, •. I 71 r BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA FOUNDED IN 1881 BY HENRY LEE HIGGINSON *Ift7 TUESDAY EVENING "CAMBRIDGE" SERIES <rSS fjgZ£.— ^ 7/7/ /3 (/////// fsi k ~< } x ~->: - ' C.'{.--j* --~\ EIGHTY-SIXTH SEASON 1966-1967 BARTOK: Violin Concerto No. 2 ^% The Boston Symphony STRAVINSKY: Violin Concerto «£ { Joseph Silverstein Boston Symphony Orchestra/Erich Leinsdorf under Leinsdorf In a recording of remarkable sonic excellence, concertma Joseph Silverstein and the Boston Symphony under Leinsc capture the atmospheric sorcery of two of the most in fluet violin works of this century: Bartbk's Concerto No. 2 and S vinsky's Concerto in D . If ever a composer could be ca a "musical poet" it is Schumann and— in a beautifully pa performance of his Fourth Symphony — Leinsdorf and Bostonians movingly portray its simple eloquence, from *&' melancholy slow-moving opening to the dramatic rusi Schumann /Symphony No. 4 ess scales that herald one of the most exciting codas of s Beethoven /Leonore Overture No. 3 phonic literature. Both albums in D ynaproove sound. Boston Symphony /Leinsdorf rca Victor 5The most trusted name in sound JGHTY-SIXTH SEASON, 1966-1967 CONCERT BULLETIN OF THE Boston Symphony Orchestra ERICH LEINSDORF, Music Director Charles Wilson, Assistant Conductor Inc. Copyright, 1967, by Boston Symphony Orchestra, The TRUSTEES of the BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, Inc. Henry B. Cabot President Talcott M. Banks Vice-President John L. Thorndike Treasurer Philip K. Allen E. Morton Jennings, Jr. Abram Berkowitz Henry A. Laughlin Theodore P. Ferris Edward G. Murray Robert H. Gardiner John T. Noonan Francis W. Hatch Mrs. James H. Perkins Andrew Heiskell Sidney R. Rabb Harold D. Hodgkinson Raymond S. Wilkins TRUSTEES EMERITUS Palfrey Perkins Lewis Perry Edward A. Taft Thomas D. Perry, Jr., Manager Norman S. Shirk James J. Brosnahan Assistant Manager Business Administrator Sanford R. Sistare Harry J. Kraut Press and Publicity Assistant to the Manager Andrew Raeburn Assistant to the Music Director SYMPHONY HALL BOSTON [31 To the prosperous, overworked man who'd like to get off the night shift If we could talk more of you men into giving up part of your night-time investment work and getting to sleep earlier, we think we'd be doing a service to you and your families. And to your companies. You might think about giving us some of the mechanical chores: keeping books, collecting dividends, clipping cou- pons, keeping tax records. You may want to turn the whole thing over to us. Or use us as an advisor. But the important thing right now is to get you down here to talk with our investment managers and let them show you how easy it is to help you out. Old Colony has a larger full-time investment staff than any other bank in New England. Won't you call on us? THE FIRST & OLD COLONY The First National Bank of Boston and Old Colony Trust Company [4] EIGHTY-SIXTH SEASON NINETEEN HUNDRED SIXTY-SIX-SIXTY-SEVEN Sixth Program TUESDAY EVENING, April 18, at 8:30 o'clock Beethoven Symphony No. 2, in D major, Op. 36 I. Adagio molto; Allegro con brio II. Larghctto III. Scherzo: Allegro IV. Allegro molto ( Iolgr vss As Quiet As A Leaf Turning Coloi s An Uninhabited (reck An Ant Walking Children Sleeping Time Passing A Soft Rainfall The First Star Coming Out (First perforttiance in this series) INTERMISSION Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 I. Allegro non troppo II. Adagio III. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace SOLOIST JOSEPH SILVERSTEIN BALDWIN PIANO RCA VICTOR RECORDS [5] ^>< AN UNEXPECTED BUT WELCOME GIFT Concord, Massachusetts February 22, 1967 Dear Mr. Thorndike Three seasons ago the Concord Ladies of the Friday Afternoon Symphony series decided to charter a bus to take them to and from the concert. This has proved to be a great success although we had no intention of making money from the enterprise. However, we do have a surplus fund and so decided that it was appropriate to forward some of this accumulation on to the Orchestra. I enclose our check for $250.00 with best wishes for the continued success of our great Orchestra. Most sincerely, Priscilla O. Barker for the "Chartered Bus" and "The Concord Ladies of the Friday Afternoon series of the BSO"! «] SYMPHONY No. 2, IN D MAJOR, Op. 36 By Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, December i6(?), 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827 The Second Symphony, composed in 1802, was first performed April 5, 1803, at the Theater- an- der-Wien in Vienna. Dedicated to Prince Carl Lichnowsky, the Symphony is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings. At