervor, nicht lauter Vergnügen, noch Freuden no more pleasure, nor joy and good. und Gut. Sie wollen uns sagen They will speak to us von Dulden und Tragen. of patience and burdens. Die Schrift kann wohl lügen, doch rüste dich, Though the writing may lie, yet buck up, Muth! courage! Wie schwer von Entwürfen! How difficult in anticipation! Wie drängend nach That! How pressing towards action! O dass wir nicht dürfen entziffern den Rath! Oh, if only we did not need to decipher this intent! Der Rath wird schon reifen; The plan will soon ripen; lernt Sicheln zu schleifen, learn to sharpen your sickles, noch eh’ wir’s bedürfen, sonst ist es zu spat. or before we need them it will be too late. O Fürst, auf dem Throne des Zeitlaufs O prince, awakened on the throne of time! erwacht! Du trägest die Krone, wir huld’gen in Nacht, You wear the crown, we huddle in the dark, bereit, auf dein Winken ready, at your signal zu steh’n und zu sinken; to rise and to fall; geh’, herrsche und lohne, geh’ führ’ uns go, rule and reward, go lead us with strength! mit Macht! Lass’ Thaten geschehen, stell’ uns auf Let deeds occur, place us into action, den Plan, lass’ Palmen uns wehen, lass’ Wunden let palms be waved, let wounds be incurred! empfahn! Dass, wenn du einst wieder so that, when you once again von Throne musst nieder, must step down from the throne, du siehst, und wir seh’n, es ist was gethan. you, and we, shall see that something has been accomplished. Schliesst, Brüder, die Runde, Join in a circle, brothers, und sprecht zum Gedeih’n: and pronounce as a blessing: Stets lasst uns im Bunde vereiniget sein. let us always be joined in unity. Doch, will es uns trennen, Yet, if we are separated, so soll man erkennen, each of us will realize, wie fest auf dem Grunde steht jeder allein. how firmly on the ground each stands alone.

[CHORALE, VERSE 1: “NUN DANKET ALLE GOTT”] Nun danket alle Gott Now let all give thanks to God mit Herzen, Mund und Händen, with hearts, mouths, and hands, der grosse Dinge thut who has done great things an uns und aller Zeit, for us and at all times, der ewig war und ist who was and is eternal, und ewig bleiben wird. Heil! and will exist forever. Hail!

Trans. PAMELA DELLAL

week 15 texts and translations 43 John Singer Sargent, Candelabra with Roses, oil on canvas, 21 x 16 in., sold: $457,500

Assisting New England families with the sale of their fine jewelry and paintings since 1987. groganco.com | 20 charles street, boston, massachusetts 02114 | 617.720.2020 Sean Shepherd “Express Abstractionism,” for orchestra (2017)

SEAN SHEPHERD was born in Reno, Nevada, on July 1, 1979, and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He wrote “Express Abstractionism” in 2017 on a joint commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig celebrating the BSO/GHO Alliance, a new, multidimensional partnership between the two organizations and their conductor, Andris Nelsons. Shepherd completed the score in Pittsburgh on December 27, 2017. These are the world premiere performances, and this is the first work by Sean Shepherd to be performed by the BSO. The Gewandhausorchester Leipzig with Andris Nelsons conducting is scheduled to give the European premiere at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig on August 31, 2018. The score bears the dedication, “for Jacob, with love and in gratitude.”

THE SCORE OF “ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM” calls for piccolo (doubling third flute), two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets (second doubling E-flat clarinet), bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon (doubling third bassoon), four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (four players: I. xylophone, nibble gong, suspended cymbal, John Singer Sargent, tambourine, glockenspiel, egg shaker, finger cymbal, tenor rum;d II. vibraphone, bass drum, sleigh bells, two triangles, two woodblocks; III. marimba, small tam-tam, log drum, crotales, suspended cymbal, brake drum, conga, vibraslap, two bongos; IV. tubular bells, suspended cymbal, three tem- sold: ple bowls, temple blocks, almglocken, large maracas, claves, three triangles, cowbell, ratchet), harp, piano and celesta, and strings. The duration of the piece is about fourteen minutes.

Sean Shepherd has been in the fold, as it were, of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a number of years: he was a Tanglewood Composition Fellow in 2005, when the first fo his works performed at Tanglewood, Ozymandias for vocal quartet, clarinet, and string quartet, was premiered. Since then, several other works of his have been heard at Tan- glewood, including his These Particular Circumstances and his Oboe Quartet, both during the Festival of Contemporary Music in 2012, and his So-Called Battle for two voices and piano in 2014. Shepherd and his music, not only these works but most of the rest of his catalog, were therefore quite familiar to BSO Artistic Administrator Anthony Fogg Assisting New England families with the sale of their fine jewelry and paintings since 1987. groganco.com | 20 charles street, boston, massachusetts 02114 | 617.720.2020 week 15 texts and translations 45 Sean Shepherd on “Express Abstractionism”

In the months leading up to the first notes of this piece being put on paper, I had a lot of ideas. This seems obvious enough, you might imagine. To this I must reply: even a bad idea can be difficult to come by; a good (fertile, useful, flexible, clear, sincere) idea is a unicorn trotting among the four-leaf clover in Shangri-La. To have more than enough thoughts, good or bad, for a piece is, well: rare.

So what to do with a lot of ideas? As far as I can count, two options: rush them down the flooding river of time as quickly as possible, one after the other, or: stack them on top of each other, like pancakes or Jenga or Tetris. The two-dimensionality of this conundrum led to the firstgood idea I had for this piece, which was to look to those who’ve dealt with it on canvas or in space, while choosing to leave each idea (a line, a color, a shape, a void) as naked as it came to them. There is stacking that goes on, but I would say the nature of this piece follows the first option—things tend to occur rather quickly over these four short movements (what occurs to me, after the fact, is that I might possibly have written a very small symphony)—hence my too-clever-by-half play on words for a title: Express Abstractionism.

Beyond the fact that I am immediately and consistently drawn to their work, the artists who inspired this piece have no particular relationship to each other, other than a basic definition of working predominantly as abstract (i.e., non-representational, but even that can be complicated) artists. Lee Krasner was an actual Abstract Expressionist (though sadly to me and my personal taste, she is probably better known as being widowed by another one). I would classify three of these artists as “iconic”—their work can be quickly recognizable as their own, and can even be emblematic of their time—while the only living artist, Gerhard Richter, continues to evolve and confound. In fact, putting these five together means that one can find an outlier in many kinds of comparisons—but a tie that appears significant to me is the generally tragic role that the political events of the early and middle 20th century played in each of their lives.

As a citizen, I’m consumed by the events of our time, and as a fascinated student of history, I feel greater unease about the future than I ever have in my still-short life. As someone who struggles with an appropriate creative response (or even whether to respond at all), I’ve taken retreat in the magic of these abstract ideas, and in their utter rawness and power in the face of…complication. Our cultural habit has been to take them—the ideas, the artists, the work, and the movement—very seriously, but I find it useful to view simply. A line is a line and blue is blue, and the brush that touches the canvas fits right in the hand—today, that to me is truth.

Express Abstractionism is dedicated to my partner, Jacob Goodman, whose curiosity, conversation, challenge, and support I treasure.

Sean Shepherd

46 when he proposed Shepherd for a commission to celebrate a historic partnership between the BSO and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. This month, concurrent with his position as music director of the BSO, Andris Nelsons takes up the historic position of Gewandhausorchesterkapellmeister, famously held by such musicians as Felix Mendelssohn and, more recently, Kurt Masur.

Sean Shepherd is already recognized for the energy and sonic imagination of his scores and the precision of his instrumental writing, inviting comparisons with such predeces- sors as Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, and his teacher Steven Stucky. In recent years he has been particularly sought after for orchestral and large-ensemble works, starting with his first major orchestral work,Wanderlust , composed for the Cleveland Orches- tra at Oliver Knussen’s request. Since then he’s written another work for Cleveland, 2013’s Tuolumne, premiered under Franz Welser-Möst’s direction; two smaller works for the Reno Philharmonic and Laura Jackson; his Concerto for Ensemble and Blur for the Ensemble Intercontemporain; a concert opener, Blue Blazes, for the National Symphony Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach; Magiya for the National Youth Orchestra of the USA and Valery Gergiev; and Songs for the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert. The New York Philharmonic had earlier commissioned his These Particular Circumstances for their new music CONTACT! series.

Shepherd grew up in Reno, Nevada, in a former ranching family with several generations of history in the region. He came to music through the public school arts programs, playing flute initially and—as happens not infrequently in these situations—being switched, not by his own choice, to bassoon to fill out the school ensemble. Composition was an almost accidental sideline, developing as part of his more general musical awareness. He had virtually no formal training as a composer during high school, but by the time he went to college, writing music had begun to eclipse performance, and he decided to double major in bassoon and composition at Indiana University. He studied composition there with Claude Baker and David Dzubay, who helped expand not only his technique but his awareness of other modes of musical expression. He studied bassoon with Kim Walker. He received his master’s degree in composition from the Juilliard School in New York, where he worked with Robert Beaser, and earned his doctorate at Cornell University, where his teachers were Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Berlin and participated in the Aspen Music Festival and the Britten-Pears Young Artist Program. Along with the ensembles named above, he has been commissioned by ASCAP, the National Society of Arts and Letters, and the New York Youth Symphony, among others. Shepherd is also a thoughtful writer and commentator on music and culture with a rich social media presence.

Like many composers, much of Shepherd’s training has involved studying the works of other composers; notable among his influences are Elliott Carter, George Benjamin, and Henri Dutilleux, with whom he shares a concern for rigorous musical architecture, clarity of gesture, and active, brilliant textures. Although he makes his living primarily as a composer, he has taught frequently around the country, often filling in for colleagues on leave from their positions. This year he is subbing for the composer Amy Williams

week 15 program notes 47 Francisco Noya, Music Director THE FRENCH/RUSSIAN CONNECTION FEBRUARY 10, 8:00PM & FEBRUARY 11, 3:00PM First Baptist Church, 848 Beacon St, Newton

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48 Jindrich Nosek, Wikipedia Carl van Vechten

Gerhardt Richter

Alexander Calder

at the University of Pittsburgh; Shepherd and his partner moved to Pittsburgh in 2017 after being based for many years in New York City.

Shepherd frequently draws on extramusical concepts and imagery for inspiration in his work, often taken from his direct experience. For example, his Ensemble Intercontem- porain piece Blur takes the conceit of a view from a fast-moving vehicle, in which elements of the landscape, from near to far, seem to move at different speeds, with different levels of detail perceptible to the viewer. His second work for the Cleveland Orchestra, Tuolumne, was inspired by Ansel Adams photographs from Yosemite (the composer’s mother is a photographer). His new work, Express Abstractionism, was inspired by the work of five different modern artists from the past hundred years: the Russian-born Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), the Dutch Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), the Americans Lee Krasner (1908-1984) and Alexander Calder (1898-1976), and the German Gerhardt Richter (b.1932).

Stimuli from painting, sculpture, and other arts can and do suggest close analogies between art and music, of course—say, the idea of light and darkness corresponding to transparency and density in scoring or harmony—but perhaps more common is a composer’s tendency to reflect in a piece the mood or energy he or she experiences in a given art work. For that matter, artists have responded in much the same way to music, such as in Kandinsky’s Impression III (Konzert), the artist’s reaction to a performance of Schoenberg’s music. Reactions can run a gamut from impressionistic to direct modeling of shapes and proportions, even within one and the same piece. The 20th century saw an uptick of musical responses to visual art—perhaps because of the rise of abstraction in both media, among other reasons. Gunther Schuller’s Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee is a particularly famous example; more recently the BSO-commissioned Thea Musgrave work Turbulent Landscapes was an engagement with the work of J.M.W. Turner. Several of Harrison Birtwistle’s works are responses to art, and Morton Feldman was

week 15 program notes 49 “With First Republic, banking is an incredibly personal experience.”

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André Kertész

Wassily Kandinsky Lee Krasner Piet Mondrian

continually inspired by, and inspiring for, many New York contemporary artists including Rothko and Guston. There are plenty of other examples, testament to the fecund relationship between visual and musical arts.

As the composer notes in his own comments (see page 46), he started thinking about the five artists who inspiredExpress Abstractionism as a way of organizing his thoughts about the layering, stacking, or tiling of sound objects, comparing it to how artists use materials and iconography. This led to some fairly explicit correspondences between each of the four movements of Shepherd’s piece (which, incidentally, comprise a symphony- like series of varying characters) and its respective model. The composer’s quixotic titles are an oblique and obscure reference to modernists’ use of either very dry, unen- lightening titles—e.g., Untitled or Composition—versus highly suggestive titles whose relationship to the visual content of a work is cleverly confounding, albeit perhaps more suggestive. In the first movement, “dense bubbles, or: Calder, or: the origin of life on earth,” Shepherd was thinking of his musical “objects” as having the clear, discrete shapes Calder employed in his metal sculptures and mobiles. Although not readily identifiable as simply “square” or “oval,” Calder’s shapes are nonetheless clean and immediately recognizable. When incorporated into a kinetic work like a mobile, that archetypal clarity of shape, abetted by the artist’s typical use of bright, pure colors, “stabilizes” the moving image for the viewer. Shepherd uses “blocks” of instrumental combinations in juxtaposition to suggest changing interrelationships of musical shape, and overlapping speeds to suggest movement. After a quiet opening chord, clarinets and bassoons intertwine disparate, rangy melodic lines, then divided strings oppose two very different kinds of sound, half of each section playing sustained, bowed notes, the other strumming, guitar-like. The gonglike chord that opens the piece acts as a kind of tactile, physical divider between the woodwind and string “shapes.” In the middle of fi

week 15 program notes 51

BostonSymphony 2017-18 Dorrance ND2017.indd 1 7/21/17 4:02 PM 2017-18

Our upcoming MARCH concerts Salem Giants of Romanticism Friday Evenings at 8:00 Salem Fri. March 9, 8:00 Brookline Sun. March 11, 3:00 in historic Hamilton Hall Mar 9 | Apr 20 Schumann Quartet in A minor, Opus 41, No. 1 Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Brookline Brahms Opus 115

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52 the movement is a full-orchestra passage so varied and dense that details blend and blur into a vibrating sheen.

