Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Summer, 1986
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TanglewGDd Music Center contemporary Boston's New Music collage Ensemble ) ANNOUNCES 1986-1987 SEASON FEATURING AN ALL BRITISH PROGRAM AND A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION NOVEMBER 24, 1986 Featuring works by John Anthony Lennon, Tod Brief, Mario Davidovsky and composers from the MacDowell Colony. Conductor to be announced. FEBRUARY 23, 1987 Conducted by Gunther Schuller, this program will celebrate the 70th birthdays of composers Milton Babbitt and George Perle. Also featuring "Not- turno" by Donald Martino. APRIL 13, 1987 An All British Program conducted by Oliver Knussen. Works to include "The Sentinel of the xv Rainbow" by Robert Saxton and The River of Hell" by Robin Holloway. For further information and a season brochure, call (617) 437-0231 or write: COLLAGE, 295 Huntington Avenue, Suite 208, Boston, Massachusetts 02 1 15 Subscriptions are Available 1986 FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC sponsored by the TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER Artistic Director Leon Fleisher, Tanglew(©d Richard Ortner, Administrator Music Oliver Knussen, Composer-in-Residence Center Works presented at this year's Festival were prepared under the guidance of the following Tanglewood Music Center Faculty: Leon Fleisher Donald MacCourt Dennis Helmrich Peter Serkin Gilbert Kalish Joel Smirnoff Oliver Knussen Roger Voisin Louis Krasner Yehudi Wyner Joel Krosnick 1986 Visiting Composer/Teachers Elliott Carter Poul Ruders Leon Kirchner Robert Saxton George Perle ToruTakemitsu 1986 Festival of Contemporary Music Advisory Committee Jacob Druckman Hans Werner Henze John Harbison Leon Kirchner The Tanglewood Music Center is maintained for advanced study in music and sponsored by the Boston Symphony Orchestra Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Daniel R. Gustin, Acting General Manager The 1986 Festival of Contemporary Music is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with funds from the generous and loyal Friends of Music at Tanglewood. References furnished request Aspen Music Festival Liberace Burt Bacharach Panayis Lyras David Bar-Man Marian McPartland Leonard Bernstein Zubin Mehta Bolcom and Morris Metropolitan Opera Jorge Bolet Mitchell-Ruff Duo Boston Pops Orchestra Seiji Ozawa Boston Symphony Orchestra Philadelphia Orchestra Brevard Music Center Andre Previn Dave Brubeck Ravinia Festival David Buechner Santiago Rodriguez Chicago Symphony Orchestra George Shearing Cincinnati May Festival Abbey Simon Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Georg Solti Aaron Copland Tanglewood Music Center Denver Symphony Orchestra Michael Tilson Thomas Ferrante and Teicher Beveridge Webster Natalie Hinderas Earl Wild Interlochen Arts Academy and John Williams National Music Camp Wolf Trap Foundation for Billy Joel the Performing Arts Gilbert Kalish Yehudi Wyner Ruth Laredo Over 200 others H Baldwin Contemporary Music at Tanglewood Every year the Tanglewood Music Center birthdays: Milton Babbitt, on his 70th birth- sponsors an intensive week of contempo- day; Henri Dutilleux on his 70th; Hans rary music, a term taken to include some of Werner Henze on his 60th; Morton the established classics of our century, but Feldman on his 60th. far more the recent work of both young While individual compositions may be and established composers. As in the past, perceived to fall into a category represent- the Festival of Contemporary Music aims ed by one or another of the recent musical to represent different approaches to music, buzzwords— minimalism, serialism, the to be generally inclusive in its approach new romanticism —the program as a with no claim to be comprehensive. (In- whole has no tendentious aim, unless it be deed, given the number of composers ac- to suggest that pigeonholing composers by tively at work all over the world today, no means of a one-word description has less single week's concerts, however full, has validity today than ever before. Today's any hope of comprehensiveness.) musical creators are drawing on extremely The programs have been chosen by a varied sources that make an impact on committee of musicians under the leader- them, fusing them into a personal state- ship of Oliver Knussen; each program aims ment that differs from all of the sources that to include a number of works in styles that went into it. Since the end of World War II, offer interesting contrasts. The works by the word "eclecticism" has been bandied young European composers, for example, about pejoratively between representa- almost all show some kind of American tives of armed camps in the musical world. influence; at the same time, music by some Today it is becoming respectable again. senior American composers (George Perle, Drawing upon a wide range of sources did Gunther Schuller) maintains important not destroy the personal quality in the European influences. No numerical test has music of Handel, Mozart, or Stravinsky, to been applied to determine the relative pro- name three notably eclectic composers of portion of American versus non-American the past; there is no