• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Bernard Haitink, Principal Guest Conductor One Hundred and Twenty-first Season, 2001-02 CHAMBER TEA V Friday, April 5, at 2:30 COMMUNITY CONCERT VII Sunday, April 7, at 3, at Lynn Classical High School This concert is made available free to the public through the generosity of State Street Corporation. VICTOR ROMANUL, violin MICHAEL ZARETSKY, viola ANDREW PEARCE, cello XAK BJERKEN, piano SCHUBERT String Trio No. 1 in B-flat, D.471 (Allegro) DVORAK Quartet No. 2 in E-flat for piano, violin, viola, and cello, Opus 87 Allegro con fuoco Lento Allegro moderato, grazioso Finale. Allegro, ma non troppo Baldwin piano Week 22 Franz Schubert (1797-1828) String Trio No. 1 in B-flat, D.471 (Allegro) Schubert began two trios for the combination of violin, viola, and cello, both in the key of B-flat. The first was composed, though left incomplete, in September 1816; the second, his only finished string trio, followed it exactly a year later. Both were among the many Schubert works that remained almost entirely unknown after the composer's premature death. The earlier trio, D.471, remained unpublished until 1890. It is a relatively unprepossessing work illustrating the kind of lighthearted chamber music that Schubert wrote in his youth, largely for use in the circle of his family and friends, where active music-making was a regular pastime. Yet it also seems to be aiming at a rather more elevated style, and it is probably significant that Schubert wrote it at about the same time as an overture in B-flat, in which he was consciously trying on Beethovenian wings (the chamber work and the overture grow out of a similar Allegro theme). Lyrical throughout, and covering a remarkably wide range of emotion, the completed movement shows the young genius—not yet out of his teens—aiming at a very high mark indeed. After completing the Allegro, Schubert wrote only a few bars of a slow movement marked "Andante sostenuto" and then—for reasons unknown—dropped the work. He never returned to it again. Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) Quartet No. 2 in E-flat for piano, violin, viola, and cello, Opus 87 Dvorak's E-flat piano quartet has always been overshadowed in popularity by its siblings, the earlier piano quintet in A, Opus 81, and the slightly later Dumky Trio, Opus 90. This is a shame, because the Opus 87 quartet is both original and beauti- ful. Dvorak wrote the work between July 10 and August 19, 1889, thereby fulfilling the long-standing request of his publisher, Simrock, for a piano quartet. Just a week after finishing the score, he began work on his Eighth Symphony, which was already finished by November. Small wonder that when Simrock wrote to Brahms, he remarked that Dvorak's head was "full of music." The strings open the proceedings with a forceful, somber phrase presented in unison. The piano replies with lighthearted banter, setting the stage for a remark- able movement ranging widely in mood and character, accentuated by a surprising breadth of harmonic plan. The contrasting elements of the opening theme are fur- ther offset by the more languishing melody of the secondary theme (presented in the unexpected key of G), but all three of these gestures intertwine flexibly in the course of the development, their character changing from moment to moment. The secondary theme appears in the distant key of B major before slipping down a half- step onto the dominant of the home key and turning into the recapitulation—but one that omits the first theme entirely. That opening material recurs to conclude the movement—and most strikingly in a chilling passage of string tremolos that brings in an entirely new air of mystery just before the end. The Lento is built of three principal themes, the first presented by the strings with piano commentary in G-flat, followed by a dramatic outburst in C-sharp minor, yielding to a lyrical major-mode melody in the piano with an effective syncopated accompaniment in the strings. All three themes are then repeated in the same order, though with adjustments of tonality. The third movement is a gracious waltz in which the piano occasionally takes on the character of a cimbalom (a Hungarian Bj Hat stringed instrument played with mallets), lending more precisely the air of a Czech folk tune. The energetic finale begins, like many of Haydn's works, in the tonic minor; its second subject features Dvorak's own instrument, the viola (one reason why viola players, so often overlooked by composers, love his music!). Having run its course with good humor, the movement ends, now firmly in the major, with a coda that makes almost orchestral demands on the four performers. —Notes by Steven Ledbetter Violinist Victor Romanul joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 1992 Tanglewood season and was an assistant concertmaster of the BSO for two years beginning in April 1993. Mr. Romanul began performing at the age of