The second movement, “Richter, or: the rainbow inside a bolt of lightning,” was inspired by the contemporary Dresden-born artist Gerhard Richter, whose long career has encompassed a bewildering range of media, perhaps most famously photography in combination with painting. Shepherd had a particular memory of a series of paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago, such as those titled Ice 1-4, from the late 1980s, in which paint is applied to the canvas in one process using a board or squeegee, resulting in a generalized directional texture but with (deliberately) uneven densities, from quite thick to almost nothing—the paint was scraped off as part of the process of its application. The artist then applies further layers of texture, color, shape. A salient point is that the negative-space areas of the canvas are the result of an active process, not a pas- sive one, almost like an erasure. Shepherd’s musical texture intersperses sharp, short gestures with a thick pattern of repeated figures. Especially active individual lines and gestures emerge brightly from the vibrant overall texture; lacunae and shifts of instrumental color create different densities of musical surface, including negative space. Still active but very quiet, it ends as though receding in the distance.

“Kandinsky, and: marble, and: Krasner” couples two very different artists, the Russian- born Wassily Kandinsky, whose shift from Fauvist representational art to geometrical (but still sensual) abstraction paralleled an important aesthetic shift in the 1910s; and the American abstract expressionist Lee Krasner, whose raw, patterned grids of the 1940s (Shepherd’s particular focus) were a strong influence on the work of her husband, Jackson Pollock. Shepherd was struck by his impression that both artists seemed compelled to overstuff their canvases with abstract imagery. Much of Krasner’s 1940s work is repetitive in idea but not in fact, calligraphy-like shapes hand-painted and widely varied filling the canvas from edge to edge. With Kandinsky, we may find shapes of pure geometry that seem machine-rendered—circles, triangles—layered with organic shapes, with a pure, clean color palette. Shepherd’s movement makes use of contrasting musical characters—scale melodies denoting Krasner’s looping lines, the heaviness of brass and percussion the solidity of Kandinsky’s shapes—with more blending and interactivity than strict opposition here.

The final movement is no splashy finale. The proto-minimalist simplicityf o Piet Mondrian’s intuitive grid paintings led Shepherd to the last movement’s still, austere, carefully bal- anced network of elements. In allowing each musical action to be heard in isolation, Shepherd had to focus intently on the rightness of each moment in its harmony, timbre, dynamic, and relationship to the prior and succeeding elements. The movement seems to take the crazily varied activity of the whole piece down to a still and highly focused point.

Robert Kirzinger

week 15 program notes 53 The Juilliard-Nord Anglia Performing Arts Programme The British International School of Boston offers students an innovative performing arts curriculum developed by The Juilliard School in collaboration with Nord Anglia Education. Students will gain life skills to enrich their academic experience, develop cultural literacy and be inspired to engage with performing arts throughout their lives. www.naejuilliard.com/bisboston Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Opus 56, “Scottish”

JAKOB LUDWIG FELIX MENDELSSOHN was born in Hamburg on February 3, 1809, and died in Leipzig, Saxony, on November 4, 1847. He completed this symphony—which, not counting the string symphonies he wrote as a boy, is actually his fifth and last—on January 20, 1842, though his first idea for it goes back to the summer of 1829. Though Mendelssohn always referred to this in correspondence and conversation as his “Scotch Symphony,” he does not use that title anywhere on the score.* He conducted the first performance on March 3, 1842, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. He then made a few revisions, and the work was played in its final form for the first time just two weeks later under the direction of Karl Bach, conductor at the Leipzig Opera. The dedication is to “H.M. Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland.” MENDELSSOHN’S “SCOTTISH” SYMPHONY IS SCORED for two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Mendelssohn is the most astonishing of all the composing prodigies. Mozart was to go much farther, but as a teenager not even he surpasses or often equals Mendelssohn in assurance and certainly not in individuality. To think of the young Mendelssohn is to think first of all of the Octet for Strings, written 1825, the year he turned sixteen, and of the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, the work of a boy of seventeen. (The Octet will be performed this Sunday afternoon, in Symphony Hall, by members of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and the Gewandhaus-Quartett.) He had found a voice unmistakably his own and he used it with the confidence of a seasoned professional. In a way he was just that. By the time of the Octet, he had seen, heard, read a lot. He had composed a lot, too.

All advantages were his. Moses Mendelssohn, his grandfather, was a philosopher and literary man of stature—a Martin Buber of his time, it has been suggested—who has an

* The rule that “Scotch” is used only for whiskey (or whisky) and that “Scots” and “Scottish” are the correct forms for people, places, customs, and so forth was not yet in force in Mendelssohn’s day. This symphony was called the “Scotch” without objection throughout the 19th century.

week 15 program notes 55 Program page for the first Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, “Scottish,” on January 20, 1883, with Georg Henschel conducting (BSO Archives)

56 enduring monument as the principal character of Lessing’s profound and humorous play about religious tolerance, Nathan the Wise. It is with Moses that the name Mendelssohn comes into the family: his father’s name was Mendel Dessau, and he styled himself Moses Ben Mendel, Moses the son of Mendel. Felix’s father was a prosperous banker. His mother played the piano, sang, drew, and read French, Italian, English, and Greek authors in the original.

Felix’s sister Fanny, four years older, surprised the family when she was thirteen by giving them a performance, from memory, of the whole of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier. Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, the person Felix was closest to all his life (even after his marriage) and whose death hastened his own, is one of the lost women of 19th-century history. Her father insisted that music could only be an ornament to her life, never its “fundamental bass.” He managed, however, to ignore the letters from Uncle Jakob Bartholdy, with their animadversions against Felix’s being allowed to become a professional musician, “which is after all no kind of career, no life, no goal.”

With Fanny to one side of him and Rebecka and Paul, two and four years younger, on the other, Felix was Crown Prince. At ten, he gave his first piano recital. He traveled widely with his family, turned into an accomplished linguist, and learned to execute the elegant drawings that adorn his letters and journals (see page 59 for an example). He became the pupil and protégé of Carl Zelter, composer, conductor, Bach-lover, and partner in a prolific correspondence with Goethe. It was through Zelter that Felix met Germany’s Great Man him self, improvising for him, upsetting him by thundering through Beethoven’s shocking Fifth Symphony for him at the piano, and thoroughly enjoying his rather flirta- tious friendship with that seventy-two-year-old Olympian eminence. The deaths of Zelter and Goethe in the spring of 1832 hit Mendelssohn hard; the former brought an additional hurt when the Berlin Singakademie did not appoint Mendelssohn as his successor.

In 1829, Mendelssohn, just turned twenty, had conducted the Singakademie chorus in a performance in Berlin of Bach’s Passion According to Saint Matthew. Apart from the fact that we would surely find Mendelssohn’s reorchestration and huge cuts hard to take, the significance of that performance has been exaggerated over the years, as well as embellished by tales of how the score Mendelssohn conducted from had been rescued in the nick of time from the grocer who had started to use its leaves to wrap cheese in. (Eduard Devrient, who sang the part of Jesus in the Berlin performance, was responsible for that one.) Still, even if Bach had not been as forgotten as all that, it is probable that nothing even approaching a complete Saint Matthew Passion had been heard in two generations. That in itself was sufficient to mark this as an undertaking of consid- erable moment in the 19th-century rediscovery of Bach. The enterprise was impressive and did make its waves.

It was also characteristic of its staggeringly gifted and ruthlessly driven organizer. Mendels sohn, elegant classicist nurturing Romantic fantasies, was amazingly facile and at times no less amazingly self-critical: the twelve-year gestation of the Scotch Symphony and his never-resolved doubts about the Italian tell their own stories. When

week 15 program notes 57 he died he was burnt out by his nonstop composing, traveling, conducting, playing. Being charming all the time must have been draining too. Fanny’s death was a blow his fragile ecology could not take. His F minor string quartet, a cry of a piercing intensity not heard in his music before, was to be his Requiem for her. Before he could finish it, he too had died, annihilated at thirty-eight.

In 1829 Mendelssohn made his first visit to England, the country where he became more appreciated, more adored, than in any other. He conducted his Symphony No. 1 with the London Philharmonic, played Weber’s Konzertstück and Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with that orchestra (creating a sensation because he did it from memory), gave a piano recital, and capped his stay with a benefit concert for Silesian flood victims, for which he assembled an all-star cast including the sopranos Maria Malibran and Henriette Sontag, the pianist Ignaz Moscheles, and the flutist Louis Drouet. Not to give a false im pression of Mendelssohn’s London stay, this time he did not just work but had fun as well.

In mid-July he was ready for a vacation, and so, with Karl Klingemann, a friend from Berlin now posted in London as Secretary to the Hanoverian Legation, he set out for Scotland. He was both a diligent and a gifted letterwriter, as was Klingemann, which means we have a remarkably complete picture of their journey to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, Inverness, Loch Lomond, and the Hebrides islands of Iona, Mull, and Staffa. They made a detour to Abbotsford to visit the then worshipped Sir Walter Scott and were disappointed to find him grouchy, distracted, and unwilling to rise beyond small talk. They were good-humored about bad food (sometimes no food), uncomfortable inns, and taciturn Scots (“To all questions you get a dry ‘no’”), but Mendelssohn hated, absolutely hated, bagpipes and anything to do with folk music.

On August 7, after his visit to Staffa and Fingal’s Cave, he jotted down the opening of his Hebrides Overture. A week before, on July 30, he had written home: In darkening twilight today, we went to the Palace [of Holyrood] where Queen Mary lived and loved. There is a little room to be seen there with a spiral staircase at its door. That is where they went up and found Rizzio in the room, dragged him out, and three chambers away there is a dark corner where they murdered him. The chapel beside it has lost its roof and is overgrown with grass and ivy, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything there is ruined, decayed and open to the clear sky. I believe that I have found there today the beginning of my Scotch Symphony. And for himself he wrote down sixteen bars of music, the opening, still in preliminary form, of this score.*

But it was years before either of his musical mementos from Scotland reached final form. The Hebrides Overture went through three stages, being first written in 1829 with

* One reason for Mendelssohn’s fascination with Queen Mary and Holyrood was that, like virtually every literate and theatergoing German, he loved Schiller’s emotional and rousing Maria Stuart.

58 From the travel diary of Mendelssohn and Karl Klingemann, with a sketch by Mendelssohn of the Scottish countryside

the name of Die einsame Insel (“The Desert Island”), then revised in December 1830 and again in June 1832. Mendelssohn did not even return to his plan for a Scotch Symphony until 1841. He wrote from Rome in March 1831 that he could not “find his way back into the Scottish fog mood,” and the matter receded farther and farther from the forefront of his mind. Over the next ten years he wrote the Reformation and Italian symphonies, as well as the Hymn of Praise (on the invention of printing), two piano concertos, four books of Songs Without Words, the oratorio Saint Paul, four string quartets, the Piano Trio No. 1, and much besides.

He had traveled, become music director first at Düsseldorf and then at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, married Cécile Jeanrenaud, had given the first performance of Schubert’s Great C major symphony, and had just been appointed director of the music division of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. In 1842, on his seventh visit to England, he made two new friends, enthusiastic and competent performers of his songs and chamber music, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and Her Majesty graciously consented to accept the dedication of the Scotch Symphony. (She herself was later the author of two charming memoirs about Scotland, Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, 1848-61 and More Leaves... 1862-82.)

When Breitkopf & Härtel published the score and parts in February 1843, Robert Schumann reviewed the work in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and, misinformed by someone about the circumstances of its composition, committed one of the most famous gaffes in the annals of criticism: We learn from a third party that the beginning of the new symphony was written... during Mendelssohn’s residence in Rome.... This is interesting to know in view of its special character. Just as the sight of a yellowed page, unexpectedly found in a mislaid volume, conjures up a vanished time and shines in such brightness that we forget the present, so must many lovely reminiscences have risen to encircle the imagination of

week 15 program notes 59

the master when among his papers he rediscovered these old melodies sung in lovely Italy—until, intentionally or unintentionally, this tender tone picture revealed itself; a picture that—like those of Italian travel in Jean Paul’s Titan—makes us forget for a while our unhappiness at never having seen that blessed land. And so it has often been said that a special folk tone breathes from this symphony— only a wholly unimaginative person could fail to observe it.... We do not find [here] traditional instrumental pathos and massive breadth, no sense of an attempt to outdo Beethoven; rather, it approaches, mainly in character, the Schubert [Great C major] Symphony—with the distinction that while Schubert’s suggests a rather wild, gypsy- like existence, Mendelssohn places us under Italian skies. This is a way of saying that the latter is of a graciously civilized character, speaking a more familiar language, though we must allow Schubert other superiorities, particularly that of richer powers of invention.

Schumann goes on to remark, “In point of plan, Mendelssohn’s symphony is distinguished by its intimate connection of all four movements.” Schumann refers to similarities among the movements of melodic shape, character, and so on. But Mendelssohn is also concerned with connection in another sense: the score is prefaced by a note asking that the movements not be separated by the customary pauses, and the composer goes on to suggest that their sequence be indicated in the program as follows: Introduction and Allegro agitato—Scherzo assai vivace— Adagio cantabile—Allegro guerriero and Finale maestoso. The markings in Mendelssohn’s preface and in the music itself, however, do not exactly correspond to this. (Max Bruch picked up Mendelssohn’s unusual “allegro guerriero” for his own Scottish Fantasia.)

