Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Season 126, 2006
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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA •*#£**• James Levine, Music Director Bernard Haitink, Conductor Emeritus Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Laureate ,> 126th Season, 2006-2007 CHAMBER PRELUDE III 1 •*.<-". Saturday, April 28, at 6 ' COMMUNITY CONCERT VIII .'.-:•'.'• Sunday, April 29, at 3, at First Baptist Church, Worcester This free concert is generously supported by the State Street Foundation. on SHEILA FIEKOWSKY, violin -.-?•.'•-Di^Kttfe JULIANNE LEE, violin and viola -.-'• MARVIN MOON, viola MICKEY KATZ, cello DANIEL KATZEN, horn .#^*, MOZART Quintet in E-flat for horn, violin, two violas, r and cello, K.407(386c) m Allegro Andante Rondo. Allegro Mr. KATZEN, Ms. FIEKOWSKY, Ms. LEE, Mr. MOON, and Mr. KATZ .-... r RAVEL String Quartet in F Allegro moderato. Tres doux Assez vif . Tres rythme Tres lent Vif et agite Ms. LEE, Ms. FIEKOWSKY, Mr. MOON, and Mr. KATZ Week 26 Wolfgang Amade Mozart (1756-1791) Quintet in E-flat for horn and strings, K.407(386c) Mozart composed his Quintet in E-flat for horn and strings in Vienna, probably toward the end of 1782, for the horn player Joseph Leutgeb (1732-1811), for whom he also wrote Eras' his horn concertos. Leutgeb had become a member of the Salzburg court orchestra by 1763 and in 1777 moved with his wife to Vienna, where, besides continuing his musical career, he ran a cheese shop (perhaps inherited from his father-in-law). He and Mozart remained close friends to the end of the composer's life, Leutgeb often serving as the butt of Mozart's jokes, as reflected, for example, in the composer's oft-quoted inscrip- tion on the manuscript of his Horn Concerto, K.417: "Wolfgang Amade Mozart has taken pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox, and fool, at Vienna, 27 March 1783." The piece is in three movements, moving from an opening Allegro to central slow movement to closing rondo; but despite this frequently encountered overall form, Mozart's typically inventive manner of making every moment "speak" (whether in slow- or quick-moving passages) is distinguished by the composer's ability to exploit fully the particular timbre, range, and character of the featured instrument. Though commentators have persisted in likening the Horn Quintet to a sort of miniature con- certo—presumably due to the melodic and motivic content so familiar from Mozart's horn concertos (a content determined not only by the horn's particular character, but also by the technical limitations of the valveless instrument then in use)—this is unquestionably chamber music. Rather than use a standard string quartet or (were this a concerto) a string orchestra, Mozart here creates, by employing a second viola, a recognizably chamber-musical string texture that enables him quite specifically to enrich and complement the character and range of the horn. Following the instantly engaging Allegro with its wealth of thematic ingenuity, the middle movement, a gen- tle if not always unclouded Andante in B-flat, exploits the warm, richly romantic tim- bre of the instrument in tones that can turn plaintive and melancholy. To wind things up, the energetically good-natured finale includes the sort of contrasting minor-mode episode one expects in a rondo of this sort, as well as a not-so-expected turn to fugal texture near the very end. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) String Quartet in F The string quartets of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Maurice Ravel represent the first real extensions of that genre's possibilities since the late quartets of Beethoven, the quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven having exemplified an era of consolidation. Those of Debussy and Ravel, standing as they do near the beginning of the twentieth century, stem from a period of experimentation as regards both their place within each composer's oeuvre and compositional trends in general. Like Franck (1822-1890) and Faure (1845-1924) before them, Debussy and Ravel each wrote only one quartet, and each did so at the earliest stage of his career. Thirteen years younger than Debussy, Ravel composed his quartet in 1902-03. His first large work, it received its premiere to considerable enthusiasm at the Societe Nationale on March 5, 1904, two days before the composer's twenty-ninth birthday. It was not published, however, until 1910, and in a revised version; the extent of the revisions is not known. Ravel dedicated the published score to his "cher Maitre Gabriel Faure." Like Debussy, Ravel was not much drawn to chamber music throughout his career; the Piano Trio, his only other important piece for small instrumental ensemble, dates from 1914. Ravel himself observed that in writing his quartet, he had responded to "a desire for musical structure," suggesting that (as seems to have been the case also with Debussy) he had approached the genre less out of general inclination than for a specific reason. The