BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Bernard Haitink, Principal Guest Conductor One Hundred and Sixteenth Season, 1996-97

SUPPER CONCERT II

Thursday, October 31, at 6 Tuesday, November 5, at 6

BONNIE BEWICK, KELLY BARR, violin EDWARD GAZOULEAS, viola OWEN YOUNG, JAY WADENPFUHL, horn TIMOTHY STEELE, piano

BART6K String Quartet No. 2, Opus 17 Moderato Allegro molto capriccioso Lento

Ms. BEWICK, Ms. BARR, Mr. GAZOULEAS, and Mr. YOUNG

BRAHMS Trio in E-flat for violin, horn, and piano, Opus 40 Andante—Poco piu animato Scherzo: Allegro Adagio mesto Finale: Allegro con brio

Ms. BEWICK, Mr. WADENPFUHL, and Mr. STEELE

Baldwin piano Please exit to your left for supper following the concert.

Week 4 Bela Bartok

String Quartet No. 2, Opus 17

Bartok's Second Quartet was among his first compositions in a burst of activity fol- lowing several years of artistic isolation, begun in 1912, when he devoted himself predominantly to research into folk song. His absorption with this music bore rich fruit in the Second String Quartet, premiered on March 3, 1918, by the Waldbauer- Kerpely Quartet, to which it is dedicated. In this quartet, Bartok seems to have absorbed all of Hungarian folk music within himself and to have created a music that at every point sounds Hungarian in its intervals, rhythms, textures, and sonori- ties, without the naivete of simple quotation. As his biographer Halsey Stevens writes, "The whole direction of Bartok's later writing might be deduced from this one work/' The quartet is in three movements, with the dynamic second movement sur- rounded by a lyric opening and a pensive finale. The material grows out of the first five notes of the first violin (a sequence of fourths—perfect, augmented, diminished). The second movement is forceful, even brutal, in its assertion of repeated-note patterns against highly chromatic dancelike melodies. The octave D's in the second violin, reiterated more than one hundred times following the eight introductory measures, serve as a drone—inspired, surely, by folk instru- ments—to ground the tonality even when the melodic lines are most intensely chromatic. The reflective final Lento is built up in chainlike sections linked by some important common intervals, especially fourths and minor seconds. The style, the structure, the expressive means employed reveal the mature master whose funda- mental qualities are already fully apparent in this seminal work.

Johannes Brahms Trio in E-flat for violin, horn, and piano, Opus 40

Johannes Brahms composed this striking trio in 1865, at the end of a glorious out- pouring of chamber music. He had already employed the horn to great effect in his set of choruses for women's voices, two horns, and harp, Opus 17, but it was fairly unusual to include the instrument in a full-scale four-movement chamber work, if only because of the tonal limitations that it necessitated. Although valves had recently been developed for the horn, Brahms preferred to use the old, natural horn, which was limited to a fairly restricted number of pitches, but which he claimed had a much fuller and more satisfying tone than the valved instruments. On a natural horn, the player sounded many pitches by inserting his hand into the bell to lower the pitch by a half-step or, at most, a whole step, but this also muffled the tone. The player therefore had to be somewhat circumspect in playing the unstopped tones, in order to make them match the stopped tones as closely as possible. Brahms completed the trio, a romantic work redolent of German forests, in the wooded neighborhood of Lichtenthal, near Baden-Baden, in May of 1865, and took part himself (as pianist) in the first performance that December, in Karlsruhe. When he offered it to his publisher Simrock the following June, he noted that the horn part could, if necessary, be played on a cello, but later he had a change of heart and said that he preferred viola to cello as an alternative to the horn. Simrock agreed to print a viola part, too (it could only increase sales!), but he refused Brahms's request to suppress the cello part. Owing to the difficulty of modulating freely and widely with a natural horn, Brahms wrote a first movement that simply alternates two ideas—the opening Andante in E-flat and a Poco piil animato in a related minor key—with a sonata-like tonal plan, but without any rapidly modulating development section. The scherzo that follows is a lively romp with some surprising harmonic twists, both in the main section and in the Trio, which comes in the dark key of A-flat minor. The slow movement is an expressive lament, thought by some critics to be a musical response to the death of the composer's mother, which took place in the year of composition (and to which the soprano solo of the German Requiem was another response). The finale conjures up the forest and the hunt, with its fanfares and its echoes in a vigor- ous interplay of good humor.

—Notes by Steven Ledbetter

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1963, violinist Bonnie Bewick joined the Boston Sym- phony Orchestra in January 1987. She also performs frequently in the Boston area in recitals and chamber music concerts. Ms. Bewick studied at the University of Michi- gan in Ann Arbor and received her bachelor's degree in music from the Curtis Insti- tute in Philadelphia. Her teachers included Aaron Rosand and David Cerone at Cur- tis, Ruggiero Ricci and Paul Makanowitzky in Michigan, and Elizabeth Holborn in California. Ms. Bewick has made solo appearances with a number of west coast orchestras, and with the Boston Pops and the Cape Ann Symphony in New England. Her orchestral experience has included positions with the Colorado Philharmonic, the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, and the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra; she has appeared as concertmaster and soloist with the New England Philharmonic. She has also been a member of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra and the orchestra of the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds.