The introduction begins solemnly. Mendelssohn has refined his 1829 sketch, coming up with a more interesting rhythm in the first measure and a less flaccid turn of melody a little later. This hymnlike opening gives way to an impassioned recitation for the violins, and it is from this passage that the rest of the Andante takes its cue. The music subsides into silence, and after a moment the Allegro begins, its “agitato” quality set into higher relief by the pianissimo that Mendelssohn maintains through twenty-one measures. The Scotch is very much a pianissimo symphony. The scoring tends to be dense and dark in a manner that we, certain of the symphony’s title, are much inclined to interpret as Northern and peaty. At the firstfortissimo , the tempo is pushed up to Assai animato, which is in fact the base speed for the remainder of the movement.

As always, Mendelssohn handles the entrance into the recapitulation captivatingly: as the moment of return approaches, cellos start to sing a new melody in notes much slower than the skipping staccato eighths in the strings and woodwinds, set in delicate piano against the surrounding pianissimo, and when the first theme returns, it is as a counterpoint against the continuing cello song. Schumann delighted in this sort of thing: “Every page of the score proves how skillfully Mendelssohn retrieves one of his former ideas, how delicately he ornaments a return to the theme, so that it comes to us as in a

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The scherzo emerges from this with buzzing sixteenth-notes and distant horn calls (on all sorts of instruments). In spite of Mendelssohn’s irritations in the summer of 1829, the flavor of the tunes is distinctly Scots. The Adagio alternates a sentiment-drenched melody with stern episodes of march character. The fiercely energetic fourth movement again seems very Scots indeed, and every bit as macho and athletic as Mendelssohn’s “guerriero” promises. He invents yet another of his magical pianissimos, this time to emerge into a noble song, scored in surprisingly dark and muted hues for such a perora- tion: he remarks somewhere that it should suggest a men’s chorus. Schumann of course caught the cousinage of this hymn to the one that begins the symphony and remarked: “We consider it most poetic; it is like an evening corresponding to a lovely morning.”

Michael Steinberg michael steinberg was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1976 to 1979, and after that of the San Francisco Symphony and New York Philharmonic. Oxford University Press has published three compilation volumes of his program notes, devoted to symphonies, concertos, and the great works for chorus and orchestra.

THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 was given by the Philharmonic Society led by George Loder in New York’s Apollo Rooms on November 22, 1845. A Boston performance with George J. Webb leading the Academy of Music took place at the Odeon on January 14, 1846.

THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE of Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony was given by Georg Henschel in January 1883, subsequent BSO performances being led by Bernhard Listemann (the second and third movements only, in Fall River), Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil Paur, Karl Muck, Max Fiedler, Pierre Monteux, Serge Koussevitzky, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, Joseph Silverstein, Seiji Ozawa, Pascal Verrot, Jeffrey Tate, Roger Norrington, John Nelson, Kent Nagano, Federico Cortese, Hans Graf (the most recent Tanglewood performance, on August 11, 2000), Jun Märkl, Jens Georg Bachmann, Kurt Masur, and Juraj Valˇcuha (the most recent subscription performances, in March 2012).

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The most recent comprehensive biography of J.S. Bach is Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work by Martin Geck, a professor at the University of Dortmund, Germany; this was translated by John Hargraves and published in the U.S. in 2006 (Harcourt). Another recent addition to the bibliography is Peter Williams’s J.S. Bach: A Life in Music, which takes the intriguing path of constructing a life of the composer using, as a jumping-off point, the famous 1754 obituary written by his son, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, and J.S. Bach’s pupil, J.F. Agricola (Cambridge University paperback). Also important and recent is Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, a detailed yet readable biography by Har- vard professor Christoph Wolff, one of the world’s most eminent Bach scholars (Oxford University paperback). Wolff’s Bach: Essays on His Life and Music is an earlier collection of self-contained essays, tending toward greater specificity of subject. Of great general interest, and fun to peruse, is J.S. Bach in the Oxford Composer Companions series. Laid out like an encyclopedia with entries by dozens of scholars on hundreds of individual Bach-related topics, this was edited by Malcolm Boyd, who also wrote the general- interest biography Bach in the “Master Musicians” series (Oxford University Press). Also of broad appeal is The Cambridge Companion to Bach, edited by John Butt (Cam- bridge). The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach, edited by Raymond Erickson, is a collection of essays on the influence of context and environment on Bach’s music (Amadeus Press). The J.S. Bach essay in the revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001) is by Christoph Wolff, somewhat but not radically changed from his essay in the 1980 New Grove. The earlier essay, along with the essays on Bach’s musically significant family members, was reprinted in a separate volume, The New Grove Bach Family (Norton paperback). The New Bach Reader, edited by Arthur Mendel and Hans David and revised by Christoph Wolff, compiles a biographical picture of Bach via citations from letters and other period documents in English translation (Norton). For important older sources, Albert Schweitzer’s and Philip Spitta’s biographies are still available in reprint editions (both Dover paperback).

There are many recordings of the Concerto in D minor for three keyboards, BWV 1063, played either on modern pianos or on harpsichord. Piano versions with modern string orchestras include Christoph Eschenbach, Justus Frantz, and Gerhard Oppitz with the Hamburg Philharmonic, Eschenbach conducting from the keyboard (Deutsche Grammophon); Gaby, Robert, and Jean Casadesus with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy (Sony); András Schiff, Peter Serkin, and Bruno Canino with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Schiff conducting (Decca); and a 1945 performance by

week 15 read and hear more 65 Edwin Fischer, Paul Baumgartner, and Adrian Aeschbacher with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra (Music & Arts). Versions with harpsichord are far more common now, taking varying approaches to Baroque period performance practice. Among these are conductor Helmuth Rilling’s with the Bach Collegium Stuttgart, featuring soloists Michael Behringer, Robert Levin, and Mario Videla (Hänssler Classic); conductor and soloist Pieter-Jan Belder’s with Musica Amphion, joined by Siebe Henstra and Menno van Delft (Brilliant Classics); conductor and soloist Trevor Pinnock’s with the English Concert and harpsichordists Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Kenneth Gilbert (Archiv Produktion); and the French ensemble Café Zimmermann with harpsichordists Céline Frisch, Dirk Börner, and Anna Fontana (Alpha Productions).

Composer Sean Shepherd’s website is www.seanshepherd.com. Here one can find news about performances, photos, posts about Shepherd’s comings and goings, links to audio clips and full performances, and other information. Shepherd’s music is published by Boosey & Hawkes; information about the composer and his works can also be found there (www.boosey.com/composer/Sean+Shepherd). Many performances of his music can be found on YouTube and SoundCloud (soundcloud.com/seanshepherd), and several works have been recorded commercially. His Blur was recorded by Ensemble Intercon- temporain under Matthias Pintscher’s direction, on a disc with works of Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, Edgard Varèse, and David Fulmer (Alpha Productions); Dust was recorded by violinist Benjamin Sun and pianist Jihye Chang (Albany), and These Particular Circum- stances, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for their CONTACT! series, was recorded live by Philharmonic musicians (New York Philharmonic).

Robert Kirzinger

John Daverio’s Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age” provides thoroughly informed consideration of the composer’s life and music (Oxford paperback). Eric Frederick Jensen’s Schumann is a good biography in the “Master Musicians” series (Oxford). Schumann: A Chorus of Voices, by John C. Tibbetts, offers varied perspectives on the composer and his work from a wide assortment of performers, scholars, biographers, critics, and commentators (Amadeus Press). John Worthen’s Robert Schumann: The Life and Death of a Musician is a detailed treatment of the composer’s life based on a wealth of contemporary documentation (Yale University Press). Peter Ostwald’s Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius is a study of the composer’s medical and psychological history, likewise based on surviving documentation (Northeastern University Press). Robert Schumann: The Man and his Music, includes a chapter by Louis Halsey on “The Choral Music” (Barrie and Jenkins).

Schumann’s Nachtlied, Opus 108, has been recorded by John Eliot Gardiner with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (Philips) and by Georg Günn with the Kammerchor Saarbrücken and the Deutsche Radio Phlharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslauter (Hänssler Classic). Though no commercial recording of

66 Neujahrslied, Opus 144, seems to be readily available, there are a number of videos to be found on YouTube.

Books in which to read about Mendelssohn include Mendelssohn: A Life in Music by R. Larry Todd (Oxford University Press); A Portrait of Mendelssohn by Clive Brown (Yale University Press); The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn by Peter Mercer-Taylor (Cambridge University paperback); the anthology Mendelssohn and his World, edited by R. Larry Todd (Princeton University Press); Eric Werner’s Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and his Age, translated by Dika Newlin (Macmillan); Philip Radcliffe’s Men- delssohn in the Master Musicians series, revised by Peter Ward Jones (Oxford); George Marek’s Gentle Genius, which is more concerned with the composer’s background and milieu than with specifics of the music (Funk & Wagnalls), and Herbert Kupferberg’s The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius (Scribners). Michael Steinberg’s program notes on Mendelssohn’s Third and Fourth symphonies (the Scottish and Italian, respec- tively) are in his compilation volume The Symphony–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford paperback).

The Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony in December 1959 with Charles Munch conducting (RCA). Less than a week before the recording session, a Munch/BSO performance was telecast from Sanders Theatre in Cambridge—a performance that has been issued on DVD (ICA Classics, with a Febru- ary 1958 Munch/BSO telecast of the composer’s Italian Symphony). Complete recorded cycles of the five Mendelssohn symphonies include Claudio Abbado’s with the London Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), Kurt Masur’s with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig (Warner Classics), and Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Deutsche Grammophon). Individually available recordings of the Scottish Symphony include Bernard Haitink’s with the London Philharmonic (Philips) and Peter Maag’s with the London Symphony Orchestra (Decca).

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Guest Artists

Kirill Gerstein An American citizen based in Berlin, multi-faceted pianist Kirill Gerstein divides his time between the United States and Europe. Highlights of his 2017-18 season in North America include debuts with the Pittsburgh Symphony and National Symphony; re-engagements with the Minnesota Orchestra and the symphony orchestras of Boston, Chi- cago, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Houston, Colorado, and Oregon; summer festival appearances at Ravinia, Aspen, Tanglewood, and his debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival; and touring with cellist Clemens Hagen to Philadelphia, Toronto, and Mon- treal. Internationally Mr. Gerstein works with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at home and on tour in Paris and Vienna; the Bavarian Radio Orchestra; the BBC Proms in London; and the Czech, Rotterdam, Stockholm, and Oslo philharmonics. Recent North American engagements include performances with the orchestras of Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Van- couver, and Montreal, as well as recital appearances in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Miami, and at Princeton and Duke universities. In Europe he has played with such prominent orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Munich Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, Finnish Radio Orchestra, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, and the Orchestre National de France. Mr. Gerstein has performed recitals in Vienna, Paris, Prague, Hamburg, London’s Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, and at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. Festival appearances have taken him to Salzburg, Verbier, Lucerne, and Edinburgh, the Proms in London, and the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival. His most recent recordings include Scriabin’s Piano Concerto with the Oslo Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko (LAWO Classics), Scriabin’s Prometheus: The Poem of Fire with the same forces, and, for Myrios Classics, Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and David Robertson. Previous Myrios recordings include Liszt’s Transcendental Études, named by The New Yorker as one of 2016’s most notable recordings; Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in the composer’s own 1879 version of the score; “Imaginary Pictures” coupling Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Schumann’s Carnaval; a recital disc of works by Schumann, Liszt, and Knussen; and two discs with Tabea Zimmerman of viola sonatas by Brahms, Schubert, Franck, Clarke, and Vieuxtemps. Brought up in the former Soviet Union studying both classical and jazz piano, Kirill Gerstein moved at fourteen to the United States, where he became the youngest student to attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Shifting his focus to the classical repertoire, he studied with Solomon Mikowsky in New York, Dmitri Bashkirov in Madrid, and Ferenc Rados in Budapest. A 2010 Gilmore Artist Award provided the funds for Mr. Gerstein to commission new works from Timo Andres, Chick Corea, Alexander Goehr,

week 15 guest artists 69 WINTERSPRING 2018 Classical SEASON AT THE SHALIN LIU PERFORMANCE CENTER

FEB 25 Seong-Jin Cho, piano MAR 16 Clemens Hagen, cello & Kirill Gerstein, piano Performing an all-Beethoven program Dawn Upshaw APR 22 Dawn Upshaw, soprano & Kirill Gerstein Gilbert Kalish, piano Performing works of Schubert, Ravel, Janácek and more

