2016–17 season andris nelsons music director

week 7 nathan brahms

season sponsors seiji ozawa music director laureate bernard haitink conductor emeritus lead sponsor supporting sponsor thomas adès artistic partner The most famous 19th-century American painter you’ve never heard of

Through January 16, 2017

mfa.org/chase

“William Merritt Chase” was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Phillips Collection, Presented with generous support from The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation Washington, DC; the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia; and the Terra Foundation for American Art. for the Arts, Inc., and the Deedee and Barrie A. Wigmore Fund in honor of Malcolm Rogers. Additional support from the Betty L. Heath Paintings Fund for the Art of the Americas, and the The exhibition and its publication were made possible with the Eugenie Prendergast Memorial Fund, made possible by a grant from Jan and Warren Adelson. generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art.

William Merritt Chase, The Young Orphan (An Idle Moment) (detail), 1884. Oil on canvas. NA diploma presentation, November 24, 1890. National Academy Museum, New York (221-P). Table of Contents | Week 7

7 bso news 1 5 on display in symphony hall 16 bso music director andris nelsons 18 the boston symphony orchestra 21 brahms’s orchestral voice by jan swafford 2 8 this week’s program

Notes on the Program

30 The Program in Brief… 31 Eric Nathan 37 Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 49 Brahms Symphony No. 1 57 Brahms Symphony No. 2 67 To Read and Hear More…

Guest Artist

73 Hélène Grimaud

76 sponsors and donors 88 future programs 90 symphony hall exit plan 9 1 symphony hall information

the friday preview on november 11 is given by bso director of program publications marc mandel.

program copyright ©2016 Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc. program book design by Hecht Design, Arlington, MA cover photo by Dominick Reuter cover design by BSO Marketing

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 136th season, 2016–2017

trustees of the boston symphony orchestra, inc.

William F. Achtmeyer, Chair • Paul Buttenwieser, President • George D. Behrakis, Vice-Chair • Carmine A. Martignetti, Vice-Chair • Theresa M. Stone, Treasurer

David Altshuler • Ronald G. Casty • Susan Bredhoff Cohen • Richard F. Connolly, Jr. • Cynthia Curme • Alan J. Dworsky • Philip J. Edmundson, ex-officio • William R. Elfers • Thomas E. Faust, Jr. • Levi A. Garraway • Michael Gordon • Brent L. Henry • Susan Hockfield • Barbara W. Hostetter • Stephen B. Kay • Edmund Kelly • Martin Levine, ex-officio • Joyce Linde • John M. Loder • Nancy K. Lubin • Joshua A. Lutzker • Robert J. Mayer, M.D. • Susan W. Paine • Steven R. Perles • John Reed • Carol Reich • Arthur I. Segel • Wendy Shattuck • Caroline Taylor • Stephen R. Weber • Roberta S. Weiner • Robert C. Winters • D. Brooks Zug life trustees

Vernon R. Alden • Harlan E. Anderson • J.P. Barger • Gabriella Beranek • Leo L. Beranek † • Deborah Davis Berman • Jan Brett • Peter A. Brooke • John F. Cogan, Jr. • Diddy Cullinane • Mrs. Edith L. Dabney • Nelson J. Darling, Jr. • Nina L. Doggett • Nancy J. Fitzpatrick • Charles H. Jenkins, Jr. • Mrs. Béla T. Kalman • George Krupp • Richard P. Morse • David Mugar • Mary S. Newman † • 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. Weiner • Dr. Nicholas T. Zervas other officers of the corporation

Mark Volpe, Eunice and Julian Cohen Managing Director • Thomas D. May, Chief Financial Officer • Bart Reidy, Clerk of the Board overseers of the boston symphony orchestra, inc. Philip J. Edmundson, Chair

Noubar Afeyan • James E. Aisner • Peter C. Andersen • Bob Atchinson • Lloyd Axelrod, M.D. • Liliana Bachrach • Judith W. Barr • Linda J.L. Becker • Paul Berz • Mark G. Borden • Partha Bose • William N. Booth • Karen Bressler • Anne F. Brooke † • Gregory E. Bulger • Thomas M. Burger • Joanne M. Burke • Bonnie Burman, Ph.D. • Richard E. Cavanagh • Yumin Choi • Michele Montrone Cogan • Roberta L. Cohn • RoAnn Costin • William Curry, M.D. • Gene D. Dahmen • Lynn A. Dale • Anna L. Davol • Michelle A. Dipp, M.D., Ph.D. • Peter Dixon • Dr. Ronald F. Dixon • Ursula Ehret-Dichter • Sarah E. Eustis • Joseph F. Fallon • Beth Fentin • Peter Fiedler • Steven S. Fischman • John F. Fish • Sanford Fisher • Alexandra J. Fuchs • Robert Gallery • Stephen T. Gannon • Zoher Ghogawala, M.D. • Cora H. Ginsberg • Robert R. Glauber • Todd R. Golub • Barbara Nan Grossman • Nathan Hayward, III • Ricki Tigert Helfer • Rebecca M. Henderson • James M. Herzog, M.D. • Stuart Hirshfield • Albert A. Holman, III • Lawrence S. Horn • Jill Hornor • Valerie Hyman • Everett L. Jassy •

week 7 trustees and overseers 3 CARING FOR WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS PART OF OUR MISSION. Official Airline of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. photos by Michael J. Lutch

Stephen J. Jerome • Darlene Luccio Jordan, Esq. • Paul L. Joskow • Karen Kaplan • Stephen R. Karp • Steve Kidder • John L. Klinck, Jr. • Tom Kuo • Sandra O. Moose • Cecile Higginson Murphy • John F. O’Leary • Peter Palandjian • Donald R. Peck • Wendy Philbrick • Randy Pierce • Claudio Pincus • Lina S. Plantilla, M.D. • Irving H. Plotkin • Irene Pollin • Jonathan Poorvu • William F. Pounds • Claire 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 • Susan Rothenberg • Sean C. Rush • Malcolm S. Salter • Dan Schrager • Donald L. Shapiro • Phillip A. Sharp, Ph.D. • Anne-Marie Soullière • Michael B. Sporn, M.D. • Nicole Stata • Margery Steinberg, Ph.D • Katherine Chapman Stemberg • Jean Tempel • Douglas Thomas • Mark D. Thompson • Albert Togut • Blair Trippe • Joseph M. Tucci • Sandra A. Urie • Edward Wacks, Esq. • Linda S. Waintrup • Sarah Rainwater Ward • 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 • George Elvin • Pamela D. Everhart • Judy Moss Feingold • 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 • Martin S. Kaplan • 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 • Edwin N. London • Frederick H. Lovejoy, Jr. • Diane H. Lupean • Mrs. Harry L. Marks • Jay Marks • Jeffrey E. Marshall • 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 • Dr. John Thomas Potts, Jr. • Dr. Tina Young Poussaint • Daphne Brooks Prout • Robert E. Remis • John Ex Rodgers • 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 • Paul M. Verrochi • David C. Weinstein • James Westra • Mrs. Joan D. Wheeler • Margaret Williams-DeCelles • Richard Wurtman, M.D.

† Deceased

week 7 trustees and overseers 5 All in the Family Fox Hill Village opened in1990 and is experiencing Memory Care the excitement of hosting the next generation! White Oak Cottages at Fox Hill Village offers 25 years ago Mom and Dad moved a unique alternative for those who can to Fox Hill Village. The friendly no longer live at home due to memory residents and vibrant lifestyle have impairment. With our specially designed cottages, philosophy of care, and unique made their home special for many staffing model, we provide the very years. When I was planning to move, best living options for our residents with Dad asked, “‘Why don’t you come dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. We here?’ There’s so much to do and the food is incredible. I know you’d fit are a proud partner of The Green House® right in. You’d love living here. We’re close to Boston in a beautiful setting Project, a national movement to transform long-term care. with everything right at your fingertips.” To learn more, call 781-320-1999 You were so right, as usual, Dad. or visit WhiteOakCottages.com —Marie Puffer WHITE OAK Call us to schedule your private tour 781-329-4433. COTTAGES AT FOX HILL VILLAGE Visit us at FoxHillVillage.com 10 Longwood Drive, Westwood, MA 02090

Developed by Massachusetts General Hospital Proudly Celebrating 25 Years! BSO News

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” A collaboration between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and New England Conservatory, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” is a series of free hour-long events that introduce audiences to composers working with the BSO via composer-curated chamber music programs performed by NEC students with coaching by NEC faculty and the composers themselves. Moderated by BSO Assistant Artistic Administrator Eric Valliere, with pianist Stephen Drury as musical consultant, there will be three such sessions this season—on Tuesday, November 15, at 6 p.m. in NEC’s Williams Hall, with composers Eric Nathan and Timo Andres (the for- mer’s the space of a door and the latter’s Everything Happens So Much receive their world pre- mieres on the BSO concerts of November 8 and November 15, respectively); on Thursday, January 26, at 6 p.m. in Williams Hall, with composer Julian Anderson (whose Incantesimi receives its American premiere with the BSO that same evening), and on Thursday, February 23, at 6 p.m. in NEC’s Brown Hall, with composer Sofia Gubaidulina (whose Triple Concerto for violin, cello, and bayan receives its world premiere on that evening’s BSO concert).

BSO Broadcasts on WCRB BSO concerts are heard on the radio at 99.5 WCRB. Saturday-night concerts are broadcast live at 8 p.m. with host Ron Della Chiesa, and encore broadcasts are aired on Monday nights at 8 p.m. In addition, interviews with guest conductors, soloists, and BSO musi- cians are available online, along with a one-year archive of concert broadcasts. Listeners can also hear the BSO Concert Channel, an online radio station consisting of BSO concert performances from the previous twelve months. Visit classicalwcrb.org/bso. Current and upcoming broadcasts include last week’s program of Britten, Sibelius, and Adès led by BSO Artistic Partner Thomas Adès (encore November 14), this week’s program under Andris Nelsons featuring the world premiere of Eric Nathan’s BSO-commissioned the space of a door and pianist Hélène Grimaud in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (November 12; encore November 21); next week’s program under Andris Nelsons of Timo Andres’s BSO-commissioned Everything Happens So Much and Hélène Grimaud in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (November 19; encore November 28), and music of Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Dvoˇrák led by BSO Assistant Conductor Moritz Gnann and featuring pianist Menahem Pressler (November 26; encore December 5).

Friday Previews at Symphony Hall Friday Previews take place from 12:15-12:45 p.m. in Symphony Hall before all of the BSO’s Friday-afternoon subscription concerts throughout the season. Given by BSO Director of Program Publications Marc Mandel, Assistant Director of Program Publications Robert Kirzinger, and a number of guest speakers, these informative half-hour talks incorporate recorded examples from the music to be performed. This week’s Friday Preview on Novem- ber 11 is given by Marc Mandel. The Friday Preview on November 25 will be given by composer/pianist Jeremy Gill.

week 7 bso news 7 We are honored to support the Boston Symphony Orchestra

as Sponsor of Casual Fridays BSO Young Professionals BSO College Card and Youth and Family Concerts

H E R E . F O R O U R C O M M U N I T I E S . H E R E . F O R G O O D . individual tickets are on sale for all concerts in the bso’s 2016-2017 season. for specific information on purchasing tickets by phone, online, by mail, or in person at the symphony hall box office, please see page 91 of this program book.

