Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Season 124, 2004-2005
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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA James Levine, Music Director SYMPHONY Bernard Haitink, Conductor Emeritus .ORCHESTRA, Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Laureate 124th Season, 2004-2005 CHAMBER MUSIC TEA II Friday, January 7, at 2:30 COMMUNITY CONCERT III Sunday, January 9, at 3, at Myrtle Baptist Church, West Newton This concert is made available free to the public through the generosity of State Street Foundation. LUCIA LIN, violin MARK McEWEN, oboe EDWARD GAZOULEAS, viola SCOTT ANDREWS, clarinet OWEN YOUNG, cello BRIAN CONNELLY, piano TODD SEEBER, double bass PROKOFIEV Quintet in G minor for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass, Opus 39 Tema con variazioni: Moderato Andante energico Allegro sostenuto, ma con brio Adagio pesante Allegro precipitato, ma non troppo presto Andantino DVORAK Quartet No. 2 in E-flat for piano, violin, viola, and cello, Opus 87 Allegro con fuoco Lento Allegro moderato, grazioso Finale. Allegro, ma non troppo Steinway & Sons Pianos, selected exclusively at Symphony Hall Week 10 Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953) Quintet in G minor for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass, Opus 39 While living in Paris in the mid-1 920s, Prokofiev was eager to compose a Second Symphony far different from his first, the witty Classical Symphony of his schooldays. He was widely regarded as an enfant terrible writing in an advanced and difficult mu- sical style, but some of his works had been performed in Paris already under the sponsorship of conductor Serge Koussevitzky so he had hopes of attracting attention. In order to support himself while working on the new symphony, he accepted a com- mission from Romanov's "Wandering Ballets," a company that planned to tour a series of short ballets with an "orchestra" of but five instruments. Prokofiev proposed that the ensemble consist of oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass, and for that unusual quintet he composed a circus ballet entitled The Trapeze. Yet all the while he intended also that the music be performable as a self-sufficient work. The Trapeze was performed in Italy and Germany with fair success, although Prokofiev recalled that the dancers had difficulty with his unusual rhythms, such as a 5/4 measure consisting of ten eighth-notes, divided into 3+4+3 eighths. Composition of the work gave Prokofiev no trouble (unlike the Second Symphony, over which he slaved for months). But as a concert work, separated from the visual elements of the ballet, it was regarded as one of the composer's most advanced and daring, often turning polytonal and remaining intensely chromatic virtually throughout. Years later, after he returned to Russia, where he had to accommodate his musical style to Soviet demands for simplicity and lyricism, Prokofiev "confessed" in his memoirs that this quintet and his Second Symphony—his "most chromatic" works—had been tainted by his contact with the West: "This was the effect of the Parisian atmosphere where complex patterns and dissonances were the accepted • thing, and which fostered my predilection for complex thinking." Though Prokofiev was never again so far advanced in harmonic complexity, we may wonder whether this scapegoating of Paris is to be taken at face value. But it is always fascinating to hear a piece in which the composer steps outside his normal habits and attempts something quite new. In Prokofiev's case, that step took him to the edge of an abyss from which he quickly recoiled. Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) Quartet No. 2 in E-flat for piano, violin, viola, and cello, Opus 87 Dvorak's E-flat piano quartet has always been overshadowed in popularity by its siblings, the earlier piano quintet in A, Opus 81, and the slightly later Dumky Trio, Opus 90. This is a shame, because the Opus 87 quartet is both original and beautiful. Dvorak wrote the work between July 10 and August 19, 1889, thereby fulfilling the long-standing request of his publisher, Simrock, for a piano quartet. Just a week after finishing the score, he began work on the Eighth Symphony, which was already finished by November. Small wonder that when Simrock wrote to Brahms, he re- marked that Dvorak's head was "full of music." The strings open the proceedings with a forceful, somber phrase presented in unison. The piano replies with lighthearted banter, setting the stage for a remarkable movement ranging widely in mood and character, accentuated by a surprising breadth of harmonic plan. The contrasting elements of the opening theme are further offset by the more languishing melody of the secondary theme (presented in the unexpected key of G), but all three of these gestures intertwine flexibly in the course of the development, their character changing from moment to moment. The sec- ondary theme appears in the distant key of B major before