BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SEIJI OZAWA Music Director COLIN DAVIS & MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS Principal Guest Conductors NINETY-THIRD SEASON 1973-1974 FRIDAY-SATURDAY 6 CAMBRIDGE 2 THE TRUSTEES OF THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC. TALCOTT M. BANKS President PHILIP K. ALLEN ROBERT H. GARDINER JOHN L. THORNDIKE Vice-President Vice-President Treasurer VERNON R. ALDEN MRS HARRIS FAHNESTOCK MRS JAMES H. PERKINS ALLEN G. BARRY HAROLD D. HODGKINSON IRVING W. RABB MRS JOHN M. BRADLEY E. MORTON JENNINGS JR PAUL C. REARDON RICHARD P. CHAPMAN EDWARD M. KENNEDY MRS GEORGE LEE SARGENT ABRAM T. COLLIER EDWARD G. MURRAY SIDNEY STONEMAN ARCHIE C. EPPS III JOHN T. NOONAN JOHN HOYT STOOKEY TRUSTEES EMERITUS HENRY B. CABOT HENRY A. LAUGHLIN PALFREY PERKINS FRANCIS W. HATCH EDWARD A. TAFT ADMINISTRATION OF THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA THOMAS D. PERRY JR THOMAS W. MORRIS Executive Director Manager MARY H. SMITH JOHN H. CURTIS Concert Manager Public Relations Director FORRESTER C. SMITH DANIEL R. GUSTIN RICHARD C. WHITE Development Director Administrator of Assistant to Educational Affairs the Manager DONALD W. MACKENZIE JAMES F. KILEY Operations Manager, Operations Manager, Symphony Hall Tanglewood HARRY NEVILLE Program Editor copyright © 1973 by Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc. SYMPHONY HALL BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS %ftduy .Or Furs labeled to show country of origin. BOSTON -CHESTNUT HILL'NORTHSHORE SHOPPING CENTER'SOUTH SHORE PLAZA' BURLINGTON MALL' WELLESLEY CONTENTS Program for November 9, 10 and 13 1973 287 Future programs Friday-Saturday series 327 Tuesday Cambridge series 329 Program notes Schoenberg- Violin concerto op. 36 by Michael Steinberg 289 A Reminiscence of the Premiere by Louis Krasner 295 Tchaikovsky -Symphony no. 6 in B minor op. 74 'Pathetique' byJohnN.Burk 299 The Music Director 311 The Statues of Symphony Hall (Photography by jet) 321 The soloist 313 285 Are you still walking the dogs in your portfolio? Old Colony Trust A DIVISION OF THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF BOSTON BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SEIJI OZAWA Music Director COLIN DAVIS & MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS Principal Guest Conductors NINETY-THIRD SEASON Friday afternoon November 9 1973 at 2 o'clock Saturday evening November 10 1973 at 8.30 Tuesday evening November 13 1973 at 8.30 SEIJI OZAWA conductor SCHOENBERG Concerto for violin and orchestra op. 36 Poco allegro Andante grazioso - Adagio Finale: Allegro alia Marcia JOSEPH SILVERSTEIN intermission 'TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony no. 6 in B minor op. 74 'Pathetique' Adagio - allegro non troppo Allegro con grazia Allegro molto vivace Finale: Adagio lamentoso The concert on Friday will end about 3.40; the other concerts about 10.10 The Tuesday concert is being recorded by WGBH-TV for later telecast. Occasional scenes of the audience may be included. THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA RECORDS EXCLUSIVELY FOR DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON BALDWIN PIANO DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON & *RCA RECORDS 287 $2000 for braces but not one cent more for candy. A 12-year-old's pocket money is not State Street Bank's normal concern. But she and her trust fund are. And we don't overlook the details. We have to be sure we give the right answers when requests for trust money are made. And we get requests for just about everything. From dentist bills to school bills. From new kitchens to new cars. Of 350 requests in a typical six months, we've had to say "no" to only nine. Because we don't give pat answers. In every case we respect not just the letter of the trust but its original intent. Which means putting ourselves in the shoes of the person who established it. And giving his beneficiaries the same answers he would have. If that means we have to disburse principal, we do it. Which may not fit your stereotype of a banker. Stern, conservative, remote. But neither would the trust officer we'd assign to your account. More than a trained professional, he or she is someone who becomes thoroughly involved with a family, and all its needs. And STATE STREET BANK works in a one-to-one relationship, almost as a member of the family. " We do our homework. That's why our 12-year-old is dressed up for a "date." Braces Personal Trust Division ^^ 225 m and all. Her trust officer is taking her to lunch. And he's promised fX% wZnl^Slubm^m^ a hot dog with all the trimmings. ^f^ Street Boston Financial Corporation . ARNOLD SCHOENBERG Concerto for violin and orchestra op. 36 Waterville Valley Program note by Michael Steinberg New Hampshire Schoenberg was born in Vienna on September 13 1874; he died in Los Angeles on July 13 1951. He completed his only violin concerto on September 23 1936. Published in 1939, the work is dedicated to Schoenberg's pupil Anton von Webern. The first performance was given