A member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since February 1996, Kelly Ban* received her master of music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music and her bachelor of music degree from the University of Minnesota. Ms. Barr's teach- ers included James Buswell, Almita Vamos, Roland Vamos, and Catherine Tait; her chamber music coaches included Louis Krasner, Eugene Lehner, Scott Nickrenz, and Randall Hodgkinson. As a soloist, Ms. Barr has performed in a recital series for the Jordanian Conservatory, with the Plymouth Philharmonic, and with the Depaul Sym- phony Orchestra. She has also performed at the Encore Music Festival, participated in the Musicorda Summer String Program, and been heard at the Isabella Stewart Gard- ner Museum, in the Minneapolis radio series "Live From Landmark," and as a guest artist at the Children's Museum in Washington, D.C. As an orchestral player she has also performed with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, and the American Soviet Youth Orchestra. A former member of the New England Conservatory Honors Piano Trio, she has received awards in the Schubert Club Com- petition, the Western Illinois University Orchestra Competition, and the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra Competition.

Violist Edward Gazouleas joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 1990-91 season. After viola studies with Raphael Hillyer and Steven Ansell at Yale University, he received his bachelor's degree in 1984 from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied viola with Michael Tree and Karen Turtle. Before joining the Boston Symphony he was a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony's viola section from 1985 to 1990, performing prior to that with the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of New England, and as first-desk player with the New York String Orchestra under Alexander Schneider. An avid chamber musician, Mr. Gazouleas was winner of the Eighth International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France, as a member of the Nisaika Quartet in 1984 and made his recital debut as a member of the Cezanne Quartet in 1982. Mr. Gazouleas has taught viola as an instructor at Temple University and pri- vately at Swarthmore College. Locally he has performed with the Boston Artists Ensemble and Collage New Music.

Cellist Owen Young joined the Boston Symphony during the BSO's 1991 Tanglewood season. Mr. Young has participated in the Tanglewood, Aspen, Banff, Davos, Sun- flower, and Gateway music festivals. His many appearances as soloist have included the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Boston Pops. He performs chamber music and recitals frequently in the and abroad. Besides teaching cello privately, Mr. Young also coaches and teaches at the Boston Conservatory, the New England Conservatory Extension Division, the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras, the Tanglewood Institute, and Project Step (String Training and Educa- tion Program for Students of Color). From 1991 to 1996 he was resident tutor of music and director of concerts in Dunster House at . His own teachers included Aldo Parisot, Anne Martindale Williams, and Michael Grebanier. A cum laude graduate of Yale University with bachelor's and master's degrees from that insti- tution, Mr. Young served as principal cellist with the Yale Symphony and was soloist for that ensemble's European tour. He played with the New Haven Symphony during the 1986-87 season and was a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1986 and 1987. He played as an Orchestra Fellow with the Atlanta Symphony in 1988 and with the Boston Symphony Orchestra during the 1988-89 season. Mr. Young was a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1989 until he joined the Boston Symphony in 1991.

Jay Wadenpfuhl was born into a musical family and became a professional horn player at fifteen. Mr. Wadenpfuhl studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in music, majoring in horn per- formance and minoring in composition. His teachers included John Barrows and Philip Farkas. Before joining the Boston Symphony in 1981 he was a member of the U.S. Army Band in Washington, D.C., the Florida Philharmonic, the Fort Worth Sym- phony, and the National Symphony. Mr. Wadenpfuhl teaches at Boston University and the New England Conservatory of Music. As a member of the NFB Horn Quartet he recorded an album in memory of John Barrows; released in 1989, the album includes Mr. Wadenpfuhl's own Tectonica, for eight horns and percussion. The NFB Quartet has also recorded a second album, with internationally known horn player Barry Tuckwell; this includes the world premiere recording of Gunther Schuller's Five Pieces for Five Horns with the composer conducting, as well as a new Wadenpfuhl quartet called Textures. Mr. Wadenpfuhl premiered the Huntington Horn Concerto, a piece written for him by William Thomas McKinley, in 1989 with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra.

Timothy Steele is an assistant conductor/pianist for the Boston Lyric Opera and a faculty member of the New England Conservatory. He has served on the music staff of Wolf Trap Opera and Central City Opera, among others, and plays regularly for the Handel & Handel Society and Emmanuel Music. Recital partners include violinist Bonnie Bewick and cellist Jan Pfeiffer. Mr. Steele is a graduate of Drake University and the University of Southern California, where he studied with Gwendolyn Koldofsky.