Boston Symphony Chamber Players 50th anniversary season 2013-2014 jordan hall at the new england conservatory october 13 january 12 february 9 april 6 BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS Sunday, January 12, 2014, at Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 Welcome 4 “The Boston Symphony Chamber Players: For Fifty Years, Champions of Chamber Music,” by Richard Dyer 6 From the Players 10 Today’s Program Notes on the Program 11 Aaron Copland 13 Irving Fine 14 Wolfgang Amadè Mozart 15 Johannes Brahms Artists 16 Boston Symphony Chamber Players 17 Gilbert Kalish 19 The Boston Symphony Chamber Players: A Discography COVER PHOTO (top) Founding members of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, 1964: (seated, left to right) Joseph Silverstein, violin; Burton Fine, viola; Jules Eskin, cello; Doriot Anthony Dwyer, flute; Ralph Gomberg, oboe; Gino Cioffi, clarinet; Sherman Walt, bassoon; (standing, left to right) Georges Moleux, double bass; Everett Firth, timpani; Roger Voisin, trumpet; William Gibson, tombone; James Stagliano, horn (BSO Archives) COVER PHOTO (bottom) The Boston Symphony Chamber Players in 2012 at Jordan Hall: (seated in front, from left): Malcolm Lowe, violin; Haldan Martinson, violin; Jules Eskin, cello; Steven Ansell, viola; (rear, from left) Elizabeth Rowe, flute; John Ferrillo, oboe; William R. Hudgins, clarinet; Richard Svoboda, bassoon; James Sommerville, horn; Edwin Barker, bass (photo by Stu Rosner) ADDITIONAL PHOTO CREDITS Individual Chamber Players portraits pages 6, 7, 8, and-9 by Tom Kates, except Elizabeth Rowe (page 8) and Richard Svoboda (page 9) by Michael J. Lutch. Boston Symphony Chamber Players photo on page 16 by Michael J. Lutch. Program copyright ©2014 Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc. BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, MA 02115-4511 (617) 266-1492 bso.org 2 Welcome It is with great pride and excitement that the Boston Symphony Chamber Players welcome you to the Jordan Hall concerts of their 50th Anniversary Season—programs reflecting the extraordinary diversity of programming and collaborations that have marked the Chamber Players’ offerings for the past half-century. As the season contin- ues, we look forward to an all-American program, in February, of music by Boston-based composers, including the world premieres of newly commissioned works from Kati Agócs, Hannah Lash, Gunther Schuller, and Yehudi Wyner; and an April program featuring the Boston premiere of a BSO co-commission—Parallel Worlds, for flute and string quartet—from the Grawemeyer Award-winning American composer Sebastian Currier. Also as the season continues, the program books for these concerts will continue to look closely at the extraordinary history of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, providing detailed information about repertoire, tours, recordings, and guest artists, and drawing upon the vast variety of photographs, posters, past programs, and press clip- pings preserved in the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives. It has always given us great pleasure and satisfaction to share our music-making with such a devoted audience. We thank you for your continuing support of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and we invite you to join us not only for the remainder of this special season, but also in the years ahead. 3 THE BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS For Fifty Years, Champions of Chamber Music by Richard Dyer BEGINNINGS On November 8, 1964, Joseph Silverstein, Doriot Anthony Dwyer, and Burton Fine—then the concertmaster, principal flute, and principal viola of the Boston Symphony Orchestra— climbed the short wooden staircase to the stage of Sanders Theatre in Cambridge to play Beethoven’s Serenade in D, Opus 25. It was an historic occasion, the formal debut concert of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, who this season celebrate their 50th birthday. The rest of the program, adding additional BSO principals to the mix, included Mozart’s Quartet for Oboe and Strings, K.370, and the Beethoven Septet—the first of 96 performances of the Beethoven work the ensemble would play over the next decades. Eskin was then in his first sea- son as the BSO’s principal cellist; now, at 81, he is still in place as the cellist of the Chamber Players. He has played the Septet so often that he affectionately refers to it as Beethoven’s “Schleptet.” Over the years of its existence, the Chamber Players have performed upwards of 750 concerts in Boston, at Tanglewood, and on tours throughout Ralph Gomberg, Burton Fine, Jules Eskin, and Joseph Silverstein, the United States, Europe, Russia, and Asia; they who performed Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in the Boston Symphony have played more than 400 works by more than Chamber Players’ inaugural concert of November 8, 1964 150 composers and recorded close to fifty LPs and (BSO Archives/photo by Boris and Milton) CDs. They have long represented an important aspect of the