Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Season 63,1943-1944
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SYMPHONY HALL, BOSTON HUNTINGTON AND MASSACHUSETTS AVENUES Telephone, Commonwealth 1492 SIXTY-THIRD SEASON, 1943-1944 CONCERT BULLETIN of the Boston Symphony Orchestra SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY, Conductor Richard Burgin, Associate Conductor with historical and descriptive notes by John N. Burk COPYRIGHT, 1943, BY BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, Inc. The TRUSTEES of the BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, Inc. Jerome D. Greene . President Henry B. Sawyer . Vice-President Henry B. Cabot . Treasurer Philip R. Allen M. A. De Wolfe Howe John Nicholas Brown Jacob J. Kaplan Reginald C. Foster Roger I. Lee Alvan T. Fuller Richard C. Paine N. Penrose Hallowell Bentley W. Warren G. E. Judd, Manager C. W. Spalding, Assistant Manager [577] Financial Secretary THROUGH an Agency Account with this bank you obtain, in effect, the services of an efficient financial secretary experienced in handling all investment details. You are relieved of time-consuming details, at low cost. TRUST DEPARTMENT The Rational Shawm lit Bank Member Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Listen to John Barry with "Frontline Headlines" WNAC— Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays at 7:45 p.m. [ 57» J ' — SYMPHONIANA Lyre and Laurel Exhibit LYRE AND LAUREL (Editorial by Lucien Price, in the Boston Globe, December 16, 1943) Somewhere in Finland, whether in his country home at Jarvenpaa or in Helsinki or wherever (for we in America have no way of knowing) is a great master whom the ill fortunes of war do not cause us to venerate one whit the less. In a land beleaguered for the second time in his life-span, Jean Sibelius is just entering his 79th year. "If you see a great master," said Goethe to Eckermann, "you will always find that he used what was good in his predecessors, and that it was this made him great. Men like Raphael do not spring out of the ground. They took root in the antique and the best which had been done before them." Sibelius is not only our greatest living com- poser—"our" because he belongs not alone to Finland, but to the world he is also the one composer in this 20th century who is unquestionably in the direct lineal succession from Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, and the only one who, since the death of Brahms in 1897, has carried forward the art of the symphony into regions never penetrated by his predecessors. This took some doing. A doctor's son, he had his own way to make in the world; and as a young musician, he was towered over menacingly by two German colossi, one real, the other less real than he seemed then, but both of them formidable enough. They were Richard I and Richard II; Richard Wagner, the old master, who in the 1880's and 1890's was a wicked ogre whose dominating influence on music devoured young composers like little children and threw their bones under the table; and the brilliant young mas- ter was Richard Strauss, the incredible orchestral virtuosity of whose sym- phonic tone-poems seemed to pale the music of other men to ineffectual fires. What could Sibelius do? Go home to Finland, dig in, stick to his guns, write uncompromisingly the best that was in him throughout three decades, and abide the verdict. The verdict was slow in coming. While other composers were writing symphonic poems with coloristic or- [579] chestration to literary program notes, Sibelius, between 1901 and 1923, wrote Under the New seven symphonies and in a style in- creasingly austere. His first two are not so hard to understand, but half way Slim Silhouette through his Third the landscape begins to look unfamiliar, then in his Fourth (1908) we are in a totally strange though piercingly beautiful country where music never had ventured before; and this ex- ploration is continued into regions always beautiful but ever more strange and new in his Fifth, Sixth and Seventh. He had to resign himself to a wait of from ten to twenty years for his each new work to be understood even by the most ad- vanced musical public. What has Sibelius done that had never been done before? If it is not too soon to say, and if it is not presumptuous of a layman to speak of it at all, the simplest way of putting it seems to be that, in his music, the themes are de- veloped from within themselves like the gradual unfolding of the petals of a rose—in contrast to much of the thematic development in the works of older symphonists which, at its weak- est, often suggested that the composer was doing his daily dozen. "Voces In- timae" (Inner Voices) is the title which Sibelius has given his one string quartet, and the distinguishing characteristic of his music is the peculiar depth, imagina- tive as well as structural, of its voices. There is in the man Sibelius a form of strength