BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

James Levine, Music Director r ' SYMPHONY Haitink, Conductor Emeritus I Bernard I ORCHESTRA Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Laureate \ JAMES LFVI.VE .; (i V Vf„«r J% 124th Season, 2004-2005

CHAMBER MUSIC TEA VI

Friday, April 8, at 2:30 B1 COMMUNITY CONCERT VII Sunday, April 10, at 3, at the First Baptist Church, Worcester

This concert is made available free to the public through the generosity of State Street Foundation.

HAWTHORNE RONAN LEFKOWITZ and SI-JING HUANG, violins MARK LUDWIG, SATO KNUDSEN, cello RICHARD SEBRING and JONATHAN MENKIS, horns with

PAUL W. FINNEGAN and ETHAN BERG, actors MARK LUDWIG, speaker COMEDY IN MUSIC

HAYDN Quartet in E-flat, Opus 33, No. 2, The Joke (Hob. 111:38) Allegro moderato Scherzando; Trio Largo Finale: Presto

HINDEMITH Repertory for Military Music "Minimax," for string quartet Army March 606 Overture to Water-poet and Bird-peasant Two Happy Filthy People Old Cutlets

INTERMISSION

MOZART Bin musikalischer Spass ("A Musical Joke"), K.522 Allegro Menuetto: Maestoso; Trio Adagio cantabile Presto

Week 22A Notes

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is considered the father of the string quartet—the ensemble of two violins, viola, and cello. (To call him "inventor" would be far too absolute; Haydn's Italian contemporary Boccherini was also a major composer in the genre.) Haydn was certainly central in the string quartet's development as a medium, its elevation from occasional music to that of staple of the Classical cham- ber music repertoire. It was through Haydn's example (specifically the Opus 33 pieces) that Mozart attained mastery of the string quartet, and with Haydn's some- time pupil Beethoven we see the genre become the Parnassus of chamber music. All told, Haydn wrote more than seventy string quartets. Prior to the six of Opus 33, he had already written several sets, the first few going by the designation of "divertimenti." With Opus 33, published in 1781, the string quartet evolves from the standard texture of first violin accompanied by three strings to that of four individ- ual, largely independent parts, with movement structures that begin to approach the complexity of their counterparts in symphonic music. Haydn himself said that with Opus 33 he had embarked on a "Ganz neue besondere Art"—a completely new kind of composition.

That Opus 33, No. 2, is still transitional is evident from the soloistic primacy of the first violin in the opening movement and in the relative simplicity of the formal arguments throughout. The first movement is a straightforward sonata form, though as is usual in Haydn the movement is virtually monothematic, that is, a secondary theme is really an extension of the first and plays a transitional, rather than thematic, role. The scherzo second movement is only just removed from the traditional min- uet; the little "echo" extending the first phrase is a typically clever Haydn touch. With the viola and cello in duet by themselves at the beginning of the slow move- ment, we enter a new stage of the string quartet as a genre, in which the lower instruments begin to assert their independence. The final phrases of the high-spirited finale give us the quartet's nickname, The Joke. *****

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), the son of a poor laborer, had violin lessons as a child and managed in spite of straitened circumstances to lay the foundations of a musical career. He studied with the Austrian Adolf Rebner, who saw to his entry into the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, which Paul's brother Rudolf also attended.

He began to write music in his late teens, just before the start of World War I. In spite of the war, Hindemith managed to become a section violinist with the Frank- furt Opera Orchestra, rising quickly to the position of concertmaster. He even con- tinued to compose. He won the Mendelssohn Prize for his String Quartet, Opus 2, in 1916, and the following year the firm Breitkopf & Hartel published his Three Movements for Cello and Piano, Opus 8. In 1917, however, he was conscripted into military service. He ran into some relatively good luck, being assigned as a drum- mer to his regiment's military band, playing string quartets for his music-loving commanders, and rarely traveling to the front lines. Even during his service he managed somehow to find the time and concentration to compose. This remarkable commitment to the hard work of being a musician put its stamp on Hindemith's entire career as performer, composer, and teacher.

Hindemith's first pieces after the war were the Six Sonatas, Opus 11, which can be seen as exercises in idiomatic writing for solo string instruments with and without piano. In addition to wanting to elevate his musical craft, he was committed to a strain of German neoclassicism known as "The New Objectivity," which demanded a complete avoidance of Romantic and sentimental notions in art. At the (ostensibly) other end of the spectrum, he was also experimenting with theater works of a decid- edly avant-garde stripe, drawing on the aesthetics of the Dada, Expressionist, and Absurdist movements. In many ways he represented the German perspective on the concurrent activities of the group of French composers known as Les Six and of the American pianist George Antheil. The subjects of some of his theater works of the period are telling: the opera Murder, Hope of Women (1922), was based on a 1908 play by the Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka, and the puppet-opera Das Nuschi-

Nuschi is an absurdist fable involving castration. His musical materials drew on jazz as well as the frantic exuberance and frenzied industrial activity of postwar Europe. Hindemith's Repertorium fur Militarmusik "Minimax" ("Repertory for Military Music") for string quartet is a six-movement parody of military music, four of which will be performed here. Not the least part of the joke is Hindemith's scoring of what would typically be brass band or wind band music for string quartet, the most ele- vated of chamber music genres. The burlesque titles indicate in some measure the "

set-pieces being parodied. ' Armeemarsch 606 (Der Hohenfurstenberger)" ("Army

March 606 [The Hohenfurstenberger] ") pokes fun at generic military march music. The subtitle is apparently a sincere homage to an important patron of the Donaueschingen Festival, Prince Fiirst von Fiirstenberg, as well as a reference to an actual march, the "Hohenfriedberger." The second movement, Overture zu

