Brooklyn Academy of Music 45th Season 1998-99 Bruce C. Ratner Chairman of the Board Robert C. Rosenberg Chairman of the Board Harvey Lichtenstein President and Executive Producer Craig G. Matthews, President

Robert Spano, Music Director Lukas Foss, Conductor Laureate

present &

Running time: BAM Opera House approximately two November 13 & 14, 1998 at 8pm hours and five minutes. There will be one Brooklyn Philharmonic intermission. Conductor Robert Spano

New York Virtuoso Singers Director Harold Rosenbaum

Elliott Carter Allegro scorrevole (New York premiere) 1908-

PAUSE

Luciano Berio Sinfonia 1925- I 11-0 King III-In ruhig fliessender Bewegung IV V

INTERMISSION

John Adams Harmonielehre 1947- Part I Pa rt II The Anfortas Wou nd Part III Meister Eckhardt and Quackie

Baldwin is the ottical of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The Brooklyn Philharmonic and BAM gratefully acknowledge Mr. and Mrs. Stanley H. Kaplan, whose generous support made possible the Stanley H. Kaplan Education Center Acoustical Shell. Allegro scorrevole gleaming and noble, ornate, somewhat blooming, Elliott Carter (b.1908) and fresh." In the composer's words, Il[The piece] consists primarily of a continuous flow of soft Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was born on December 11, rapid passages that move over the entire range 1908, in New York, where he now lives. He wrote of the sound spectrum, and here and there form Allegro scorrevole in 1996, on commission from into thematic material. Against this is a lyrical The Cleveland Orchestra. It is the third piece of idea also developed throughout, sometimes an orchestral triptych that also includes Partita slowing down to hesitantly separated notes and (1993) and Adagio tenebroso (1994). The at other times tightly joined together to form Cleveland Orchestra presented the world premiere intensely expressive Iines."-Peter Laki (reprint­ of Allegro scorrevole. The tri ptych was fi rst per­ ed with permission of the Cleveland Orchestra) formed as a set by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Oliver Knussen in 1995. The work is ded­ Sinfonia icated to the Cleveland Orchestra and to Oliver Luciano Berio (b. 1925) Knussen. Running approximately 15 minutes in performance, Carter's score calls for three flutes Luciano Berio was born on October 24, 1925 in (second and third double piccolos), two oboes, Oneglia (now Imperia), Italy. He now lives in english horn, two (second doubling on Radicondoli, a province of Siena, Italy. The original small in E flat), , two bas­ version of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia , composed in soons, contrabassoon, four horns, three , 1968, was fi rst performed on October 10 of that three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (vibra­ year by the New York Philharmonic and The phone, marimba, glockenspiel, xylophone, bongos, Swingle Singers, under the direction of the com­ , tom-tom, woodblocks, metal blocks, poser. The 1969 version, expanded from four to temple blocks, suspended cymbals, cowbells, guiro, five sections, was performed in New York for the , snare drum), harp, piano and strings. first time on October 8, 1970 by the same forces under Leonard Bernstein. The published score Elliott Carter has long had a reputation of being carries the inscription: IlWritten for (and commis­ a Ildifficult" composer-a reputation borne out sioned by) the New York Philharmonic and dedi­ by the often dauntingly complex metrical problems cated to Leonard Bernstein." The work is scored found in many of his works. But complexity is for three flutes and piccolo, four clarinets, two never an end in itself with Carter. It is, rather, oboes and English horn, and tenor the outward manifestation of something more saxophone, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four profou nd-something that David Sch iff has well horns, three trombones, tuba, percussion (timpani, put into words in the opening chapter of his book, glockenspiel, marimba, vibraphone, tam-tams, The Music of Elliott Carter (London, 1983), snare drums, bass drums, cymbals, sizzle cymbals, IlElliott Carter makes music out of simultaneous , wood-blocks, bongos, guiros, frusta, oppositions.... He is not interested in reconciling grelots, castanets and triangles), harp, piano, them, as a romantic composer would be; nor electric organ, electric harpsichord, strings (with does he choose to ignore them. He delights in one solo and divided into three sec­ them. HighIy cha rged contrasts provoke his tions) and eight singers. imagination, inspiring patterns of unprecedented complexity, as when two webs of plucked tones Luciano Berio's music displays a constant obses­ mesh in a dizzying, hallucinatory gauze." sion with language and the many possibilities by which language can be presented in a musical The word scorrevole (the accent is on the second context. Fragmentation into phonetic sounds, syllable) in the title of the new work means emblematic quotations, traditional vocalism and Ilflowing, fluent" in Italian. The adjective applies anti-academic (or pop) vocalism, musical, physical to the piece from the very beginning, with its and semantic gesture: these are some of the fleeting, leggiero (light) runs for woodwind and many devices the composer has used in his muted strings. This airy material is eventually scores. In Sinfonia, the texts are taken from a complemented by something more Ilbeautiful, number of sources, including Claude Levi-Strauss' Le Cru et Ie cuit (The Raw and the Cooked), Samuel Beckett's The Unnameable, Joyce, revolutionary slogans, recorded conversation and the name Martin Luther King. But as the composer notes, "The treatment of the vocal part in the first, second, fourth and fifth sections of Sinfonia is similar in that the text is not immediately perceivable as such. The words and their com­ ponents undergo a musical analysis which is integral to the total structure of voice and instruments together. The fact that the varying degree of percep­ tibility of the text at different moments is a part of the musical structure is the reason why the words and phrases used are not given in the program. The experience of 'not quite hearing,' then, is to be conceived as essential to the nature of the work itself."