The Brooks and Linda Zug Concert The Cynthia and Oliver Curme Tuesday, November 8, 2016 Concert, Friday, November 11, 2016 The performance on Tuesday evening is The performance on Friday afternoon is sup- supported by a generous gift from BSO Great ported by a generous gift from Great Bene- Benefactors D. Brooks and Linda M. Zug. factors Cynthia and Oliver Curme. Cindy and Linda and Brooks are patrons of the Boston Ollie are true champions of the BSO both in Symphony Orchestra’s diverse offerings. BSO Boston and the Berkshires. They are longtime subscribers for seventeen consecutive years, concertgoers who have been a part of the they also attend Holiday Pops, Spring Pops, BSO family for more than thirty years. and Tanglewood performances. The couple Both Cindy and Ollie, who are musicians supports the mission of the BSO as members themselves, are passionate advocates for of the Higginson Society at the Virtuoso level. music and arts education. Cindy, a classically They participated in the Beyond Measure trained pianist, worked at the Symphony as campaign through their generous support part of the administration from 1984 to 1995 of the BSO’s endowment and the funding of and later served as a volunteer. She was the new Reading Room located in the BSO elected a BSO Overseer in 2003, a Trustee Archives. Brooks and Linda also donate their in 2005, and was a Vice-Chair of the Board time to the BSO. Brooks was elected to the of Trustees in 2015-16. Cindy is extremely BSO Board of Trustees in 2015, having served active in her role as a Trustee, serving on for eleven years as an Overseer. While an numerous board committees, including the Overseer, he led an effort to connect the BSO Executive, Education, and Overseers Nom- with members of the private equity and ven- inating committees, and the Tanglewood ture capital communities; he currently serves Strategic Planning Subcommittee and the on the Buildings and Grounds, Investment, Tanglewood Annual Fund Task Force. Cindy and Leadership Gifts committees. Brooks and Ollie have served on many Symphony and Linda are members of the Symphony and Tanglewood Gala Committees, including Gala Committee. They were members of the as co-chairs for the 2010 Opening Night at benefactor committee for Opening Night at Tanglewood and 2005 Opening Night at Pops in 2006 and 2007. Symphony. Ollie serves on the BSO’s Media Brooks is a senior managing director and and Technology Committee. founder of HarbourVest Partners LLC, an In addition to her involvement at the BSO, independent investment firm that provides Cindy has been involved with several arts innovative private equity solutions to insti- organizations, including serving on the advi- tutional clients worldwide. Brooks earned sory council at Boston University Tangle- his B.S. from Lehigh University and his MBA wood Institute and the boards of the Boston from Harvard Business School. He is a for- Conservatory at Berklee, The Terezín Music mer trustee of Lehigh University. An artist Foundation, From the Top, and the Isabella and graduate of Wheaton College, Linda is a Stewart Gardner Museum. Ollie, who recent- member of the Huntington Theatre Company ly served as a senior advisor at Battery Ven- Council of Overseers. Brooks and Linda have tures and currently teaches at the Harvard three married children and seven grandchil- Institute for Learning in Retirement, studied dren and reside in Sherborn, MA.

week 7 bso news 9 several instruments as a child, continuing in the arts, working in both oil and charcoal, into adulthood. Together they share their and, for the last ten years, designing and fab- commitment to music with their three sons, ricating silver pieces, both artistic and func- all of whom studied music. tional, at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln. Mrs. Saris was married to the late Dr. Morris The Curmes are early supporters of the S. Saris, a Boston dentist, for thirty years, Tanglewood Forever Fund and were leading and to Edwin Wolfe who died in 2010 after supporters of the Artistic Initiative and the a twenty-one-year marriage. Her daughter Immediate Impact Fund. Longtime donors Patti is the wife of BSO Trustee Arthur Segel. to the BSO Annual Funds, Cindy and Ollie are members of the Higginson Society at the Encore level and the Koussevitzky Society at Go Behind the Scenes: the Virtuoso level. They are full Fellowship The Irving W. and Charlotte F. Rabb sponsors through their support of the Tan- Symphony Hall Tours glewood Music Center and have also gen- erously supported the production of “New The Irving W. and Charlotte F. Rabb Sympho- Tanglewood Tales.” ny Hall Tours, named in honor of the Rabbs’ devotion to Symphony Hall through a gift from their children James and Melinda Rabb The Ruth Clayton Saris Concert and Betty (Rabb) and Jack Schafer, provide Saturday, November 12, 2016 a rare opportunity to go behind the scenes Ruth Clayton Saris has been a Boston Sym- at Symphony Hall. In these free, guided phony subscriber for more than fifty years. tours, experienced members of the Boston Mrs. Saris raised her three children—Patti B. Symphony Association of Volunteers unfold Saris, Linda E. Saris, and Stephen C. Saris—in the history and traditions of the Boston Sym- Boston, where she was active in the Boston phony Orchestra—its musicians, conductors, chapter of the League of Women voters, and supporters—as well as offer in-depth holding the position of President for two information about the Hall itself. Tours are years. Mrs. Saris also worked at the John F. offered on selected weekdays at 4 p.m. and Kennedy Library producing programs relat- some Saturdays during the BSO season. ed to Boston and as the Director of Public Please visit bso.org/tours for more informa- Affairs at the Boston Chamber of Commerce tion and to register. for ten years. She has always been involved

10 Join Our Community of and Richard Ranti, bassoon, perform music Music Lovers— of Schubert, Fred Lerdahl, Milhaud, and The Friends of the BSO Dohnányi, on Sunday, November 13, at 4 p.m. at Wilson Chapel, 210 Herrick Road, Attending a BSO concert at Symphony Hall Newton Centre. Tickets are $20 ($10 for is a communal experience—thousands students; children under twelve free), of concertgoers join together to hear 100 available at the door or at waldencham- musicians collaborate on each memorable berplayers.org. For more information, email performance. Without an orchestra, there is [email protected] or call (617) no performance, and without an audience, 871-9WCP [-9927]. it is just a rehearsal. Every single person is important to ensuring another great expe- BSO violinist Lucia Lin is soloist in Tchaikov- rience at Symphony Hall. There’s another sky’s Violin Concerto with the Bach, Beethoven community that helps to make it all possible, and Brahms Society, Steven Lipsitt, music one that you might not notice while enjoying director, on Sunday, November 20, at 3 p.m., a concert—the Friends of the BSO. Every $1 at Boston’s Faneuil Hall. The program, enti- the BSO receives through ticket sales must tled “Russian Radiance, Haydn’s London,” be matched by an additional $1 of contribut- also features Stravinsky’s Ragtime (tran- ed support to cover annual expenses. Friends scribed by Mr. Lipsitt) and Haydn’s Sympho- of the BSO help bridge that gap, keeping the ny No. 104, London. Tickets from $35 to $78 music playing to the delight of audiences all are available at web.ovationtix.com. For more year long. In addition to joining a commu- information, visit bbbsociety.org or call (305) nity of like-minded music lovers, becoming 970-1132. a Friend of the BSO entitles you to benefits The Concord Chamber Music Society, found- that bring you closer to the music you cher- ed by BSO violinist Wendy Putnam, presents ish. Friends receive advance ticket ordering the Chiara String Quartet (Rebecca Fisher privileges, discounts at the Symphony Shop, and Hyeyung Julie Yoon, violins, Jonah Siro- and access to the BSO’s online newsletter ta, viola, and Gregory Beaver, cello) playing InTune, as well as invitations to exclusive music of Mendelssohn, Britten, and Bee- donor events such as BSO and Pops working thoven on Sunday, November 27, at 3 p.m. rehearsals, and much more. Friends member- (pre-concert lecture at 2 p.m.) at the Con- ships start at just $100. To join our commu- cord Academy Performing Arts Center, 166 nity of music lovers in the Friends of the BSO, Main Street, Concord, MA. Tickets are $42 contact the Friends Office at (617) 638-9276 and $33 (discounts for seniors and students). or [email protected], or join online at For more information, visit concordchamber- bso.org/contribute. music.org or call (978) 371-9667. BSO violinist Lucia Lin and former BSO cellist BSO Members in Concert Jonathan Miller perform in a “Music at the Former BSO principal harp Ann Hobson Mansion” concert on Tuesday, November Pilot is soloist in Ginastera’s Harp Concer- 29, at 7 p.m. (pre-concert reception at 6:30) to with the Boston Civic Symphony, led by at the Ayer Mansion, 395 Commonwealth guest conductor Steven Lipsitt, on Sunday, Avenue, Boston. On the program are Bach’s November 13, at 2 p.m. at New England Con- Violin Sonata No. 3 in C and his Cello Suite servatory’s Jordan Hall. Also on the program No. 5 in C minor, as well as Ravel’s Sonata are works by Weber and Brahms. Tickets for Violin and Cello. All proceeds benefit the are $15-$40 (discounts for students and Campaign for the Ayer Mansion, a non-profit seniors), available at csob.org or by calling organization dedicated to preserving the last (617) 923-6333. surviving intact residential commission of the famed American artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. The Walden Chamber Players, whose mem- To purchase tickets ($50 per person; stu- bership includes BSO musicians Tatiana dents $20), please call Angela Lee at (617) Dimitriades and Alexander Velinzon, violins, 536-2586 or visit AyerMansion.org.

week 7 bso news 11 OYSTER PERPETUAL

AIR-KING

rolex oyster perpetual and air-king are ® trademarks. Friday-afternoon Bus Service by knowledgeable members of the Boston to Symphony Hall Symphony Association of Volunteers. The BSO Information Stand is staffed before each If you’re tired of fighting traffic and search- concert and during intermission. ing for a parking space when you come to Friday-afternoon Boston Symphony concerts, why not consider taking the bus from your Those Electronic Devices… community directly to Symphony Hall? The As the presence of smartphones, tablets, BSO is pleased to continue offering round- and other electronic devices used for com- trip bus service on Friday afternoons at cost munication, note-taking, and photography from the following communities: Beverly, has increased, there have also been continu- Canton, Cape Cod, Concord, Framingham, ing expressions of concern from concertgoers the South Shore, Swampscott, Wellesley, and musicians who find themselves distracted Weston, and Worcester in Massachusetts; not only by the illuminated screens on these Nashua, New Hampshire; and Rhode Island. devices, but also by the physical movements In addition, we offer bus service for selected that accompany their use. For this reason, concerts from the Holyoke/Amherst area. and as a courtesy both to those on stage and Taking advantage of your area’s bus service those around you, we respectfully request not only helps keep this convenient service that all such electronic devices be completely operating, but also provides opportunities turned off and kept from view while BSO per- to spend time with your Symphony friends, formances are in progress. In addition, please meet new people, and conserve energy. For also keep in mind that taking pictures of the further information about bus transportation orchestra—whether photographs or videos— to Friday-afternoon Boston Symphony con- is prohibited during concerts. Thank you very certs, please call the Subscription Office at much for your cooperation. (617) 266-7575.

Comings and Goings... The Information Stand: Find Out What’s Happening at the BSO Please note that latecomers will be seated by the patron service staff during the first Are you interested in upcoming BSO concert convenient pause in the program. In addition, information? Special events at Symphony please also note that patrons who leave the Hall? BSO youth activities? Stop by the infor- auditorium during the performance will not mation stand in the Brooke Corridor on the be allowed to reenter until the next conve- Massachusetts Avenue side of Symphony nientpause in the program, so as not to dis- Hall (orchestra level), and in the Cohen Wing turb the performers or other audience mem- during Pops concerts. There you will find the bers while the music is in progress. We thank latest information on performances, mem- you for your cooperation in this matter. bership, and Symphony Hall, all provided

week 7 bso news 13 MASTERCARD® IS PROUD TO SUPPORT THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

EXPLORE PRICELESS® BOSTON EXPERIENCES AT PRICELESS.COM

Certain terms and restrictions apply. Quantities are limited. For MasterCard® cardholders only. MasterCard, World MasterCard, Priceless and the MasterCard brand mark are registered trademarks of MasterCard International Incorporated. © 2016 MasterCard. on display in symphony hall This season’s BSO Archives exhibit once again displays the wide variety of holdings in the Boston Symphony Archives. highlights of this year’s exhibit include, on the orchestra level of symphony hall: • a display case in the Brooke Corridor exploring the BSO’s early performances of works by Brahms • two display cases in the Brooke corridor focusing on BSO music directors Arthur Nikisch (1889-93) and Charles Munch (1949-62) • two display cases in the Huntington Avenue corridor featuring the percussionists and timpanists, and the contrabassoonists, of the BSO exhibits on the first-balcony level of symphony hall include: • a display case in the first-balcony corridor, audience-right, devoted to the BSO’s acquisition in 1926 of the Casadesus Collection of “ancient instruments” • a display case, also in the first-balcony corridor, audience-right, focusing on historic BSO performances of Shostakovich’s Sixth and Seventh symphonies • a display case in the first-balcony corridor, audience-left, exploring the early history of the Boston Pops

CABOT-CAHNERS ROOM EXHIBIT—THE HEINZ W. WEISSENSTEIN/WHITESTONE PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION: 45 YEARS AT TANGLEWOOD An exhibit highlighting the acquisition by the BSO Archives of the Whitestone Photo- graph Collection, a collection of more than 90,000 negatives and prints documenting the rich musical life at Tanglewood, the BSO’s summer home

TOP OF PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Photograph of a 19th-century serpent from the Casadesus Collection of Ancient Instruments, acquired by the BSO in 1926 (photographer unknown) Souvenir program for the U.S. and Canadian tour of the Orchestre National de France led by Charles Munch in 1948—the year before he became the BSO’s music director Photographer Heinz Weissenstein flanked by Leonard Bernstein, Gunther Schuller, and Seiji Ozawa at Tangle- wood, 1970 (photo by then BSO Assistant Manager Mary H. Smith, using Weissenstein’s Rolleiflex camera)

week 7 on display 15 Marco Borggreve

Andris Nelsons

In 2016-17, his third season as the BSO’s Ray and Maria Stata Music Director, Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in fourteen wide-ranging subscription programs at Symphony Hall, repeating three of them at New York’s Carnegie Hall in late February/early March, followed by two concerts in Montreal and Toronto. In the sum- mer of 2015, following his first season as music director, his contract with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was extended through the 2021-22 season. In addition, in 2017 he becomes Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, in which capacity he will also bring the BSO and GWO together for a unique multi-dimensional alliance. Following the 2015 Tanglewood season, Maestro Nelsons and the BSO under- took 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 (including the BSO’s first performance in Leipzig’s famed Gewandhaus), ustria,A 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 with Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. He made his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, leading both the BSO and Tangle- wood Music Center Orchestra as part of Tanglewood’s 75th Anniversary Gala. His first CD with the BSO—live recordings of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2—was released in November 2014 on BSO Classics. In 2014-15, in col- laboration with Deutsche Grammophon, he and the BSO initiated a multi-year recording project entitled “Shostakovich Under Stalin’s Shadow,” to include live performances of Shostakovich’s symphonies 5 through 10 and other works composed under the life-threatening shadow of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Released in July 2015, their first Shostakovich disc—the Symphony No. 10 and the Passacaglia from the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk—won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance. May 2016 brought not only the second release in this series—a two-disc set including

16 symphonies 5, 8, and 9 and excerpts from Shostakovich’s 1932 incidental music for Hamlet—but also the extension of the collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon to encompass the composer’s complete symphonies and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. More recently, this past August, their disc of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 won Gramo- phone Magazine’s Orchestral Award.

