BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Seiji Ozawa, Music Director One Hundred and Fourteenth Season, 1994-95 SUPPER CONCERT VI Thursday, March 9, at 6 Tuesday, March 14, at 6 NANCY BRACKEN, violin IKUKO MIZUNO, violin RICHARD SEBRING, horn BENJAMIN PASTERNACK, piano PROKOFIEV Sonata in C for two violins, Opus 56 Andante cantabile Allegro Commodo (quasi Allegretto) Allegro con brio Ms. BRACKEN and Ms. MIZUNO BRAHMS Trio in E-flat for violin, horn, and piano, Opus 40 Andante—Poco piu animate Scherzo: Allegro Adagio mesto Finale: Allegro con brio Ms. MIZUNO, Mr. SEBRING, and Mr. PASTERNACK Baldwin piano Please exit to your left for supper following 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 Lieutenant 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 Ope*nt—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. Johannes Brahms Trio in E-flat for violin, horn, and piano, Opus 40 When Johannes Brahms composed this striking trio in 1865, it was unusual to include the horn in a full-scale four-movement chamber work, if only because of the instrument's tonal limitations. Although valves had recently been developed for the horn, Brahms preferred to use the old, natural horn, which was limited to a fairly restricted number of pitches. On a natural horn, the player sounded many pitches by inserting his hand into the bell to lower the pitch by a half-step, though this also muffled the tone. A good player matched these somewhat distant tones, and Brahms liked this necessary discretion, so he always wrote as if for the older natural horns. Brahms completed the trio, a romantic work redolent of German forests, in the wooded neighborhood of Lichtenthal, near Baden-Baden, in May of 1865, and took part himself (as pianist) in the first performance that December, in Karlsruhe. When he offered it to his publisher Simrock the following June, he noted that the horn part could, if necessary, be played on a cello, but later he had a change of heart and said that he preferred viola to cello as an alternative to the horn. Simrock agreed to print a viola part, too (it could only increase sales!), but he refused Brahms' s request to suppress the cello part. Owing to the difficulty of modulating freely and widely with a natural horn, Brahms wrote a first movement that alternates two ideas—the opening Andante in E-flat and a Poco piu animate in a related minor key—with a sonata-like tonal plan, but without any rapidly modulating development section. The scherzo that follows is a lively romp with some surprising harmonic twists, both in the main section and in the Trio, which comes in the dark key of A-flat minor. The slow movement is an expressive lament, thought by some critics to be a musical response to the death of the composer's mother, which took place in the year of composition (and to which the soprano solo of the German Requiem was another response). The finale conjures up the forest and the hunt, with its fanfares and its echoes in a vigorous interplay of good humor. —Notes by Steven Ledbetter Violinist Nancy Bracken studied with Ivan Galamian at the Curtis Institute of Music and later with Donald Weilerstein of the Cleveland Quartet at the Eastman School of Music, where she received a master of music degree in 1977. Originally from St. Louis, she was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra for two years before joining the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1979. A winner of the St. Louis Symphony Young Artists Competition at age sixteen, Ms. Bracken has appeared as soloist with the St. Louis Symphony, the St. Louis Philharmonic, and the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra. She has received awards from the National Society of Arts and Letters and the Artist Presentation Society of St. Louis and was the first-prize winner in the Music Teachers National Association string competition in 1975. She has participated in summer music festivals in Aspen and the Grand Tetons and was concertmaster and a frequent violin soloist with the Colorado Philharmonic for two summers. Since joining the Boston Symphony, Ms. Bracken has played numerous solo recitals and chamber music concerts, including a performance at Tanglewood with Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax in 1989. Violinist Ikuko Mizuno entered the Toho-Gakuen School of Music as a young child in her native Tokyo and later won first prize in a national violin competition for high school students. She came to the United States as a winner of the Spaulding Award, which enabled her to study with Roman Totenberg at Boston University, where she received her master's degree and was named a member of the honorary society Pi Kappa Lambda. She also studied at the Tanglewood Music Center, at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, with Franco Gulli, and at the Geneva Conservatory with Henryk Szeryng. Ms. Mizuno joined the Boston Symphony in 1969 as the first woman ever chosen to be a member of the BSO's violin section. She made her New York recital debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1972. Ms. Mizuno continues to perform frequently in Tokyo both in recital and with orchestra; she was invited to be concert- mistress for the inaugural concert of the Women's Orchestra of Japan in 1984 and has been a member of the Saito Kinen Orchestra since its inaugural concert in 1985. She is currently on the faculty of Boston University School for the Arts as a part-time Associate Professor; she also teaches at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and has taught as a guest professor at the Toho-Gakuen School in Tokyo. Richard Sebring is associate principal horn of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal horn of the Boston Pops Orchestra. Born and raised in Concord, Massa- chusetts, Mr. Sebring studied at Indiana University and then at the New England Conservatory of Music, where his teacher was Thomas Newell In 1979 he graduated from the University of Washington, where he studied with J. Christopher Leuba. In the summer of 1979 he was a fellowship student at the Tanglewood Music Center. After a year as a professional freelance horn player in Boston, Mr. Sebring became principal horn of the Rochester Philharmonic for the 1980-81 season. He joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1981 as third horn; since 1982 he has been the BSO's associate principal horn and principal horn of the Boston Pops Orchestra. Mr. Sebring has been soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston, at Tanglewood, and on tour, and also with the Boston Pops Orchestra. A faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music, he has also performed with the contemporary chamber ensembles Collage and Musica Viva. Pianist Benjamin Pasternack was the Grand Prize winner at the inaugural World Musk Masters Piano Competition held in Paris in 1989. Bestowed by the unanimous vote of a distinguished panel of judges, the honor carried with it engagements in Portugal, France, Canada, Switzerland, and the United States. He had previously won top prize at the 40th Busoni International Piano Competition in August 1988, leading to a series of recitals in northern Italy and a compact disc recording on the Nuova Era label Mr. Pasternack's engagements have included appearances with major orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as two recital tours of Europe.