Also significant in this work is the parallel musical device of quotation typified by the third movement, about which Berio admitted at the time of the premiere, "To use a cliche-it is perhaps the most experimental I have ever written." In this section, Berio uses a movement from Mahler's Second Symphony as a container for numerous musical references, from Bach, Beethoven and Brahms to Boulez, Stockhausen and Berio himself. Again, the composer's words are revelatory, "If I were to describe the presence of Mahler's scherzo in Sinfonia, the image that comes most spontaneously to mind is that of a river going through a constantly changing landscape, sometimes going under­ ground and emerging in another, altogether different place, sometimes very evident in its journey, sometimes disappearing completely, present as a fully recognizable form or as small details lost in the surrounding host of musical presences."

Harmonielehre John Adams (b. 1947)

John Coolidge Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on February 15, 1947 and now lives in Berkeley, California. He began working on Harmonielehre in February 1984, though nothing that actually made its way into the complet­ ed score was wdtten before October of that year. The work was finished in March 1985 and first performed in the 21st of that month by the San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart conducting. Adams was then in his fourth and final year as the San Francisco Symphony's first composer-in-residence. The score calls for four flutes (three doubling piccolo), three oboes (third doubling English horn), four clarinets (two doubling bass clarinet), three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, timpani, two marimbas, vibraphone, xylophone, tubular bells, crotales (played both with mallets and a bow), glockenspiel, high and low suspended cymbals, , small crash cymbals, bell tree, two tam­ tams, two triangles, bass drum, two harps, piano (sometimes four hands), celesta and strings (with violins divided into four sections and and each into two).

In the thirteen and a half years since John Adams bounded onto the Davies Symphony Hall stage in San Francisco to acknowledge the tumultuous applause that greeted the premier of Harmonielehre, he has risen from being known nationally as an interesting "younger" composer to become an internationally renowned and acclaimed composer whose orchestral works are performed more often than any other American composer. Harmonielehre turned out to be the resolution of a major and, for a time, paralyzing compo­ sition crisis in Adams's life. His seminal minimalist works of the late seven­ ties, typified by Phrygian Gates and Common Tones in Simple Time, were, as he described them, "almost rigorously pure in [their] modal, diatonic expression." Indeed, his turning point resulted from his self-description as "a minimalist who is bored with minimalism." The crisis was broken when Adams had a dream in which he saw himself "driving over the... Bay Bridge and looking out saw a huge tanker in the bay. It was an image of immense power and gravity and mass. And while I was observing the tanker, it sud­ denly took off like a rocket ship with an enormous force of levitation ...When I woke up the next morning, the image of those huge chords [with which the piece begins] came to me, and the piece was off like an explosion." The resultant work takes a large step in the direction of a more chromatic style, and the long periods of harmonic stasis in his earlier scores have largely, if not entirely, given way to music with a more pronounced sense of motion and punctuation.