From 2008 to 2015, Andris Nelsons was critically acclaimed as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In the next few seasons, he continues his collaborations with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal Concertge- bouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Philhar- monia Orchestra. A regular guest at the Royal Opera House, Vienna State Opera, and Metropolitan Opera, he returned to the Bayreuth Festival in summer 2014 to conduct Wagner’s Lohengrin, in a production directed by Hans Neuenfels, which he premiered at Bayreuth in 2010. Under a new, exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon, Mr. Nelsons will record the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic and Bruckner symphonies with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.

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 principal conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany, from 2006 to 2009 and music director of the Latvian National Opera from 2003 to 2007. Mr. Nelsons is the subject of a 2013 DVD from Orfeo, a documentary film enti- tled “Andris Nelsons: Genius on Fire.” Marco Borggreve

week 7 andris nelsons 17 Boston Symphony Orchestra 2016–2017

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

18 photos by Michael J. Lutch

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

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CommonwealthLimo.com 800-558-5466 • +1-617-787-5575 Brahms’s Orchestral Voice by Jan Swafford

Author/composer Jan Swafford reflects on the place in the concert repertoire of Brahms’s four symphonies and two piano concertos, which Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform November 8-19, with soloist Hélène Grimaud in the concertos.

It would have been a considerable surprise to critics and connoisseurs of the late 19th century to learn that by the time the 20th century was well underway, Johannes Brahms had become one of the most beloved composers of orchestral music, a position he has occupied ever since. There are perhaps two central reasons for his own time’s coolness toward that side of his work. First, orchestral music was a comparatively sparse element in his output. Haydn wrote over a hundred symphonies, Mozart over forty, Beethoven nine, Brahms four. Mozart wrote over thirty concertos, Beethoven seven, Brahms four (two for piano, one for violin, and the Double Concerto for violin and cello). Added to that were his two orchestral overtures, the Haydn Variations, two early serenades, and that’s all. In its Brahms programs this fall, the Boston Symphony will perform the four symphonies and the two piano concertos, which together form a summary of most of his life and career.

Moreover, listeners of his day tended to find Brahms’s orchestral music difficult and intellectual, too much for the common listener. Even Max Kalbeck, a member of Brahms’s intimate circle and eventually his biographer, felt that the symphonies lacked Beethoven’s popular touch and would never find a wide audience. And of course we can’t forget that when Symphony Hall opened its doors in 1900, a local critic suggested the egresses should be marked “Exit In Case of Brahms.”

Brahms in 1868, when the “German Requiem” was premiered

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There are in turn two aspects to our critic’s notorious brickbat. First, many of the other orchestral works created during Brahms’s lifetime were conceived on the Wagner/Liszt side of the equation, meaning perfervid in expression and usually based on programmatic ideas—a story, a poem, a drama. It was Liszt who invented the orchestral tone poem founded on a literary theme (e.g., Les Preludes, or the Faust-Symphony). By the end of the century, that concept had expanded into the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss—Don Juan, Don Quixote, Thus spake Zarathustra, and others—which were operatically decked out with images and events.

Brahms was not a mainstream Romantic, and he resolutely avoided program music. A characteristic example is his Tragic Overture, firmly in the tradition of programmatic Romantic overtures such as Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave, which was inspired by a famous landmark in Scotland. But in his Tragic Overture, Brahms did not inform us what particular tragedy he had in mind, if any. In other words, he wrote a high-Romantic genre work that omitted a central element—storytelling and tone painting—suggested by its title. Mean- while in all his music Brahms stayed true to Classical forms going back through Beethoven to Mozart and Haydn, which we know under the names of sonata form, sonata-rondo, theme and variations, and so on—the old forms that Wagner and Liszt declared dead and buried. Brahms, Liszt wrote, represents “the posthumous party” in music.

For Romantic audiences, program music offered lots of handles to get into a piece: Mahler’s No. 4 or Mozart’s No. 40? drama, imagery, emotion that goes for the jugular. Brahms offered few overt handles: no stated drama, no imagery, and shades of feeling often more delicate and subtle At Fairmont Copley Plaza, we appreciate than the titanic or the heart-on-sleeve variety Romantics craved (think Liszt, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky). He was declared the great abstractionist, uniting Classical form with all our guests’ preferences. Romantic expression. Whether in a song or a symphony Brahms was more concerned with the overall expressive tone and its progress, and the effectiveness of the form, than its center. Fairmont Copley Plaza is honored to be the Official Hotel of two of in tone painting, or Wagner’s epic spine-tinglings, or Bruckner’s warm bath of emotion www.fairmont.com/copley-plaza-boston week 7 brahms’s orchestral voice 23 and paroxysms of brass. Meanwhile there was Brahms’s use of what came to be called “developing variation,” which in practice means that as soon as an idea is presented he usually begins to toy with it, meditate on it, develop it. He can’t simply say something and leave it alone, critics said. You can’t keep up with his incessant tinkering with ideas, his endless roaming through the keys.

So audiences called Brahms’s orchestral voice intellectual and forbidding, and preferred his far more extensive body of chamber music, his German Requiem, his stacks of light- classical items like the Hungarian Dances and Liebeslieder Waltzes. Make no mistake: in terms of career, Brahms had one about as successful as a composer ever has. It was his orchestral music that was the main sticking point. As an example, the exquisitely beauti- ful Violin Concerto never caught on in his lifetime.

Yet, as cultural historian Peter Gay noted, as soon as Brahms was in his grave his orchestral reputation went in short order from forbidding to warm and fuzzy. What happened? How did the forbidding Brahms become a familiar and cherished part of the repertoire? Much of that process is unsearchable. I suspect, though, that some of it had to do with the spread of the German Requiem, which the Boston Symphony played earlier this season. That piece was more or less an instant and permanent success, and it seems to me that anyone who hears this manifestly heartfelt, moving, powerful piece understands that this is who Brahms was. So via that and/or other routes, this under- standing finally came to be applied to the supposedly abstract orchestral music. In other words, listeners began better to understand its warmth, its subtle drama, its distinctive melodic and harmonic beauty. In short, its humanity.

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24 Brahms around the time of his Symphony No. 3, premiered 1883

None of this is simple, though, and the development of Brahms’s orchestral work as reflected in the BSO’s November programs is a case in point. The kind of problem his music faced can be seen in the early reception of the First Piano Concerto. At its 1859 second performance, in conservative Leipzig with Brahms as soloist, he was hissed off the stage. To the extent that the public knew concertos, they were virtuosic and win- ning ones by the likes of Viotti, Paganini’s hyper-virtuosic outings, the elegant ones of Mozart, and the more robust ones of Beethoven—nothing like the tone of tragic alarm that begins the First, the concerto’s enormous proportions, its widely variegated ideas, its singular integration of orchestra and soloist. It’s the first concerto that resembles a symphony during which a piano just happens to be playing most of the time! The solo part manages to be at once brutally difficult without being conventionally virtuosic.

Still, in its tone the First Piano Concerto was a one-off for Brahms, suffused with the turmoil of his early twenties—his discovery by Robert Schuman, Schumann’s descent into madness, Brahms’s doomed passion for Clara Schumann. (So much for the great abstractionist.) He finished the First Concerto after years of struggle with a medium with which he never entirely felt comfortable. It took him over a decade more to find his true voice with the orchestra, which appeared first in the Haydn Variations of 1873. The 1881 Second Piano Concerto is even longer then the First, its piano part as two-fistedly epic, its symphonic approach to the concerto the same as the First. But this is the work of a mature master experienced with the orchestra, and its tone is largely Olympian except for the massive and demonic scherzo.

The symphonies have their own complexities. The First Symphony’s tumultuous opening movement was drafted in 1862, when Brahms was twenty-nine, though only later did he add its searing, fateful introduction. He finally finished the First some fifteen years later. It is marked by Beethoven through and through: the progress from darkness at the beginning to light in the finale echoes Beethoven’s Fifth; the chorale theme of Brahms’s

week 7 brahms’s orchestral voice 25 finale recalls Beethoven’s Ninth. When somebody pointed out the latter resemblance, Brahms snapped, “Any jackass can see that!” He meant that anyone discerning can see that the piece is also unmistakably Brahms’s own, the chorale theme in his own heart-piercing expressive world, the traditional forms handled with enormous freedom and imagination. The relatively sunny—albeit some dark clouds—Second Symphony is Brahms’s equally individual response to, among other things, Beethoven’s Pastoral Sym- phony.

Some have called the Third Symphony the first one where he escaped the model of Beethoven and stamped the genre definitively with his own personality, from its tow- ering and anguished moments to the exquisitely lyrical ones, the treatment of form so original that the underlying traditional models seem close to dissolution: for one exam- ple, the recapitulation and development of the second movement’s ominous chorale theme is reserved for the finale. Finally came Brahms’s late farewell to symphonies in the towering, dark-toned Fourth, in which his backward-looking viewpoint joined with his unique voice comes to rest in the elegiac finale, laid out in the Baroque form of the chaconne.

So in this Boston Symphony series we see Brahms as composer of concertos and sym- phonies from early to late. Concertos were a high-Romantic genre, and his were at once part of that tradition and distinctive. By the time he finished the First Symphony the genre was verging on moribund (Liszt, Wagner, and their disciples had already declared it dead), never having regained the heights Beethoven brought it to. From the First to the Fourth Brahms virtually revived the symphony, paving the way for generations of symphonists to come: Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius, and a long list beyond. He also provid- ed, even if he did not live to see it, works that live vibrantly in the repertoire and in the hearts of countless listeners. jan swafford is a prizewinning composer and writer whose books include biographies of Johannes Brahms and Charles Ives, “The Vintage Guide to Classical Music,” and, most recently, “Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph.” An alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied composition, he is currently working on a biography of Mozart.

week 7 brahms’s orchestral voice 27 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 136th season, 2016–2017

Tuesday, November 8, 8pm | the brooks and linda zug concert Thursday, November 10, 8pm Friday, November 11, 1:30pm | the cynthia and oliver curme concert Saturday, November 12, 8pm | the ruth clayton saris concert

andris nelsons conducting

Eric nathan “the space of a door” (world premiere; commissioned by the boston symphony orchestra, andris nelsons, music director, through the generous support of the new works fund established by the massachusetts cultural council, a state agency)

brahms piano concerto no. 1 in d minor, opus 15 Maestoso Adagio Allegro non troppo hélène grimaud

{intermission} Chris Lee

28 brahms symphony no. 1 in c minor, opus 68 (november 8 and 10 only) Un poco sostenuto—Allegro Andante sostenuto Un poco allegretto e grazioso Adagio—Più Andante—Allegro non troppo ma con brio—Più Allegro Program note begins on page 49. brahms symphony no. 2 in d, opus 73 (november 11 and 12 only) Allegro non troppo Adagio non troppo Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino) Allegro con spirito Program note begins on page 57.

Please note that these performances of Brahms’s First and Second symphonies are being recorded for potential release on BSO Classics. Your cooperation in keeping noise in Symphony Hall at a minimum is sincerely appreciated. friday afternoon’s performance by hélène grimaud is supported by a gift in memory of hamilton osgood. saturday evening’s performance of brahms’s symphony no. 2 is supported by a gift from lucille batal. bank of america and dell emc are proud to sponsor the bso’s 2016-17 season.

The evening concerts on Tuesday and Thursday will end about 10:20, the Friday-afternoon concert about 3:45, and the Saturday-night concert about 10:15. Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe performs on a Stradivarius violin, known as the “Lafont,” generously donated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra by the O’Block Family. 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 Chauffeured Transportation. The program books for the Friday series are given in loving memory of Mrs. Hugh Bancroft by her daughters, the late Mrs. A. Werk Cook and the late Mrs. William C. Cox. 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 concert, 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 orchestra—whether photographs or videos—is prohibited during concerts.

week 7 program 29 The Program in Brief...

This week’s new work by the young American composer Eric Nathan, and next week’s by Timo Andres, were commissioned by the BSO to complement the Brahms symphonies and piano concertos being performed here this week and next. The resulting work by Eric Nathan, the space of a door, alludes directly to Brahms’s Second Symphony while also seeking to approach that composer’s richness of emotional expression. The single-movement, eleven-minute work is also one of many inspired by a sense of “place” in human culture. Another such piece was Nathan’s 2014 BSO-commissioned chamber-music work Why Old Places Matter, premiered by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in January 2015. the space of a door was in part triggered by Nathan’s discovery of the Providence Athenaeum and its latent cultural energy.