parent Boston Symphony’s activities and represent the BSO’s standards to the discriminating public for chamber music worldwide; the Chamber Players have improved the orchestra, and playing in the orchestra has improved the Chamber Players. Their story is remarkable and cannot be told by statistics alone, so in order to celebrate this anniversary sea- son, we spoke with four veterans of the first season and two of the ensemble’s managers. Silverstein was the first violin for the first half of the Chamber Players’ activity; he remains active today as a conductor, soloist, teacher, and coach. He points to some of the factors that converged to create an environment that would support the founding of the Chamber Players. “There was a new music director, Erich Leinsdorf, at a time when many of the other American orchestras were also going to a year-round contract. Traditionally the BSO’s prin- cipal players did not play in the Pops season, meaning they were not actually working the full year. So this was a way to use them during the weeks when they were not performing Pops.” Also, Leinsdorf and the administration had decided that the Friday-night concerts at Tangle- wood should begin at 9 p.m. so that people from New York would have time to drive up. This spawned the idea of creating the Prelude Concerts, which would take place earlier in the evening and present chamber music that was related to the weekend’s orchestral pro- grams. In marketing terms, Leinsdorf wanted to package every weekend. So the question became, “Who is going to play the chamber music?” Leonard Burkat, who was the artistic administrator then, suggested the principal players of the orchestra should do it, and Leinsdorf seized on the idea: “If they do that,” he said, “the orchestra is going to sound better.” Silverstein himself saw a problem with the idea—and a solution. The problem was when to 4 rehearse all that chamber music in the middle of the crowded Tanglewood schedule. So at a luncheon in Leinsdorf’s home in Brookline, Silverstein suggested the idea of giving three chamber music concerts in Boston during the winter season that would be repeated as the Prelude Concerts at Tanglewood. “And to substitute for all of us playing in the Pops season, we would tour for three weeks and make recordings; we began with a three-record set for RCA Victor. Violinist Joseph de Pasquale and cellist Samuel Mayes had just left the orches- tra to go to Philadelphia, and Burton Fine and Jules Eskin had just come in, so it was a good time to start something new. And after some of us had played with Claude Frank at Marlboro, we invited him to be our pianist.” COLLABORATIONS The personnel of the Chamber Players has changed as the membership of the parent orches- tra has changed. Thus there have been three principal flutists and a couple of acting princi- pals; three oboists; two bassoonists, etc. Today’s ensemble consists of concertmaster Malcolm Lowe, violinist Haldan Martinson, violist Steve Ansell, Eskin, Edwin Barker, double bass, Elizabeth Rowe, flute, John Ferrillo, oboe, William R. Hudgins, clarinet, Richard Svoboda, bassoon, and James Sommerville, horn. Many pianists and keyboard players have appeared with the ensemble, beginning with Frank, who was followed by a young American pianist, Richard Stephen Goode, who later became famous—and lost his middle name. Daniel Pinkham played harp- sichord with the ensemble, and former BSO assistant manager Daniel Gustin remembers two young men from Harvard making guest appearances long before they became famous, William Christie and Robert Levin. In the early 1970s, Michael Tilson Thomas, the BSO’s assistant conductor, was catapulted into prominence because of his last-minute replacements for ailing Concertmaster Joseph Silverstein, principal horn music director William Steinberg; he also appeared as pianist with James Stagliano, and pianist Claude Frank, the Chamber Players. c.1964 (BSO Archives) Gilbert Kalish entered the chronicle in 1969 and soon became the pianist of choice for the Chamber Players until 1997, nearly 30 years. “Gil was very important to the ensemble,” Gustin says, “but perhaps not recognized as much as he should have been. Some people wanted to hear the Chamber Players work with different pianists, which is one way of looking at the possibilities, but the other instrumentalists didn’t change except when someone left the orchestra or retired. The other side of the argument is that someone new might not invariably fit in. Gil’s run was remarkable for his breadth of artistry, through all of the classical and romantic reper- tory; and he was not daunted The Boston Symphony Chamber Players in 1972: (from left) Jules Eskin, at all by any contemporary Doriot Anthony Dwyer, Joseph Silverstein (center front), Charles piece. Whenever the players Kavalovski, Everett Firth, Harold Wright, Ralph Gomberg, Armando took on a new piece, he was a Ghitalla, Henry Portnoi, Burton Fine, and William Gibson (BSO very positive force in making it Archives/photo by Eugene Cook) happen.” Continued on page 22..