Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Season 104, 1984-1985
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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Seiji Ozawa, Music Director One Hundred and Fourth Season, 1984-85 PRE-SYMPHONY CHAMBER CONCERTS Thursday, 21 February at 6 Saturday, 23 February at 6 AMNON LEVY, violin FENWICK SMITH, flute MARTIN AMLIN, piano PROKOFIEV Sonata in F minor for violin and piano, Opus 80 Andante assai Allegro brusco Andante Allegrissimo Mssrs. LEVY and AMLIN PROKOFIEV Sonata in D for flute and piano, Opus 94 Moderato Scherzo: Presto Andante Allegro con brio Mssrs. SMITH and AMLIN Baldwin piano Please exit to your left for supper following the concert. The performers appreciate your not smoking during the concert. Week 14 Sergei Prokofiev Sonata in F minor for violin and piano, Opus 80 Sonata in D for flute and piano, Opus 94 In the late 1930s, Prokofiev was busy producing large-scale dramatic and concert works in response to the official requirement that music serve the state by educating and elevating the proletariat while remaining accessible to the majority at the same time. His musical style became much simpler and more direct, more overtly lyrical than it had been during his early days as an enfant terrible (though even then the essential strain of lyricism in his make-up had often been evident). He had turned out his classic film score for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, followed by a specifically Soviet opera, Semyon Kotko, based on Kateyev's civil war story, "I Am the Son of the Working People." This in turn he followed with a delightful comic opera, Betrothal in a Monastery, based on Sheridan's The Duenna. Yet already at the beginning of work on these large compositions in 1938^ Prokofiev had sketched a violin sonata, marking his return to abstract chamber music after a gap of nearly fifteen years. The sonata was not completed for eight more years, during which time he also turned out three more piano sonatas and a flute sonata. As with all of his music at this time, the composer was concerned to avoid political entanglements—which could be dangerous to life and limb—from accusations of "formalism" that might be brought on if the work was deemed inaccessible. Thus the Violin Sonata is marked by a clarity and openness that recall the melodic richness of the two earlier violin concertos. The Flute Sonata was composed during the time Prokofiev was collaborating again with Eisenstein, this time on Ivan the Terrible. The director always progressed slowly and painstakingly on his films, so the composer had more leisure than he desired. Recalling the artistry of the flute players he had heard during his years in Paris, especially Georges Barrere, he decided to write something for that instrument—a sonata, in fact, in which the contrasting movements could display both the daydreaming aspect and the quicksilver side of the instrument's personality. Yet when it was finished, flutists did not rush at first to play it, so Prokofiev acceded to the request of David Oistrakh that he adapt it as a violin sonata. He did so, changing only a few bits of the solo line, thus producing what became known as his Second Violin Sonata, labeled "Opus 94a" to distinguish it from the Flute Sonata, Opus 94. In either version, Prokofiev's concern to write accessibly made the sonata one of his brightest and most delightful works, marked by a melodic inventiveness that never flags throughout its four movements. —Steven Ledbetter Amnon Levy Amnon Levy's musical career began in Tel violin section. He was soloist with Arthur Aviv, where he was born. After hearing him Fiedler and the Boston Pops on several occa- play, Jascha Heifetz urged his teachers to send sions, performing concertos of Mozart, him to America for further study, and he Tchaikovsky, and William Walton. While a continued his training at the Juilliard School solo artist with orchestras in Israel he played and at the Curtis School of Music. Mr. Levy for the Israeli Army, and he has also been joined the second violins of the Boston Sym- soloist with orchestras throughout this country phony in 1964, moving in 1972 to the first and in Mexico. Fenwick Smith Flutist Fenwick Smith graduated from the music ensemble Musica Viva. Mr. Smith Eastman School of Music, where he studied teaches at the New England Conservatory, the with Joseph Mariano. A Boston native, Mr. Boston Conservatory, and the Tanglewood Smith spent three years in West Berlin, where Music Center. He worked as a flute maker for he studied with James Galway and was a mem- Verne G. Powell, Inc., for twelve years, mak- ber of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Follow- ing more than 100 flutes, and he plays a ing a summer at the Tanglewood Music Powell flute which he constructed himself. Mr. Center, he returned to Berlin, teaching there Smith appears regularly as a soloist and cham- at Schiller College. He was flutist for three ber musician in the Boston area, and he years with the New England Woodwind recently recorded the Schoenberg Sonata, Quintet, he performs with the Boston Conser- Opus 26, with pianist Randall Hodgkinson. He vatory Chamber Players, and since 1975 he joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in has been a member of the twentieth-century 1978. Martin Amlin Pianist and composer Martin Amlin holds the Young Composers, two ASCAP Standard degree Doctor of Musical Arts as well as the Awards, a Massachusetts Council for the Arts Performer's Certificate from the Eastman NEW WORKS grant, and a St. Botolph Club School of Music. His teachers have included Foundation grant. An active performer in the Frank Glazer at Eastman and Nadia Boston area, he has presented solo concerts at Boulanger, with whom he studied in Fon- the Gardner Museum and the Boston Shake- tainebleau and Paris, France. Mr. Amlin was speare Company and has collaborated with awarded fellowships to the Tanglewood Music soloists such as tenor Rolf Bjorling and flutist Center for four summers; there he twice Doriot Anthony Dwyer. Mr. Amlin is on the received the CD. Jackson Award. He has faculties of the Phillips Exeter Academy and often been a resident at Yaddo and the Mac- Boston University, and he is pianist for the Dowell Colony, and he was recently named a contemporary music group ALEA III, based Norlin Fellow by the MacDowell Colony. He at Boston University. He has recorded for Sine has been the recipient of an ASCAP Grant to Qua Non and Folkways records. .