Brahms completed his D minor piano concerto in 1859, when he was just twenty-five years old. Noteworthy for its wide-ranging content and variety of contrast, it was his second big work for orchestra (following his Serenade in D) and is his earliest heard with any regularity today. Its composition cost Brahms years of struggle, with much rewriting and alteration along the way; some of its material derives from the composer’s early efforts to create a symphony. The instrumentation of the very opening—a jagged melody in violins and cellos, heard against sustained notes from winds and lower strings, and rumbling drum-rolls—immediately creates a world recognizably the concerto’s own. The slow movement combines breadth and lyricism with a depth of feeling that belies how young Brahms was when he wrote it. This is music of striking emotional depth that never fails to absorb the listener, and remains a key reason for the important place the work holds in the repertoire.

Brahms was forty-three when he finished his First Symphony (being played this Tuesday and Thursday) in 1876. Though he already had several works for orchestra behind him— notably the Piano Concerto No. 1 and Variations on a Theme by Haydn—a symphony was something different, requiring a newfound comfort level in writing for the orchestra, and, more significantly, that he overcome his fear of following in Beethoven’s footsteps. Before the premiere, Brahms himself characterized his First Symphony as “long and not exactly amiable.” Though it elicited conflicting responses when it was new, its emotional power and musical impact are today recognized as unquestionably great.

Once he was past the pressure of following in Beethoven’s footsteps, Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 (being performed Friday and Saturday) came much more easily: the First was pre- miered in November 1876, the Second composed in the summer of 1877. Like the First, the Second initially proved a hard nut to crack, given its combination of warmly lyric Roman- ticism with a density of counterpoint that could prove baffling to contemporary listeners. And though often characterized as a sunny contrast to Brahms’s turbulent First Symphony, the Second is in fact a work of many moods, balancing the uneasy tranquility of its first two movements with the geniality of the third and the unbridled exuberance of the fourth.

Robert Kirzinger/Marc Mandel

30 Rebecca Fay Photography

Eric Nathan “the space of a door” (2016)

ERIC NATHAN was born in New York City on December 8, 1983, and currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island. He wrote “the space of a door” on commission for the Boston Symphony Orches- tra, starting to compose in January 2016 and completing the score in August (and covering much ground while doing so, working in Providence, Berlin, Huangshan, and Aspen). The score is “Dedicated to Andris Nelsons, Anthony Fogg, and the members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra with admiration and gratitude,” and “To S.E.S., in memoriam.” These are the first performances.

“the space of a door” CALLS FOR AN ORCHESTRA OF two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons (second doubling contrabassoon), four horns, three trum- pets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (minimum three, variously playing timpani, chimes, two bass drums, marimba, vibraphone, snare drum, maracas, glockenspiel, six suspended cymbals, Chinese cymbals, clash cymbals, two sizzle cymbals, four triangles, large tam-tam, piece of paper), harp, and strings. The duration of the piece is about eleven minutes.

Eric Nathan’s the space of a door is one of two new pieces commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra to open two series of concerts traversing Brahms’s four sympho- nies and two piano concertos this week and next. Nathan’s piece appears on concerts featuring the D minor piano concerto and either the First Symphony (November 8 and 10) or the Second (November 11 and 12). The other new work, Timo Andres’s Everything Happens So Much, appears on next week’s concerts, with the Second Piano Concerto and either the Third (November 15 and 17) or Fourth (November 18 and 19) symphony.

BSO artistic administrator Anthony Fogg first spoke to Nathan about the commission in summer 2015, but the composer’s personal and professional associations with the BSO extend back to his childhood, when his parents first took him to Tanglewood. (The family lived an easily manageable distance from Tanglewood in Larchmont, New York, just north of New York City.) He had both piano and trumpet lessons and by high school was advanced enough as a trumpet player to attend the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, where as a member of the Young Artists Orchestra he performed music of

week 7 program notes 31 Eric Nathan on “the space of a door”

I am often inspired by engaging with old places such as historic churches, cathedrals, or concert halls. Despite the silence of their atmosphere, these places can feel full of a collective energy of those who were there before me. The initial creative spark for the space of a door came from my first visit to the Providence Athenaeum in December 2015. Upon entering this temple of books, built in 1836, one is welcomed by a grand sight of thousands of books brightly illuminated. I imagined the energy latent in all of the count- less stories, the voices of authors and their characters who live in these books, each work a portal to another world. This was my starting point, providing a kind of scaffold- ing for the piece, which then expanded in other directions as I filtered my musical ideas through the emotions experienced during the months working on it, including a sense of personal loss from the sudden death of one of my closest mentors, composer Steven Stucky, and the daily hurt I have felt from news of the tragic series of world events.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra invited me to compose this work as part of a festival celebrating Johannes Brahms, whose music has been important to me as a composer and performer. My piece pays homage to Brahms by taking inspiration from his Sympho- nies Nos. 1 and 2, particularly the rising minor third in the horns that opens Symphony No. 2. I begin my piece with the horns playing this interval together in harmony. The interval plays a key role throughout my work, both harmonically and structurally, return- ing at the end as a descending melodic third in a vastly different emotional context. Emotionally, the piece takes a journey through a series of interconnected worlds punc- tuated by sections featuring massive, asynchronous textures in the strings, where each player is asked to play individually within the collective, as if a soloist. These sections are set against moments of stillness and fragility. A fast, wildly agitated section lies at the middle of the work.

the space of a door was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and is dedi- cated to Music Director Andris Nelsons, Anthony Fogg, and the members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra with my deepest admiration and gratitude. The title quotes from a line of Samuel Beckett’s poem, “my way is in the sand flowing.”

Eric Nathan, August 2016

32 Robert Kirzinger

The Providence Athenaeum, part of the inspiration for Eric Nathan’s “the space of a door”

Brahms and Shostakovich in Ozawa Hall. The seriousness of purpose he experienced in that environment cemented his decision to make his career as a musician, but gradually he began to realize he preferred composing to practicing. He’d written his first piece, for trumpet, because he wanted such a piece to exist for him to play. To this day Nathan’s music exhibits a performative physicality and concern for the idiomatic character of the instrument that are clearly rooted in his own experience as a player—which partly explains why many of his pieces, especially the solo works, are very difficult, reveling in the joyful challenge of virtuosity.

Having decided on composing as his career, Nathan went on to study at Yale, Indiana, and Cornell universities. The Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Steven Stucky, with whom he studied at Cornell, was one of his most important mentors. Nathan also attended the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme at the Aldeburgh Festival as well as the Aspen Music Festival. In another link to the Boston Symphony, he was a Com- position Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center in 2010; several of his pieces were performed there that summer. The TMC commissioned his brass piece Timbered Bells, which was premiered there in 2011, and in 2014 his solo trumpet piece Toying was performed as part of that summer’s Festival of Contemporary Music. In the 2013-14 academic year, Nathan lived in Rome as a recipient of the prestigious Rome Prize of the American Academy. As a composer intensely inspired by culture and place, he had an incredibly fruitful year in Italy, completing and starting a number of pieces, among them his orchestral work Paestum, named after the ruins of a Greek settlement south of Naples and commissioned by the International Society for Contemporary Music. When, in April 2014, the BSO offered him a commission for the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, he used his Rome experience as the basis for Why Old Places Matter, the title of which comes from a series of essays by Tom Mayes, a historic preservationist whom Nathan had met at the Academy. That piece was premiered by the Chamber Players in January 2015 at Jordan Hall in Boston, and repeated that summer at Tanglewood.

week 7 program notes 33 In addition to the Rome Prize, Eric Nathan was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as commissions from the Yale Symphony Orchestra for its 50th anniversary season (This Old Place), soprano Lucy Shelton, the Aspen Music Festival, and the New York Phil- harmonic for its biennial (As Above, So Below, a solo work for the Philharmonic’s principal trombonist Joseph Alessi), among others. His Soul Perching was premiered by sopranos Lucy Shelton, Dawn Upshaw, and Tony Arnold at Merkin Hall in New York City. In 2015 a CD of his music, “Multitude, Solitude,” was released by Albany Records. Nathan has been active as a teacher as well. He had a one-year teaching position at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts; has taught at Vermont’s Yellow Barn Young Artists Program and the New York Philharmonic's Composer's Bridge Program; and since fall 2015 has been an assistant professor at Brown University.

Nathan’s orchestral work the space of a door is one many pieces inspired by place, in this case the Providence Athenaeum, near Brown University (see photo, page 33), which he visited during his first year on the Brown faculty and which has become one of his favorite buildings in the city. In his own comments on the space of a door the compos- er describes being struck by the “energy latent in all the countless stories” within its volumes, an energy that seemed to be made manifest by the quality of light within the high-ceilinged building as one enters the front doors.

As usual with Nathan’s music, though, the initial trigger of place is just one dimension of the expressive content of his new piece. He started the space of a door in January 2016, and the following month was shocked by the death of one of his most significant mentors, Steven Stucky. The dedication mentioned above, “To S.E.S., in memoriam,” refers to Stucky. Nathan had already composed a tribute to his teacher in his 2014 solo piano work Hommage à Steven Stucky (...with friends nearby...) and has spoken of that composer’s tendency to weave quotes and references to his admired predecessors (e.g., Stravinsky, Lutosławski) into his pieces, often very subtly and privately. In that spirit, to go along with the more obvious and “public” references to Brahms that were already

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34 suggested as part of the BSO commission, Nathan has interspersed allusions to his own personal canon of musical influences. I will mention only one of these: the great C major chord that appears just after the start of the piece is taken from Bartók’s Blue- beard’s Castle, where the flinging open of the fifth door to reveal the vista of Bluebeard’s kingdom parallels Nathan’s experience of seeing the brightly lit interior of the Athenaeum for the first time. (The BSO having just performedBluebeard’s Castle two weeks ago, that bright chord might still be ringing in Symphony Hall.)

Besides Stucky’s death, a number of tragic events that occurred in the world during the period of the space of a door’s composition led Nathan to enrich what had begun as an ostensibly optimistic work with more somber, contemplative colors. He realized while writing the piece that he wanted to evoke complex emotions that could simultaneously express grief and wonder, tragedy and beauty, reflecting his sense that normal, everyday human emotional experience is a fluid and highly nuanced spectrum. In this he aimed at a further, less concrete connection to Brahms’s symphonies and piano concertos: while any given piece might leave with us an overall affect of tragedy or joy, within each piece is a continuum of expression from dark to light. the space of a door begins with a harmonic motif from the F-sharp–A rising melodic motif at the start of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, followed by the aforementioned brilliant C major chord borrowed from Bartók. This is the start of a harmonic wash made up of asynchronous strings (playing short figures without coordinating with one another) and flashing gestures in the winds, maintaining a sense of awe and sparkling light. The feeling of meter and forward motion is established in the following section, a network of tightly intertwined melodic lines marked “Broadly – coming to life, with a sense of wonder.” The texture here is a rich canon, voices in imitation, which gradually disperses. Opposition between bright winds and sustained strings creates tension, with percussion providing both color and, occasionally, added impetus. The feeling of tense stillness is suddenly interrupted by a passage of frantic, aggressive activity in the middle of the piece. This transforms seamlessly into a long-breathed melodic passage for violins and flutes over sixteenth-note and triplet accompaniment (the three-against-two texture is a common Brahms detail). Ideas from earlier in the work, such as static harmonies and the glimmering textures of asynchronous strings, are revisited in a series of rapid changes, recapitulation-like, in an extended buildup of energy toward the end of the piece, but the dominant characteristics of the closing minutes portray a shimmering, sparkling scrim of colorfully fragile light.

Robert Kirzinger

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

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performanc ® sound for yourself. of their their of And our And s. e— he he e . Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Opus 15

JOHANNES BRAHMS was born in the free city of Hamburg on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. His First Piano Concerto took shape over the years 1854-1858. Brahms played the solo part in the first performance, which took place in Hanover on January 22, 1859, with Joseph Joachim conducting.

IN ADDITION TO THE SOLO PIANO, the score calls for two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Admit, when you think of Brahms, you probably think of him as he is in the famous von Beckerath drawing of him at the piano (see page 41 of this program book)—an older man with grey hair and flowing white beard, stout, sure to light a cigar when he is finished playing, then off to a place called The Red Hedgehog for wine and smoke and conversa- tion, gruff and sometimes outright rude but still capable of turning on charm for the ladies, going for long walks, writing many letters, some of them distressingly arch, spending summers composing in places with names like Portschach, Mürzzuschlag, and Bad Ischl, but unable to tolerate any of them more than three years in a row, and of course writing solid masterpiece after solid masterpiece.