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70 Oliver Knussen, and Brad Mehldau. Kirill Gerstein taught at the Stuttgart Hochschule für Musik from 2007 to 2017 and, beginning in fall 2018, will teach at the Kronberg Academy’s new Sir András Schiff Performance Program for Young Artists. Kirill Gerstein has appeared with the BSO on five previous occasions: as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at Tanglewood for his BSO debut in July 2010; in both Thomas Adès’s In Seven Days and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 for his November 2012 subscription series debut with Adès on the podium; at Tanglewood in August 2014 in Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; on Opening Night of the 2015 Tanglewood season in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F; and in March 2017 as soloist in Busoni’s Concerto in C for piano and orchestra with men’s chorus, with Sakari Oramo conducting. Next season he returns to Symphony Hall for the world premiere of a BSO-commissioned piano concerto by BSO Artistic Partner Thom- as Adès. This coming summer at Tanglewood he is the BSO’s 2018 Koussevitzky Artist, appearing as soloist with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in Thomas Adès’s piano concerto In Seven Days; joining Adès for an evening of two-piano music in Ozawa Hall; and performing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in the summer’s gala Tanglewood on Parade concert.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet For more than three decades, Jean-Yves Thibaudet has performed worldwide, recorded over fifty albums, and built a reputation as one of today’s finest pianists. He plays a range of solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire—from Beethoven through Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Saint-Saëns; to Khachaturian and Gershwin; and to contemporary composers Qigang Chen and James MacMillan. The 2017-18 season takes Mr. Thibaudet to fourteen countries, including extensive concerts in Asia with the Singapore, NHK, and Guangzhou symphony orchestras, and the Malaysian, Hong Kong, and China philharmonics. As 2017-18 Artist-in-Residence with the Boston Symphony Orchestra this season, he plays Bach’s Triple Concerto with Thomas Adès and Kirill Gerstein this week, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the left hand next week, chamber music with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players next month, and Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety, in Boston also next month and at Carnegie Hall in April. Mr. Thibaudet is considered one of the premier interpreters of the solo part for this symphony, which he also performs during Bernstein’s centennial season with the Atlanta and National symphony orchestras; the San Francisco and Houston symphonies; the China Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra both at home and on tour in Germany, Austria, and Israel. Other season highlights include Ravel with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra; a Carnegie Hall recital with violinist Janine Jansen; a tour with the Royal Philhar- monic Orchestra in California, and a trip to his hometown to play Qigang Chen’s Er Huang, which was written for him, with the Orchestre National de Lyon. This season the Colburn School has extended Mr. Thibaudet’s artist-in-residency an additional three years and has announced the Jean-Yves Thibaudet scholarships; he himself will select students for the merit-based awards, regardless of their instrument choice. His passion for education and fostering young musical talent extends to his tour with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, with which he plays Gershwin and Messiaen in such noted European concert halls as the Concertgebouw, the new Elbphilharmonie, and the Teatro alla Scala. Recent additions to

week 15 guest artists 71 Your evening enchantment

A service of WGBH A SERVICE OF WGBH

Download the App his award-winning discography include Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety with the Baltimore Sym- phony Orchestra and Marin Alsop, with whom he previously recorded “Gershwin” (2010). In 2016, on the 150th anniversary of Erik Satie’s birth, Decca released a box set of Satie’s complete solo piano music performed by Mr. Thibaudet, one of the foremost interpreters and champions of the composer’s works. He is featured on Aaron Zigman’s soundtrack for Wakefield, Robin Swicord’s recent film drama; was soloist in Dario Marianelli’s award- winning scores for the filmsAtonement and Pride and Prejudice; and recorded Alexandre Desplat’s soundtrack for the 2012 filmExtremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Mr. Thibaudet’s concert wardrobe is by celebrated London designer Dame Vivienne Westwood. Born in Lyon, France, Jean-Yves Thibaudet won the Premier Prix du Conservatoire at age fifteen and, three years later, the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York City. Among his numerous commendations is the Victoire d’Honneur, the highest honor given by France’s Victoires de la Musique. In 2010 he was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. Previously a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, he was awarded the title of Officier by the French Ministry of Culture in 2012. Jean-Yves Thibaudet made his BSO debut at Tanglewood in 1992 and has since performed frequently with the orchestra at Tanglewood, in Boston, and at Carnegie Hall, appearing also with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and in recital in Ozawa Hall. His most recent subscription appearances with the BSO were in April 2015, as soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with Bernard Haitink conducting. His most recent Tanglewood appearance was in August 2017, performing Leonard Bernstein’s Sym- phony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety, with Gustavo Gimeno conducting.

Thomas Adès Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès is in his second of three seasons as the Boston Sym- phony Orchestra’s first-ever Artistic Partner. As the BSO’s Deborah and Philip Edmundson Artistic Partner, he collaborates variously as conductor, pianist, curator, and educator with members of the BSO community in Boston and at Tanglewood. This January he appeared as pianist with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and led the BSO in a subscription program of music by Beethoven, Ligeti, Adès, and Stravinsky; he appears this week as pianist with Andris Nelsons and the orchestra during the BSO’s first “Leipzig Week in Boston,” and this coming summer at Tanglewood will direct the 2018 Festival of Contemporary Music, as well as conduct both the BSO and Tangle- wood Music Center Orchestra. Thomas Adès’s compositions include three operas: the most recent, The Exterminating Angel, premiered at the 2016 Salzburg Festival, subsequently heard at the Royal Opera–Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera, and to be performed at the Royal Danish Opera this spring; his first,Powder Her Face, presented at the Cheltenham Festival/Almeida Theatre in 1995; and The Tempest, commissioned by Cov- ent Garden in 2004 with subsequent productions at the Vienna State Opera, Metropolitan Opera, and elsewhere. His orchestral works include Asyla (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, 1997), Tevot (Berlin Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, 2007), Polaris (New World Symphony, Miami 2011), the violin concerto Concentric Paths (Berliner Festspiele and the BBC Proms, 2005), In Seven Days–Piano Concerto with moving image (Los Angeles Philhar- monic and London’s Royal Festival Hall, 2008), and Totentanz for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and orchestra (BBC Proms, 2013). His first film score,Colette , is a collaboration with director

week 15 guest artists 73 Start your day with Joe.

Joe Mathieu is now on Morning Edition.

wgbhnews.org Wash Westmoreland, based on the writer’s life and starring Keira Knightley, to be released in 2018. Chamber works include the string quartets Arcadiana (1993) and The Four Quarters (2011), the Piano Quintet (2001), and Lieux retrouvés for cello and piano (2010). Solo piano works include Darknesse Visible (1992), Traced Overhead (1996), and Three Mazurkas (2010). Choral works include The Fairfax Carol (King’s College, Cambridge, 1997), America: a Prophecy (New York Philharmonic, 1999), and January Writ (Temple Church, London 2000). Mr. Adès coaches piano and chamber music regularly at the International Musicians Sem- inar at Prussia Cove, Cornwall, and from 1999 to 2008 served as artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. In addition to the BSO, he regularly conducts the Los Angeles Philhar- monic, New York Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam’s Royal Concert- gebouw Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony, Sydney Symphony, BBC Symphony, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, among others. Engagements this season take him to the Czech Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has led opera productions at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna Philharmonic, Salzburg Festival, and Zurich Opera. His many awards include the Grawemeyer Award for Asyla (1999); Royal Philharmonic Society large-scale composition awards for Asyla, The Tempest, and Tevot; the Ernst von Siemens Composers’ Prize for Arcadiana; and the British Composer Award for The Four Quarters. His CD recording of The Tempest from the Royal Opera House (EMI) won the Contemporary category of the 2010 Gramophone Awards. His DVD of the Metropolitan Opera production was awarded the 2013 Diapason d’Or de l’année, a 2014 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, and a 2014 ECHO Klassik Award for Music DVD Recording of the Year. In 2015 he was awarded Den- mark’s prestigious Léonie Sonning Music Prize. Thomas Adès made his BSO debut in March 2011, subsequently returning to conduct subscription concerts in November 2012, October 2013, November 2016, and January 2018. He made his first Tanglewood appearance with the BSO in July 2017, and also appeared that month as pianist in a “Schubert’s Summer Journey” program in Ozawa Hall, collaborating with baritone Andrè Schuen and with members of the Emerson String Quartet.

David Kravitz This season baritone David Kravitz returns to Odyssey Opera as Dunois in The Maid of Orleans and to the Boston Symphony Orchestra as Brander in The Damnation of Faust and as Kurwenal in Act II of Tristan und Isolde, the latter to be performed in April both in Boston and at New York’s Carnegie Hall. He also returns to Emmanuel Church in Boston for its “Late Night at Emmanuel” series, singing two settings of Allen Ginsberg’s poem A Supermarket in California. Last season he joined the Center for Contemporary Opera in a collaboration with Laboratorio Opera for the premiere of Love Hurts (music by Nicola Moro, libretto by Lisa Hilton), singing the role of Marquis de Sade/Gilles de Rais. He made his Opera Santa Barbara debut as the Forester in The Cunning Little Vixen and joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as the Notary in Der Rosenkavalier. Recent seasons have included Mr. Kravitz’s role debut as Scarpia in Tosca with Skylight Opera, Handel’s Messiah with the Virginia Symphony, a company debut with Palm Beach Opera, as the Rabbi in the world premiere of Enemies, A Love Story, the workshop and acclaimed world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s Crossing: A New American

week 15 guest artists 75 Opera with American Repertory Theater, and a return to Boston Lyric Opera as Baron Duphol in La traviata. Mr. Kravitz has performed world or regional premieres of numerous contemporary works, earning acclaim as Leontes in John Harbison’s Winter’s Tale with Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He has sung Dominick Argento’s song cycle The Andrée Expedition, newly commissioned songs by Andy Vores and James Yannatos, the world premiere of an oratorio by Kareem Roustom, and the world premieres of Thomas Whitman’s A Scandal in Bohemia with Orchestra 2001; James Yannatos’s Lear Symphony with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra; Julian Wachner’s My dark-eyed one with Back Bay Chorale, and short operas by Andy Vores and Theo Loevendie with Boston Musica Viva. His recordings include Bach’s Cantata No. 20 and St. John Passion with Emmanuel Music, and Harbison’s Four Psalms and Peter Child’s Estrella with the Cantata Singers. Before devoting himself full-time to a career in music, David Kravitz had a distinguished career in the law that included clerkships with U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen Breyer. He later served as Deputy Legal Counsel to the Governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Kravitz made his BSO debut in Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron under James Levine in 2006, subsequently returning for Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions; Berlioz’s Les Troyens also under James Levine (in 2008 at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood), Stravinsky’s The Nightingale; Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (the opening subscription concerts of the 2016-17 season), and, this past October, the role of Brander in Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust.

Tanglewood Festival Chorus James Burton, BSO Choral Director and Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus John Oliver, Founder and Conductor Laureate

This season at Symphony Hall, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra for performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Schumann’s Nachtlied and Neujahrslied under BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons; Grieg’s incidental music to Peer Gynt under BSO Associate Conductor Ken-David Masur; Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust under Charles Dutoit; Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloé led by Jacques Lacombe; and Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, under Giancarlo Guerrero. Members of the chorus also participated in this season’s all-Bernstein program on Opening Night. Originally formed under the joint sponsorship of Boston University and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the all-volunteer Tanglewood Festival Chorus was established in 1970 by its founding conductor John Oliver, who stepped down from his leadership position with the TFC at the end of the 2014 Tanglewood season. Awarded the Tanglewood Medal by the BSO to honor his forty- five years of service to the ensemble, Mr. Oliver now holds the lifetime title of Founder and Conductor Laureate and occupies the Donald and Laurie Peck Master Teacher Chair at the Tanglewood Music Center. In February 2017, following appearances as guest chorus conductor at both Symphony Hall and Tanglewood, and having prepared the chorus for that month’s BSO performances of Bach’s B minor Mass led by Andris Nelsons, the British-born James Burton was named the new Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, also being appointed to the newly created position of BSO Choral Director.

Though first established for performances at the BSO’s summer home, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus was soon playing a major role in the BSO’s subscription season as well as

76 BSO concerts at Carnegie Hall. Now numbering more than 300 members, the ensemble performs year-round with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops. It has performed with Seiji Ozawa and the BSO in Hong Kong and Japan, and with the BSO in Europe under James Levine and Bernard Haitink, also giving a cappella concerts of its own on the two latter occasions. The TFC made its debut in April 1970, in a BSO performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Leonard Bernstein conducting. Its first recording with the orchestra, Berlioz’s La Damnation of Faust with Seiji Ozawa, received a Grammy nomination for Best Choral Per- formance of 1975. The TFC has since made dozens of recordings with the BSO and Boston Pops, with James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Keith Lockhart, and John Williams. In August 2011, with John Oliver conducting and soloist Stephanie Blythe, the TFC gave the world premiere of Alan Smith’s An Unknown Sphere for mezzo-soprano and chorus, commissioned by the BSO for the ensemble’s 40th anniversary. Its most recent recordings on BSO Classics, all drawn from live performances, include a disc of a cappella music led by John Oliver and released to mark the TFC’s 40th anniversary; and, with James Levine conducting, Ravel’s complete Daphnis and Chloé (a 2009 Grammy- winner for Best Orchestral Performance), Brahms’s German Requiem, and William Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony for chorus and orchestra (a BSO 125th Anniversary Commission). Besides their work with the BSO, TFC members have performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic; participated in a Saito Kinen Festival production of Britten’s Peter Grimes under Seiji Ozawa in Japan, and sang Verdi’s Requiem with Charles Dutoit to help close a month-long International Choral Festival given in and around Toronto. The ensemble had the honor of singing at Sen. Edward Kennedy’s funeral; has performed with the Boston Pops for the Boston Red Sox and Boston Celtics; and can be heard on the soundtracks of Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, John Sayles’s Silver City, and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. TFC members regularly commute from the greater Boston area, western Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, and TFC alumni frequently return each summer from as far away as Florida and California to sing with the chorus at Tanglewood. Throughout its history, the TFC has established itself as a favorite of conductors, soloists, critics, and audiences alike.

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week 15 guest artists 77 James Burton James Burton was appointed Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and to the new position of BSO Choral Director, in February 2017. Born in London, Mr. Burton began his training at the Choir of Westminster Abbey, where he became head chorister. He was a choral scholar at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and holds a master’s degree in orchestral conducting from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Frederik Prausnitz and Gustav Meier. He has conducted concerts with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Hallé, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera, Royal Northern Sinfonia, BBC Concert Orchestra, and Manchester Camerata; in early 2016 he made his debut with the Orquestra Sinfònica Nacional with concerts in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Opera credits include Don Giovanni and La bohème at English National Opera, Così fan tutte at English Tour- ing Opera, The Magic Flute at Garsington, and Gianni Schicchi and Suor Angelica at the Prague Summer Nights Festival. He has served on the music staff of the Metropolitan Opera, Opéra de Paris, English National Opera, Opera Rara, and Garsington Opera, where he was honored with the Leonard Ingrams Award in 2008. He has also conducted in London’s West End and led a UK tour of Bernstein’s Wonderful Town in 2012. His extensive choral conducting has included guest invitations with professional choirs including the Gabrieli Consort, the Choir of the Enlightenment, Wrocław Philharmonic, and the BBC Singers, with whom he performed at the Dubai Opera house in its inaugural season earlier this year. From 2002 to 2009 he served as choral director at the Hallé Orchestra, where he was music director of the Hallé Choir and founding conductor of the Hallé Youth Choir, winning the Gramophone Choral Award in 2009. He returned to Manchester in 2014, preparing the choirs for a Gram- my-nominated recording under Sir Mark Elder of Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony. From 2002 to 2017 he was music director of the chamber choir Schola Cantorum of Oxford, touring all over the world and recording with Hyperion Records. He collaborates regularly with leading young musicians and in 2017 appeared as guest director of the National Youth Choir of Japan and the Princeton University Glee Club, as well as the Genesis Sixteen. He teaches conducting, and has given master classes at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Welsh College of Music. In 2011 he founded a conducting scholarship with Schola Cantorum of Oxford. His compositions and arrangements have been performed internationally, and his orchestral arrangements for Arlo Guthrie have been performed by the Boston Pops, by many other leading U.S. orchestras, and at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. His commissions have included the music for the 2010 World Equestrian Games opening ceremony, a setting for chorus and orchestra of Thomas Hardy’s The Convergence of the Twain commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, and a recent Christmas carol premiered by the Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, live on BBC Radio 3. His choral works are published by Edition Peters. As BSO Choral Director and Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, James Burton occupies the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Chair, endowed in perpetuity.

