Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Summer, 2001
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
FEEL READY LEARN THE ART OF PERFORMANCE, so you can feel an audience rise to its feet. Learn the rules of logic, so you can feel the heat of debate. Learn the discipline of riding, so you can feel the joy of a perfect jump. Stoneleigh-Burnham School. Feel Ready. College Prep Program for Girls, Grades 9-12 Nationally Recognized Riding Program Specializing in the Arts, Debate & Athletics Extensive Science Program STONELEIGH- Including Equine Science Class BURNHAMn SCHOOL Call admissions at 413-774-2711 or visit www.sbschool.org A College Preparatory School for Young Women Since 1 869 Greenfield, Massachusetts MM Table of Contents Prelude Concert of Friday, July 6, at 6 3 Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra MUSIC OF MOZART AND PONCHIELLI Boston Symphony Orchestra concert of Friday, July 6, at 8:30 13 Seiji Ozawa conducting; Mstislav Rostropovich, cello; Steven Ansell, viola MUSIC OF BEETHOVEN AND STRAUSS Boston Symphony Orchestra concert of Saturday, July 7, at 8:30 25 Rafael Friihbeck de Burgos conducting; Itzhak Perlman, violin MUSIC OF MOZART AND STRAUSS Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert of Sunday, July 8, at 2:30 34 Mariss Jansons conducting MUSIC OF MOZART, STRAUSS, AND TCHAIKOVSKY Ozawa Hall concert of Wednesday, July 11, at 8:30 49 Matthias Goerne, baritone; Eric Schneider, piano SCHUBERT "DIE SCHONE MULLERIN" SATURDAY-MORNING OPEN REHEARSAL SPEAKERS, JULY 2001 July 7 and 28 — Robert Kirzinger, BSO Publications Associate July 14 and 21 — Marc Mandel, BSO Director of Program Publications You are invited to take Tanglewood Guided Tours of Tanglewood sponsored by the Tanglewood Association of the Boston Symphony Association of Volunteers. Free to the public Wednesday from 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Free to Sunday ticket-holders: Sunday at 12:30 p.m. All tours last one hour, beginning and ending at the Tanglewood Visitor Center. Please arrive at the Visitor Center five minutes before the starting time of each tour. Group tours may be scheduled at other times by calling the Tanglewood Volunteer Office at (413) 637-5393. A contribution of $6 per person is requestedfor scheduled group tours. ——— —— 2001 Tanglewood SEIJI OZAWA HALL Prelude Concert Friday, July 6, at 6 Florence Gould Auditorium, Seiji Ozawa Hall LINDA TOOTE, flute SUZANNE NELSEN, bassoon MARK McEWEN, oboe RICHARD RANTI, bassoon ROBERT SHEENA, oboe DANIEL KATZEN, horn SCOTT ANDREWS, clarinet RICHARD MACKEY, horn THOMAS MARTIN, E-flat clarinet NINA FERRIGNO, piano MOZART Divertimento in E-flat, K.252(240a), for two oboes, two horns, and two bassoons Andante Menuetto; Trio Polonaise. Andante Presto assai PONCHIELLI Quartet in B-flat for flute, oboe, clarinet, and E-flat clarinet, with piano accompaniment Moderato Andante Allegro non molto Allegretto moderato Andantino Allegro brillante MOZART Quintet in E-flat for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, K.452 Largo—Allegro moderato Larghetto Rondo: Allegro moderato Baldwin piano Nina Ferrigno plays the Steinway piano. In consideration of the performers and those around you, cellular phones, pagers, and watch alarms should be switched off during the concert. Please refrain from taking pictures in Seiji Ozawa Hall at any time during the concert. Thank you for your cooperation. Weekl Notes In 1775-77, Wolfgang Amade Mozart (1756-1791) composed at least five divertimenti for an unusual wind sextet consisting of oboes, horns, and bassoons. Considering their date and their easygoing character, it is surmised that these pieces were intended as din- ner music for Mozart's employer in Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. Just leaving his teens, Mozart already shows a keen ear for wind sound and a creative approach to musical form. In the E-flat Divertimento, K.252, for example, he substitutes an Andante in graceful siciliano meter for the customary opening sonata allegro, yet still makes a substantial statement to begin the piece. The minuet is of the brisk, vigorous type, heat- ing up the music rather than relaxing it, so it becomes the role of the Polonaise to sit back and smile a rustic smile. (This "bumpkin," however, uses some highly sophisticated writing for winds.) The closing Presto assai turns an Austrian folk song, "Die Katze lasst das Mausen nichf ("The cat won't leave the mouse alone"), into some charming cat-and- mouse counterpoint. Amilcare Ponchielli's (1834-1886) gift for melody and musical drama was such that some people proclaimed him "the next Verdi." His operas were not as consistent in bsc OPFRA Moving barrington stage company COMPANY Artistic Director, Julianne Boyd 'lerience. €ilPN THE TWENTIETH Mozart's IP CENTURY Cos! fan tutte July 14, 16m, 19, June 20 -July 14 21,23m, 26, 28 Book & Lyrics by Koussevitsky Arts Center Betty Comden and Adolph Green Pittsfield, MA Music by Cy Coleman Fully