Right enough, but it has nothing to do with the twenty-five-year-old Brahms struggling to bring his D minor piano concerto to completion—“I have no judgment about this piece any more, nor any control over it,” he writes to Joseph Joachim on December 22, 1857. Four years earlier, on October 28, 1853, Robert Schumann closed his career as music critic with the celebrated, oft-invoked article “New Paths”: ... I have always thought that some day, one would be bound suddenly to appear, one called to articulate in ideal form the spirit of his time, one whose mastery would not reveal itself to us step by step, but who, like Athena, would spring fully armed from the head of Zeus. And he is come, a young man over whose cradle graces and heroes have stood watch. His name is Johannes Brahms... and he [bears] even outwardly those signs that proclaim: here is one of the elect.

week 7 program notes 37 Program page for the first Boston Symphony performances of Brahms’s D minor piano concerto on November 30 and December 1, 1900, with Wilhelm Gericke conducting and Harold Bauer as soloist (BSO Archives)

38 That year, Brahms had come to the Schumanns in Düsseldorf as a shy, awkward, nearsighted young man, boyish in appearance as well as manner (the beard was still twenty-two years away), blond, delicate, almost wispy. His two longest, closest musi- cal friendships began in 1853—with the violinist, conductor, and composer Joseph Joachim, and with Clara Schumann. Both went through turbulent, painful stages, the one with Joachim much later, but that with Clara almost at once. On February 27, 1854, Robert Schumann, whose career as conductor had collapsed and who had begun to suffer from auditory and visual hallucinations, tried to drown himself, and five days later he was committed to an asylum in Endenich. Clara, pregnant with their seventh child, was des perate, and in the following weeks, Brahms’s kindliness, friendship, and grati- tude were transmuted into the condition of being passionately in love with this gifted, strong, captivatingly charming and beautiful thirty-five-year-old woman. Moreover, she re turned his feelings. In their correspondence there is reference to “the unanswered question.” Schumann’s death in July 1856 was a turning point in Brahms’s relations with Clara, though not the one for which he must have hoped. She seemed more married to Robert than ever, they pulled apart, and it took a while before they settled into the lov- ing, nourishing friendship that endured until Clara’s death in May 1896.

All this time, the music we know as the D minor piano concerto was in Brahms’s head, occupying more and more pages of his notebooks, being tried out at the piano (or at two), sent to Joachim for criticism, discussed in letters. It is surely marked by the turmoil of these years, by Robert Schumann’s madness and death, by Brahms’s love for Clara and hers for him, by their retreat from their passion. Its composition was marked as well by purely musical troubles, by the mixed effect of the very young man’s originality, his ambition, his inexperience (particularly with respect to writing for orchestra), his almost overpowering feeling for the past, his trembling sense of his own audacity at inserting himself into history as, somehow, a successor of Bach and Handel, Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann.

He set out in 1854 to write a sonata for two pianos, but by June of that year, he was already uncertain about it and wrote to Joachim: I’d really like to put my D minor sonata aside for a long time. I have often played the first three movements with Frau Schumann. (Improved.) Actually, not even two pia- nos are really enough for me.... I am in so confused and indecisive a frame of mind that I can’t beg you enough for a good, firm response. Don’t avoid a negative one either, it could only be useful to me.

In March he had traveled the few miles from Düsseldorf to Cologne in order to hear the Beethoven Ninth for the first time. More than twenty-two years would pass before he allowed himself to complete a symphony and have it performed, but still, from then on, the idea of writing such a work gave him no peace. Before long, the sonata for which two pianos were not enough turned into the symphony it had really wanted to be in the first place (and the choice of D minor, the key of the Beethoven Ninth, for this sonata/ symphony is no coincidence). He was reluctant, though, to face the idea of symphony, nor

week 7 program notes 39

Brahms at the piano, as drawn by his artist friend Willy von Beckerath

would the sonority of the piano go away. To turn the music into a piano concerto seemed to be the answer, and by April 1856 he was sending drafts to Joachim (“You know how infinitely you could please me—if it’s worth the effort at all—by looking at it very carefully and passing on to me even the most trivial of your thoughts and reservations”).

Joachim to Brahms, December 4, 1856: I don’t know whether you will be pleased by my penciled suggestions and wish you’d soon answer that unstated question, best of all by simply sending me the concerto’s continuation.... I become more fond of the piece all the time, though certain things don’t altogether convince me compositionally: from page 21 to 24 it’s too fragmentary, not flowing enough—restless rather than impassioned—just as in general, after the significant opening and the wonderfully beautiful song in minor, I miss an appropriately magnificent second theme—I do realize that something commensurately elevated and beautiful in major, something that could compete in breadth with the opening idea, must be hard to find—but even these reservations don’t blind me to the many glories of the movement.

Brahms to Joachim, December 12, 1856: So here is the finale, just to be rid of it at last. Will it be good enough for you? I doubt it. The end was really meant to be good, but now it doesn’t seem so to me. A thousand thanks for having looked over the first movement so benevolently and exactly. I have already learned a lot from your beautiful commentary.... Scold and cut all you want.

Brahms to Joachim, early January 1857: You’re not embarrassed to make heavy and heavier cuts in the rondo, are you? I know very well that they’re needed. Send it soon. Here’s the first movement, copied over for a second—and, please, severe—going over.... Oddly enough, an Adagio is going along as well. If I could only rejoice over a successful Adagio. Write to me about it, and

week 7 program notes 41

firmly. If you like a little bit, show it to our dear friend, otherwise not.... I like the little alteration on page 19, line 2, but doesn’t it remind me of Wagner?... Dear Joseph, I am so happy to be able to send you my things, it makes me feel doubly sure.

Joachim to Brahms, January 12, 1857: Your finale—all in all, I find it really significant: the pithy, bold spirit of the first theme, the intimate and soft B-flat major passage, and particularly the solemn reawakening toward a majestic close after the cadenza, all that is rich enough to leave an uplifting impression if you absorb these principal features. In fact, I even believe that even after the impassioned spaciousness of the first movement and the elevating reverence of the second it would make a satisfying close to the whole concerto—were it not for some uncertainties in the middle of the movement, which disturb the beauty and the total effect through a kind of instability and stiffness. It sounds as though the themes themselves had been invented by the creative artist in very heat of inspiration, but then you hadn’t allowed them enough time to form proper crystals in the process of fermentation. [There follow several pages of detailed criticism of the harmonic struc- ture and some questions about the scoring.] ... A conversation with Frau Schumann led me to think it would be well if you wrote another finale, revision often being more trouble than new invention. But that would be a waste of so much that is meaningful in the rondo, and perhaps you can bring yourself back to the point of working with your original impetuosity so as to make those few places over—I’d like that.

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So it went for months more, with revisions, with decisions to leave certain things alone (“I’m returning one passage still with the mark of Cain on its forehead”), with inquiries about horn transpositions, the risk involved in assigning a solo to the third horn (“The players in Hamburg and Elberfeld are worthless, and who knows about other orches- tras?”), about the advisability of omitting the piccolo altogether (he did, settling finally on a contained and classical orchestra with woodwinds and trumpets in pairs, four horns, kettledrums, and strings). In December 1857 he wrote the despairing sentence already quoted: “I have no judgment about this piece any more, nor any control over it,” adding “Nothing sensible will ever come of it.” To which Joachim sensibly replied, “Aber Mensch, but I beg you, man, please for God’s sake let the copyist get at the concerto.” “I made more changes in the first movement,” Brahms reported in March 1858 and even risked not sending them to Joachim. That good friend made his orchestra available for a read- ing rehearsal in Hanover in April, and bit by bit, Brahms came to face the inevitable: he must let it go and perform it.

The premiere in Hanover went well enough, but the performance in the more important city of Leipzig a few days later was a disaster: No reaction at all to the first and second movements. At the end, three pairs of hands tried slowly to clap, whereupon a clear hissing from all sides quickly put an end to any such demonstration.... I think it’s the best that could happen to one, it forces you to collect your thoughts and it raises courage. After all, I’m still trying and groping. But the hissing was really too much, yes?

“For all that,” Brahms wrote in the same letter to Joachim, “one day, when I’ve improved its bodily structure, this concerto will please, and a second will sound very different.” He was right on both points—though, in fact, he revised only some details. He became a

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46 master. For the solemn, sarabande-like slow movement of the D minor symphony-that- never-was, he found a beautiful use when he set to it the words “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass” in his German Requiem. And who would want the D minor concerto to be other than it is, great and with rough edges, daring and scarred, hard to make sound well, and holding in its Adagio, over which he once inscribed the words “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini,” all that in his painful, Werther-like loyalty and love he had felt about Robert and Clara Schumann?

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 compilations of his program notes, devoted to symphonies, concertos, and the great works for chorus and orchestra.

THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE of music from the Brahms First Piano Concerto was of just the first movement, on December 9, 1871, in Boston, with Marie Krebs as soloist and Theodore Thomas conducting his orchestra. Leopold Godowsky was soloist for the first complete American performance on March 2, 1900, with Theodore Thomas conducting the Chicago Orchestra.

THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF BRAHMS’S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 took place during the BSO’s first Symphony Hall season, on December 1, 1900, with Wilhelm Gericke conducting and Harold Bauer as soloist. Bauer was also soloist for the next three series of performances: in 1914 under Karl Muck, in 1920 under Pierre Monteux, and in 1925 under Serge Koussevitzky. The concerto has been heard in BSO concerts more frequently since 1930, in performances featuring Artur Schnabel, Myra Hess, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Leonard Shure, Rudolf Serkin, Claudio Arrau, and Rudolf Firkušný (all with Koussevitzky conducting), Arrau (with Richard Burgin), Jesús María Sanromá (with Leonard Bernstein), Solomon (Charles Munch), Leon Fleisher (Pierre Monteux), Rudolf Serkin and Gary Graffman (Munch), Van Cliburn, Arthur Rubinstein, and Claude Frank (all with Erich Leinsdorf), Frank (Burgin), Misha Dichter (Michael Tilson Thomas), Rudolf Serkin, Maurizio Pollini, and Claudio Arrau (all with Seiji Ozawa), Garrick Ohlsson (Klaus Tennstedt), Firkušný (Eugene Ormandy), Marek Drewnowski (Leonard Bernstein), Daniel Barenboim (Ozawa and Ilan Volkov), Emanuel Ax (Andrew Davis, Simon Rattle, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Bernard Haitink), John Browning (Jeffrey Tate), Krystian Zimerman (Rattle), Peter Serkin (Ozawa and Christoph Eschenbach), Yefim Bronfman (Antonio Pappano and David Zinman), Evgeny Kissin (James Levine), Gilles Vonsattel (Herbert Blomstedt), and Rudolf Buchbinder (Thierry Fischer). The most recent subscription performances were Buchbinder’s with Fischer, in October 2014. The BSO’s most recent Tanglewood performance was Peter Serkin’s with Eschenbach, on July 30, 2011, though Andris Nelsons led a more recent performance there on July 31, 2016, with soloist Paul Lewis and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, as part of that summer’s Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert.

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JOHANNES BRAHMS was born in Hamburg, Germany, on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. He completed his First Symphony in 1876, though some of the sketches date back to the 1850s. Otto Dessoff conducted the first performance on November 4, 1876, at Karlsruhe.

BRAHMS’S FIRST SYMPHONY IS SCORED for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bas- soons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.

When Brahms finished his First Symphony in September 1876, he was forty-three years old. (Beethoven was twenty-nine, Schubert fifteen, Schumann twenty-two, and Mahler twenty-eight at the completion of their respective first symphonies; Mozart was eight or nine, but that’s another story altogether.) As late as 1873, the composer’s publisher Simrock feared that a Brahms symphony would never happen (“Aren’t you doing any- thing any more? Am I not to have a symphony from you in ’73 either?” he wrote the composer on February 22), and Eduard Hanslick, in his review of the first Vienna perform- ance, noted that “seldom, if ever, has the entire musical world awaited a composer’s first symphony with such tense anticipation.”

Brahms already had several works for orchestra behind him: the Opus 11 and Opus 16 serenades, the D minor piano concerto (which emerged from an earlier attempt at a symphony), and that masterwork of orchestral know-how and control, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn. But a symphony was something different and had to await the sort- ing out of Brahms’s complicated emotional relationship with Robert and Clara Schumann (only after Robert’s death in 1856 could Brahms finally begin to accept that his passion for the older Clara had to remain unrequited), and, more important, of his strong feelings about following in Beethoven’s footsteps.

Beethoven’s influence is certainly to be felt in Brahms’s First Symphony: in its C minor- to-major progress; in the last-movement theme resembling the earlier composer’s

week 7 program notes 49 Program page for the first Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 on December 10, 1881, during the orchestra’s inaugural season, with Georg Henschel conducting (BSO Archives)

50 Ode to Joy—a relationship Brahms himself acknowledged as something that “any ass could see” (perhaps less obvious is the relationship between the theme itself and the slow-moving violin phrase of the last movement’s opening measures); and, perhaps most strikingly, in the rhythmic thrust and tight, motivically-based construction of the work—in some ways quite different from the melodically expansive Brahms we encoun- ter in the later symphonies. But at the same time, there is really no mistaking the one composer for the other: Beethoven’s rhythmic drive is very much his own, whereas Brahms’s more typical expansiveness is still present throughout this symphony, and his musical language is unequivocally 19th-century-Romantic in manner.

