Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Summer, 1983
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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Sir Colin Davis, Principal Guest Conductor Joseph Silverstein, Assistant Conductor Tanglewood on Parade Thursday, 25 August 1983 (For the benefit of the Berksh re Music Center) 2:00 Gates Open 6:00 Berkshire Music Center Fellowship Wind Music 2:10 Fanfare at Main Gate Drive: (Main House Porch; Ronald Barron Chamber Music Hall (Theatre Colonnade r • \ in case of rain) in case ot rain) 7:00 Berkshire Highlanders 2:30 Boston University (Lion Gate) Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Orchestra 7:30 Eastover Train (Shed) (Main Gate) 3:00 Berkshire Music Center 7:45 Mehla Military Shrine Band Fellowship Vocal Concert (Main Gate) (Chamber Music Hall) 8:15 Fanfare at rear of Shed: 3:45 Berkshire Music Center Roger Voisin Fellowship Chamber Music 8:40 Fanfare from Shed stage: Concert Charles Schlueter (Theatre-Concert Hall) 9:00 Gala Concert 4:30 Boston University (Shed) Tanglewood Institute Chamber Music Concert (Chamber Music Hall) Artilk?ry, cannon, and train supplied by George Bisacca of Eastover, Inc. Scottish folk music courtesy of Berkshire Highl.anders Fireworks over the Stockbridge Bowl following the Gala Concert VA BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Sir Colin Davis, Principal Guest Conductor Joseph Silverstein, Assistant Conductor TANGLEWOOD ON PARADE Thursday, 25 August at 9 BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BERKSHIRE MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA BOSTON UNIVERSITY TANGLEWOOD INSTITUTE YOUNG ARTISTS ORCHESTRA SEIJI OZAWA, GUNTHER SCHULLER, JOHN WILLIAMS, and JOSEPH SILVERSTEIN conducting VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Folk Song Suite 1. — Sunday" March "Seventeen— come 2. Intermezzo "My Bonny Boy" 3. March — "Folk Songs from Somerset" WINDS OF THE BERKSHIRE MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA and the BOSTON UNIVERSITY TANGLEWOOD INSTITUTE YOUNG ARTISTS ORCHESTRA, TC GUNTHER SCHULLER, conductor VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending, Romance for violin and orchestra BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA JOSEPH SILVERSTEIN, vioUn and conductor Please do not take pictures during the concert. Flashbulbs, in particular, distract the musicians and other members of the audience. Please be sure the electronic signal on your watch or pager is switched off during the concert. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Serenade to Music, with words by Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice) VOCAL FELLOWS OF THE BERKSHIRE MUSIC CENTER and MEMBERS OF THE PHYLLIS CURTIN SEMINAR FOR SINGERS (PCS) Sopranos Tenors Martha Elliott Marcus J. Haddock Betsy Gintz James R. Kerr (PCS) Meredith L. Stone Joe G. Pechota (PCS) Dawn K. Upshaw John M. Sullivan Mezzo- sopranos Basses Penelope E. Bitzas S. Mark Aliapoulios Candice Burrows Robert C. Bork Karen S. Lykes Robert M. Osborne Allyn D. Muth (PCS) Robert A. Sapolsky (PCS) BERKSHIRE MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA and BOSTON UNIVERSITY TANGLEWOOD INSTITUTE YOUNG ARTISTS ORCHESTRA, GUNTHER SCHULLER conducting INTERMISSION BERNSTEIN Symphonic Dances from West Side Story BERKSHIRE MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA, SEIJI OZAWA conducting TCHAIKOVSKY Ceremonial Overture, 1812 BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA and BERKSHIRE MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA, JOHN WILLIAMS conducting Philips, Telarc, CBS, Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, and RCA records Baldwin piano The Berkshire Music Center is funded in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. Notes As a young man, Ralph Vaughan Williams discovered the tradition of English folk song, long nearly lost to a "civilized" society. His zeal for recovering this fast-disappearing repertory took him all over England, especially during the years 1903-13, though he collected one tune as late as 1955. Many of these he edited and published in the Journal of the Folk Song Society; more important, though, was the fact that these wonderfully direct and simple tunes entered into the core of his musical being and became an intrinsic part of his musical style. In this way, the centuries-old songs were of fundamental importance in sparking the "English musical renaissance" of the early part of this century. Occasionally this treasury of songs reappeared directly in Vaughan Williams's music, as when he responded to a request for a work for military band with his Folk Song Suite. The request came from the commandant of the Royal Mihtary School of Music, Kneller Hall. The composer's response was to produce a delightful medley of folk tunes, which quickly numbered among his most popular compositions. The suite was premiered at Kneller Hall on 4 July 