6

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ^&J Of*

Ozawa, Music Director Seiji BOSTON Sir Colin Davis, Principal Guest Conductor SYMPHONY Joseph Silverstein, Assistant Conductor ORCHESTRA

One Hundred and Third Season, 1983-84 SEIJI OZAWA jh '

Musii Dtnctor ,> .

PRE-SYMPHONY CHAMBER CONCERTS (^

Thursday, 3 November at 6 Saturday, 5 November at 6 Tuesday, 8 November at 6

FENWICK SMITH, flute LAURENCE THORSTENBERG, PETER HADCOCK, ROLAND SMALL, RICHARD SEBRING, PHYLLIS MOSS, piano

NIELSEN Woodwind in A, Opus 43

Allegro ben moderato Menuet Praeludium (Adagio)—Tema con variazioni

BEETHOVEN Quintet in E-flat for piano, oboe, clarinet,

horn, and bassoon, Opus 1

Grave— Allegro ma non troppo Andante cantabile Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

Baldwin piano

Please exit to your left for supper following the concert.

The performers appreciate your not smoking during the concert.

Week 4

Woodwind Quintet in A, Opus 43

Nielsen knew and loved the woodwinds. This can be seen in the varied and highly personal parts that he composed for them in his symphonies, in the fact that he wrote full concertos for the flute and for the clarinet, and especially in his , one of the finest pieces ever composed in that medium, a chamber work in which each of the five participants reveals its unique musical personality and an attractive sense of humor while still remain- ing part of a musical team.

The quintet was composed in 1922, the same year as the Fifth Symphony, but its expressive qualities are in a quite different world from that dramatic and monumental score. The quintet is essentially an amiable serenade, designed largely for pleasure — both in listening and in playing. For the original performers, at least, Nielsen also managed a charming series of character portraits, since he knew each of the players well, and cap- tured in his music the nervously sensitive flutist, the charmingly ingratiating oboist, the irrascible clarinetist, the bluff, unimaginative horn player, and the easygoing bassoonist.

Opening with a bassoon solo, the first movement is a crisp depiction of the Danish coun- tryside. It is followed by a pastiche in imitation of the classical (the sort of re- creation of an older musical style that Nielsen had accomplished with such flair in his

comic opera ) . The finale opens with a stark dramatic Prelude (in which the oboist switches to an English horn with surprising effects on his normally genial personal- ity); this yields to a sunny hymn tune of Nielsen's own composing, which serves as the basis for a series of eleven variations in which the five instruments, singly, duetting, and all together, present every conceivable mood from comic to dramatic, closing the work with a tranquil repetition of the hymn tune.

—Steven Ledbetter

Ludwig van Beethoven

Quintet in E-flat for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, Opus 16

During Beethoven's first years in Vienna, he wrote several chamber works involving wind instruments, not all of which have survived complete. After about 1800 his output was restricted to ensembles of stringed instruments, with or without piano.

One of the most successful of his early chamber pieces is the Opus 16 quintet for piano and winds, in which the choice of instruments, key, and arrangement of movements all point to Beethoven's inspiration in Mozart's masterful quintet, K.452, for the same combination of instruments. Certain elements of Mozart's ground plan may be discerned, such as the way the slow introduction presents each of the protagonists in little solo snatches or the arpeggiated horn call near the end of the first movement. But with a composer of Beethoven's imagination, the influence of an older composer always takes the form of a call to new creation, not plagiarism, and attempts to trace really direct connections between the two works are otiose.

The quintet seems to have been composed in late 1796 or early 1797 and achieved its first performance as one of two Beethoven works included in a concert presented by the violinist Schuppanzigh on 6 April 1797. The piano part, no doubt written for the com- poser himself, is brilliant and elaborate, even to including concerto-like cadenzas, while the fact that the clarinet tends to lead the woodwinds virtually throughout has prompted the suggestion that Beethoven may have planned the work for Joesph Beer, the earliest important clarinet virtuoso, for whom it is believed that Beethoven also wrote his trio,

Opus 11, for piano, clarinet, and cello the following year.

^* A special performance of the quintet took place some years after its composition, apparently in the home of Prince Lobkowitz on the same evening that the newly composed

Eroica Symphony had its first semi-public hearing. One of the distinguished musicians present was Friedrich Ramm, the oboe virtuoso from Mannheim whose virtuosity and beauty of tone were legendary (Mozart had written his F major oboe quartet for Ramm more than twenty years earlier, not to mention the important oboe part in his opera Idomeneo). After the playing of the new, long, and very difficult symphony, a group including Ramm as oboist and Beethoven as pianist began to play the popular quintet for piano and winds (possibly as a balm to soothe everyone's nerves after the trying audition of so advanced a symphony?), and what happened was related by Beethoven's friend Ferdinand Ries:

In the last Allegro there are several holds before the theme is resumed. At one of these Beethoven suddenly began to improvise, took the Rondo for a theme and entertained himself and the others for a considerable time, but not the other players.

They were displeased and Ramm even very angry. It was really very comical to see them, momentarily expecting the performance to be resumed, put their instruments

to their mouths, only to put them down again. At length Beethoven was satisfied and dropped into the Rondo. The whole company was transported with delight.

