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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ^fi^ Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Grant Llewellyn and Robert Spano, Assistant Conductors One Hundred and Eleventh Season, 1991-92 SUPPER CONCERT VII Saturday, March 14, at 6 Tuesday, March 17, at 6 TAMARA SMIRNOVA-SAJFAR, violin AZA RAYKHTSAUM, violin OWEN YOUNG, cello TATIANA YAMPOLSKY, piano PROKOFIEV Sonata in C for two violins, Opus 56 Andante cantabile Allegro Commodo (quasi Allegretto) Allegro con brio Ms. SMIRNOVA-SAJFAR and Ms. RAYKHTSAUM SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Opus 67 Andante—Moderato Allegro non troppo Largo Allegretto—Adagio Ms. YAMPOLSKY, Ms. SMIRNOVA-SAJFAR, and Mr. YOUNG Baldwin piano Please exit to your left for supper following the concert. The performers appreciate your not smoking during the concert. Week 18 Sergei Prokofiev Sonata in C for two violins, Opus 56 Prokofiev had to a considerable extent lived down his youthful reputation as an enfant terrible by 1932, when he came to compose this sonata. Indeed, he had eagerly accepted the challenge of writing music that would speak to a broad audience, and he was thus delighted to be asked to write music for the film Lt. Kije, which he later turned into a popular concert suite. It was at this time, and with such artistic concerns, that he turned to writing a substantial work for two violins, which was to be premiered in Paris. Prokofiev's own memoirs tell the amusing tale: A society called the 'Triton" had been formed in Paris for the performance of new chamber music. Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, myself and others joined it. Listening to bad music sometimes inspires good ideas. 'That's not the way to do it," one tells oneself, "it should be done this way." That is how I happened to write my sonata for two violins. After once hearing an unsuccessful piece for two violins without piano accompaniment, it struck me that in spite of the apparent limitations of such a duet, one could make it interesting enough to listen to for ten or fifteen minutes without tiring. The sonata was performed at the official opening of the "Triton" on December 16, 1932, which chanced to coincide with the premiere of my Dnieper ballet [On the Dnieper]. Fortunately the ballet came on half an hour later, and so immediately after the sonata we dashed over to the Grand Opera-musicians, critics, author all together. Those present before the mad rush to the ballet performance heard a surprisingly serious, even austere, composition. Rather than exploiting the familiar flashy dazzle of his concertos for piano or violin, Prokofiev restrained his exuberance. The sonata is thus one of the first examples of "the new simplicity" that Prokofiev sought at the time he contemplated dividing his life between Russia and the West. But he had not yet found the accessible directness of Romeo and Juliet or the Second Violin Concerto, so the two-violin sonata fell between two stools-neither intellectual enough for the musical intelligentsia of Paris nor folksy enough for the Russian proletariat. It thus marks a fascinating midpoint in the style of this composer who lived alternately in two different worlds-both musical and political-which he was given no opportunity to reconcile. Dmitri Shostakovich Trio No. 2 in E minor for piano, violin, and cello, Opus 67 Shostakovich composed his Second Piano Trio in 1944 (the First was a youthful work written in 1923 which Shostakovich called Opus 8, though he never published it). Thus it came right on the heels of the two wartime symphonies, No. 7 {Leningrad) and No. 8. It was premiered at the same concert as the Second String Quartet. The composer himself played the piano part, while the string parts were taken by two members of the Beethoven Quartet. Officially the trio was dedicated to the memory of Shostakovich's close friend, Ivan Sollertinsky, who had died in a Nazi camp. But the music cannot help but evoke the wider world situation as well, and throughout all four movements the mood is essentially elegiac. The work opens with an astonishing texture: a slow fugato with the cello in a high register, the violin entering in the middle, and then the piano in the bass. Throughout the work Shostakovich takes great pains to prevent the piano part from overpowering the strings. The bulk of the first movement is in sonata form. It is followed by a scherzo-like movement in F-sharp, where the two stringed instruments band together, as it were, against the onslaught of the piano. The third movement is a passacaglia in the dark key of B-flat minor, based on a series of eight chords sounded in the piano at the outset. These repeating harmonies modulate from B-flat minor to B minor and back; over them, the violin and cello sing their mournful song. At the final statement, the B becomes a dominant to the home key of E