78 Tanglewood Festival Chorus James Burton, BSO Choral Director and Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus John Oliver, Founder and Conductor Laureate

(Schumann Nachtlied and Neujahrslied, February 8 and 10, 2018)

In the following list, § denotes membership of 40 years or more, * denotes membership of 35-39 years, and # denotes membership of 25-34 years. sopranos

Debra Benschneider • Michele Bergonzi# • Aimée Birnbaum • Joy Emerson Brewer • Jeni Lynn Cameron • Catherine C. Cave # • Sarah Dorfman Daniello# • Bridget Dennis • Emilia DiCola • Mary A.V. Feldman* • Jodie-Marie Fernandes • Katherine Barrett Foley • Kaila J. Frymire • Karen Ginsburg • Cynde Hartman • Kathy Ho • Eileen Huang • Polina Dimitrova Kehayova • Donna Kim # • Greta Koning • Sarah Mayo • Laurie Stewart Otten • Stephanie M. Riley • Sandra J. Shepard • Joan P. Sherman§ • Stephanie Steele • Dana R. Sullivan • Jessica Taylor • Sarah Telford# • Nora Anne Watson • Sarah Wesley mezzo-sopranos

Virginia Bailey • Betty Blanchard Blume # • Betsy Bobo • Donna J. Brezinski • Cypriana Slosky Coelho • Abbe Dalton Clark • Kathryn DerMarderosian • Dorrie Freedman§ • Irene Gilbride* • Mara Goldberg • Julie Hausmann • Irina Kareva • Susan L. Kendall • Yoo-Kyung Kim • Nora Kory • Gale Tolman Livingston* • Louise Morrish • Kendra Nutting • Lelia Tenreyro-Viana • Michele C. Truhe • Martha F. Vedrine • Christina Wallace Cooper # • Karen Thomas Wilcox tenors

Stephen Chrzan • Tom Dinger • Ron Efromson • Keith Erskine • Len Giambrone • James E. Gleason • Leon Grande • J. Stephen Groff* • Timothy O. Jarrett • James R. Kauffman# • Kwan H. Lee • Michael Levin • Lance Levine • Henry Lussier§ • Daniel Mahoney • Ronald J. Martin • Mark Mulligan • David Norris* • Adam Ouellet • Dwight E. Porter § • Guy F. Pugh • Adam Van der Sluis • Andrew Wang • Hyun Yong Woo basses

Nicholas Altenbernd • Matthew Buono • Eric Chan • James W. Courtemanche • Arthur M. Dunlap • Michel Epsztein • William Farrell • Jeff Foley • Mark Gianino • Mark L. Haberman* • David M. Kilroy • Will Koffel • Bruce Kozuma # • Timothy Lanagan # • Daniel Lichtenfeld • Christopher T. Loschen • Martin F. Mahoney II • Richard Oedel • Stephen H. Owades § • Donald R. Peck # • Bradley Putnam • Peter Rothstein § • Karl Josef Schoellkopf# • Scott Street • Charles Sullivan • Stephen Tinkham • Bradley Turner # • Thomas C. Wang # • Peter J. Wender§

Ian Watson, Rehearsal Pianist Pamela Dellal, German Diction Coach Jennifer Dilzell, Chorus Manager Micah Brightwell, Assistant Chorus Manager

week 15 guest artists 79 Boston Symphony Orchestra 137th season, 2017–2018

Sunday, February 11, 3pm Symphony Hall

gewandhaus-quartett Frank-Michael Erben, first violin Conrad Suske, second violin Anton Jivaev, viola (guest artist) Jürnjakob Timm, cello (guest artist)

boston symphony chamber players Steven Ansell, viola William R. Hudgins, clarinet Edwin Barker, double bass Richard Svoboda, bassoon Elizabeth Rowe, flute James Sommerville, horn John Ferrillo, oboe

with BSO Members Elita Kang, violin Alexander Velinzon, violin Sato Knudsen, cello Thomas Rolfs, principal trumpet Toby Oft, principal trombone Timothy Genis, percussion and Moritz Gnann, BSO assistant conductor

haydn string quartet in d, opus 64, no. 5, “the lark” Allegro moderato Adagio Menuet. Allegretto; Trio Finale. Vivace gewandhaus-quartett

80 ligeti six bagatelles for wind quintet (1953) I. Allegro con spirito II. Rubato lamentoso III. Allegro grazioso IV. Presto ruvido V. Béla Bartók in memoriam. Adagio. Mesto VI. Molto vivace. Capriccioso ms. rowe; messrs. ferrillo, hudgins, svoboda, and sommerville foss “for aaron” (2002) messrs. erben, jivaev, timm, and barker ms. rowe; messrs. ferrillo, hudgins, svoboda, sommerville, rolfs, oft, and genis moritz gnann, conductor

{intermission} mendelssohn octet in e-flat for four violins, two violas, and two cellos, opus 20 Allegro moderato ma con fuoco Andante Scherzo: Allegro leggierissimo Presto mr. erben, mr. suske, ms. kang, and mr. velinzon, violins messrs. jivaev and ansell, violas messrs. timm and knudsen, cellos

the boston symphony orchestra and gewandhausorchester leipzig alliance is supported by a leadership gift from the gregory e. bulger foundation/ gregory bulger & richard dix.

week 15 chamber program 81 Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) String Quartet in D, Opus 64, No. 5, “The Lark” (Hob. III:63)

The six quartets published as Opus 64 constitute Haydn’s second tribute to Johann Tost, the principal second violin in Haydn’s orchestra from 1783 to 1788. Tost must have been a fine violinist, but had a rather complicated relationship with the composer, not least because of his eagerness to set up an establishment to copy and sell music to foreign publishers without the composer’s knowledge. Haydn had already had a great deal of difficulty with such practices; yet even after Tost had gone to Paris in 1788, carrying some of Haydn’s works off with him, Haydn was willing to compose for him again. Tost’s specialty was floating high notes that soar far above the rest of the ensemble, and Haydn made sure that the dozen quartets he wrote for Tost had plenty of examples.

The Opus 64 set of 1790 is the last group of quartets Haydn composed before leaving for England on his first visit. Not long before this he had composed two sets of three quartets each for Tost, his Opus 54 and Opus 55. H.C. Robbins Landon considers the Opus 64 set as a whole to be Haydn’s “greatest single achievement of the period—six flawless masterpieces” showing “utility of purpose, perfection of execution, and profundity of spirit.” It is the opening of the D major quartet, the fifth of the set, that won the piece its nickname, which refers to the high-lying first violin line heard

Boston ChamBer musiC soCiety

Debussy Centennial Highlighting the music of Debussy (1862–1918) with performances of his string quartet and three sonatas

Sun. 1/7 • 3 PM | Sanders Theatre Sun. 2/18 • 3 PM | Sanders Theatre Dohnányi Serenade in C for String Trio, Op. 10 Beethoven Serenade in D for Flute, Violin & Viola Debussy String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 Walton Piano Quartet in D minor Dvořák String Sextet in A major, Op. 48 Debussy Sonata for Flute, Viola & Harp, L. 137 with violist Kim Kashkashian with flutist Paula Robison & harpist Jessica Zhou 617.349.0086 • www.bostonchambermusic.org

82 against the jaunty accompaniment idea that opens the work. Following the meditative Adagio, the third movement contrasts a witty, major-mode minuet with an earthy, minor-mode Trio. The quick-moving finale rushes along, barely stopping for breath, and is practically over before we know it, but, typically for Haydn, with no shortage of invention along the way.

Steven Ledbetter steven ledbetter was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.

György Ligeti (1923-2006) Six Bagatelles for wind quintet

Although as a child György Ligeti was drawn to a musical career, he was strongly dis- couraged by his father. By the time he finished school, in 1940, war had broken out, Hitler’s Reich controlled Hungary, and Jews were virtually prohibited from attending the university. Ligeti was at first able to study with Ferenc Farkas while unofficially attending university science courses, and later worked with Pál Kádosa in Budapest before matters in Hungary became untenable. He, along with many other Jews, was pressed into forced labor in 1944. He eventually escaped and waited out the war in Transylvania. His father and brother died in concentration camps; his mother survived Auschwitz. Ligeti resumed his schooling in Budapest at the Franz Liszt Academy, working with Sándor Veress and meeting Zoltán Kodály, who arranged a position for him as a theory instructor. He also met the composer and pianist György Kurtág, who became a lifelong friend.

As the 1940s continued, the increasing political and military presence of the Soviets became as oppressive in its way as the war had been. Only a watered-down, stylized folk music was acceptable; even Bartók’s music was suppressed. Ligeti’s style changed from willing compliance with social realist strictures to a more abstract, progressive approach, virtually guaranteeing that his music would not be performed. It was in the repressed Budapest atmosphere in the early 1950s that Ligeti wrote a set of eleven piano pieces he called Musica ricercata (1951-53). Ligeti himself later found the piece to be “hovering...between gravity and caricature,” but he rewrote six of the pieces for woodwind quintet in 1953. Hungarian authorities found Ligeti’s “Stravinsky/Bartók” language too jarring (!) and did not allow performance of the piece until 1955—even then withholding the sixth bagatelle as being too modern.

The Six Bagatelles for woodwind quintet are highly differentiated in character and approach. In the fast first bagatelle, the short, six-note motif is juggled between high instruments and low. The second is a lament, the theme being stated in each of the instruments in flexible, expressive rhythms. The third piece features a beautiful, singing melody over a very fast ostinato. The fourth movement uses the rhythm of a Bulgarian folk dance and plays with different dynamic levels and instrumentation for dramatic

week 15 chamber notes 83 contrast. The fifth movement, marked “Béla Bartók in memoriam,” contrasts sections of two tempos, but uses the same incisive motif for both. The high-energy last movement is a kind of circus music, with a lyrical theme in the flute that is treated to satirical parody in the other instruments.

Ligeti was able to escape Hungary in a harrowing night in 1956, and lived the rest of his life in Germany and Vienna, eventually earning a reputation as one of the great and most celebrated geniuses of 20th-century music, with an inimitable musical voice. His Bag- atelles, though an early work, show his trademark humor and the already vast musical imagination that defines his entire output. As such the set has become, in spite of tricky performance requirements, one of the most popular of all works for woodwind quintet.

Robert Kirzinger

Composer/annotator robert kirzinger is Associate Director of Program Publications of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Lukas Foss (1922-2009) “For Aaron” (2002)

Lukas Foss was a member of the very first class (1940) of the Berkshire Music Center, established by Koussevitzky to be a training ground for young professional composers, conductors, singers, and orchestral musicians. The German-born Foss spent the sum- mers 1940-42 in the Berkshires working with Koussevitzky. Soon after, Koussevitzky hired him as orchestral pianist for the BSO. His musical life then had many parallel tracks: composer, conductor, pianist, and educator. He took a faculty position at UCLA in 1951 and taught there for many years, also teaching at Tangle- wood, Harvard, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, and many other institutions. As music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Milwaukee Symphony he followed the lead of Koussevitzky, Copland, and Bernstein in bringing American music to its rightful audience, and at the same time was also a noted performer of the music of Bach and Mozart.

Early in his career as a composer, Lukas Foss leaned toward American neoclassicism, the then current mainstream represented by Copland, Piston, and Schuman, along with a certain rigor of construction growing out of his love for the music of Mozart, Bach, and other composers he performed as a keyboardist. The Prairie and Song of Songs are examples of this early style. Foss began exploring avant-garde approaches in the late 1950s, forming an ensemble with younger musicians to unleash the energies of group improvisation. Some of his most important works date from the 1960s, among them Time Cycle and Baroque Variations. Through his recent pieces runs the thread of lucid nostalgia that also appears in For Aaron, a crisp, rhythmically incisive reminiscence of Foss’s association with Tanglewood and Aaron Copland beginning over sixty years ago.

84 For Aaron’s clear motivic writing and casually exquisite contrapuntal textures are a hall- mark of Foss’s craft, a result of careful study of the masters from Bach to Copland. At the time of the premiere, Foss wrote: For Aaron means of course Aaron Copland. I never took lessons with him but I learned a lot from his music, which made me fall in love with America. I got to know Aaron when I was sixteen years old. We became friends for life. For Aaron is based on early sketches I wrote in my Tanglewood student days (1940, ’41, ’42). It is basically in one movement, but there are different sections: slow, fast, scherzando, slow. It can be performed with just twelve musicians (solo strings and winds) or with a string orchestra and winds. It was commissioned in 2001 by the Boston Symphony for Tanglewood.

The world premiere of For Aaron took place on July 23, 2002, at Tanglewood during the summer’s Festival of Contemporary Music, in recognition of Lukas Foss’s 80th birthday year. It was performed by Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center under the direction of conductor Stefan Asbury. Foss writes in his introduction to the score, “I dedicate this composition to you, Aaron, and to our fifty years of friendship.”