reason why it need do work (Knussen says "I loathe musical jin- so today. Knussen likes to talk of a "mean- goism"), but there is perhaps a balance, for ingful eclecticism," a totally personal ab- purposes of comparison, between young sorption of elements from many different American and young European composers. kinds of music into a single stream that As is customary, this year's Festival offers represents the power of one composer's a glimpse at current or recent work by com- musical imagination. FCM '86 celebrates posers who were once at Tanglewood as that imaginative fusion. Fellows in Composition: Bainbridge, Drat- —Steven Led better tell, Knussen, Lloyd, Neikrug, Thorne, Musicologist and Program Annotator Torke. It also pays homage to senior mas- Boston Symphony Orchestra ters as they reach numerically significant Contemporary Music at Tanglewood To return to this very special place, where some sixteen years ago I first became aware of so many ideas and ideals— not to mention people—which profoundly influ- enced the direction of my own musical Tanglew(©d life, has been an immense pleasure and honour; I have yet to encounter another Music place where such a heady and intensive confrontation of the technical, practical, Center and spiritual aspects of music occurs. Cer- tainly the exposure of young, gifted perform- ers to such a concentration of new music as the Festival of Contemporary Music pre- sents each year remains to my knowledge quite unique and, if necessarily danger- fraught—the mind-boggling scheduling problems posed and somehow solved an- nually by James Whitaker— ultimately can provide an irreplaceable practical crash- course in how to deal with unfamiliar and often very taxing new scores. A few sum- mers here in the early 1970s, under the inspirational guidance of my teacher, Gunther Schuller, opened my eyes to those problems and potential solutions in ways that I shall never forget. The search for music that will provide rewarding and varied experience for the ALEAIII Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center Theodore Antoniou. Music Director is, then, one major consideration in the 1986-87 Season Boston University: September 27 Kucyna International Composition Prize Concert (free) Longy School of Music: October 17 ALEA Commissions and a Surprise! Joan Heller, Soprano; Edwin Barker, Contrabass Boston University: December 1 "SOLOISTS", Judith Kellock, Soprano; The Paratore Brothers, Piano Duo Longy School of Music: March 28 "PERCUSSION & SOLOISTS" Tickets: $5 (S3 for students and senior citizens) All 3 concerts for only $10! Boston University: February 19 Composers' Workshop (free and open to the public) Boston University: May 1 & 2 An Evening ofContemporary Opera - John Goodman, The Garden of Flowers (world prem.) Hans Werner Heme, The Tedious Way to the Place of Natascha Ungeheuer Tickets: $8 ($4 students and senior citizens) — choice of programs for the present Festival; and cross-fertilisation (which is, by the happily, quite a few former composition way, my own view of how the wind is Fel lows of the TMC are represented by thei r blowing) or whether they remain merely work as well. Aside from these "local" con- interesting objects placed next to each cerns, and the request that the content of other willy-nilly is a question for each indi- recent years' Festivals not be duplicated, vidual listener to consider. the planner today is on his/her own: the The representation of trans-Atlantic in- pendulum-swings of stylistic fashion have fluence in both directions has been a con- accelerated so bewilderingly over the past scious programming factor; the bringing decade-and-a-half that a central "Main- together of seemingly incompatible con- stream" can no longer either provide back- temporaries; works by young composers ground or provoke meaningful reaction which seem to me to be bound for near- in this or any other contemporary music classic" status in new music; and so forth. festival. No survey, however notional, of music What I have tried to accomplish with now can ignore the huge strides that have these programmes (armed with suggestions been made in electronic and computer and help from my co-workers) is simply to music studios. Tapes thrown into "live" construct varied and illuminating contrasts concerts are, it seems to me, always at a of approach, colour, and "weight," draw- disadvantage, hence our separation of ing on recent work from several genera- them into "Preludes" which, I hope, will tions of composers on both sides of the relate also to the more general concerns of Atlantic and beyond—more than thirty this Festival. works in the Festival date from after 1975 It is a special pleasure to welcome Toru celebrating, if you like, the peaceful co- Takemitsu to Tanglewood in this context: existence of such diverse and lively musi- there is perhaps no other single creative cal types as can be found today working at figure alive who demonstrates so graphi- the highest levels of technical excellence. cally what an integration of culture, styles, Whether these juxtapositions will, as I and spiritual approaches can achieve when hope, begin to build up an image of the forged through a unique poetic sensibility.