Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Season 129, 2009
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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA boston" James Levine, Music Director symphony ORCHESTRA Bernard Haitink, Conductor Emeritus JAMES LEV1NE Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Laureate Music Director « 129th Season, 2009-2010 w CHAMBER TEA VI Friday, April 23, at 2:30 COMMUNITY CONCERT IX Sunday, April 25, at 3, at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, South End, Boston COMMUNITY CONCERT X Sunday, May 2, at 3, at New Life Community Church, Framingham The free Community Concerts are made possible by a generous grant from The Lowell Institute. CATHERINE FRENCH, violin (1st violin in Strauss) IKUKO MIZUNO, violin (1st violin in Brahms) KAZUKO MATSUSAKA, viola (1st viola in Strauss) EDWARD GAZOULEAS, viola (1st viola in Brahms) BLAISE DEJARDIN, cello (1st cello in Strauss) MIHAIL JOJATU, cello (1st cello in Brahms) STRAUSS String Sextet from the opera Capriccio BRAHMS String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat, Opus 18 Allegro ma non troppo Andante, ma moderato Scherzo: Allegro molto; Trio: Animato Rondo: Poco Allegretto e grazioso Weeks 24/25 Richard Strauss (1864-1949) String Sextet from the opera Capriccio Strauss completed Capriccio, the last of his fifteen operas, on August 8, 1941, and the first performance took place in Munich on October 28, 1942. Clemens Krauss, who had also written the libretto, was the conductor, and the role of Countess Madeleine, the main character, was taken by Krauss' s wife, the soprano Viorica Ursuleac. The year 1941 found Strauss and his own wife in poor health, depressed by the war, worried about prospects for their Jewish daughter-in-law and half- Jewish grandson, and dismayed by the ever more chilly treatment the composer was getting at the hands of the German government (Strauss was not a Nazi, but he was not an outspoken opponent either, and he despised the Nazis no more than any other political party). Work on Capriccio cheered him up somewhat, not least because he had found a congenial and stimulating literary partner in Clemens Krauss. The premiere went well, too, and he was especially delighted by the con- tributions of his librettist-conductor as well as those of Viorica Ursuleac and the young bass Hans Hotter. Strauss was twenty-eight when he wrote his first opera, Guntram, and seventy- seven when he completed Capriccio (in between had come, among others, Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne aufNaxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Arabella). Capriccio has a complicated history, which from first thought to first performance spanned ten years. While Clemens Krauss signed as librettist, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Gregor, and Rodulf Hartmann had all been involved en route, as was Strauss himself, and the references in the play encompass various historical characters from 18th-century Paris, the 16th-century poet Pierre Ronsard, Carlo Goldoni, the rivalry of Gluck and Piccinni, Strauss himself, and, centrally, Antonio Salieri's THE BSO ONLINE watch m* listen 4)) explore BUY TICKETS • SUBSCRIBE • DONATE PROGRAM LISTINGS • SPECIAL EVENTS DOWNLOAD PODCASTS • BIOGRAPHIES HISTORICAL FACTS • NEW AMENITIES VISIT US AT BSO.ORG Prima la tnusica e poi le parole (First the Music and then the Words), which had its the same time, this music is very much Brahms's own. At one point, the suggestion premiere in 1786 as half of a double bill of operas about opera, its partner being of a Bach chaconne in the cello reflects Brahms's wide-ranging and inquisitive sense Mozart's The Impresario. of musical history and style. Throughout, as relief from the generally moodier Strauss himself thought of this "conversation piece," as the title page has it, as tone, the shape and harmonic scheme of his theme permit striking moments of "caviar to the general." It is witty, intelligent conversation, subtly set, laced with Brahmsian lyricism. sharp observation of human behavior, only occasionally expanding into that The scherzo's energy cannot help but suggest Beethoven; this movement is also mmmm-yes-stroke-me-some-more lyricism at which Strauss was so good. The extremely compact where the first and second are expansive. Brahms qualifies the issue is: which is more important in opera, the words or the music. Most of the tempo marking of his rondo finale with the term "grazioso," a designation that argument lavished on this question since the beginning of opera some 400 years appears frequently in his music. The finale's duple meter contrasts strongly with ago has been dry, humorless, angry. In Capriccio it takes on charm because it is both the opening movement and the immediately preceding scherzo. The tune is presented as human drama. Flamand, a composer, and Olivier, a poet, are both in easy to follow, so the changes Brahms works upon it are readily recognized; as love with the beautiful young and widowed