Robert Kirzinger

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Octet in E-flat for strings, Opus 20

Was there ever so precocious a musical composition as the Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet? Certainly Mozart was younger when he started composing, and Schubert was no slouch either, but as brilliantly talented as they were, neither of them had by his sixteenth year achieved anything as fresh and original as this Octet, composed in 1825. Ludwig Spohr had written four estimable and well-known works for this ensemble, but they usually treated the collection of instruments as two antiphonal string quartets, echoing and re-echoing to the point of stultification. Mendelssohn virtually created a new medium by fusing the two quartets into a single large ensemble that combined the instruments in every possible permutation, thereby producing a vibrancy of color hitherto unknown and rarely matched since. At times the Octet seems about to turn into a small symphony for string orchestra—Mendelssohn already had a dozen of those under his belt, which explains the incredibly fluent writing for the string ensemble—but then the music breaks up into smaller motives treated contrapuntally and regains the character of pure chamber music.

Mendelssohn addressed the symphonic quality of much of the score quite frankly in his instructions to the performers: “This Octet must be played by all the instruments in the symphonic orchestral style. Pianos and fortes must be strictly observed and more strongly emphasized than is usual with pieces of this character.” His remarks likely allude to an important change in the character and locale of chamber music performances that was beginning to take place at that time: no longer was chamber music written

week 15 chamber notes 85 and performed solely for the private entertainment of the performers or at best a small audience within the family circle (or royal households, which were becoming ever scarcer). Rather, composers like Beethoven had written works of such technical difficulty that few amateur musicians could hope to do them justice; they began to be performed before an audience, rather more in the environment of a symphony concert—a public event—than had previously been the case. And if the difficulty of the music, in part, motivated this trend, the change of performance venue in turn affected later chamber works by inviting the grand gesture, the overtly dramatic quality, and—as Mendelssohn specified in his instructions—the playing up of the dynamics of a piece as one means fo projecting it to a larger audience than might have been expected a few decades earlier.

A “public” gesture opens the Octet: the first violin soars above a curtain of symphonic tremolandos and syncopated chords, rather like the start of the Violin Concerto written twenty years later. This violin part was, no doubt, intended for the dedicatee, Eduard Rietz. In the first movement, a sonata form, the violinist’s opening idea links phrases almost throughout; the lively staccato sixteenth-note figure arrives soon after, sounding like a brief transitional device, but it recurs frequently and grows in importance; the lyrical second theme grows naturally out of a rhythmic motive that first appeared as foil to the sixteenth-note figure; and so it goes. Mendelssohn delights us constantly with new treatments of familiar ideas.

The slow movement, a far-reaching harmonic adventure, begins with a short phrase in the lower strings in C minor, answered immediately in D-flat by the four violins. This precipitates an extended passage around the home key with a chromaticism that was advanced for its time but never an end in itself. The scherzo has always been the Octet’s most popular movement—to such an extent that Mendelssohn later arranged it for orchestra (with added wind parts) and used it as a substitute third movement for his First Symphony when he conducted it in London in 1929, where the scherzo was immediately encored. The headlong rush of pianissimo activity makes it hard to con- centrate on details, but we have the statement by the composer’s sister Fanny that the movement was inspired by some lines from Goethe’s Walpurgis Night episode in Faust, a scene of transient visions compounded of clouds and mist, insubstantial and evanes- cent, appearing and vanishing in an instant.

The finale is a jovial and most unacademic fugue formed of brilliant contrapuntal technique and musical humor. The light touch with which different thematic ideas are combined and reworked arouses awe along with delight, as even the heavy tread of the fortissimo unison march that follows the opening fugato is lightened later to a textural jest, with each of its individual repeated notes assigned to a different one of the four violins. Throughout this masterful score, the boy Mendelssohn demonstrated his complete mastery of both chamber and symphonic writing for strings, his familiarity with the great masters of the preceding generation, and his own burgeoning originality.

Steven Ledbetter

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88 Artists

Boston Symphony Chamber Players The Boston Symphony Chamber Players celebrated their 50th Anniversary Season in 2013-14. To mark that milestone anniversary, the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned new works for the Chamber Players from Gunther Schuller, Yehudi Wyner, Sebastian Currier, Kati Agócs, and Hannah Lash, and reissued as downloads on BSO Classics the historic recordings made by the ensemble’s original membership for RCA between 1964 and 1968. One of the world’s most distinguished chamber ensembles sponsored by a major symphony orchestra and made up of principal players from that orchestra, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players include first-chair string and wind players from the BSO. Founded in 1964 during Erich Leinsdorf’s tenure as music director, the Chamber Players can perform virtually any work within the vast chamber music literature by calling upon other BSO members and collaborating with such distinguished artists as BSO Artistic Partner Thomas Adès and pianists Emanuel Ax, Paul Lewis, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. The ensemble’s activities include an annual four-concert series in Boston’s Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory, regular appearances at Tanglewood, and a busy touring schedule. Besides appearances throughout the United States, they have performed in Europe, Japan, South America, and the Soviet Union. In September 2008, sponsored by Cunard® Line, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players performed on the Queen Mary 2’s transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton, England. Their recordings on BSO Classics include an album of Mozart chamber music for winds and strings; a disc of chamber music by American composers, including Lukas Foss’s For Aaron plus music of William Bolcom, Michael Gandolfi, and Osvaldo Golijov; “Profanes et Sacrées,” a Grammy-nominated disc of 20th-century French chamber music by Ravel, Debussy, Tomasi, Françaix, and Dutilleux; and, most recently, arrangements for chamber ensemble of serenades written originally for orchestra by Brahms (his Serenade No. 1 in D, Opus 11) and Dvoˇrák (his E major string serenade, Opus 22). This coming June, six members of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players will travel to Leipzig to participate in concerts there during the first “Boston Week in Leipzig” (June 19-24, 2018).

Gewandhaus-Quartett The Gewandhaus-Quartett is the oldest continuously active string quartet in the world; it was founded in 1808 by four members of the Gewandhausorchester, under the leadership of the GHO’s then concertmaster, August Matthäi. The ensemble looks back with pride on an uninterrupted history spanning more than two centuries, since retir- ing members have continually been succeeded by younger principal musicians drawn from the ranks of the Gewandhausorchester, generation for generation. In today's performance, the Gewandhaus-Quartett includes Frank-Michael Erben, Conrad Suske, Anton Jivaev (guest), and Jürnjakob Timm (guest). Besides its extensive series of concerts in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the quartet is a frequent and celebrated guest at chamber music festivals throughout Europe, in Japan, the United States, and South America. Private performances have been given at the invitation of Emperor Akihito

week 15 artists 89 BoSTon yoUTH SyMpHony oRCHeSTRAS

TH THe HonoReeS: Martin J. Walsh ANNIVERSARY Mayor of Boston Boston University College of Fine Arts George Keches BYSO President Emeritus Robert Beaser Class of 1972 SATURdAy, MARCH 10, 2018 MUSeUM of fine ARTS, BoSTon Tickets on sale now at www.BYSOweb.org/gala

90 of Japan and the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles; the quartet was honored to accompany the German President, Roman Herzog, on a state visit to Argentina. In June 2006, the quartet accepted an invitation from King Juan Carlos to perform in the Palacio Real in Madrid on a quartet of instruments belonging to the Spanish royal family, built by Antonio Stradivari in 1709. The ensemble is the subject of a major series of filmed performances produced by the Japanese broadcasting corporation, NHK. In recent decades, the Gewandhaus-Quartett has joined forces with such exceptional musicians as Yo-Yo Ma, Julian Rachlin, Sabine Meyer, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Alfred Brendel, Menahem Pressler, Rudolf Buchbinder, Lars Vogt, and Alfredo Perl. This continues an unparalleled tradition of collaboration with the world’s finest musicians, including, among many others, Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Max Reger, and Arthur Nikisch.

Since its earliest years, the Gewandhaus-Quartett has been a committed advocate of the music of its contemporaries. Many of the world’s most eminent composers have entrusted the quartet with first performances of their work, among them Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Robert Schumann, Max Bruch, Antonín Dvoˇrák, Max Reger, and Ferruccio Busoni. More recently the ensemble has given world premieres of music by Olav Kröger, Günter Kochan, Ermano Maggini, Dietmar Hallmann, and Günter Neubert. The Gewandhaus-Quartett’s discography boasts many critically acclaimed releases, including a highly praised recording of Beethoven’s late quartets. The ensemble’s complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets, available in a ten-CD boxed set, won the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik award for chamber music in 2004. Their recording of Haydn’s Opus 76 quartets, numbers 2, 3, and 4, received the recognition of Bavarian Radio’s Hörempfehlung. Their discography also includes recordings of Schumann and Mendelssohn quartets originally given their first performances by the Gewandhaus- Quartett. To mark its 200th anniversary, the Gewandhaus-Quartett released an album featuring both contemporary and historical live recordings, the earliest of which dates back to 1928. The following year, in 2009, to celebrate the bicentennial of the composer’s birth, the group released a four-CD set of Felix Mendelssohn’s complete string quartets. In 2012, the Society of Friends of the Beethoven House in Bonn bestowed hon- orary membership upon the Gewandhaus-Quartett. In 2014 the quartet was awarded the International Mendelssohn Prize in the “music” category.

week 15 artists 91 The Great Benefactors

In the building of his new symphony for Boston, the BSO’s founder and first benefactor, Henry Lee Higginson, knew that ticket revenues could never fully cover the costs of running a great orchestra. From 1881 to 1918 Higginson covered the orchestra’s annual deficits with personal contributions that exceeded $1 million. The Boston Symphony Orchestra now honors each of the following generous donors whose cumulative giving to the BSO is $1 million or more with the designation of Great Benefactor. For more information, please contact Bart Reidy, Director of Development, at 617-638-9469 or [email protected].

ten million and above Julian Cohen ‡ • Fidelity Investments • Linde Family Foundation • Maria and Ray Stata • Anonymous

seven and one half million Bank of America • Mr. and Mrs. George D. Behrakis • John F. Cogan, Jr. and Mary L. Cornille • Cynthia and Oliver Curme/The Lost & Foundation, Inc. • EMC Corporation • Sally ‡ and Michael Gordon

five million Alli and Bill Achtmeyer • Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser • Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky • Fairmont Copley Plaza • Germeshausen Foundation • Barbara and Amos Hostetter • Ted and Debbie Kelly • Commonwealth of Massachusetts • Cecile Higginson Murphy • NEC Corporation • Megan and Robert O’Block • UBS • Stephen and Dorothy Weber

two and one half million Mary and J.P. Barger • Gabriella and Leo ‡ Beranek • Roberta and George ‡ Berry • Bloomberg • Peter and Anne ‡ Brooke • Eleanor L. and Levin H. Campbell • Chiles Foundation • Mr. and Mrs. William H. Congleton ‡ • Mara E. Dole ‡ •

Eaton Vance Corporation • Jane and Jack Fitzpatrick ‡ • Susan Morse Hilles ‡ • Charlie and Dorothy Jenkins/The Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation • Stephen B. Kay and Lisbeth L. Tarlow/The Aquidneck Foundation • The Kresge Foundation • Lizbeth and George Krupp • Liberty Mutual Foundation, Inc. • Kate and Al ‡ Merck • National Endowment for the Arts • Mrs. Mischa Nieland ‡ and Dr. Michael L. Nieland • William and Lia Poorvu • John S. and Cynthia Reed • Carol and Joe Reich • Kristin and Roger Servison • Miriam Shaw Fund • State Street Corporation and State Street Foundation • Thomas G. Stemberg ‡ • Miriam and Sidney Stoneman ‡ • Elizabeth B. Storer ‡ • Caroline and James Taylor • Samantha and John Williams • Anonymous (3)

92 one million Helaine B. Allen • American Airlines • Lois ‡ and Harlan Anderson • Mariann Berg (Hundahl) Appley • Arbella Insurance Foundation and Arbella Insurance Group • Dorothy and David B. ‡ Arnold, Jr. • AT&T • Caroline Dwight Bain ‡ • William I. Bernell ‡ • BNY Mellon • The Boston Foundation • Lorraine D. and Alan S. ‡ Bressler • Jan Brett and Joseph Hearne • Gregory E. Bulger Foundation/Gregory Bulger and Richard Dix • Ronald G. and Ronni J. ‡ Casty • Commonwealth Worldwide Chauffeured Transportation • William F. Connell ‡ and Family • Dick and Ann Marie Connolly • Country Curtains • Diddy and John Cullinane • Edith L. and Lewis S. ‡ Dabney •

Elisabeth K. and Stanton W. Davis ‡ • Mary Deland R. de Beaumont ‡ • Delta Air Lines • Bob and Happy Doran • Hermine Drezner and Jan Winkler • Alan and Lisa Dynner and Akiko ‡ Dynner • Deborah and Philip Edmundson • William and Deborah Elfers • Elizabeth B. Ely ‡ • Nancy S. and John P. Eustis II ‡ • Shirley and Richard ‡ Fennell • Anna E. Finnerty ‡ • John and Cyndy Fish • Fromm Music Foundation • The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation • Marie L. Gillet ‡ • Sophia and Bernard Gordon • Nathan and Marilyn Hayward • Mrs. Donald C. Heath ‡ • Francis Lee Higginson ‡ • Major Henry Lee Higginson ‡ • John Hitchcock ‡ • Edith C. Howie ‡ • John Hancock Financial •