seven. His first teacher was Alfred Krips, former associate concertmaster of the Boston Symphony. He was soloist in Beethoven's Triple Concerto at eleven, and in the Brahms Violin Concerto at thirteen. Subsequently he studied with Ivan Galamian, former BSO concertmaster Joseph Silverstein, and Jascha Heifetz. In 1979 Mr. Romanul won the Pierre Mayer Award for Most Outstanding String Player at the Tanglewood Music Center. In 1981, at twenty-one, he joined the Pittsburgh Symphony as associate concertmaster, a position he held for six years, leaving that orchestra in 1987 to perform as a chamber music and solo artist. Mr. Romanul has taught violin, chamber music, and string pedagogy as a faculty member at the Boston Conservatory of Music. Recent activities have included the world premiere of John Clement Adams's Violin Concerto, as well as numerous chamber music concerts and solo recitals. In 1997 his performance of the Saint-Saens Violin Concerto No. 3 with the Civic Symphony Orchestra was cited as a "Best of Boston" solo per- formance by the Boston Globe. Born in the Soviet Union in 1946, violist Michael Zaretsky studied originally as a violinist at the Central Music School in Moscow and at the Music College of the Moscow State Conservatory. In 1965 he continued his education as a violist at the Moscow State Conservatory. In 1972 Mr. Zaretsky immigrated to Israel, where he became principal violist of the Jerusalem Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra and a soloist of Israeli Radio. In 1973 he auditioned for Leonard Bernstein, who helped him obtain an immigration visa to the United States and brought him to Tanglewood. There, while a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, he successfully auditioned for the BSO, which he joined that fall. An established soloist and chamber musician, Mr. Zaretsky has been soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra and other orchestras in North America. Elected to the Pi Kappa Lambda Chapter of the National Music Honor Society for his achievement in teaching, he currently teaches at the Boston University School of Music and the Longy School of Music. For the Artona label, Mr. Zaretsky has made a Bach album with harpsichordist Marina Minkin and two discs with pianist Xak Bjerken: "Black Snow," including music of Shostakovich, Glinka, and Jakob Jakulov, and a Brahms/Schumann disc entitled "Singular Voices," including the two Brahms viola sonatas, Brahms's songs for contralto, viola, and piano, and Schumann's Miirchenbilder for viola and piano. Cellist Andrew Pearce joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in September 1996. Mr. Pearce has been soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Utah Symphony, the Polish Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; he has performed at the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival and at the Grand Teton Music Festival. A graduate of the University of Southern California, he studied with Lynn Harrell, Eleonore Schoenfeld, and Ryan Selberg. Head of the chamber music program and a cello teacher at Vancouver Academy of Music from 1989 until he joined the BSO, Mr. Pearce has also been a cello instructor at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and at the Klinger String Quartet Seminar in Germany. He was the first recipient of the University of South- ern California's Hammer-Rostropovich Prize in 1983 and has received several other awards, including the Presidential Scholar in the Arts Medallion awarded by Ronald Reagan in 1983 and first prize at the Coleman International Chamber Auditions in 1981 and 1982. Pianist Xak Bjerken has given solo and chamber music recitals in Europe and throughout the United States. As soloist he has appeared with, among others, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, and Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. He has performed in Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall, the Phillips Collection, and the Kennedy Center, and was the director of two festivals of twentieth-century music: "Angels, Saints and Birdsong: A Messiaen Festival" and "Through the Iron Curtain: Music of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union." Mr. Bjerken has held chamber music residencies at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy; he is the pianist of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet, which tours the United States regu- larly. He has recorded two discs with Boston Symphony violist Michael Zaretsky on the Artona label, and chamber music for Koch International, Chandos, Albany Records, and Mobius Productions. "High Rise," a disc of solo works by seven living composers, was released in January 2001 by CRI. Mr. Bjerken earned his bachelor's degree cum laude at UCLA studying with Aube Tzerko, and his master's and doc- toral degrees from the Peabody Institute as a student of and teaching assistant to Leon Fleisher.

Load more

  4

Copy Link