by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski, on December 6 1940, with Louis Krasner as soloist. The first and most recent performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra were those of March 26 and 27 and April 3 1965, in which Joseph Silverstein was the soloist and Erich Leinsdorf the conductor. Windsor Hill RESORT CONDOMINIUMS Studios, 1, 2, and 3 Bedrooms from under $25,000 69 Jennings Peak Rd. Waterville Valley, N.H. (603) 236-8388 (Waterville Office) (617) 482-5080 (Boston Office) When . Arnold Schoenberg, a self-portrait from the collection of Louis Krasner. • A mother is unable to care for children • Serious illness disrupts family 'Meine Werke sind ZwoUton-Kompositionen, life nicht Zwo/fton-Kompositionen.' ('My works are twelve-tone compositions, • An aging or ill person is not twelve-tone compositions.') convalescing Schoenberg to Rudolf Kolisch, •A person under psychiatric 27 July 1932 treatment needs temporary care 'Things that must be explained often in the home make better secrets.' Anon. • Parents need a vacation • Handicapped people need help Schoenberg left Berlin on May 17 1933. Hitler had become Chancellor • Chronic illness strikes on January 30, and on March 1, the composer Max von Schillings began the Entjudung (literally, dejewification) of the Prussian Academy of Arts, •A terminal patient needs whose President he was and where Schoenberg, succeeding Busoni, had homecare taught since 1925. Schoenberg went first to Paris, but by October he was in Boston, living at the Pelham Hall apartments, 1284 Beacon Street, Call . Brookline, and teaching at the Malkin Conservatory. Fearing that one more Boston winter would kill him, he moved to New York in March Suburban Homemaking 1934, declined job offers at the Juilliard School and in Chicago, spent and Maternity Agency, Inc. the summer at Chautauqua, and in October moved to Los Angeles, BROOKLINE 232-7650 where he began to teach privately and eventually at the University of FRAMINGHAM 879-1516 Michael Steinberg is music critic of The Boston Globe. His program note for the Schoenberg Violin Concerto was written for Symphony, program magazine of the Minnesota Orchestra. The commentary is used here by kind permission of the Minnesota Orchestral Association. 289 1? <•** Southern California as well. During the summer of 1936, he moved with his family into a newly-built house in Brentwood Park, where he was to live for the rest of his life. He also began to compose again after a THE PLACE TO BUY considerable hiatus (his last work had been the Suite in G for String Orchestra, completed December 26 1934). His first Californian works EVERYTHING were the Fourth String Quartet and the Violin Concerto. Their comple- from what's in style tion dates are, respectively, July 26 and September 23 1936, and he worked both scores simultaneously. And, as always, he worked quickly: to what's traditional that is to say, his life was full of unfinished projects, some of them gnawed-over for decades, but when he was in vena, he wrote with * * * Mozartian facility and speed. Though Klemperer, then conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, OPEN THURSDAY EVENINGS UNTIL 8:30 made noises about introducing the Concerto in Los Angeles, London and Moscow during the 1937-1938 season, Schoenberg proposing Rudolf Kolisch as soloist, there was in fact no performance until December 6 and 7 1940. Leopold Stokowski conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the soloist then was Louis Krasner, the Russian-born American violinist who was also the first to play the concertos of Alban Berg and Roger Sessions. Even now, performances are rare, and few violinists have the Schoenberg in their repertory (not one of the Big Big Names). It is formidably dif- ficult, and early in its history, Schoenberg reinforced that reputation 1-HOUR FREE PARKING at the when he said that it would require a new and special brand of fiddler Church Street Garage (right next door) with six fingers on his left hand. I don't know what it feels like to play this work; I do know that it sounds beautiful, and very much for the violin. Also, when it is commandingly and elegantly played — I speak on the basis of Mr Silverstein's performances with Erich Leinsdorf and * * * this Orchestra in 1965 and Zvi Zeitlin's with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1967 — audiences like it. 31 CHURCH ST. • CAMBRIDGE Let us start at the surface, with the sound. The instrumentation is three UNiversity 4-2300 each of flutes (third doubling piccolo), oboes and clarinets (E flat, A and bass); quartets of bassoons and horns; three each of trumpets and trom- bones; tuba, much percussion, and strings — all that quite big, some- what idiosyncratic in distribution, but within the framework of the 'nor- mal.' Schoenberg's writing for this orchestra is, however, very special indeed. One of his choices in this work (but not only in this) is to avoid octave doublings, meaning that if, for example, middle C occurs in a chord, there will be no lower or higher C in the same chord.