The work itself is in three parts, the first of which accounts for a little more than half the work. Adams thinks of Part I, which is untitled, as a huge symphonic movement, or perhaps a single-movement symphony like the Sibelius Seventh. The metrical patterns change constantly, but for a long time the pounding beat with which Harmonielehre opens are relentless and unchangeably present. The second, slow movement is called The Anfortas Wound. It is, as Adams notes, "about sickness and infirmity, physical and spiritual." The meters are numbingly regular, which for Adams is part of the imagery of sickness and confinement. The third movement also begins with slow music ("slowly rocking" is the tempo mark), but where the second movement is wracked, this music brings healing. "At the end," Adams says, "there's an extended passage during which a tremendous harmonic struggle takes place with the different tonalities vying for dominance...And finally E-flat wins through its strength, and this moment seems like an epiphany."

-Michael Steinberg is program annotator of the San Francisco Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. This note originally appeared in the program book of the San Francisco Symphony and is reprinted with permission. Copyright 1995 San Francisco Symphony. Robert Spano Music Director Lukas Foss Conductor Laureate Simon Lipskar Assistant Conductor

Violin I Alto Saxophone Piano / Keyboard Laura Park, Chris Finckel* AI Regni Ken Bowen* Concertmaster David Calhoun Betsy Difelice Yuval Waldman, La nny Payki n Tenor Saxophone Bill Grossman Assistant Michael Rudiakov Lino Gomez Concertmaster Joshua Gordon Personnel Laura Frautschi Peter Rosenfeld Bassoon Jonathan Taylor Diane Bruce Sarah L. Hewitt Harry Searing Rebekah Johnson Michael Fi nckel Jean Gockowski Librarian Claudia Hafer Laura Plasson Andrew S. Holmes Matthew Loden Wharim Kim Judith Sugarman Contrabassoon Aloysia Friedmann David Rosi Tom Sefcovic Sashka Korzenska Janet Conway Barbour New York Virtuoso Fritz Krakowski Jules Hirsh Singers Andrea Schultz Bill Ellison Paul Ingraham* Harold Rosenbaum, Heidi Modr Jeffrey L. Levine Kaitilin Mahony Director Yoon Mi 1m Louis Bruno Francisco Donaruma William A. Sloat Katie Dennis Soprano Violin II Joan Krause Darryl Kubian* Flute Cynthia Richards Katherine Hannauer Katherine Fink* Wilmer Wise* Wallace Shinwon Kim Brian Miller Neil Balm Cecelia Hobbs Gardner Robert Bush Steve Ametrano Alto Stephani J. Bell Tom Hoyt Phillis Jo Kubey Janet Sung Piccolo Nancy Wertsch* Roxanne Bergman Robert Bush Trombone Sarah Schwartz Wendy Stern Hugh Eddy* Tenor Jean Perrault Tom Hutchinson Mukund Marathe Rena Isbin Oboe Lawrence Benz Steven Ra iford Nam Sook Lee Henry Schuman* Dennis Linkevitch Gus Highstein Tuba Bass Andrew Seligson* Frank Barr

Viola English Horn r Morris Kainuma Elliot Levine Ah Ling Neu David Kossoff Juliet Hafner Timpani *Chora I Contractor Monica Gerard Clarinet Richard Fitz* Leslie Tomkins Steven Hartman* Maxine Roach Paul Garment Percussion Kenji Bunch Gary Koch James Preiss* Ronald Lawrence William Trigg Alexander Rees E-flat Clarinet David Frost Ariel Rudiakov Paul Garment Barry Centanni Martin Sher Bass Clarinet Harp Gary Koch Karen Lindquist* Dennis Smylie Anna Reinersma *Principal Board of Directors Executive Vice Directors Ex officio President Arthur C. Bennett Louis Bruno Chairman John Tamberlane Russell A. Campbell Henry Schuman Robert C. Rosenberg Emilie A. Cozzi Treasurer Timothy Gilles President Kevin Burke Harriet Goodman Craig G. Matthews James Kendrick Secretary William F. Kuntz, II Chairman Emeritus Paul Travis Gloria Messinger Stanley H. Kaplan Peter M. Meyer Vice Presidents Julie Ratner Honorary Chairman Jerry Jacobs Irving Redel I. Stanley Kriegel John M. Powers, Jr. Tazewell Smith Hon. Howard Golden Laura Walker Bruce Van Dusen A. Lorne Weil Wayne C. Winborne

Administration Orchestra Manager Finance Administrative Lisa Takemoto Peter Gee Assistant Executive Director Tonya Cobb Melora Soodalter Designate Production Gregg Gustafson Coordinator Public Relations Intern Don Coleman Shirley Kirshbaum & Tanya Duffus Director of Associates Development Marketing and Joseph Chart Promotion Artistic Advisor Tambra Dillon Maurice Edwards Jeff Levine