successful premiere of the quartet was an important event for Ravel, who had failed to win first prize in the Conservatoire's Prix de Rome competition three years running, in 1901, 1902, and 1903. (In fact, a public uproar resulted when in May 1905, having reached the age limit of thirty, he competed for the last time and was not even admitted to the finals.) Though composer Gabriel Faure, the quartet's dedicatee, had some reservations, Debussy's reaction was altogether favorable: he advised Ravel, "in the name of the gods of music, and in mine," not to change a single note. Ironically, the success of the quartet, even as it confirmed awareness of Ravel's status as the French composer equal in rank to Debussy, was used by the younger composer's partisans to herald their favorite at Debussy's expense, leading to a cooling of the m friendship that had previously existed between the two. IKS If Debussy's quartet is primarily concerned with color, mood, and atmosphere, Ravel's opening Allegro evidences an immediate concern with clearly harmonized melody. With regard to thematic treatment and proportions, this movement behaves pretty much as a sonata-form movement "should," though the second theme explores third-related keys rather than being centered around the dominant. At the same time, the second theme is as sweetly melodic as the first, and made even more so by its doubling two octaves apart in first violin and viola. Ravel's scherzo juxtaposes and interweaves a vigorous 6/8 pizzicato outburst and ..•'. a singing melodic idea in 3/4; the Trio, marked Lent, develops from an atmospheric transformation of the scherzo's melodic component. The slow third movement is note- worthy for its free-flowing expansiveness, even as it retains a clear relationship to the rest of the quartet through the recurrence of a melodic phrase clearly derived from the opening movement's first theme. In the finale, Ravel reinterprets the thematic material of his opening movement, subordinating his earlier concerns with melody and clarity mi 1 of form—to which he has already exhibited a conscious alternative in the rhapsodic slow movement—in favor of an all-out play of atmosphere, reaffirming that the concern with color and atmosphere (so central to Debussy's <••••' quartet from the start) here takes 'V'' its place in Ravel's work as just one element of the larger, multi-faceted whole. —Notes by Marc Mandel HIM A member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1975, Sheila Fiekowsky was born in Detroit and began studying violin at nine, when she was offered a violin through a public school program. Her musical studies quickly progressed when her teacher, a bass player, insisted she begin lessons with Emily Mutter Austin, a violinist in the Detroit Symphony. Her summers were spent at the Meadowmount School of Music, where she studied with Ivan Galamian and studied chamber music with Joseph Gingold. She appeared as soloist with the Detroit Symphony at sixteen and that same year won the National Federation of Music Clubs Biennial Award. Ms. Fiekowsky attended the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Ivan Galamian and Jaime Laredo. In chamber music classes she worked with Felix Galimir and members of the Guarneri Quartet. She holds a master's degree in music from Yale University, where her teacher was Joseph Silverstein. Her chamber music experience includes performances at the Marlboro Music Festival, the Norfolk Festival, and the Aspen Festival. Ms. Fiekowsky is a regular performer in Symphony Hall Chamber Concerts and Tanglewood Prelude Concerts, and has been heard in numerous chamber and solo concerts in the Boston area. Solo appearances have included concerts with the Newton Symphony, the North Shore Symphony, the Mystic Valley Orchestra, and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Ms. Fiekowsky plays a Hieronymus Amati violin made circa 1670 «?4fcti in Cremona, Italy. A member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra violin section since the fall of 2006, Julianne Lee recently received the Presser Music Award. Ms. Lee made her solo debut at seven with the Lake Placid Symphonietta, subsequently appearing as soloist with the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Korea and the Baden-Baden Philharmonie in Germany. Her chamber music collaborations have included concerts with such renowned artists as Joseph Silverstein, Peter Wiley Roger Tapping, Samuel Rhodes, and Arnold Steinhardt. In the summer of 2006 she participated in the Marlboro Music Festival, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and a */* European tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra as guest principal violist. Ms. Lee Iffl received a bachelor's degree in violin performance and a diploma in viola performance from the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Victor Danchenko, Joseph Silverstein, and Joseph DePasquale. She is currently pursuing her master's degree as a student of Donald Weilerstein and Kim Kashkashian at the New England Conservatory of Music.