slipping down a half-step onto the dominant of the home key and turning into the recapitulation—but one that omits the first theme entirely. That opening material recurs to conclude the movement—and most strikingly in a chilling passage of string tremolos that brings in an entirely new air of mystery just before the end. The Lento is built of three principal themes, the first presented by the strings with piano commentary in G-flat, followed by a dramatic outburst in C-sharp minor, yielding to a lyrical major-mode melody in the piano with an effective syncopated viola with Michael Tree and Karen Tuttle. Before joining the BSO he was a member of the accompaniment in the strings. All three themes are then repeated in the same order, Pittsburgh Symphony viola section from 1985 to 1990, performing prior to that with the though with adjustments of tonality. The third movement is a gracious waltz in Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Or- which the piano occasionally takes on the character of a cimbalom, lending more chestra of New England, and as first-desk player with the New York String Orchestra under precisely the air of a Czech folk tune. The energetic finale begins, like many of Alexander Schneider. An avid chamber musician, Mr. Gazouleas was winner of the Eighth International String Quartet Evian, Haydn's works, in the tonic minor; its second subject features Dvorak's own instru- Competition in France, as a member of the Ni- saika Quartet in 1984 and made his Carnegie Hall recital ment, the viola (one reason why viola players, so often overlooked by composers, debut as a member of the Cezanne Quartet in 1982. He also performed at the Norfolk Festival and the Pensacola love his music!). Having run its course with good humor, the movement ends, now Chamber Music Festival. He has taught viola as an instructor at Temple University and firmly in the major, with a coda that makes almost orchestral demands on the four privately at Swarthmore College. He has performed locally with the Boston Artists En- performers. semble and Collage New Music —Notes by Steven Ledbetter Cellist Owen Young joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in August 1991. A frequent Violinist Lucia Lin made her debut performing the Mendelssohn Concerto with the collaborator in chamber music concerts and festivals, he has also appeared as concerto Chicago Symphony Orchestra at eleven. A prizewinner in the 1990 International soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Pittsburgh Symphony, Boston Pops Or- Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, she has been soloist with the Boston Pops Orches- chestra, and San Antonio Chamber Orchestra. Mr Young has performed frequently with tra, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Oklahoma Symphony, the Cincinnati Chamber Orches- singer /songwriter James Taylor, including the nationally televised recorded concert tra, and the Festivalorchester in Graz, Austria. She has appeared in solo recital throughout "James Taylor Live at the Beacon Theatre" in New York City. He is on the faculties of the the United States and is a frequent collaborator in chamber music. A member of the Muir Boston Conservatory, the New England Conservatory Extension Division, and the Longy String Quartet, which is the quartet-in-residence at Boston University, she is a founding School of Music, and is active in Project Step (String Training and Education Program for member of the Boston Trio and the chamber group, Innuendo. She has performed in the Students of Color) and the BSO's Boston Music Education Collaborative. From 1991 to Sapporo, Taos, and St. Barts music festivals, as well as for the Da Camera Society in 1996 he served as a Harvard-appointed resident tutor and director of concerts in Dunster Houston and the Barbican Hall Chamber Series in London. She has recorded for None- House at Harvard University. Mr. Young began playing cello at six; his teachers included such Records as a guest of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and for New World Eleanor Osborn, Michael Grebanier, Anne Martindale Williams, and Aldo Parisot. A cum Records on a disc featuring works of Bright Sheng. A native of Champaign, Illinois, Ms. laude graduate of Yale University with both bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale, he Lin received her bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois and her master of music de- was principal cellist with the Yale Symphony Orchestra and was soloist for its 1986 Euro- gree at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Important musical influences include Sergiu pean tour, hi 1986 and 1987 he was a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. Mr. Young Luca, Paul Rolland, Josef Gingold, Dorothy DeLay, and Louis Krasner. Ms. Lin joined the won an Orchestra Fellowship in 1987; he played with the Atlanta Symphony in 1988 and Boston Symphony in 1985, serving as assistant concertmaster from 1988 to 1991 and from with the Boston Symphony in 1988-89.