An international leader in innovative programming, Luciano Berio, and Elliott Carter. In December, the the Brooklyn Philharmonic is recognized as one Philharmonic moves from the BAM Opera House of this country's finest regional orchestras. Under to the BAM Majestic Theater for Powder Her Face, the leadership of Music Director Robert Spano, a work inspired by the salacious life of the Duchess the orchestra has reached a new level of artistic of Argyll. The spring begins with two monumental excellence and is hailed for its challenging reper­ works: Shostakovich's epic Symphony No.7, toire and superb musicianship. Since its incep­ Leningrad; and Mahler's lush and romantic tion, the Brooklyn Philharmonic has received Symphony No.2, Resurrection. A concert for seventeen ASCAP awards for Adventuresome orchestra and chorus entitled Music and Religion and Creative Programming and presented over will feature Stravinsky's Mass, Bach's Christ lag 100 New York premieres. in Todesbanden and Steve Reich's Tehillim.

The 1998-99 season continues to build upon The Brooklyn Philharmonic was founded by con­ the Brooklyn Philharmonic's tradition of presenting ductor Siegfried Landau in 1954. He was suc­ uniquely designed programs of both classical and ceeded by Lukas Foss in 1971 and Dennis contemporary repertoire. Robert Spano has pro­ Russell Davies in 1991. Robert Spano was named grammed two important New York premieres­ music director in 1996. The Philharmonic serves Elliot Carter's Allegro Scorrevole in honor of the a diverse audience with five pairs of subscription composer's ninetieth birthday, and Thomas Ades' concerts, community concerts, pre-concert lectures, critically acclaimed opera Powder Her Face. recordings, chamber music activities, and extensive This concert, AB&C, is a program of significant education programs. Free Schooltime Concerts twentieth century symphonies by John Adams, reach more than 10,000 of Brooklyn's students. Music director Robert Orchestra Philharmonic della Scala (Milan), Spano is one of the Frankfurt Radio Sinfonie Orchestra, Orchestra of world's most prominent The Hague, Helsinki Philharmonic, New Japan young conductors. "He Philharmonic (Tokyo), Royal Opera at Covent seems the most com­ Garden, Tonhalle Orchestra (Zurich) and Welsh prehensively gifted National Opera. American conductor to emerge since James Mr. Spano's 1998-99 guest appearances include Levine, Michael Tilson his debut with the Chicago Lyric Opera in perfor­ Thomas and Leonard mances of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Slatkin."-The Boston and engagements with the Atlanta Symphony, Globe. In 1990, Seiji Ozawa appointed him Baltimore Symphony, Boston Symphony, Buenos assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Aires Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Czech Orchestra. Since that time, he has conducted Philharmonic, Goteborg Symphony, Minnesota nearly every major North American orchestra Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic and Toronto including the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Symphony. Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, National Robert Spano is committed to music education. Symphony, and Houston Symphony. Last season In 1998, he began his tenure as head of the Mr. Spano debuted with the Houston Grand Opera conducting fellowship program at the Tanglewood and Santa Fe Opera, and conducted the world Music Center. He is on faculty at the Oberlin premiere of John Corigliano's Red Violin Chaconne Conservatory and this season will conduct in with Joshua Bell and the San Francisco Symphony. residence at Curtis Institute and The Juilliard He has also conducted orchestra and opera com­ School. He appears regularly at the Aspen and panies throughout Europe and Asia, including Round Top Music Festivals.

Born in Conneaut, Ohio and raised in Elkhart, Indiana, Mr. Spano grew up in a musical family playing flute, violin, and piano, and composing. He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied conducting with Robert Baustian, and continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music with the late Max Rudolf. Mr. Spano makes his home in Brooklyn, New York.

The New York Virutoso Singers, founded in 1988 by Harold Rosenbaum, is one of this country's leading professional choirs specializing in the performance, commissioning, and recording of contemporary music. It was the first chorus to be invited to perform at Tanglewood's Festival of Contemporary Music, and has performed with major New York orchestras and at the Juilliard School. They have recorded with Sony Classical, CRI, Koch International and Bridge Records.

Harold Rosenbaum, music director and founder of the New York Virtuoso Singers also conducts the Canticum Novum Singers and Westchester Oratorio Society. He was recently appointed director of choirs at the University at Buffalo.