1923. The work's popularity was only extended by two arrangements made in 1924 by Gordon Jacob, a pupil of the composer's, for wind band and for normal orchestra; it is the latter version that will be heard in this concert. Despite the titles of the individual movements, there are other folk tunes hidden in the suite. The first movement contains "Dives and Lazarus" (in the bass), "Seventeen come Sunday," and "Pretty Caroline"; the second "My bonny boy" and "Green bushes"; and the third "Blow away the morning dew," "High Germany," "The trees so high," and "John Barleycorn." Before the outbreak of the First World War, Vaughan Williams had used part of that last idyllic pre-war summer to compose a uniquely simple and contemplative work. The Lark Ascending, for violin and orchestra. The score was inspired by some lines from a poem by George Meredith (1828-1900), who hailed from Dorking, Surrey, where the composer lived for many years. It inspired him to compose a work in which the violin represented the lark's song, winging ever higher with its trills and folklike outbursts of song. When war broke out, RVW put aside composition for four full years. He returned to polish his Romance in 1920 (and revised it slightly again after the first performance before letting it go to the publisher). The premiere was given by Marie Hall, for whom the work had been conceived, in 1921. The portions of Meredith's poem printed in the score of the work run as follows: THE LARK ASCENDING He rises and begins to round. He drops the silver chain of sound. Of many links without a break. In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake. For singing till his heaven fills, 'Tis love of earth that he instils. And ever winging up and up. Our valley is his golden cup And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes. Till lost on his aerial rings In light, and then the fancy sings. Vaughan Williams enjoyed writing "occasional music" now and then, such as the score written as a present for the conductor Henry J. Wood on the occasion of his golden jubilee in that profession, in 1938. Vaughan Williams chose a Shakespearean text to be set to music for a unique ensemble — not chorus, not just soloists, but sixteen leading singers, all of whom had worked often with Henry Wood, treated as a flexible group of solo/chorus. Instead of simply labeling the vocal parts SATB for the normal vocal ranges, Vaughan Williams put the initials of the singer who was to have each line: sopranos Isobel Baillie, Stiles Allen, Elsie Suddaby, and Eva Turner; contraltos Margaret Balfour, Muriel Brunskill, Astra Desmond, and Mary Jarred; tenors Parry Jones, Heddle Nash, Frank Titterton, and Walter Widdop; and basses Norman Allin, Robert Easton, Roy Henderson, and Harold Williams. The composer knew these singers' voices so well that he wrote for each of them solo phrases in a style that perfectly suited them. The conductor was delighted with the gift, which is virtuoso music of a special kind: not that which astonishes an audience by its difficulty and brilliance, but rather that which woos because it is so entirely a propos. The atmosphere is utterly peaceful; the score reverberates with the silver of moonlight from first page to last. Vaughan Williams later made a purely instrumental arrangement, but it is hard to imagine this shimmering work without the sixteen voices that give the music such point in uttering one of Shakespeare's most poetic evocations of music, both that which actually "sounds" and that contained "in immortal souls": How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears: soft stillness, and the night. Become the touches of sweet harmony. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st. But in his motion like an angel sings. Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn: With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear. And draw her home with music. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. The reason is, your spirits are attentive: The man that hath no music in himself. Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night. And his affections dark as Erebus; Let no such man be trusted. Music! Hark! It is your music of the house. Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. Silence bestows that virtue on it. How many things by season seasoned are ' To their right praise and true perfection! Peace, ho! The moon sleeps with Endymion And would not be awak'd! Soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. — Shakespeare {The Merchant of Venice, Act V, scene 1) From its opening night on Broadway on 26 September 1957, West Side Story has been recognized as an epoch-making musical, a touchstone for the musical and dramatic possibilities of the modern American musical theater. Freely derived from Romeo and Juliet, translated into a modern urban setting, the story was told especially in inventive dances created by Jerome Robbins for the two rival gangs.