BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA James Levine, Music Director Bernard Haitink, Conductor Emeritus Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Laureate 129th Season, 2009-2010 g=*<l? «^ CHAMBER TEA II Friday, November 13, at 2:30 COMMUNITY CONCERT III Sunday, November 15, at 3, at Tuckerman Hall in Worcester COMMUNITY CONCERT IV Sunday, November 22, at 3, at Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton The free Community Concerts are made possible by a generous grant from The Lowell Institute. JULIANNE LEE, violin (Rolla; Dohnanyi) CATHERINE FRENCH, violin (1st violin in Debussy) SI-JING HUANG, violin (2nd violin in Debussy) EDWARD GAZOULEAS, viola BLAISE DEJARDIN, cello ROLLA Duo concertant in C for violin and viola, Opus 6, No. 1 Allegro Cavatina. Andante Rondo. Allegretto DOHNANYI Serenade in C for violin, viola, and cello, Opus 10 Marcia. Allegro Romanza. Adagio non troppo, quasi andante Scherzo. Vivace Tema con variazioni. Andante con moto Rondo (Finale). Allegro vivace DEBUSSY String Quartet in G minor, Opus 10 Anime et tres decide Assez vif et bien rythme Andantino, doucement expressif Tres modere Weeks 6/7 Alessandro Rolla (1757-1841) Duo concertant in C for violin and viola, Opus 6, No. 1 Alessandro Rolla was nearly an exact contemporary of W.A. Mozart but out- lived him by fifty years. Born in Pavia, near Milan, he was already well-known in his teens as a violin and viola virtuoso and composer. In 1782 he became principal viola of the orchestra of the Duke of Parma, where he remained for twenty years. In 1802 he became director of La Scala opera in Milan, remaining until 1833; in 1808 he became director of the new Milan Conservatory. As a conductor at La Scala and in concerts, Rolla was remarkable for his control of the orchestra as well as his catholic repertoire, which included Beethoven's symphonies. He also introduced several of Mozart's operas to La Scala audi- ences. Strangely, he wrote no operas in spite of his close involvement with the medium. He wrote a dozen symphonies and numerous concertos, as well as a large body of chamber music, including more than a hundred duos for two violins and nearly eighty surviving duos for violin and viola, plus pedagogical studies. His works were known and published throughout Europe. Stylistically, Rolla had an Italian's sense of instrumental brilliance and also drew on the styles of Mozart and Haydn. "Composed for and dedicated to His Majesty Charles IV, King of Spain," the Duo concertant in C for violin and viola was written no later than 1808. Although one might expect the violin to take the lead in this pairing, the duo shows an almost perfect balance between the violin and the viola. The instru- ments are intertwined to an extent that they frequently flip positions, the viola going high while the violin is in its lowest register, and both fill out the harmony with arpeggios and double-stops. The Allegro first movement is characterized by the march-invoking dotted-note phrase at its start, as well as by much sparkling passagework between the two instruments, with almost constant sixteenth- note motion. The second movement, in F major, is a sweet Cavatina, which takes its name from a kind of opera aria—hence the singing quality of the viola's opening melody. Although written in 3/4, the movement is really in a lilting 9/8. The finale is a rondo, its recurring theme again featuring march-like dotted figures. A central section features a descent into a warmer harmonic realm. The dotted-note figure, intermixed with quick triplet runs, propels the final measures—but the apparent concluding cadence is a feint worthy of Haydn, and the piece skitters to its true close pianissimo. —Robert Kirzinger Erno Dohnanyi (1877-1960) Serenade in C for violin, viola, and cello, Opus 10 Although he grew up in an environment that produced some important nation- alist composers (Kodaly and Bartok), Erno Dohnanyi always stayed much closer to the main German traditions of late Romantic music, especially that of Brahms, whose influence on him was profound. The present serenade was pub- lished in 1904, when the composer was twenty-seven years old; he had already established himself with his Opus 1, a piano quintet praised by Brahms himself, and the present Opus 10 would attract the attention of Donald Francis Tovey, as one of the very few great compositions structure in which those arrivals are determined less by the sequence of harmonies who hailed it, in an extended analysis, days of Mozart and Beethoven. preceding them than by the juxtaposition of those harmonies against each other, as for three stringed instruments since the the music through contrasting, juxtaposed areas of different Nonetheless, the serenade, with its five movements and their characteristic moves "key colors." piece (especially since it lacks Insofar as its thematic material is concerned, Debussy's first movement