Following its premiere at Karlsruhe on November 4, 1876, and its subsequent appear - ance in other European centers, the symphony elicited conflicting reactions. Brahms himself had already characterized the work as “long and not exactly amiable.” Clara Schumann found the ending “musically, a bit flat... merely a brilliant afterthought stem- ming from external rather than internal emotion.” Hermann Levi, court conductor at Munich and later to lead the 1882 Bayreuth premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal, found the two middle movements out of place in such a sweeping work, but the last movement he decreed “probably the greatest thing [Brahms] has yet created in the instrumental field.” The composer’s close friend Theodor Billroth described the last movement as “over- whelming,” but found the material of the first movement “lacking in appeal, too defiant and harsh.”

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week 7 program notes 51

The critic Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904), staunch Brahmsian, staunch anti-Wagnerian

One senses in these responses an inability to reconcile apparently conflicting elements within the work, and the two inner movements do indeed suggest a world quite differ- ent from the outer ones. At the same time, these reactions also point to the seeming dichotomy between, as Eduard Hanslick put it, “the astonishing contrapuntal art” on the one hand and the “immediate communicative effect” on the other. But the two go hand in hand: the full effect of the symphony is dependent upon the compositional craft that binds the work together in its progress from the C minor struggle of the first movement through the mediating regions of the Andante and the Allegretto to the C major triumph of the finale.

The first Allegro’s two principal motives—the three eighth-notes followed by a long er value, suggesting an abstraction of the opening timpani strokes, and the hesitant, three- note chromatic ascent across the bar, heard at the start in the violins—are already sug- gested in the sostenuto introduction, which seems to begin in mid-struggle. The move- ment is prevailingly somber in character, with a tension and drive again suggestive of Bee tho ven. The second idea’s horn and wind colorations provide only passing relief: their dolce and espressivo markings will be spelled out at greater length in the symphony’s sec- ond movement.

The second and third movements provide space for lyricism, for a release from the ten- sion of the first. The calmly expansive oboe theme of the E major Andante is threatened by the G-sharp minor of the movement’s middle section (whose sixteenth-note figura- tions anticipate the main idea of the third movement), but tranquility prevails when the tune returns in combined oboe, horn, and solo violin. The A-flat Allegretto is typical of Brahms in a grazioso mood—compare the Second Symphony’s third movement, or the finale of the Piano Concerto No. 2—and continues the respite from the main battle. And just as the middle movements of the symphony are at an emotional remove from the

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54 outer ones, so too are they musically distant, having passed from the opening C minor to third-related keys: E major for the second movement and A-flat major for the third.

At the same time, the third movement serves as preparation for the finale: its ending seems unresolved, completed only when the C minor of the fourth movement, again a third away from the movement that precedes it, takes hold. As in the first movement, the sweep of the finale depends upon a continuity between the main Allegro and its introduction. This C minor introduction gives way to an airy C major horn call (originally conceived as a birthday greeting to Clara Schumann in 1868) which becomes a crucial binding element in the course of the movement. A chorale in the trombones, which have been silent until this movement, brings a canonic buildup of the horn motto and then the Allegro with its two main ideas: the broad C major tune suggestive of Beethoven’s Ninth, and a powerful chain of falling intervals, which crystallize along the way into a chain of falling thirds, Brahms’s musical hallmark. The movement drives to a climax for full or ches tra on the trombone chorale heard earlier and ends with a final affirmation of C major—Brahms has won his struggle.

Marc Mandel marc mandel is Director of Program Publications of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 was given by Leopold Damrosch on December 15, 1877, in New York’s Steinway Hall. The first Boston performance was given by Carl Zerrahn on January 3, 1878, in a Harvard Musical Association concert at the Music Hall.

THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF BRAHMS’S SYMPHONY NO. 1 was during the orchestra’s inaugural season, on December 10, 1881, under Georg Henschel, who pro- grammed it again in December 1882 and December 1883. Subsequent BSO performances were given by Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil Paur, Karl Muck, Max Fiedler, Ernst Schmidt, Pierre Monteux, Serge Koussevitzky, Richard Burgin, Sir Adrian Boult, Charles Munch, Guido Cantelli, Carl Schuricht, Eugene Ormandy, Erich Leinsdorf, William Steinberg, Rafael Kubelik, Bruno Maderna, Joseph Silverstein, Seiji Ozawa, Georg Solti, Leonard Bernstein, Christoph von Dohnányi, Pascal Verrot, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Haitink (including the most recent subscription performances, in April/May 2015), James Levine, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, and Vladimir Jurowski (the BSO’s most recent Tanglewood performance, on July 19, 2013, though Andris Nelsons led a more recent performance there on July 31, 2016, with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, as part of that summer’s Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert).

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JOHANNES BRAHMS was born in the free city of Hamburg on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. He composed his Symphony No. 2 in 1877, during a productive summer stay at Pörts chach in Carinthia (southern Austria). The first performance took place in Vienna on Decem- ber 30, 1877, under the direction of Hans Richter.

THE SYMPHONY IS SCORED for two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.

In a letter to Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms offhandedly revealed something fun- damental about himself: “I always write only half-sentences, and the reader...must sup ply the other half.” He was talking about his letters, which were often misread, and were often intended to be. In person and on the page, Brahms was chronically given to the oblique, the ironic, the unspoken. Likewise in some of his music we find an ironic play of surface appearance and hidden import; but in his art the irony was no joke, rather a symptom of his own thickly shrouded inner world.

Another example is the celebrated Brahmsian lyricism. When we think of his warmly lyrical moments we usually think of his instrumental works, rather than where we would expect to find that warmth, in his songs. When Brahms was setting words with their in escapable emotions, he pulled back; he only warmed fully within the abstractions of instrumental music. Yet despite his historical reputation as a creator of “pure” music, his life and feelings always went into his work, where they could at once lie hidden and sing for all the world.

Perhaps the most regularly misread of Brahms’s major works is his Second Symphony. From the beginning, critics hailed it as a sunny and halcyon vacation from the turbulent First Symphony. The Second, everybody said, is Brahms’s counterpart to Beethoven’s Pastoral, and looks back further to Haydn and Mozart at their most congenial.

week 7 program notes 57 Program page for the first Boston Symphony perfomance of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, on February 25, 1882, during the BSO’s inaugural season (BSO Archives)

58 But if the Second paints an idyll, it is a lost idyll. Brahms himself hinted at its tangled import. To friend and critic Eduard Hanslick he wrote, “It’ll sound so cheerful and lovely that you will think I wrote it specially for you or even your young lady.” He cited the benevolent influence of his composing spot on the Wörthersee: “[there are] so many melodies flying around that you have to be careful not to step on them.” Meanwhile, having just finished the First Symphony after some fifteen years of wrestling with it, Brahms completed the Second—and several smaller works—during one delightful four- month working vacation in the summer of 1877.

To Clara Schumann, however, Brahms described the symphony as “elegiac.” To his pub- lisher he wrote, “The new symphony is so melancholy that you won’t be able to stand it. I’ve never written anything so sad.... The score must appear with a black border.” There the presumable joke is that the symphony usually strikes listeners as suave and en chant- ing. After all, every movement is in a major key.

2016-17

Our upcoming NOVEMBER concerts Darkness & Light Salem Salem 11/11 8:00 Brookline 11/13 3:00 Friday Evenings at 8:00 In Historic Hamilton Hall Szymanowski Nov 11 | Jan 6 | Mar 10 | Apr 21 String Quartet No. 2, Opus 56 Beethoven Brookline String Quartet No. 7, Opus 59, No. 1 in F Sunday Afternoons at 3:00 In Beautiful St. Paul’s Church Lucia Lin, Tatiana Dimitriades, violins Nov 13 | Jan 8 | Mar 12 | Apr 23 Rebecca Gitter, viola – Jonathan Miller, cello

You ™ Please note Hamilton Hall is a Registered National Historic Landmark and is not handicap accessible to the performance hall on the second floor. Are Hear BostonArtistsEnsemble.org

week 7 program notes 59 “...the finest performance of Messiah in years.” – NewBostonPost

HANDEL MESSIAH

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60 Brahms’s bedroom in Vienna (note picture of J.S. Bach on the wall)

The deeper irony hidden in Brahms’s words is that the elegiac black border is as much a part of the symphony as its more explicit cheeriness. Brahms’s Second is like a vision of nature and youth troubled by shadows that come and go like dark clouds in a sum- mer sky.

In his book on the Second Symphony, Late Idyll, Harvard scholar Reinhold Brinkmann calls this supposed hymn to nature and serenity a “questioning of the pastoral world, a firm denial of the possibility of pure serenity.” Brahms’s testament to the past is haunted by a skepticism and foreboding that seem prophetic.

The questioning begins within the gentle opening. We hear a little three-note turn in the basses (D–C-sharp–D), a melodic shape that will pervade the symphony. The basses are answered by an elegant wind phrase that at once suggests a Strauss waltz (Brahms ad mired the Waltz King) and the hunting horns of a Haydn symphony or divertimento. But all this gracious simplicity is deceptive. Anyone trying to waltz to this opening will fall on his face: the phrasing of the basses and the answering winds is offset by one measure, with neither predominating. At times the movement falls into tumultu- ous stretches where the meter is dismantled. The breezy and beautiful first theme is followed by a fervent second theme that, in itself, is in A major—but harmonized in F-sharp minor. Throughout the symphony, the brightness of major keys will be touched by darker minor-key tints.

The more salient voices disturbing the placid surface are the trombones and tuba. After the balmy opening, the music seems to stop in its tracks; there is a rumble of timpani like distant thunder, and the trombones and tuba whisper a shadowy chorale, in cryptic harmonies. That shadow touches the whole symphony. Later, the develop- ment section is intensified by braying brasses—startling for Brahms, more startling in this halcyon work.

week 7 program notes 61

From the beginning of the symphony’s career there were some who saw the shadows. One of them, conductor and Brahms acquaintance Vincenz Lachner, complained to the com- poser about “the gloomy lugubrious tones of the trombones” intruding on the tranquility. Brahms replied with one of the most revealing statements he ever made about his music or about himself: I very much wanted to manage in that first movement without using trombones.... But their first entrance, that’s mine, and I can’t get along without it, and thus the trombones. I would have to confess that I am...a severely melancholic person, that black wings are constantly flapping above us, and that in my output—perhaps not entirely by chance—that symphony is followed by a little essay about the great “Why.”... It casts the necessary shadow on this serene symphony and perhaps accounts for those tim- pani and trombones. The “little essay” Brahms mentions is another product of the same summer, the motet “Warum ist das Licht gegeben” (Opus 74, No. 1: “Wherefore is the light given to them that toil?”) in which the chorus proclaims Job’s anguished question, “Why? Why?” Thus the trombones, the necessary shadow, the great “Why.”

The second movement begins with a sighing high-Brahmsian cello theme. While the tone throughout is passionate and Romantic, the movement’s languid beauties are un settled by rhythmic and harmonic ambiguity. It ends with a chromatic haze like an expansion of the first movement’s trombone chorale—and underneath, the relentless strokes of timpani that for Brahms were an image of fate, and the thought of fate always ominous. The final sustained chord sounds remarkably frail and uncertain for B major.

If the keynote of the first two movements is tranquility compromised, in the last two movements gaiety and frivolity break out. Brahms was generally influenced by the va cation spots where he composed, for example the cliffs and crashing seas of Rügen that helped complete the stormy First Symphony. This time the pleasures of the Wörther- see have the last word. The third movement unfolds as a charming and jocular scherzo

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week 7 program notes 63 marked by sudden shifts of rhythm and meter: an elegant Allegretto grazioso leaping into a skittering Presto.

The finale is a romp, with one droll and delicious theme after another, ending unfor- gettably with a triumphant D major blaze of trombones. Here Brahms does something he was not supposed to know how to do—make an instrument the bearer of meaning. The trombones as harbingers of fate have become the heralds of joy; avant-gardists of the next century would call that “tone-color composition.” If the great “Why” is ulti- mately unanswerable, this time Brahms was happy to lay aside the question in favor of joie de vivre, flourishing his trombones like a wineglass.

Of Brahms’s four symphonies the Second often seems the most atavistic, the least pon derous and self-conscious. Yet in its pensive irony as in its masterful craftsmanship, in its dark moments as in its jubilation, the Second is essentially Brahms. He was a com poser who looked back to the giants of the past as an unreachable summit, and who looked to the future of music and civilization with increasing alarm. He was a man who felt spurned by his beloved hometown of Hamburg, who called himself a vagabond in the wilderness of the world. So midway through his journey as a symphonist, Brahms wrote a serenely beautiful masterpiece whose secret message is that you can’t go home again.

Jan Swafford jan swafford is a prizewinning composer and writer whose books include biographies of Johannes Brahms and Charles Ives, “The Vintage Guide to Classical Music,” and, most recently, “Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph.” An alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied composition, he is currently working on a biography of Mozart.

THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 was given on October 3, 1878, by the Philharmonic Society under Adolph Neuendorff in New York’s Steinway Hall. Boston heard the Brahms Second for the first time several months later, on January 9, 1879, with Carl Zerrahn conducting.

THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF BRAHMS’S SYMPHONY NO. 2 was given by Georg Henschel on February 25, 1882, during the orchestra’s inaugural season, subse- quent BSO performances being given by Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil Paur, Karl Muck, Max Fiedler, Otto Urack, Henri Rabaud, Pierre Monteux, Serge Koussevitzky, Richard Burgin, Bruno Walter, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, John Barbirolli, Lorin Maazel, Ernest Ansermet, Erich Leinsdorf, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, William Steinberg, Michael Tilson Thomas, Colin Davis, Eugen Jochum, Seiji Ozawa, Joseph Silverstein, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Kurt Masur, Gunther Herbig, Bernard Haitink, Leonard Slatkin, Dennis Russell Davies, Zdenek Macal, James DePreist, Simon Rattle, Andrey Boreyko, James Levine, Pinchas Steinberg, Herbert Blomstedt, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Christoph von Dohnányi (including the BSO’s most recent Tanglewood performance on August 9, 2013, though Paavo Järvi led a more recent performance there with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen on August 6, 2014, in Ozawa Hall), and Andris Nelsons (including the most recent subscription performances, in October 2015).

week 7 program notes 65

To Read and Hear More...

Eric Nathan’s website—ericnathanmusic.com—is the best place to look for a broad range of information about the composer, including a biography, discography, list of works, news about upcoming performances, and links for purchasing scores. The web- site of Brown University, where Nathan is an assistant professor, also covers a wide swath of information: https://vivo.brown.edu/display/enathan. Eric Nathan’s portrait CD “Multitude Solitude,” released in September 2015, features a nice selection of the composer’s chamber music, including the title track, for string quartet; the Quartet for oboe and strings, and five other pieces, with performances by the Momenta Quartet, New York Philharmonic trombonist Joseph Alessi, and others (Albany Records). To explore further, visit the album’s website at http://www.multitudesolitude.com/main. Nathan’s Wing over Wing was recorded by soprano Amanda Kohl and violinist Joseph Lin for the Society of Composers CD “Pendulum” (Navona). His Cantus for trumpet and piano is on the trumpeter John Adler’s “Confronting Inertia” album, with Tracy Cowden as pianist (Origin Classical).

Robert Kirzinger

Important books about Brahms include Jan Swafford’s Johannes Brahms: A Biography (Vintage paperback); Malcolm MacDonald’s Brahms in the “Master Musicians” series (Schirmer); Michael Musgrave’s A Brahms Reader, which offers wide-ranging consid- eration of the composer’s life and work (Yale University Press); The Compleat Brahms, edited by conductor/scholar Leon Botstein, a compendium of essays on Brahms’s music by a wide variety of scholars, composers, and performers, including Botstein himself (Norton); Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters as selected and annotated by Styra Avins (Oxford); Walter Frisch’s Brahms: The Four Symphonies (Yale paperback), and Peter Clive’s Brahms and his World: A Biographical Dictionary, which includes a chronology of the composer’s life and works followed by alphabetical entries on just about any- one you might think of who figured in Brahms’s life (Scarecrow Press). Important older biographies include Karl Geiringer’s Brahms (Oxford paperback) and The Life of Johannes Brahms by Florence May, who knew Brahms personally (from 1905, but periodically available in reprint editions). For detailed analysis of the works, go to Michael Musgrave’s The Music of Brahms (Oxford paperback) or Bernard Jacobson’s The Music of Johannes Brahms (originally Fairleigh Dickinson). John Horton’s Brahms Orchestral Music in the series of BBC Music Guides includes discussion of his sympho- nies, concertos, serenades, Haydn Variations, and overtures (University of Washington

week 7 read and hear more 67 Bowers & Wilkins congratulates the Boston Symphony Orchestra on its Grammy Award for “Shostakovich: Under Stalin’s Shadow”

Bowers & Wilkins products consistently set the benchmark for high-performance stereo, home theater and personal sound. The 802 Diamond loudspeakers are the reference monitors in the control room at Boston Symphony Hall. Bowers & Wilkins offers best in class speakers for nearly every budget and application, along with award-winning headphones and Wireless Music Systems. Most recently, Bowers & Wilkins has become the audio system of choice for premium automotive manufacturers such as BMW and Maserati. paperback). The Brahms symphonies are discussed in Donald Ellman’s chapter “The Symphony in Nineteenth-century Germany” in A Guide to the Symphony, edited by Robert Layton (Oxford paperback). His concertos are discussed by Joan Chissell in the chapter “The Concerto After Beethoven” in A Guide to the Concerto, also edited by Layton (Oxford paperback). Michael Steinberg’s notes on the four Brahms symphonies are in his compilation volume The Symphony–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford paperback); his notes on the Brahms concertos are in his compilation volume The Concerto–A Listener’s Guide (also Oxford paperback). Donald Francis Tovey’s notes on the Brahms symphonies and concertos are among his Essays in Musical Analysis (also Oxford).

Hélène Grimaud has recorded the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Vienna Philharmonic; Andris Nelsons conducts both (Deutsche Grammophon). Her much earlier recording of the First Piano Concerto has Kurt Sanderling conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin (Erato). Other pianists who have recorded both Brahms concertos include Rudolf Buch- binder with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Apex), Leon Fleisher with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (Sony), Nelson Freire with Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig (Decca), Steven Kovace- vich with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the London Philharmonic (EMI), Maurizio Pollini with Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden (Deutsche Grammophon) and, before that, with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Gram-

week 7 read and hear more 69 Suburban Serenity In an Estate Setting

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Proudly Offered by Northland Residential Corporation, Developer of Exceptional Properties Throughout New England For Over 45 Years mophon), and Krystian Zimerman with Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon). The Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded the Brahms First Piano Concerto three times for RCA: with Gary Graffman under Charles Munch in 1958, Van Cliburn under Erich Leinsdorf in 1964 (incorporating alterations by Leinsdorf to Brahms’s instrumentation), and Arthur Rubinstein under Leinsdorf also in 1964. The BSO recorded the Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1997 with Emanuel Ax under the direction of Ber- nard Haitink (Sony) and in 1952 with Arthur Rubinstein under the direction of Charles Munch (RCA). Among historic recordings of the Piano Concerto No. 1, an excellent one to know is Solomon’s, recorded in 1952 with Rafael Kubelik conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra (Testament). Sviatoslav Richter’s recording of the Piano Concerto No. 2 with Erich Leinsdorf and the Chicago Symphony is a crucial classic account (RCA). Important historic recordings of the Piano Concerto No. 2 include Vladimir Horowitz’s with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Edwin Fischer’s with Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic, and Solomon’s with Issay Dobrowen conducting the Phil- harmonia Orchestra (various labels).

The Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded the four Brahms symphonies under Bernard Haitink between 1990 and 1994 (Philips) and under Erich Leinsdorf between 1963 and 1966 (RCA). Charles Munch recorded the Brahms Second with the BSO in 1955 (RCA). A 1960 BSO telecast of the Second from Sanders Theatre with Munch conducting has been released on DVD (ICA Classics), as has a 1959 BSO telecast of the Second, also from Sanders Theatre, with John Barbirolli conducting (VAI). Andris Nelsons leads the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in an August 2014 performance of the Brahms Second issued on DVD and Blu-ray (Accentus). Other noteworthy cycles of the four sympho- nies include Daniel Barenboim’s with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Erato), Bernard Haitink’s with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live), Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s with the Berlin Philharmonic (Teldec), Marek Janowski’s with the Pittsburgh Symphony (PentaTone), Herbert von Karajan’s early-1960s cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon), James Levine’s with the Chicago Symphony (RCA) and live with the Vienna Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon), Charles Mackerras’s with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, in “period style” with interpretive choices suggested by documentation from Meiningen, Germany, where Brahms himself frequently conduct- ed the orchestra (Telarc), and Christian Thielemann’s with the Staatskapelle Dresden (Deutsche Grammophon). For those interested enough in historic recordings to listen through dated sound, performances under the direction of Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Willem Mengelberg, and Felix Weingartner are well worth seeking (various labels).

Marc Mandel

week 7 read and hear more 71 familymatters

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Hélène Grimaud

Joining Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra as soloist for the two Brahms piano concertos this week and next, French pianist Hélène Grimaud is also a wildlife conservationist, human rights activist, and writer. Born in 1969 in Aix-en-Provence, she studied at the local conservatory with Jacqueline Courtin and subsequently with Pierre Barbizet in Marseille. Accepted into the Paris Conservatoire at just thirteen, she won first prize in piano performance three years later. She continued her studies with György Sándor and Leon Fleisher until making her well-received debut recital in Tokyo in 1987. That same year, Daniel Barenboim invited her to perform with the Orchestre de Paris, launching her musical career. She has since appeared with most of the world’s major orchestras and many celebrated conductors. Her recordings have been critically acclaimed and awarded numerous accolades. Between her 1995 debut with the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado and her first performance with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur in 1999, Ms. Grimaud established the Wolf Conservation Center in upper New York State. She is also a member of Musicians for Human Rights, a worldwide network of people working in the field of music to promote a culture of human rights and social change. Hélène Grimaud has also found time to write three books: Variations Sauvages (2003), Leçons particulières (2005), and Retour à Salem (2013). Also a committed chamber musician, she performs with a wide range of musical collaborators, including Sol Gabetta, Thomas Quasthoff, Rolando Villazón, Jan Vogler, Truls Mørk, Clemens Hagen, and the Capuçon brothers. Recent performance highlights include two collaborations with the Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon—tears become... streams become..., a large-

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TICKETS FROM $15 / STUDENTS $10 / CALL 617.236.0999 BUY TICKETS AT BOSTONPHIL.ORG scale immersive installation at New York’s Park Avenue Armory; and Neck of the Woods, a piece devised for the Manchester International Festival—and her appearance at the Open- ing Night gala of the Philharmonie de Paris. Last season Ms. Grimaud appeared with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra in St. Petersburg’s White Nights Festival and at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden’s Summer Festival, and played Beethoven with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Antonio Pappano and Brahms with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. She also toured Asia and Europe, and made an international tour with the Australian Youth Orchestra and Manfred Honeck. Her 2016-17 season includes European appearances with Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic; performances of concertos by Bartók, Brahms, and Ravel in the United States and Australia, and recital dates in Germany and Switzerland with cellist Sol Gabetta. In recital she performs music from her latest album, “Water,” in the U.S. and Europe. “Water,” a live recording of the performances from tears become... streams become..., features works by Berio, Takemitsu, Fauré, Ravel, Albéniz, Liszt, Janáˇcek, Debussy, and Nitin Sawhney. Ms. Grimaud has been an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2002. “Water” was the follow-up to the September 2013 release of the two Brahms piano concertos, which she recorded with Andris Nelsons conducting. “Duo,” the album she recorded with cellist Sol Gabetta just prior to the Brahms concertos, won the 2013 ECHO Award for chamber recording of the year. In March 2016 Hélène Grimaud was named a Chevalier in the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government. She has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on three previous occasions: as soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, in March 1997 with James Conlon conducting; in Mozart’s D minor piano concerto, K.466, in March 2000 with David Zinman, and in Schumann’s Piano Concerto at Tanglewood in July 2000, with Jeffrey Tate.

week 7 guest artist 75 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 run- ning 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 Mr. and Mrs. George D. Behrakis • John F. Cogan, Jr. and Mary L. Cornille • Cynthia and Oliver Curme/The Lost & Foundation, Inc. • EMC Corporation

five million Alli and Bill Achtmeyer • Bank of America • Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser • Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky • Germeshausen Foundation • Sally ‡ and Michael Gordon • Barbara and Amos Hostetter • Ted and Debbie Kelly • 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 • Peter and Anne Brooke • Eleanor L. and Levin H. Campbell • Chiles Foundation • Mara E. Dole ‡ • Fairmont Copley Plaza and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts •

Jane and Jack Fitzpatrick ‡ • Susan Morse Hilles ‡ • Dorothy and Charlie Jenkins • Stephen B. Kay and Lisbeth L. Tarlow/The Aquidneck Foundation • The Kresge Foundation • Lizbeth and George Krupp • Liberty Mutual Foundation, Inc. • Massachusetts Cultural Council • Kate and Al ‡ Merck • Cecile Higginson Murphy • National Endowment for the Arts • 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)

76 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 • 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 • Mr. and Mrs. William H. Congleton ‡ • William F. Connell ‡ and Family • 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 • 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 • 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 ‡ • Nancy and Richard Lubin • Vera M. and John D. MacDonald ‡ • Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation • Carmine A. and Beth V. Martignetti • Commonwealth of Massachusetts • 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 ‡ • Mrs. Mischa Nieland ‡ and Dr. Michael L. Nieland • 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 • 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 • Helen and Josef Zimbler ‡ • Brooks and Linda Zug • Anonymous (9)

‡ Deceased

week 7 the great benefactors 77 BSO Major Corporate Sponsors 2016–17 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 2016-17 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 sustenance, Bank of America 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 Dell EMC is pleased to support the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Dell EMC provides the foundation to enable our enterprise customers' digital transformation through our trusted hybrid cloud and big-data solutions, built upon a modern data center infrastructure that incorporates industry- leading converged infrastructure, servers, storage, and cybersecurity technologies. David Goulden President

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 support the Boston Symphony Orchestra through sponsorship of the BSO’s Casual Fridays Series, College Card program, Youth & Family Concerts, and the BSO’s Young Professionals program. These outreach pro- grams give both area students and young professionals from Boston and from around the globe the opportunity to experience great classical music performed by one of the world’s leading orchestras in one of the world’s greatest concert halls. Through the Foundation, Arbella helps support organi- zations like the Boston Symphony Orchestra that work so hard to positively impact the lives of those around them. We’re proud to be local, and our passion for everything that is New England helps us better meet all the unique insurance needs of our neighbors.