—S.L.

Fenwick Smith Laurence Thorstenberg

Flutist Fenwick Smith graduated from the Laurence Thorstenberg joined the Boston Eastman School of Music, where he studied Symphony as an English horn player in 1964, with Joseph Mariano. A Boston native, Mr. though he plays oboe and oboe d'amore as

Smith spent three years in West Berlin, where well. A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, he is a he studied with James Galway and was a mem- graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, ber of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Follow- where he was a student of Marcel Tabuteau.

ing a summer at the Berkshire Music Center, He participated in the Marlboro Music Festival

he returned to Berlin, teaching there at in Vermont, where his chamber music coaches

Schiller College. He was flutist for three years included Marcel Moyse and Rudolf Serkin, with the New England Woodwind Quintet, he and he has been a member of the Utah, Bal- performs with the Boston Conservatory Cham- timore, and Dallas symphonies. During World

ber Players, and since 1975 he has been a War II, Mr. Thorstenberg served as a combat member of the twentieth-century music infantryman and later as a bandsman and as

ensemble Musica Viva. Mr. Smith teaches at first oboist in the G.I. Symphony Orchestra. the New England Conservatory, the Boston He was a member of the Chicago Symphony Conservatory, and the Berkshire Music Cen- during Fritz Reiner's tenure and has partici-

ter. He worked as a flute maker for Verne G. pated at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. Mr. Powell, Inc., for twelve years, making more Thorstenberg teaches oboe at Boston Univer-

than 100 flutes, and he plays a Powell flute sity, the New England Conservatory, and which he constructed himself. Mr. Smith privately.

appears regularly as a soloist and chamber musician in the Boston area, and he recently recorded the Schoenberg Sonata, Opus 26, with pianist Randall Hodgkinson. He joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1978. HWUK

Peter Hadcock Roland Small

Peter Hadcock is E-flat clarinetist and assis- Bassoonist Roland Small grew up in Dayton, tant principal clarinetist of the Boston Sym- Ohio, and went on to study at Indiana Univer- phony Orchestra, which he joined in 1965. sity, also studying privately with Leo Reines, Mr. Hadcock holds a bachelor's degree and Roy Houser, Ralph Lorr, and Sol Schoenbach. performer's certificate from the Eastman In 1967 he began an eight-year tenure with School of Music. He has played solo and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, after chamber music recitals throughout the north- having held positions in the Dallas Symphony, east, and he has presented master classes in the National Symphony, the Portland (Oregon- the United States and in the People's Republic Symphony, and the Yomiuri Orchestra of of China. He has taught at the State Univer- Tokyo. He spent the summer of 1952 at the sity of New York at Buffalo and at the Hartt Berkshire Music Center and from 1956 to

School of Music in Connecticut; he is cur- 1962 played at the summer festival in Marl- rently on the faculties of the New England boro, Vermont, under the direction of Rudolf Conservatory and the Berkshire Music Center, Serkin. Mr. Small joined the Boston Symphon) and in the spring of 1982 he was visiting pro- Orchestra in 1975. fessor of clarinet at Eastman. Mr. Hadcock has edited music for International Music Pub- lishers, has had articles published in several Phyllis Moss magazines, and has compiled a book of excerpts for E-flat clarinet. He has recorded Pianist Phyllis Moss was accepted at the Cur- for Northeast Records, and for Deutsche tis Institute of Music when she was eleven and Grammophon with the Boston Symphony awarded a scholarship to study with Isabelle Chamber Plavers. Vengerova. At twelve she made her Philadel- phia debut at a concert of the Philadelphia

Symphonietta under Sevitsky; at fifteen she

made her first New York appearance. Ms. Richard Sebring Moss has been soloist with the Boston Pops, Richard Sebring joined the Boston Symphony the Philadelphia Orchestra, and with orches- Orchestra in the fall of 1981 and became tras throughout New England, and she has associate principal horn of the BSO and princi- made concert appearances at Jordan Hall, pal horn of the Boston Pops in 1982. A student Tanglewood, the Metropolitan Museum in of Thomas Newell, he attended the University New York, Brooklyn Academy, Lincoln Cen- of Indiana, where he played solo horn with the ter, and at many colleges and universities. She

University of Indiana Symphonic Wind has toured extensively as a soloist, and as a Ensemble, and he graduated in 1979 from the chamber musician in collaboration with mem- University of Washington, where he studied bers of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Ms. with J. Christopher Louba. In 1979 he was a Moss has two solo recordings on the Orion fellowship student at the Berkshire Music Cen- label, of music by Mendelssohn and Hummel, ter, after which he played principal horn for and a third, with music of Carl Maria von the Rochester Philharmonic. Before joining Weber, will be released soon. She will make a the BSO he played principal horn with the European solo tour in April 1984. Ms. Moss Opera Company of Boston, and he has also has taught at Wellesley College; she currently played with the Boston Ballet, the Pro Arte teaches privately and gives master classes at

Chamber Orchestra, and other musical organi- the All Newton Music School. zations. He also performs with the contempo- rary-music ensemble Musica Viva in Boston.