Wasserdichter und Vogelbauer ("Overture to 'Water-poet and Bird-peasant' "), is a play on Suppe's famous Poet and Peasant Overture. The third and fourth movements, "An Evening on the Danube" and "Dandelions on Brook's Edge"—Concert Waltz are omitted here. The fifth movement, Die beiden lustigen Mistfinken ("Two Happy Filthy People") alludes to a piece by one Henri Kling, "Die beiden kleinen Finken" ("The Two Little Finches"), a "Fantasie-polka" for two flutes or piccolos and accom- paniment. Hindemith calls for his violins to mimic Kling's flute-finches. (The word "Mistfink" elides the German words for "dung" and "finch.") The final movement, Alte Karbonaden ("Old Cutlets"), is a pun on another military march, Karl Teike's "Aire Kameraden" ("Old Comrades"). *****

Wolfgang Amade Mozart (1756-1791) wrote his one lampoon of a musical score on June 11, 1787. He was then at work upon Don Giovanni; he had composed his great G minor quintet the month previous and would compose Eine kleine Nacht- musik in August. An inveterate joker, fond of word-play in his letters, and in certain

canons to texts as unrefined as their counterpoint is faultless, he never except in this

case distorted music itself. This bit of parody has been published as a "Dorfinusikanten Sextett" ("Sextet for Village Musicians"), but wrongly. Village musicians are not the butt of this joke, but the would-be composer. It is in the form of a divertimento like four others he had written, for string quartet and two horns, with the difference that the smoothest of composers here forces himself, against every instinct, to be ungainly. The har- monies are wrong, the distribution of chords awkward. There are trills on wrong notes. The horns for once refuse to blend with the strings. The opening theme is choppy and ends a bar too soon. If the breaking of musical laws were constant, the point would be lost. Mozart ripples along amiably for a few bars only to trip us up unawares. In the minuet a solo passage for the horns begins dolce, only to go com- pletely awry. In the Trio the first violin carries a scale passage to its top and adds a lame extra note. In the "Adagio cantabile" (a direction Mozart rarely permitted himself) the solo violin becomes lost in ornamental passages. His cadenza makes fun of that custom and the ensuing cadence disposes of the impregnable dignity of cadences for one and all, as if Mozart too were weary of them. The Presto leads us on only to spring surprises, traverses a false fugato, and coming to its close, ham- mers away at the tonic chord, only to end in harmonic confusion. —Notes by Robert Kirzinger (Haydn, Hindemith) and John N. Burk (Mozart)

Since its inception in 1986, the Hawthorne String Quartet has performed extensively throughout Europe, South America, Japan, and the United States, including such major festivals as Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Aspen. The quartet has distinguished itself interna- tionally for championing the works of composers persecuted during the Nazi regime, with an emphasis on the Czech composers incarcerated in the Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezin). The ensemble has collaborated with such artists as Christopher Hogwood, Ned Rorem, Andre Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Lynn Harrell, Martha Argerich, and the Philobolus Dance Company. It has made solo appearances with the

Boston Symphony (giving the American premiere led by Seiji Ozawa of Ervin Schulhoff 's Concerto for String Quartet and Chamber Orchestra), National Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra, and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. Produced by the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation, the quartet's recordings "Chamber Music from Theresienstadt" and "Silenced

Voices" feature music of composers persecuted during World War II. The quartet has also recorded chamber music by Arthur Foote, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and .

It can be heard on several motion picture and documentary soundtracks, and has performed 4" on radio and television programs worldwide. For London/ Decca's "Entartete Musik" series it recorded Schulhoff 's Concerto for String Quartet and Chamber Orchestra and string quar- tets of and Hans Krasa. Upcoming projects include recordings, the commission- ing and performance of new chamber works, the national release of a PBS documentary on the history of artists incarcerated in Terezin, and educational programs spearheaded by the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation. Made up of members of the Boston Symphony

Orchestra, the Hawthorne String Quartet takes it name from the novelist and in 1998 was appointed quartet-in-residence at .

Richard Sebring is associate principal horn of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal horn of the Boston Pops Orchestra. Born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, Mr. Sebring studied at Indiana University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the University of Washington. In 1979 he was a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow. Previously principal horn of the Rochester Philharmonic, he joined the BSO in 1981 as third horn; he became associate principal horn of the BSO and principal horn of the Boston Pops Orchestra in

1982. Mr. Sebring has been soloist with the Boston Symphony in Boston, at Tanglewood, . and on tour; he has also been soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra. A faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music, he is also a member of the Walden Chamber Players. An active studio musician, Mr. Sebring's work was featured prominently in John Williams's score for the motion picture Saving Private Ryan.

Originally from West Orange, New Jersey, and now living in Lincoln, Massachusetts, Jonathan Menkis received his bachelor's degree from Ithaca College in 1981, then joined the Sacramento Symphony Orchestra as its associate principal horn. He became assistant principal horn with the New Orleans Philharmonic the following season and was appointed to the Boston Symphony Orchestra horn section in 1984. Mr. Menkis has been a member of the Colorado Philharmonic Orchestra, the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and the American Wind Symphony Orchestra. He is on the faculty of the New England Conserva-

tory of Music. Mr. Menkis is an occasional soloist in the Boston area and performs chamber music frequently.