78 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- General Manager - chusetts and beyond with each passing season. As the BSO continues to New England Sales 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 Boston is proud to be the official hotel of the BSO. Regional Vice President, We look forward to many years of supporting this wonderful organization. North East U.S. and For more than a century Fairmont Copley Plaza and the BSO have graced General Manager, their community with timeless elegance and enriching experiences. The Fairmont Copley Plaza BSO is a New England tradition and like Fairmont Copley Plaza, a symbol of Boston’s rich tradition and heritage.

OFFICIAL CHAUFFEURED TRANSPORTATION Dawson Rutter OF THE BSO President and CEO Commonwealth Worldwide Chauffeured 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 hon- ored 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 7 bso major corporate sponsors 79

Administration

Mark Volpe, Eunice and Julian Cohen Managing Director, endowed in perpetuity Anthony Fogg, William I. Bernell Artistic Administrator and Director of Tanglewood Marion Gardner-Saxe, Director of Human Resources 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 Thomas D. May, Chief Financial Officer Kim Noltemy, Chief Operating and Communications Officer Bart Reidy, Director of Development Ray F. Wellbaum, Orchestra Manager administrative staff/artistic

Bridget P. Carr, Senior Archivist • 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 Christopher W. Ruigomez, Director of Concert Operations and Assistant Director of Tanglewood Kristie Chan, Chorus and Orchestra Management Assistant • Jennifer Dilzell, Chorus Manager • Tuaha Khan, Stage Technician • Jake Moerschel, Technical Supervisor/Assistant Stage Manager • Leah Monder, Operations Manager • John Morin, Stage Technician • Mark C. Rawson, Stage Technician • Emily W. Siders, Concert Operations Administrator • Nick Squire, Recording Engineer • Andrew Tremblay, Orchestra Personnel Administrator 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 Wei Jing Saw, Assistant Manager of Artistic Administration • Amanda Severin, Manager of Artistic Planning and Services business office

Sarah J. Harrington, Director of Planning and Budgeting • Mia Schultz, Director of Investment Operations and Compliance • Natasa Vucetic, Controller James Daley, Accounting Manager • Karen Guy, Accounts Payable Supervisor • Jared Hettrick, Budget and Finance Reporting Assistant • Erik Johnson, Finance and Marketing Administrator • Evan Mehler, Budget Manager • Robin Moxley, Payroll Supervisor • Nia Patterson, Staff Accountant • Mario Rossi, Staff Accountant • Lucy Song, Accounts Payable Assistant • Teresa Wang, Staff Accountant • Maggie Zhong, Senior Endowment Accountant

week 7 administration 81 development

Susan Grosel, Director of Annual Funds and Donor Relations • Nina Jung, Director of Board, Donor, and Volunteer Engagement • Ryan Losey, Director of Foundation and Government Relations • John C. MacRae, Director of Principal and Major Gifts • 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 • Erin Asbury, Manager of Volunteer Services • Stephanie Baker, Assistant Director, Campaign Planning and Administration • Nadine Biss, Assistant Manager, Development Communications • Diane Cataudella, Associate Director, Donor Relations • Caitlin Charnley, Donor Ticketing Associate • Allison Cooley, Major Gifts Officer • Emily Diaz, Assistant Manager, Gift Processing • Elizabeth Estey, Major Gifts Coordinator • Emily Fritz-Endres, Executive Assistant to the Director of Development • Barbara Hanson, Senior Leadership Gifts Officer • Laura Hill, Friends Program Coordinator • James Jackson, Assistant Director, Telephone Outreach • Allison Kunze, Major Gifts Coordinator • Laine Kyllonen, Assistant Manager, Donor Relations • Andrew Leeson, Manager, Direct Fundraising and Friends Program • Anne McGuire, Assistant Manager, Corporate Initiatives and 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 Coordinator • Emily Reynolds, Assistant Director, Development Information Systems • Francis Rogers, Major Gifts Officer • Alexandria Sieja, Assistant Director, Development Events • Yong-Hee Silver, Senior Major Gifts Officer • Szeman Tse, Assistant Director, Development Research education and community engagement Jessica Schmidt, Helaine B. Allen Director of Education and Community Engagement Claire Carr, Senior Manager of Education and Community Engagement • Emilio Gonzalez, Manager of Education and Community Engagement • Elizabeth Mullins, Assistant Manager of Education and Community Engagement • Darlene White, Manager of Berkshire 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 • Thomas Davenport, Carpenter • Michael Frazier, Carpenter • Steven Harper, HVAC Technician • Sandra Lemerise, Painter • Adam Twiss, Electrician environmental services Landel Milton, Lead Custodian • Rudolph Lewis, Assistant 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 • Kathleen Sambuco, Associate Director of Human Resources

week 7 administration 83 Redefining Retirement

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Wolfgang, Gustav, Johann Sebastian, Sergei, and Franz, meet NEC’s 2016-17 Orchestra Season Cindy, Ellen, features work by seven women composers. That’s in addition to Augusta, Anna, favorites by Mozart, Mahler, Bach, and more. Fabulous performances, Caroline, Jennifer, superb young musicians, Jordan Hall—and such exciting music. All for free. You don’t want to miss and Kati. this season!

necmusic.edu/orchestras

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

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

Helen N.H. Brady, Director of Group Sales • Alyson Bristol, Director of Corporate Partnerships • Dan Kaplan, Director of Boston Pops Business Development • Roberta Kennedy, Buyer for Symphony Hall and Tanglewood • Sarah L. Manoog, Director of Marketing • Michael Miller, Director of Ticketing Amy Aldrich, Associate Director of Subscriptions and Patron Services • Christopher Barberesi, Assistant Manager, Corporate Partnerships • Gretchen Borzi, Associate Director of Marketing • Lenore Camassar, Associate Manager, SymphonyCharge • Megan Cokely, Group Sales Manager • Susan Coombs, SymphonyCharge Coordinator • Jonathan Doyle, Graphic Designer • Paul Ginocchio, Manager, Symphony Shop and Tanglewood Glass House • Mary Ludwig, Manager, Corporate Sponsor Relations • Tammy Lynch, Front of House Director • Ronnie McKinley, Ticket Exchange Coordinator • Michelle Meacham, Subscriptions Representative • Michael Moore, Associate Director of Internet Marketing and Digital Analytics • Laurence E. Oberwager, Director of Tanglewood Business Partners • Meaghan O’Rourke, Internet Marketing and Social Media Manager • Greg Ragnio, Subscriptions Representative • Doreen Reis, Advertising 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 • Thomas Vigna, Group Sales and Marketing Associate • Amanda Warren, Graphic Designer • Ellery Weiss, SymphonyCharge Representative • David Chandler Winn, Tessitura Liaison and Associate Director of Tanglewood Ticketing box office Jason Lyon, Symphony Hall Box Office Manager • Nicholas Vincent, Assistant Manager Jane Esterquest, Box Office Administrator • Kelsey Devlin, Box Office Representative event services James Gribaudo, Function Manager • Kyle Ronayne, Director of Event Administration • Luciano Silva, Manager of Venue Rentals and 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 7 administration 85

Boston Symphony Association of Volunteers executive committee Chair, Martin Levine Vice-Chair, Boston, Suzanne Baum Vice-Chair, Tanglewood, Alexandra Warshaw Secretary, Susan Price Co-Chairs, Boston Mary Gregorio • Trish Lavoie • George Mellman Co-Chairs, Tanglewood Bob Braun • David Galpern • Gabriel Kosakoff Liaisons, Tanglewood Glass Houses, Adele Cukor • Ushers, Carolyn Ivory boston project leads 2016-17

Café Flowers, Stephanie Henry and Kevin Montague • Chamber Music Series, Rita Richmond • Computer and Office Support, Helen Adelman • Flower Decorating, Linda Clarke • Guide’s Guide, Audley H. Fuller and Renee Voltmann • Instrument Playground, Melissa Riesgo • Mailings, Steve Butera • Membership Table/Hall Greeters, Sabrina Ellis • Newsletter, Cassandra Gordon • Volunteer Applications, Carol Beck • Symphony Shop, Karen Brown • Tour Guides, Cathy Mazza

Celebrating

Big Bad Wolf DEC 11 3 PM ANNUAL FAMILY CONCERT William Schuman Newsreel in 5 Shots Bernard Hoffer Nocturne: The Timber Wolf WORLD PREMIERE Andy Vores Big Bad Wolf TICKETS ON SALE Paul Patterson Little Red Riding Hood Song Book NEPhilharmonic.org WBZ-TV’s Eric Fisher, Narrator Boston City Singers, Joshua DeWitte, Director ALL CONCERTS HELD AT THE TSAI PERFORMANCE Concerto played by Young Artist Competition Winner CENTER

week 7 administration 87 Next Program…

Tuesday, November 15, 8pm Thursday, November 17, 8pm Friday, November 18, 8pm Saturday, November 19, 8pm

andris nelsons conducting

Timo andres “everything happens so much” (world premiere; bso commission)

brahms piano concerto no. 2 in b-flat, opus 83 Allegro non troppo Allegro appassionato Andante Allegretto grazioso hélène grimaud

{intermission}

brahms symphony no. 3 in f, opus 90 (november 15 and 17 only) Allegro con brio Andante Poco Allegretto Allegro—Un poco sostenuto

brahms symphony no. 4 in e minor, opus 98 (november 18 and 19 only) Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Allegro giocoso Allegro energico e passionato

The second program of the BSO’s two-week Brahms mini-fest encompassing Brahms’s symphonies and piano concertos opens with a brief new work commissioned from the Brooklyn-based American composer Timo Andres (the first program having included a new work by American composer Eric Nathan). Andres’s new piece opens this week’s concerts, which feature Hélène Grimaud as soloist in Brahms’s magisterial Piano Concerto No. 2. The Third Symphony concludes the concerts of November 15 and 17; the Fourth completes the concerts of November 18 and 19.

88 Coming Concerts… friday previews and 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.

Tuesday ‘B’ November 15, 8-10:10 Thursday ‘C’ January 5, 8-10 Thursday ‘B’ November 17, 8-10:10 Friday ‘B’ January 6, 1:30-3:30 Friday Evening November 18, 8-10:15 Saturday ‘A’ January 7, 8-10 Saturday ‘B’ November 19, 8-10:15 KEN-DAVID MASUR, conductor ANDRIS NELSONS, conductor CYNTHIA MEYERS, piccolo HÉLÈNE GRIMAUD, piano WILLIAM R. HUDGINS and MICHAEL WAYNE, clarinets ANDRES Everything Happens So Much (world premiere; THOMAS ROLFS, trumpet BSO commission) TOBY OFT, trombone BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 JAMES SOMMERVILLE, MICHAEL WINTER, BRAHMS Symphony No. 3 RACHEL CHILDERS, and JASON SNIDER, horns (November 15 & 17 only) VIVALDI Piccolo Concerto in C BRAHMS Symphony No. 4 KROMMER Concerto No. 2 for two (November 18 & 19 only) clarinets and orchestra JOLIVET Concertino for trumpet, piano, and strings Tuesday ‘C’ November 22, 8-9:55 ROTA Concerto for Trombone and Friday ‘A’ November 25, 1:30-3:25 Orchestra Saturday ‘A’ November 26, 8-9:55 SCHUMANN Concert Piece for four horns MORITZ GNANN, conductor and orchestra MENAHEM PRESSLER, piano

MENDELSSOHN Overture, The Hebrides Thursday, January 12, 10:30am (Open Rehearsal) (Fingal’s Cave) Thursday ‘D’ January 12, 8-10 MOZART Piano Concerto No. 27 in Friday ‘A’ January 13, 1:30-3:30 B-flat, K.595 Saturday ‘B’ January 14, 8-10 DVORÁˇ K Symphony No. 9, From the New World BRAMWELL TOVEY, conductor CAMERON CARPENTER, organ BARBER Toccata Festiva RILEY At the Royal Majestic, for Programs and artists subject to change. organ and orchestra ELGAR Enigma Variations The BSO’s 2016-17 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.

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.

week 7 coming concerts 89 Symphony Hall Exit Plan

90 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 infor- mation 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 (4 p.m. to 8:30 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 avail- able 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 pro- gram 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 7 symphony hall information 91 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 $9 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 con- certs. 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 balco- ny, 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 All-Classical. 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 infor- mation, 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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Bank of America recognizes the Boston Symphony Orchestra for its success in bringing the arts to performers and audiences throughout our community. Visit us at bankofamerica.com/massachusetts Life’s better when we’re connected®

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