minor, leading directly into the finale. The last movement is cast in a kind of sonata-rondo form, but what is most striking is its half-mocking tone with uneasy shades of meaning. This has sometimes been called the 'Jewish" part of the trio-a daring choice on the composer's part at a time when the regime was starting a new campaign of anti-Semitism. That portion had to be repeated, by audience demand, at the opening performance. But the first performance was for a long time the last; almost at once it was forbidden to perform the Trio. Even now, more than forty years after its completion, it evokes tragedy and sorrow through musical means. Just before the recapitulation in the last movement there is a hint of the opening fugato, and the final hushed coda combines the passacaglia chords in the piano with broken statements of the movement's main theme in the violin and cello-and the rest is silence. —Notes by Steven Ledbetter Born in Siberia, Tamara Smirnova-Sajfar joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as its associate concertmaster in the fall of 1986; she is also concertmaster of the Boston Pops Orchestra. Ms. Smirnova-Sajfar started playing the violin at six and graduated in 1981 from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where she studied with Eugenia Chugaeva. Upon completing her studies she moved to Zagreb, where she soon became concertmaster of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the youngest concertmaster in the history of that ensemble. A Bronze Medalist in the 1985 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Ms. Smirnova-Sajfar performs regularly at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival and is a laureate of the annual award of the Croatian Musicians Association for 1988, "Milka Trnina." She made her American recital debut in November 1986 at Jordan Hall and has performed as concerto soloist with the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and many New England-area orchestras, as well as in California and North Carolina. Ms. Smirnova-Sajfar has recorded for Jugoton and has been a lecturer at the Music Academy in Zagreb. She now makes her home in Newton with her husband Miljenko £ajfar, who was principal cellist of the Zagreb Philharmonic, and their son. BSO violinist Aza Raykhtsaum was born in Leningrad and began studying the piano when she was five, taking up the violin a year later at the suggestion of her teacher. Ms. Raykhtsaum majored in violin at the Leningrad Conservatory, where she studied with the renowned Ryabinkov; she became concertmaster of the Leningrad Conservatory Orchestra and a first violinist in the Leningrad Philharmonic. In 1980 she emigrated to the United States, after which she joined the Houston Symphony as a first violinist and then became a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1982. She has appeared as soloist in the Glazunov Violin Concerto with the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of John Williams. Ms. Raykhtsaum teaches privately and performs chamber music frequently in the Boston area with her husband, BSO principal cellist Jules Eskin. Cellist Owen Young graduated cum laude from Yale University with bachelor's and master's degrees in music. A student of Aldo Parisot, he served as principal cellist with the Yale Symphony Orchestra and was a soloist on that orchestra's 1985 European tour. For the 1986-87 season he was third-chair cellist with the New Haven Symphony. A Tanglewood Music Center Fellow in 1986 and 1987, and a participant also in the Banff and Aspen summer music festivals, Mr. Young is a frequent performer of chamber music and recitals in the United States and abroad. He has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Yale Symphony, and the Eastern Connecticut Symphony. Mr. Young played as an Orchestra Fellow with the Atlanta Symphony in 1988 and with the Boston Symphony for the 1988-89 season. From 1989 to 1991 he was a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony; from 1990 to 1991 he was a member of the music faculty of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Mr. Young joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in August 1991. He is currently Resident Tutor of Music and Director of Concerts in Dunster House at Harvard University. A Russian pianist of Armenian origin, Tatiana Yampolsky began her musical studies at the age of five and made her debut when she was twelve, at the Large Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Ms. Yampolsky graduated with honors from the Moscow Conservatory, where she studied with the prominent Soviet pianists Yakov Flier and Dmitry Bashkirov, and received her degree in both concert performance and piano teaching. Ms. Yampolsky performed in concerts throughout the Soviet Union, playing in recitals, with orchestra, and for Moscow Broadcasting.

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