BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Seiji Ozawa, Musk Director Carl St. Clair and Pascal Verrot, Assistant Conductors One Hundred and Sixth Season, 1986-87

SUPPER CONCERT VIII Saturday, 14 March at 6 Tuesday, 17 March at 6

THE HAWTHORNE QUARTET BO YOUP HWANG, violin RONAN LEFKOWITZ, violin MARK LUDWIG, viola SATO KNUDSEN, cello

STRAVINSKY Three Pieces for = 126 = 76 — 49

SMETANA String Quartet No. 1 in B minor, From My Life Allegro vivo appassionato Allegro moderato a la Polka Largo soetenuto Vivace

Please exit to your left for supper following the concert. The performers appreciate your not smoking during the concert.

Week 18 Igor Stravinsky Three Pieces for String Quartet These three short pieces were composed in 1914 (the year after the first performance of Le Saere du printemps, which had established Stravinsky instantly as the most significant composer of the age) and dedicated to the conductor Ernest Ansermet. They have little connection, if any, with the traditional treatment of the medium of string quartet, and for that reason they aroused both resentment and incornprehen• sion. In 1929 George Dyson quoted part of the second piece in his book The New Music and commented, "If this type of passage has any proper place in the art of the string quartet, then the end is near." Stravinsky actually seems to have conceived the pieces as individual, self-suffieient treatments of different mode. This is clear from the titles he applied to them when he orchestrated them in 1928 as part of Four Studies for Orchestra; there the three movements derived from the string quartet work were called "1. Dance; 2. Eccentric; 3. Canticle." The second movement was inspired by a famous clown, Little 'rich, whom Stravinsky saw in London in the summer of 1914. The last movement, with its stately, hieratic motion and alterna- tions of register, foreshadows the Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920). Late in his life, the composer declared that that last half of the third piece contained some of the best music that he wrote in this period. —Steven Ledbetter

Bedirich Smetana String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, From My Life Smetana is the other great composer who wrote much of his work while deaf. The loss of hearing had been signalled by a whistling in his ears and a sustained high E that wouldn't go away; when it started he was working on the first of the six orchestral tone poems that make up his vast nationalistic canvas Ma Was, ("My Homeland"). That symphonic cycle, three of his eight operas and the final version of a fourth, and both his string quartets all tame after the catastrophic loss of hearing at the age of fifty, which forced him to retire from at the Provisional Theater in Prague. This loss of position, combined with late payments for the performances of some of his earlier operas, forced him to give up his flat in Prague and move in with his married daughter Jabkenice. Here, in understandable despair, he turned to for the first time since the tragic death of his little daughter, twenty years earlier, had wrung from him the great in 0 minor. Now he turned to the intimate medium of the string quartet for a remarkable work, a thoroughly programmatic composition that offered, he said, "a remembrance of my life and the catastrophe of complete deafness." He began the work in October 1876, completing two movements by the end of the month and the remainder by the end of the year. It is an intensely human document, yet it also fulfills most normal expectations of a four-movement string quartet. In April 1878, in a letter to a friend, Smetana himself outlined the meaning of the music: "The first movement depicts my youthful leanings towards art, the Romantic atmosphere, the inexpressible yearning for something I could neither express nor define, and also a kind of warning of my future misfortune." The "warning" took the form of a sustained high E, played in harmonies, by the violin. "It is the fateful ringing in my ears of the high-pitched tones which, in 1874, announced the beginning of my deafness. I permitted myself this little joke because it was so disastrous to me." The viola begins with a pas- sionately intense solo representing Fate, while the secondary theme is the com- poser's suggestion of his romantic yearnings. The second movement is a scherzo in polka style; according to Smetana "it brings to mind the joyful days of youth when I composed dance tunes and was known everywhere as a passionate lover of dancing." Not coincidentally, it emphasizes nationalistic melodic and rhythmic ideas. The third movement is made up of song- fully romantic episodes and variations. This movement reminded Smetana "of the happiness of my first love, the girl who later became my first wife." The scurrying of the finale's beginning recalls Smetana's successes in comic opera—especially with The Ba rtered Bride, for we are reminded here of the gabby matchmaker Kecal—until the musical progress is interrupted with dramatic suddenness by the harmonies on a high E, the shattering onset of the composer's deafness. Fate has overwhelmed him, and the remainder of the work is subdued, recollections of earlier themes now turned into plaintive recitations below that piercing high E. Smetana referred to this as "a feeling of painful regret," yet in the very process of conceiving the music, he managed to sublimate the pain to produce a string quartet of expressive power and high originality.