staged and Based on plays by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur & Bruce Millholland performed in Italian with English supertitles. Sponsored by BfmshIIBaNK SUDDENLY Music at the LAST SUMMER Mahaiwe July 18 -August 4 Highlights of seasons by Tennessee Williams to come featuring an all-star cast and WORLD Opera CIAO! PREMIbKE the Berkshire Orchestra on the stage August 8 - August 25 of our new home. by Anonymous August 11, 13, aiso THE BACON BROTHERS July 9th at 8pm 15,17,18 Mahaiwe Theatre BSC Box Office • 413-528-8888 Great Barrington, MA www.barringtonstageco.org All performances at the Consolati Performing Arts Center, Sheffield, MA Performances held lues. - Sun. BOX Office: 413-644-9988 www berkop.org quality as those of Rossini and Verdi, but he did produce one real masterpiece, La Gio- conda, which is still a staple of the repertoire. The "Dance of the Hours," the brilliant ballet from that opera, has survived generations of parody, most notoriously by animated ostriches and alligators in the 1940 Walt Disney film Fantasia. The sassy comedy and lyrical spirit of the "Dance of the Hours" make an early appearance in Ponchielli's Quar- tet for wind instruments and orchestra, which was first performed in Cremona in 1857, nineteen years before he composed La Gioconda, then published with the orchestral part arranged for piano. So why does it take five players to perform a "quartet"? A chamber music fan might ask that question, but the answer is self-evident to an opera fan. Of course this piece is a quartet, just as an operatic ensemble for four singers is a quartet, no matter how many other musicians are required to keep them afloat. At times in this music, one can almost hear the instruments taking the roles of voices in an opera scene: that is, with the flute, small clarinet in E-flat, oboe, and standard clarinet in B-flat as the soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass-baritone, respectively. Played without a break, the quartet's brief sections flow from one another like num- bers in an opera, while at the same time forming a traditional sonata sequence: substan- tial first movement, slow movement, and variation-finale. Following the concerto-like introduction for the piano, the winds jump in with a Mozart-like plethora of ideas, skipping, singing, and driving forward by turns, then whirling them all into an operatic coda. Amid this excitement, Ponchielli artfully hands the ball off to the tenor—excuse me, the oboe—for a rather formal solo aria in minuet tempo, Andante. But the oboe's colleagues immediately get into the act, delicately coloring the minuet tune with fresh harmonies and expressive pauses. By now, the piece has taken on more of the character of wind chamber music than of instruments imitating singers; the emphasis is on fanci- ful wind sounds and digital dexterity, not vocal characterization. A witty transitional passage brings us to another naive little dance, an Andantino waltz that blossoms into four highly-contrasted variations and a hilarious, twittering Allegro brillante coda. —David Wright copyright ©2001 David Wright contributes regularly to the New York Times and other publications, and is a program annotator for Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. On Thursday, April 1, 1784, at the Imperial and Royal National Theatre in Vienna, Wolfgang Amade Mozart presented a "grand musical concert" for his own benefit and which included, in addition to three of his symphonies and a new piano concerto, "an entirely new grand quintet" (K.452) which he had entered into his own thematic catalogue just two days earlier. Mozart was the pianist for this performance, and in a letter to his father on April 10 he declared the quintet to be "the best thing I have written so far in my life I wish you could have heard it—and how beautifully it was performed!" The quintet dates from what may very well have been the busiest and happiest months of Mozart's career. He had moved to Vienna several years earlier to escape his intolerable employment with the Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg, and he would soon achieve the height of his popularity as both pianist and composer. His principal works during this time were the extraordinary series of eleven piano concertos beginning with the E-flat, K.449, in February 1784 and extending through those in A, K.488, and C minor, K.491, both entered into his catalogue in March 1786. He had triumphed Weekl with his opera Idomeneo in Munich in January 1781. In July 1782, the premiere of his opera The Abductionfrom the Seraglio at the Burgtheater won over Vienna's operagoing public, as would The Marriage ofFigaro four years later. Soon after the first performance of the quintet, Mozart played it again in a June 1784 concert in which his pupil Babette Ployer introduced the magical new G major piano concerto he had written for her and which immediately follows the quintet in Kochel's chronological catalogue of Mozart's works.