Countess Madeleine. Which will she rondo form dictates, the theme alternates with a number of ingeniously contrasting choose? episodes. Near the end, the use of pizzicato strings harks back to a similar effect at Strauss emphasized to his librettist that he must not supply a happy ending, the end of the sextef s first movement. rather that the curtain should fall on a question mark. But in opera, music has, so —Marc Mandel to speak, the last word, literally as well as figuratively. Krauss and Strauss—word- loving, word-beholden, word-skilled though they both were—were themselves musicians. Capriccio does end on a question mark, but quietly the orchestra sug- Catherine French is a native of Victoria, British gests that if there were an answer... Columbia, where she began Suzuki studies on the violin at age four. frequent soloist,, The opera is set in Paris in the spring of 1777. It is the Countess's birthday, and A Ms. French has performed with the Toronto Orchestra, her two admirers have written presents. Olivier's is a sonnet (actually one of Symphony Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Edmonton Sym- Ronsard's) and Flamand' s is a string sextet. When the curtain rises we see the phony Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic, and Symphony Nova Scotia; she made Countess, eyes closed, listening to Flamand's offering. Thus the Sextet, the first her Carnegie Hall debut in 1992 with the Senior Concert Orchestra of New York the baton of Gilbert. Recital music we hear in Capriccio, is the overture to the opera, and it is also our transport under David appearances include performances in D.C., to the pre-Revolutionary Paris of Strauss's fantasy. In the turns of its lovely texture, New York, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Toronto, Washington, and Marlboro, Vermont, as a participant in the 1993 Marlboro Music Festival. She has received smiling and subtly erotic, it is also a declamation of love—Flamand's to Madeleine, Strauss's to music. numerous study grants from the Canada Council, Alberta Culture, Alberta Foun- dation for the Performing Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, and Chalmers Fund. Ms. Michael Steinberg — French won grand prize at the National Competitive Festival of Music in 1986 and was the overall winner of the Canadian Music Competition in 1988. She won first Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) prize in the CBC Young Artists Competition in 1989 and in 1990 won the concerto String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat, Opus 18 competition at Indiana University, where she was a student of Miriam Fried. Ms. a degree and The shadow of Beethoven the symphonist loomed large over Johannes Brahms, French graduated from Indiana University in 1990 with bachelor's later earned a professional studies diploma at Mannes College of Music as a student who did not complete a first symphony of his own until 1876, when he was forty- received her master's degree from the Juilliard three. Doubtless Beethoven's specter also influenced Brahms in the realm of the of Felix Galimir. In May 1994 she as student of Smirnoff. Ms. French joined the Boston Symphony string quartet; though he began working on them around 1865, the first two of his School a Joel violin section in September 1994. three quartets appeared only in 1873. But his first important chamber work for Orchestra string ensemble appeared well before that: he worked on the first of his two sextets, Ikuko Mizuno began her musical training at five, entering the Toho-Gakuen School Opus 18 in B-flat, in the years 1858-1860, publishing it in 1862. The second sextet, going on to win first prize in a national violin Opus 36 in G major, was published four years later. of Music in her native Tokyo and prizewinner in Japan's Mainichi Beethoven never wrote for this particular combination of instruments (two competition for high school students. A NHK the United States as a winner of the Spaulding violins, two violas, and two cellos), which allows for an extraordinary range of Shimbun Competition, she came to her to study with Roman Totenberg at Boston University, contrapuntal variation and textural ingenuity on the composer's part. The presence Award, which enabled of degree and was named a member of the honorary two cellos also allows for a particularly rich sound in the ensemble's lower where she received her master's range, Lambda. She was also a fellowship student at the Tanglewood evident from the very opening of the first movement, when the two cellos society Phi Kappa sing In her teachers included Jeanne Isnard, Toshiya Etoh, and (for the main theme against the accompaniment of a single viola. When this theme Music Center. Japan returns Hideo Saito. She holds diplomas from the Accademia Musicale at the recapitulation, it is made to sound quite different, embedded within chamber music) the texture over an unstable harmony. Chigiana in Siena, Italy, where she studied with Franco Gulli, and from the Geneva For with Henryk Szeryng.