Muriel E. and Richard L. Kaye ‡ • Nancy D. and George H. ‡ Kidder • Kingsbury Road Charitable Foundation • Audrey Noreen Koller ‡ • Farla and Harvey Chet Krentzman ‡ • Barbara and Bill Leith ‡ • Elizabeth W. and John M. Loder • Nancy and Richard Lubin • Vera M. and John D. MacDonald ‡ • Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation • Carmine A. and Beth V. Martignetti • Jane B. and Robert J. Mayer, M.D. • The McGrath Family • The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation • Henrietta N. Meyer ‡ • Mr. and Mrs. Nathan R. Miller ‡ • Mr. and Mrs. Paul M. Montrone • Richard P. and Claire W. Morse Foundation • William Inglis Morse Trust • Mary S. Newman ‡ • Mr. ‡ and Mrs. Norio Ohga • P&G Gillette • The Claudia and Steven Perles Family Foundation • Polly and Dan ‡ Pierce • Mary G. and Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. ‡ • Susan and Dan ‡ Rothenberg • Carole and Edward I. Rudman • Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation • Wilhemina C. (Hannaford) Sandwen ‡ • Hannah H. ‡ and Dr. Raymond Schneider • Carl Schoenhof Family • Ruth ‡ and Carl J. Shapiro • Wendy Shattuck and Samuel Plimpton • Marian Skinner ‡ • Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation/Richard A. and Susan F. ‡ Smith • Sony Corporation of America • Dr. Nathan B. and Anne P. Talbot ‡ • Diana O. Tottenham • The Wallace Foundation • Edwin S. Webster Foundation • Roberta and Stephen R. Weiner • The Helen F. Whitaker Fund • Robert and Roberta Winters • Helen and Josef Zimbler ‡ • Brooks and Linda Zug • Anonymous (12)

‡ Deceased week 15 the great benefactors 93 BSO Major Corporate Sponsors 2017–18 Season

BSO SEASON LEAD SPONSOR Bank of America is proud of our longstanding support of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and we’re excited to serve once again as co-sponsor for the 2017-2018 season. Bank of America’s support of the arts reflects our belief that the arts matter: they are a powerful tool to help economies thrive, to help individuals connect with each other and across cultures, and to educate and enrich societies. Our Arts and Culture Program is Miceal Chamberlain diverse and global, supporting nonprofit arts institutions that deliver the Massachusetts President, visual and performing arts, provide inspirational and educational sus- Bank of America tenance, anchor communities, create jobs, augment and complement existing school offerings, and generate substantial revenue for local businesses. On a global scale, the arts speak to us in a universal language that provides pathways to greater cultural understanding. It’s an honor and privilege to continue our collaboration with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and to play a part in welcoming the valued audiences and world-class artists for each and every performance of this cherished institution.

BSO SEASON SUPPORTING SPONSOR For more than 235 years, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited has brought the hope of Better Health and a Brighter Future to people around the world through our empathetic and people-centered approach to science and medicine. Takeda’s Boston campus is the home of one of our world-class R&D sites, as well as our oncology and vaccine business units. We are pleased to support the Boston Symphony Orchestra Andrew Plump, in its efforts to bring artistic excellence to the local community and M.D., Ph.D. across the globe. Chief Medical and Scientific Officer

CASUAL FRIDAYS SERIES, COLLEGE CARD PROGRAM, John Donohue Chairman and CEO YOUTH & FAMILY CONCERTS, AND THE BSO’S YOUNG PROFESSIONALS PROGRAM SPONSOR The Arbella Insurance Group, through the Arbella Insurance Foundation, is proud to sponsor the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Casual Fridays Series, College Card program, Youth & Family Concerts, and Young Professionals program. These programs give local students and young professionals the opportunity to experience classical music performed by one of the world’s leading orchestras in historic Symphony Hall. Arbella is a local company that’s passionate about serving our communities throughout New England, and through the Foundation we support many wonderful organizations like the BSO. 94 OFFICIAL AIRLINE OF THE BSO Delta Air Lines has been proud to support the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2004 as the Official Airline of the BSO at Symphony Hall, and most recently as a BSO Great Benefactor. The BSO's dedication to the performing Charlie Schewe arts and arts education programs continues to delight and enrich Massa- Director of Sales- chusetts and beyond with each passing season. As the BSO continues to New England help classical music soar, Delta looks forward to celebrating this vibrant institution's rich legacy for many years to come.

OFFICIAL HOTEL OF THE BSO George Terpilowski Fairmont Copley Plaza has had the honor of being the official hotel of Regional Vice President, the BSO for more than 15 years. Located less than a mile from Symphony North East U.S. and Hall, we are proud to offer luxury accommodations for the talented General Manager, artists and conductors that captivate Boston audiences. Together our Fairmont Copley Plaza historic institutions are a symbol of the city’s rich tradition and elegance. We look forward to celebrating another season of remarkable BSO performances.

OFFICIAL CHAUFFEURED TRANSPORTATION Dawson Rutter OF THE BSO President and CEO Commonwealth Worldwide Executive Transportation is proud to be the Official Chauffeured Transportation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops. The BSO has delighted and enriched the Boston community for over a century and we are excited to be a part of such a rich heritage. We look forward to celebrating our relationship with the BSO, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood for many years to come.

Boston Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Hall major corporate sponsorships reflect the increasing importance of alliance between business and the arts. The BSO is honored to be associated with the companies listed above and gratefully acknowledges their partnership. For information regarding BSO, Boston Pops, and/or Tanglewood sponsorship opportunities, contact Alyson Bristol, Director of Corporate Partnerships, at (617) 638-9279 or at [email protected].

week 15 bso major corporate sponsors 95 Be in touch with the full spectrum of arts and culture happening right here in our community. Visit The ARTery at wbur.org/artery today. Administration

Mark Volpe, Eunice and Julian Cohen Managing Director, endowed in perpetuity Evelyn Barnes, Chief Financial Officer Anthony Fogg, William I. Bernell Artistic Administrator and Director of Tanglewood Alexandra J. Fuchs, Chief Operating Officer Ellen Highstein, Edward H. Linde Tanglewood Music Center Director, endowed by Alan S. Bressler and Edward I. Rudman Bernadette M. Horgan, Director of Public Relations Lynn G. Larsen, Orchestra Manager and Director of Orchestra Personnel Bart Reidy, Director of Development Christopher W. Ruigomez, Director of the Boston Pops and Concert Operations and Assistant Director of Tanglewood Kathleen Sambuco, Director of Human Resources administrative staff/artistic

Bridget P. Carr, Director of Archives and Digital Collections • Jennifer Dilzell, Chorus Manager • Sarah Donovan, Associate Archivist for Digital Assets • Julie Giattina Moerschel, Executive Assistant to the Managing Director • Vincenzo Natale, Chauffeur/Valet • Sarah Radcliffe-Marrs, Manager of Artists Services • Eric Valliere, Assistant Artistic Administrator administrative staff/production

Brandon Cardwell, Video Engineer • Kristie Chan, Orchestra Management Assistant • Tuaha Khan, Assistant Stage Manager • Jake Moerschel, Technical Director • Leah Monder, Operations Manager • John Morin, Stage Technician • Mark C. Rawson, Stage Technician • Emily W. Siders, Concert Operations Administrator • Nick Squire, Recording Engineer boston pops

Dennis Alves, Director of Artistic Planning • Richard MacDonald, Executive Producer and Operations Director • Pamela J. Picard, Executive Producer and Event Director, July 4 Fireworks Spectacular, and Broadcast and Media Director Helen N.H. Brady, Director of Boston Pops Sales and Business Director • Wei Jing Saw, Assistant Manager of Artistic Administration • Amanda Severin, Manager of Artistic Planning and Services • Thomas Vigna, Group Sales and Marketing Associate business office

Kathleen Donahue, Controller • Mia Schultz, Director of Investment Operations and Compliance James Daley, Accounting Manager • Karen Guy, Accounts Payable Supervisor • Jared Hettrick, Budget and Finance Reporting Assistant • Erik Johnson, Interim Director of Planning and Budgeting • Evan Mehler, Budget Manager • Robin Moxley, Payroll Supervisor • Kwan Pak, Payroll Specialist • Nia Patterson, Staff Accountant • Mario Rossi, Senior Accountant • Lucy Song, Accounts Payable Assistant • Teresa Wang, Staff Accountant • Maggie Zhong, Senior Endowment Accountant

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Nina Jung Gasparrini, Director of Board, Donor, and Volunteer Engagement • Susan Grosel, Director of Annual Funds and Donor Relations • Ryan Losey, Director of Foundation and Government Relations • Jill Ng, Director of Planned Giving and Senior Major Gifts Officer • Richard Subrizio, Director of Development Communications • Mary E. Thomson, Director of Corporate Initiatives • Jennifer Roosa Williams, Director of Development Research and Information Systems Kyla Ainsworth, Donor Acknowledgment and Research Coordinator • Kaitlyn Arsenault, Graphic Designer • Erin Asbury, Manager of Volunteer Services • Stephanie Baker, Assistant Director, Campaign Planning and Administration • Lydia Buchanan, Assistant Manager, Development Communications • Diane Cataudella, Associate Director, Donor Relations • Caitlin Charnley, Assistant Manager of Donor Relations and Ticketing • Allison Cooley, Major Gifts Officer • Emily Diaz, Assistant Manager, Gift Processing • Elizabeth Estey, Major Gifts Coordinator • Emily Fritz-Endres, Senior Executive Assistant, Development and Board Relations • Barbara Hanson, Senior Leadership Gifts Officer • Laura Hill, Assistant Manager, Annual Funds Friends Program • James Jackson, Associate Director, Telephone Outreach • Laine Kyllonen, Assistant Manager, Donor Relations • Anne McGuire, Manager, Corporate Initiatives and Development Research • Kara O’Keefe, Leadership Gifts Officer • Suzanne Page, Major Gifts Officer • Mark Paskind, Assistant Manager of Planned Giving • Kathleen Pendleton, Assistant Manager, Development Events and Volunteer Services • Johanna Pittman, Grant Writer • Maggie Rascoe, Annual Funds Associate • Francis Rogers, Major Gifts Officer • Laura Sancken, Assistant Director of Board Engagement • Alexandria Sieja, Assistant Director, Development Events • Yong-Hee Silver, Senior Major Gifts Officer • Szeman Tse, Assistant Director, Development Research education and community engagement Zakiya Thomas, Helaine B. Allen Executive Officer for Education, Community Engagement, and Inclusion Claire Carr, Associate Director of Education and Community Engagement • Cassandra Ling, Head of Strategic Program Development, Education • Elizabeth Mullins, Manager of Education and Community Engagement • Sarah Saenz, Assistant Manager of Education and Community Engagement facilities Robert Barnes, Director of Facilities symphony hall operations Peter J. Rossi, Symphony Hall Facilities Manager Charles F. Cassell, Jr., Facilities Compliance and Training Coordinator • Alana Forbes, Facilities Coordinator • Shawn Wilder, Mailroom Clerk maintenance services Jim Boudreau, Lead Electrician • Samuel Darragh, Painter • Thomas Davenport, Carpenter • Michael Frazier, Carpenter • Steven Harper, HVAC Technician • Adam Twiss, Electrician environmental services Landel Milton, Lead Custodian • Desmond Boland, Custodian • Julien Buckmire, Custodian/Set-up Coordinator • Claudia Ramirez Calmo, Custodian • Garfield Cunningham,Custodian • Errol Smart, Custodian • Gaho Boniface Wahi, Custodian tanglewood operations Robert Lahart, Director of Tanglewood Facilities Bruce Peeples, Grounds Supervisor • Peter Socha, Tanglewood Facilities Manager • Fallyn Davis, Tanglewood Facilities Coordinator • Stephen Curley, Crew • Richard Drumm, Mechanic • Maurice Garofoli, Electrician • Bruce Huber, Assistant Carpenter/Roofer human resources

Heather Mullin, Human Resources Manager • Susan Olson, Human Resources Recruiter

week 15 administration 99 latest release on bso classics!

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100 information technology Timothy James, Director of Information Technology James Beaulieu, IT Services Lead • Andrew Cordero, IT Asset Manager • Ana Costagliola, Senior Database Analyst • Isa Cuba, Infrastructure Engineer • Stella Easland, Telephone Systems Coordinator • Michael Finlan, Telephone Systems Manager • Karol Krajewski, Senior Infrastructure Systems Architect • Brian Van Sickle, User Support Specialist public relations

Nicole Banks, Publicist • Samuel Brewer, Senior Publicist • Taryn Lott, Assistant Director of Public Relations publications Marc Mandel, Director of Program Publications Robert Kirzinger, Associate Director of Program Publications—Editorial • Eleanor Hayes McGourty, Assistant Director of Program Publications—Production and Advertising sales, subscription, and marketing

Alyson Bristol, Director of Corporate Partnerships • Roberta Kennedy, Director of Retail Operations • Sarah L. Manoog, Senior Director of Sales, Marketing, and Branding • Michael Miller, Director of Ticketing and Customer Experience Amy Aldrich, Associate Director of Subscriptions and Patron Services • Amanda Beaudoin, Senior Graphic Designer • Gretchen Borzi, Director of Marketing Programs • Hester C.G. Breen, Corporate Partnerships Coordinator • Lenore Camassar, Associate Manager, SymphonyCharge • Megan Cokely, Group Sales Manager • Susan Coombs, SymphonyCharge Coordinator • Jonathan Doyle, Graphic Designer • Leslie Wu Foley, Associate Director of Audience Development • Paul Ginocchio, Manager, Symphony Shop and Tanglewood Glass House • Neal Goldman, Subscriptions Representative • Mary Ludwig, Senior Manager, Corporate Sponsor Relations • Tammy Lynch, Front of House Director • Ronnie McKinley, Ticket Exchange Coordinator • Michael Moore, Manager of Digital Marketing and Analytics • Laurence E. Oberwager, Director of Tanglewood Business Partners • Meaghan O’Rourke, Digital Media Manager • Greg Ragnio, Subscriptions Representative • Ellen Rogoz, Marketing Manager • Laura Schneider, Internet Marketing Manager and Front End Lead • Robert Sistare, Senior Subscriptions Representative • Richard Sizensky, Access Coordinator • Kevin Toler, Art Director • Himanshu Vakil, Associate Director of Internet and Security Technologies • Claudia Veitch, Director, BSO Business Partners • David Chandler Winn, Tessitura Liaison and Associate Director of Tanglewood Ticketing box office Jason Lyon, Symphony Hall Box Office Manager • Nicholas Vincent, Assistant Manager Kelsey Devlin, Box Office Administrator • Evan Xenakis, Box Office Representative event services James Gribaudo, Function Manager • Kyle Ronayne, Director of Event Administration • John Stanton, Venue and Events Manager tanglewood music center