does titles, is more of a suite than a traditional chamber lively march of the opening includes a Trio suggest a sonata-form movement, with a vigorous first theme, a transitional a sonata-form first movement). The "bridge" idea, and a more relaxed, lyrical contrasting theme (marked et suggesting a folk melody, with the steady accompanying drone. This Trio returns "doux expressif") which will assume a role in the development section virtually equal to briefly in the finale, along with the rhythmic pattern of the march, to round off following the Trio, that of the main idea. The cyclical scheme becomes apparent at the opening of the the work as a whole. The scherzo has a rapid fugal opening; major scherzo when, following four introductory pizzicato chords in the first both scherzo theme and Trio recur as part of a double fugue—heavy learning G violin cello, the viola gives out a transformation of the opening indeed, though worn lightly. The variation movement is the most serious part of and 6/8 move- ment's main idea. The atmospheric Trio section presents an augmented version the serenade; its quiet unfolding in a rich, romantic way is filled with marvels of invention for the three instruments. of the same theme in the first violin, supported initially by a cushion of sixteenth- note figuration in the middle strings and a pizzicato pulse in the cello. A rather —Steven Ledbetter exotic transformation of the main theme precedes the written out da capo, in which the theme is implied within the vigorous pizzicato texture rather than Claude Debussy (1862-1918) directly stated. String Quartet in G minor, Opus 10 The third-movement Andantino is a melancholy song beginning and ending in The thirty-year-old Claude Debussy completed his "Premier Quatuor en sol D-flat. Franck's influence is present here in the music's harmony and lyricism, mineur, Op. 10" ("Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 10") in February 1893. It had and perhaps in a suggestion—in the rocking melody heard at the outset—of the its first performance on December 29 that year, when it was played by Eugene D minor Symphony, which had been premiered at the Conservatoire in February Ysaye's string quartet at a concert of the Societe Nationale. Debussy biographer 1889. Debussy does not choose explicitly to rework his main theme within the slow Edward Lockspeiser suggests that Debussy's specification of key and opus number movement itself. Though the middle section of the Andantino makes reference to may have been ironic, merely a "concession to meticulous methods of classifying the second theme of the first movement, hints of the main theme reappear only chamber works," since this is the only instance in the composer's output of a in the slow introduction to the finale. The lively finale proper once again clothes specified key and opus number. That the piece itself would seem to represent the main theme in a variety of new guises, reserving a "real" statement (in experimentation on Debussy's part within a genre to which he would not normally slightly augmented form) until near the end, followed by a double reference to have been drawn is suggested by works premiered by the Societe Nationale both the second theme, after which a driving coda closes the movement in a vigorous before and after the quartet (the "lyric poem" La Damoiselle elue on April 8, 1893, wash of G major. and the Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun in December 1894), both being more —Marc Mandel suggestive of the composer's broader interests and later output. The impetus to write a quartet may in fact have come from Debussy's close A member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2007, Julianne Lee recently friendship, from 1892 until it was broken off early in 1894, with Ernest Chausson, received the Presser Music Award. She made her solo debut at age seven with a pupil of Cesar Franck's—an idea supported by Debussy's use in his quartet of the Lake Placid Symphonietta and has also appeared as soloist with the KBS the Franckian device of a cyclical musical scheme based almost entirely on trans- Symphony Orchestra in Korea and the Baden-Baden Philharmonie in Germany. formation of the opening theme. A letter from Debussy to Chausson suggests Her chamber music collaborations include concerts with such renowned artists Debussy's disappointment over Chausson's reaction to his work; he even goes so as Joseph Silverstein, Peter Wiley, Roger Tapping, Samuel Rhodes, and Arnold far as promising to write another quartet, in which he would bring "more dignity Steinhardt. Ms. Lee has participated at the Marlboro Music Festival and Santa Fe to the form." But aside from a Rapsodie for saxophone and piano completed in Chamber Music Festival and toured Europe with the Australian Chamber Orches- 1908, and two pieces for clarinet and piano written for the annual examinations tra as guest principal violist.