—$.1 ,.

Bo Youp Hwang Born in Korea, Bo Youp Hwang gave his appointed assistant concertmaster of the first solo performance when he was thin Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In 1972, teen. He attended the Seoul School of Mr. Hwang joined the violins of the Boston Music, where he received a performance Symphony Orchestra. He has performed as degree, then entered the University of soloist with the Boston Pops, and he was Seoul. By nineteen, Mr. Hwang had won first violinist of the Francesco String two prestigious prizes, leading to study Quartet. Mr. Hwang teaches at the Boston with the Fine Arts String Quartet at the University Institute, and he University of Wisconsin, where he won the has been heard on WOBH radio. Young Artists Competition. Ile was later

Ronan Lefkowitz Born in Oxford, England, violinist Ronan Orchestra under Leopold Stokowaki at St. Lefkowitz joined the Boston Symphony Moritz, Switzerland, in August 1969, when Orchestra in 1976. A graduate of Brookline he won first prize as the most promising Iligh School and Ilarvard College, his young violinist at the international Festival teachers included Max Flostal, Gerald of Youth Orchestras. A 1972 winner of the (lelbloom, Joseph Silverstein, and Szymon Gingold-Silverstein Prize at the Tangle- Goldberg. He was concertmaster and a fre- wood Music Center, Mr. Lefkowitz has quent soloist with the Greater Boston made numerous recital appearances in the Youth Symphony, and he was concertmaster Boston area. of the International Youth Symphony Mark Ludwig Originally from Philadelphia, violist Mark orchestra composed mainly of members Ludwig joined the Boston Symphony from the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestra in the fall of 1982. He received Curtis Institute of Music. Principal violist his bachelor of music degree from the Cur- of the Curtis Institute of Music Orchestra tia Institute of Music in Philadelphia, during the 1979-80 season, Mr. Ludwig has where he studied with Joseph de Pasquale, also played for the Philadelphia Opera and he has had orchestral and ensemble Company, the Concerto Soloists of Phila- coaching with such eminent musicians as delphia, and the Philadelphia Pops. He has Joseph Silverstein, Raphael Bronstein, been on the teaching faculty for viola and Norman Carol, Felix Galimir, and Alex- violin at the Agnes Irwin School in Rose- ander Schneider. Before joining the Boston mont, Pennsylvania, and the Episcopal Symphony, Mr. Ludwig was co-principal Academy in Devon, Pennsylvania. He cur- violist of the Kansas City Philharmonic; he rently teaches privately in the Boston and has also been principal violist and soloiat Cambridge area. with The New Chamber Players, a chamber

Sato Knudsen Born in Baltimore in 1955, cellist Sato Mr. Knudsen was associate principal cellist Knudsen joined the Boston Symphony of the San Antonio Symphony; prior to that Orchestra in 1983. His teachers included he performed with the Boston Pops, Boston David Boyer at Bowdoin College and Opera Company, New Hampshire Sym- Stephen Gelber, Robert Ripley, and phony, and Worcester Symphony. As cellist Madeleine Foley at the New England Con- with the Anima Piano Trio, he performed in servatory of Music. He was also a member Carnegie Recital Hall, Jordan Hall, on of the Piatigorsky Seminar in Los Angeles WQXR-FM in New York, and WOBH-FM and a fellowship student for two summers in Boston, as well as throughout New at the . Before England. joining the Boston Symphony Orchestra,