Karen Leopardi, Associate Director for Faculty and Guest Artists • Michael Nock, Associate Director for Student Affairs • Bridget Sawyer-Revels, Manager of Administration • Gary Wallen, Associate Director for Production and Scheduling

week 15 administration 101

Boston Symphony Association of Volunteers executive committee Chair, Martin Levine Chair-Elect, Gerald L. Dreher Vice-Chair, Boston, Suzanne Baum Vice-Chair, Tanglewood, Bob Braun Secretary, Beverly Pieper Co-Chairs, Boston Trish Lavoie • Cathy Mazza • George Mellman Co-Chairs, Tanglewood Nancy Finn • Gabriel Kosakoff • Susan Price Liaisons, Tanglewood Glass Houses, Adele Cukor • Ushers, Carolyn Ivory boston project leads 2017-18

Café Flowers, Virginia Grant, Stephanie Henry, and Kevin Montague • Chamber Music Series, Rita Richmond • Computer and Office Support, Helen Adelman • Flower Decorating, Stephanie Henry and Wendy Laurich • Guide’s Guide, Audley H. Fuller and Renee Voltmann • Instrument Playground, Elizabeth Michalak • Mailings, Steve Butera • Membership Table/Hall Greeters, Connie Hill • Newsletter, Cassandra Gordon • Volunteer Applications, Carol Beck • Symphony Shop, Karen Brown • Tour Guides, Greg Chetel

BEETHOVEN HANDEL MESSIAH BACH MASS SYMPHONY NO. 9 Dec 1 + 2 + 3 IN B MINOR Oct 6 + 8 Mar 23 + 25 BACH CHRISTMAS MOZART + Dec 14 + 17 PURCELL BEETHOVEN THE FAIRY QUEEN Oct 27 + 29 MOZART + HAYDN Apr 6 + 8 Jan 26 + 28 AMADEUS LIVE HANDEL HERCULES Nov 10 + 11 + 12 BACH BRANDENBURG May 4 + 6 CONCERTOS Complete film with soundtrack Feb 16 + 18 performed live by the H+H Orchestra and Chorus.

HANDELANDHAYDN.ORG 617.266.3605

week 15 administration 103 Next Program…

Thursday, February 15, 8pm Friday, February 16, 1:30pm (Friday Preview at 12:15pm in Symphony Hall) Saturday, February 17, 8pm

jacques lacombe conducting

debussy “sarabande et danse,” orchestrated by maurice ravel

ravel piano concerto in d for the left hand

jean-yves thibaudet

{intermission}

ravel “daphnis et chloé” (complete) tanglewood festival chorus, james burton, conductor

Canadian conductor Jacques Lacombe makes his BSO subscription series debut with this all-French program featuring BSO 2017-18 Artist-in-Residence Jean-Yves Thibaudet in Ravel’s serious, single- movement Piano Concerto for the left hand—one of several works commissioned from several major composers by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (brother of the philosopher Ludwig), who lost his right arm to an injury during World War I. Closing the program is a work that’s long been a staple of the BSO repertoire, Ravel’s ballet score Daphnis et Chloé, a tour-de-force of orchestral coloration and dramatic atmosphere the composer felt was one of his best works. Opening the program is Ravel’s orchestration of two contrasting Debussy piano pieces—the stately Sarabande and lively, energetic Danse. These concerts mark the 90th anniversary of Ravel’s conducting the BSO at Symphony Hall while visiting America in 1928.

Single tickets for all Boston Symphony concerts throughout the season are available online at bso.org via a secure credit card order; by calling Symphony Charge at (617) 266-1200 or toll-free at (888) 266-1200; or at the Symphony Hall box office, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Saturdays from 4-8:30 p.m. when there is a concert). Please note that there is a $6.50 handling fee for each ticket ordered by phone or online.

104 Coming Concerts… friday previews and pre-rehearsal talks: The BSO offers half-hour talks prior to all of the BSO’s Friday-afternoon subscription concerts and Thursday-morning Open Rehearsals. Free to all ticket holders, the Friday Previews take place from 12:15-12:45 p.m. and the Open Rehearsal Talks from 9:30-10 a.m. in Symphony Hall.

Thursday ‘B’ February 15, 8-9:55 Sunday, March 11, 3pm Friday ‘A’ February 16, 1:30-3:25 Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory

Saturday ‘A’ February 17, 8-9:55 BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS JACQUES LACOMBE, conductor with JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET, piano JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET, piano HAYDN Trio in G for flute, cello, and TANGLEWOOD FESTIVAL CHORUS, piano, Hob. XV:15 JAMES BURTON, conductor BERWALD Grand Septet in B-flat, for DEBUSSY Sarabande et Danse winds and strings (orch. RAVEL) DVORÁˇ K Piano Quintet No. 2 in A, Op. 81 RAVEL Piano Concerto for the left hand RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé (complete) Thursday ‘A’ March 15, 8-10:05 Friday Evening March 16, 8-10:05 Thursday ‘A’ February 22, 8-10 Saturday ‘A’ March 17, 8-10:05 Friday ‘B’ February 23, 1:30-3:30 GIANCARLO GUERRERO, conductor Saturday ‘B’ February 24, 8-10 TAMARA WILSON, soprano Tuesday ‘C’ February 27, 8-10 TANGLEWOOD FESTIVAL CHORUS, HERBERT BLOMSTEDT, conductor JAMES BURTON, conductor MORITZ GNANN, conductor (February 27) CHOIR OF ST. PAUL’S, HARVARD SQUARE, JOHN ROBINSON, conductor ALL- Symphony No. 34 MOZART Symphony No. 36, Linz TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6, Pathétique PROGRAM Symphony No. 41, Jupiter BERNSTEIN Symphony No. 3, Kaddish

Thursday ‘C’ March 1, 8-10 Thursday ‘B’ March 22, 8-10:10 Friday ‘A’ March 2, 1:30-3:30 Friday ‘A’ March 23, 1:30-3:45 Saturday ‘A’ March 3, 8-10 Saturday ‘A’ March 24, 8-10:10 Tuesday ‘B’ March 27, 8-10:10 ALAN GILBERT, conductor ANDRIS NELSONS LEILA JOSEFOWICZ, violin , conductor JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET, piano SIBELIUS En saga BERNSTEIN DEBUSSY Jeux Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety JOHN ADAMS Scheherazade.2, Dramatic symphony for violin and SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 4 orchestra

The BSO’s 2017-18 season is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which receives support from the State of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Programs and artists subject to change.

week 15 coming concerts 105 Symphony Hall Exit Plan

106 Symphony Hall Information

For Symphony Hall concert and ticket information, call (617) 266-1492. For Boston Symphony concert program information, call “C-O-N-C-E-R-T” (266-2378). The Boston Symphony Orchestra performs ten months a year, in Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood. For information about any of the orchestra’s activities, please call Symphony Hall, visit bso.org, or write to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. The BSO’s web site (bso.org) provides information on all of the orchestra’s activities at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, and is updated regularly. In addition, tickets for BSO concerts can be purchased online through a secure credit card transaction. The Eunice S. and Julian Cohen Wing, adjacent to Symphony Hall on Huntington Avenue, may be entered by the Symphony Hall West Entrance on Huntington Avenue. In the event of a building emergency, patrons will be notified by an announcement from the stage. Should the building need to be evacuated, please exit via the nearest door (see map on opposite page), or according to instructions. For Symphony Hall rental information, call (617) 638-9241, or write the Director of Event Administration, Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 02115. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, or until a half-hour past starting time on performance evenings. On Saturdays, the box office is open from 4 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. when there is a concert, but is otherwise closed. For an early Saturday or Sunday performance, the box office is generally open two hours before concert time. To purchase BSO Tickets: American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Diners Club, Discover, a personal check, and cash are accepted at the box office. To charge tickets instantly on a major credit card, call “SymphonyCharge” at (617) 266-1200, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday (12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday). Outside the 617 area code, phone 1-888-266-1200. As noted above, tickets can also be purchased online. There is a handling fee of $6.50 for each ticket ordered by phone or online. Group Sales: Groups may take advantage of advance ticket sales. For BSO concerts at Symphony Hall, groups of twenty-five or more may reserve tickets by telephone and take advantage of ticket discounts and flexible payment options. To place an order, or for more information, call Group Sales at (617) 638-9345 or (800) 933-4255, or e-mail [email protected]. For patrons with disabilities, elevator access to Symphony Hall is available at both the Massachusetts Avenue and Cohen Wing entrances. An access service center, large print programs, and accessible restrooms are available inside the Cohen Wing. For more information, call the Access Services Administrator line at (617) 638-9431 or TDD/TTY (617) 638-9289. In consideration of our patrons and artists, children age four or younger will not be admitted to Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts. Please note that no food or beverage (except water) is permitted in the Symphony Hall auditorium. Patrons who bring bags to Symphony Hall are subject to mandatory inspections before entering the building. Those arriving late or returning to their seats will be seated by the patron service staff only during a convenient pause in the program. Those who need to leave before the end of the concert are asked to do so between program pieces in order not to disturb other patrons.

Each ticket purchased from the Boston Symphony Orchestra constitutes a license from the BSO to the pur- chaser. The purchase price of a ticket is printed on its face. No ticket may be transferred or resold for any price above its face value. By accepting a ticket, you are agreeing to the terms of this license. If these terms are not acceptable, please promptly contact the Box Office at (617) 266-1200 or [email protected] in order to arrange for the return of the ticket(s).

week 15 symphony hall information 107 Ticket Resale: If you are unable to attend a Boston Symphony concert for which you hold a subscription ticket, you may make your ticket available for resale by calling (617) 266-1492 during business hours, or (617) 638-9426 up to one hour before the concert. This helps bring needed revenue to the orchestra and makes your seat available to someone who wants to attend the concert. A mailed receipt will acknowledge your tax-deductible contribution. Rush Seats: There are a limited number of Rush Seats available for Boston Symphony subscription concerts on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and on Friday afternoons. The low price of these seats is assured through the Morse Rush Seat Fund. Rush Tickets are sold at $10 each, one to a customer, at the Symphony Hall box office on Fridays as of 10 a.m. for afternoon concerts, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays as of 5 p.m. for evening concerts. Please note that there are no Rush Tickets available for Friday and Saturday evenings. Please note that smoking is not permitted anywhere in Symphony Hall. Camera and recording equipment may not be brought into Symphony Hall during concerts. Lost and found is located at the security desk at the stage door to Symphony Hall on St. Stephen Street. First aid facilities for both men and women are available. On-call physicians attending concerts should leave their names and seat locations at the Cohen Wing entrance on Huntington Avenue. Parking: The Prudential Center Garage and Copley Place Parking on Huntington Avenue offer discounted parking to any BSO patron with a ticket stub for evening performances. Limited street parking is available. As a special benefit, guaranteed pre-paid parking near Symphony Hall is available to subscribers who attend evening concerts. For more information, call the Subscription Office at (617) 266-7575. Elevators are located outside the O’Block/Kay and Cabot-Cahners rooms on the Massachusetts Avenue side of Symphony Hall, and in the Cohen Wing. Ladies’ rooms are located on both main corridors of the orchestra level, as well as at both ends of the first balcony, audience-left, and in the Cohen Wing. Men’s rooms are located on the orchestra level, audience-right, outside the O’Block/Kay Room near the elevator; on the first-balcony level, also audience-right near the elevator, outside the Cabot-Cahners Room; and in the Cohen Wing. Coatrooms are located on the orchestra and first-balcony levels, audience-left, outside the O’Block/Kay and Cabot-Cahners rooms, and in the Cohen Wing. Please note that the BSO is not responsible for personal apparel or other property of patrons. Lounges and Bar Service: There are two lounges in Symphony Hall. The O’Block/Kay Room on the orchestra level and the Cabot-Cahners Room on the first-balcony level serve drinks starting one hour before each performance. For the Friday-afternoon concerts, both rooms open at noon, with sandwiches available until concert time. Drink coupons may be purchased in advance online or through SymphonyCharge for all performances. Boston Symphony Broadcasts: Saturday-evening concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are broadcast live in the Boston area by 99.5 WCRB Classical Radio Boston. BSO Friends: The Friends are donors who contribute $100 or more to the Boston Symphony Orchestra Annual Funds. For information, please call the Friends of the BSO Office at (617) 638-9276 or e-mail [email protected]. If you are already a Friend and you have changed your address, please inform us by sending your new and old addresses to Friends of the BSO, Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 02115. Including your patron number will assure a quick and accurate change of address in our files. BSO Business Partners: The BSO Business Partners program makes it possible for businesses to participate in the life of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Benefits include corporate recognition in the BSO program book, access to the Beranek Room reception lounge, two-for-one ticket pricing, and advance ticket ordering. For further information, please call the BSO Business Partners Office at (617) 638-9275 or e-mail [email protected]. The Symphony Shop is located in the Cohen Wing at the West Entrance on Huntington Avenue and is open Thurs day and Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m., and for all Symphony Hall performances through intermission. The Symphony Shop features exclusive BSO merchandise, including calendars, coffee mugs, an expanded line of BSO apparel and recordings, and unique gift items. The Shop also carries children’s books and musical-motif gift items. A selection of Symphony Shop merchandise is also available online at bso.org and, during concert hours, outside the Cabot-Cahners Room. All proceeds benefit the Boston Symphony Orchestra. For further information and telephone orders, please call (617) 638-9383, or purchase online at bso.org.

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