peculiarly rare in our time. "Renown," said Goethe to Eckermann, again in that volume of "Conversations" which Dr. Sibelius knows almost by heart, "renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may indeed by skillful conduct and various artificial means make a sort of name for Warner's LeGant Royale himself. But if the inner jewel is want- Sta-Up-Top ing, all is vanity and will not last a day." Wherever in Finland Dr. Sibelius may The smartest girdle in the best qual- be, and however sad his heart, his music ity that can be obtained under war-time restrictions. "... and its foundations are "Laid beneath the tides of war," The fine workmanship and detail of these superb foundations is in keeping and it goes on sounding above the battle. with our pifrpose, in War or Peace, of offering only the best at whatever price your budget dictates. EXHIBIT GIRDLES - BRAS - LINGERIE In the First Balcony Gallery are to be SWEATERS - SKIRTS - HOSIERY seen fifteen paintings from the now DRESSES - HATS - SPORTSWEAR famous Capehart Collection. This collection is significant, for it represents a meeting of music and paint- ing. Each painting interprets a great musical composition, providing a visual 50 TEMPLE PLACE approach to the appreciation of some of the world's most loved music. [580] — Within the past ten years Americans through such pioneering as the motion picture "Fantasia"—have become in- creasingly conscious of the close har- mony between sight and sound. To this growing awareness the Capehart Collec- tion has contributed materially. The Collection is exhibited here through the courtesy of the Capehart Division of the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation, and is a part of its program to extend the knowledge and appreciation of good music. The paintings comprising the present exhibit are: I "Symphony No. 7" Dmitri Shostakovitch Interpreted by William Gropper $*y m "The Magic Flute" Wolfgang Mozart Interpreted by Julian Levi nt.*ry C^<\&>*f> "From the New World Symphony" Antonin Dvorak Interpreted by Peter Hurd 1W we Alert' vrasi "Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake)" Peter II j itch Tschaikowsky Bernard Lamotte Interpreted by with a gift from our "Finlandia" gift balcony . cos- Jan Sibelius tume jewelry . Interpreted by Bernard Lamotte gloves . bags . "Fire Bird Suite" Igor Stravinsky or exotic perfumes Interpreted by Pavel Tchelitchew ... in our sports "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" shop myriad colors Johann Sebastian Bach in knitted novelties Interpreted by Bernard Lamotte ...and blouses "The Raindrop Prelude" •"'•'I whether "grande" or Frederick Chopin "petite" . you'll Interpreted by Bernard Lamotte 1 find your gift ges- "Symphony No. 5" Ludwig van Beethoven ture . Interpreted by Bernard Lamotte "Cathedrale Engloutie" Claude Achille Debussy Interpreted by Raymond Breinin "Scheherazade" Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakow Interpreted by Sergei Soudeikine "Symphony No. 1" Johannes Brahms Interpreted by Lewis Daniel "Hallelujah Chorus" from "Messiah" Georg Friedrich Handel Interpreted by Franklin Watkins "Symphony in D Minor" Cesar Franck Interpreted by Bernard Lamotte "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" Edvard Hagerup Grieg Interpreted by B. J. O. Nordfeldt [ 5 8i] WILLIAM GROPPER, in six one- man shows from 1936 to 1941, proved himself a forceful commentator on national life, a master of design, a mature artist. A few years ago he com- pleted a series of lithographic studies of presents life and manners as demonstrated in the United States Senate and, with paintings and prints of the Loyalist fighters in Spain, of air bombings during the new European war, of workers and street Music a la Carte characters, they were shown in 1941. Because he has twice been to Russia and has a strong affinity with the Soviet KOUSSEVITZKY spirit, it was inevitable that he was commissioned to interpret Shostako- RECORDINGS vich's Seventh Symphony. JULIAN LEVI studied at the Penn- sylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where The music you love . when and he received a Cresson Traveling Scholar- ship in 1920. how you want it . as played by He visited Italy in the the Boston Symphony Orchestra summer of 1920 and then left for France. There he exhibited in the Salon ALBUMS d'Automne and, after more than four years in that country, returned to 685 Stravinsky—Capriccio $2.63 — America. He is a "modern" artist—one 566—Prokofieff—Peter and the of the first to interpret Cezanne to Wolf $3.68 Americans. Levi was elected a member of The American Group in 1933. 294—Mendelssohn—Italian Symphony #4 $3.68 PETER HURD was born in 1904 in New Mexico, where he spent his boy- Schubert Symphony 319— — #8 hood. After two years at West Point, in Minor B $3.68 where he went down in mathematics but 327—Tschaikowsky—Sym- sold his first painting, Hurd left to be- phony #4 in F Minor $5.78 come a painter.