Heiligenstadt in 1802, Beethoven expressed himself almost simul- taneously in two startlingly different ways. In October he wrote the famous "Heiligenstadt testament," pouring out his grief at the full realization that his deafness was incurable into a document carefully sealed and labelled "to be read and executed after my death." Before this and after, working intensively, making long drafts and redrafts, he composed the serene and joyous Second Symphony. Writers have constantly wondered at the coincidence of the agonized "testament" and the carefree Symphony in D major. Perhaps it must be the expectation of perennial romanticism that a "secret sorrow" must at once find its voice in music. Beethoven at thirty-two had not yet reached the point of directly turning a misfortune to musical account — if he ever reached such a point. He was then not quite ready to shake off the tradition of Haydn and Mozart, who had their own moments of misery, but to whom it would never have remotely These Great Concert Pianists, appearing this season with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, GINA BACHAUER CLAUDE FRANK EVELYNE CROCHET JACOB LATEINER _ play only THE Steinway_ IN MASSACHUSETTS AND NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW STEINWAY PIANOS ARE SOLD ONLY BY M. STEINEKT & SONS 162 BOYLSTON STREET, BOSTON • ALSO WORCESTER, SPRINGFIELD [7] occurred to allow depressed spirits to darken the bright surfaces of , their symphonies. Beethoven found a way, soon after, to strike notes of poignant grief or of earth-shaking power such as music had never known. He found the way through the mighty conception of an imagi- nary hero — not through the degrading circumstance that the sweet strains of music were for him to be displaced by a painful humming and roaring, the humiliating thought that he was to be an object of ridicule before the world — a deaf musician. That terrible prospect might reasonably be expected to have driven him to take glad refuge in his powers of creation, to exult in the joyous freedom of a rampant imagination, seizing upon those very delights of his art from which the domain of the senses were gradually shutting him out. And indeed it was so. Writing sadly to Dr. Wegeler of his infirmity, he added: "I live only in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time." He composed with unflagging industry in the summer of 1802. And while he made music of unruffled beauty, Beethoven maintained the even tenor of his outward life. Ferdinand Ries, who was very close to Beethoven at this time, has told the following touching incident: "The beginning of his hard hearing was a matter upon which he was so sensitive that one had to be careful not to make him feel his deficiency by loud speech. When he failed to understand a thing he generally attributed it to his absent-mindedness, to which, indeed, he was subject in a great degree. He lived much in the country, whither I went often to take a lesson from him. At times, at 8 o'clock in the morning after breakfast, he would say: 'Let us first take a short walk/ We went, and frequently did not return till 3 or 4 o'clock, after having made a meal in some village. On one of these wanderings Beethoven [8] The shortest path to person-to-person banking YOUR HARVARD TRUST FULL-SERVICE OFFICE Offices in Cambridge, Arlington, Belmont, Concord and Littleton MEMBER E.D.I.C. [9] concerning which gave me the first striking proof of his loss of hearing, Stephan von Breuning had already spoken to me. I called his attention on a flute to a shepherd who was piping very agreeably in the woods made of a twig of elder. For half an hour Beethoven could hear nothing, and though I assured him that it was the same with me (which was not the case), he became extremely quiet and morose. When occasionally he seemed to be merry it was generally to the extreme of boisterousness; but this happened seldom." which It may have been this pathetic episode of the shepherd's pipe brought before Beethoven with a sudden vivid force the terrible dep- rivation of his dearest faculty. It may have precipitated the Heiligen- stadt paper, for in it he wrote: "What a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and / heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again 1 heard nothing; such incidents brought me to the verge of despair. A little more, and I would have put an end to my life — only art it was that withheld me. all Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced 1 felt called upon to produce." To his more casual friends there could have been no suspicion of the crisis, the thoughts of suicide which were upon him at this time.