BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA James Levine, Music Director Designate BOSTON \ Bernard Haitink, Principal Guest Conductor SYMPHONY I Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Laureate ORCHESTRA 122nd Season, 2002-2003 CHAMBER MUSIC TEA III Friday, January 31, at 2:30 COMMUNITY CONCERT III Sunday, February 2, at 3, at the Hernandez Cultural Center, Boston This concert is made available free to the public through the generosity of State Street Corporation. HAWTHORNE STRING QUARTET RONAN LEFKOWITZ, violin SI-JING HUANG, violin MARK LUDWIG, viola SATO KNUDSEN, ceUo IVES String Quartet No. 1 Andante con moto (Chorale) Allegro (Prelude) Adagio cantabile (Offertory) Allegro marziale (Postlude) POST String Quartet No. 2 Moderato Scherzo: Allegro aggressivo Molto Lento Allegro agitato LEE Morango . almost a tango Week 14 Charles Ives (1874-1954) String Quartet No. 1 Charles Ives's father was Danbury, Connecticut's most famous bandleader, and it was from George Ives that Charles understood early on the importance of vernacu- lar music—band marches, church hymns, parlor songs, and the like. Ives wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last composer to realize that the music of common experience was both defined by and helped shape the culture of a society; in addi- tion to his father he had the precedent of such composers as Haydn, Chopin, and Dvorak to support his innate interest in bridging the gap between popular and "classic" music. As a child Charles showed a remarkable talent in music, supplemented and en- couraged by his father's teaching as well as traditional piano lessons. By the time he was fourteen Ives had secured a post as the youngest salaried organist in the state. Following his father's lead, his early compositional experiments never stray far from the music he heard around him. At the same time he tried his hand at studies in polytonality (multiple keys at once) or other experimental methods. He was already an accomplished musician and composer of small works by the time he entered Yale, in 1894. There he presented his conservative, German-trained teacher, Horatio Parker, with a fugue in four simultaneous keys. Ives came quickly to learn that such experiments had no place in the formal training of a young composer. But he gave himself—at the expense of his overall grade-point average—ample opportunity to experiment in providing humorous and high-spirited music for bands, glee clubs, parties, and vaudeville shows. Among these experiments is Yale-Princeton Football Game, an illustrative piece that foreshad- ows such later works as The Gong on the Hook and Ladder and Central Park in the Dark as well as parts of his symphonies. He also held the prestigious position of organist at Center Church in New Haven, and wrote songs and organ pieces along more con- ventional lines for services there. Ives wrote three of the movements of his String Quartet No. 1 for a "Revival Service" that took place at Center Church, for a performance for strings and organ, calling the movements Prelude, Offertory, and Postlude. Later he appended to these three a first movement, a fugue of solemn character, which he'd written as an as- BOSTON ( > I SYMPHONY j BOSTON V ORCHESTRA / Tanglewood fO)^lD THE BSO ONLINE Boston Symphony and Boston Pops fans with access to the Internet can visit the orchestra's official home page (http://www.bso.org). The BSO web site not only provides up-to-the- minute information about all of the orchestra's activities, but also allows you to buy tickets to BSO and Pops concerts online. In addition to program listings and ticket prices, the web site offers a wide range of information on other BSO activities, biographies of BSO musicians and guest artists, current press releases, historical facts and figures, helpful telephone num- bers, and information on auditions and job openings. A highlight of the site is a virtual-real- ity tour of the orchestra's home, Symphony Hall. Since the BSO web site is updated on a regular basis, we invite you to check in frequently. complete four-movement piece in string quartet signment for Horatio Parker. The including the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Moravian Philharmonic, and 1896. In 1910-11, Ives took the first movement and rescored it for or- form dates from the Salem Philharmonic, among others. Soundbites, a recent commission from the chestra as the third (slow) movement of his Symphony No. 4. For some time he re- Aiolos Collective—an international group of wind players—was premiered in to the original three revival service movements when listing his First ferred only August 2001 to critical acclaim. Among current projects is a commission from the String Quartet, and the fugue introductory movement was only reattached at a much Terezin Chamber Music Foundation and the BSO's Project STEP. His music is pub- later date. lished by MMB Music, Inc., St. Louis, MO. David Posf s discography includes his Little matter; few enough of Ives's works were being performed anyway, much Symphony No. 1 performed by the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra under less researched for their authenticity. Following his graduation from Yale, Ives took Vladimir Valek, his String Quartet No. 1 performed by the Boston Composers his father's advice and went into business, beginning as a clerk in an insurance office String Quartet, a Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra with soloist Donna in New York City. Ultimately he started his own firm with a partner and became Marie Cobert and the Moravian Philharmonic, Vit Micka conducting, and Sound- quite well-to-do; in the meantime he continued to compose and to arrange for him- bites for nine double reed instruments, recorded by the Aiolos Collective. self performances of works from an increasingly substantial body of daring, but About his String Quartet No. 2, Post writes: (usually) well and thoughtfully constructed, works in many genres. It wasn't until My second string quartet was written in 2001 for my good friends, the Martinu much later, beginning in the 1930s, mostly through the offices of younger musician Quartet, a wonderful group based in Prague, where I have had several pieces colleagues like Henry Cowell and Elliott Carter, that Ives came to be recognized as premiered and recorded. The piece is in four movements, and although there one of the truly great and truly original American composers of all time. is no "program," the piece is very much influenced by my time in Prague, and The String Quartet No. 1 is one of three "string quartets" to which Ives gave the a growing familiarity with and love for the music of many of the composers name, although the second one is not really a quartet at all but often contains extra who passed through the Terezin concentration camp. instruments, like piano or flute, because at this time Ives was frustrated with the Last year, the Hawthorne Quartet took up the piece, giving the American "prettiness" that the genre implied for him. That "second one," from about 1906, was premiere in the Berkshires. After a number of performances, they took the dismantled and reconstituted in such pieces as Hallowe'en for piano quintet. The ac- work to Prague this past fall, performing it at Prague Castle in a highly suc- tual, extant Second String Quartet dates from 1911. Although the First String Quartet cessful benefit concert for the Terezin Memorial, and at the historic Spanish is far more conservative in its language than most of Ives's later music, its use of Synagogue in Prague. They have recorded the piece for an upcoming CD hymn tunes within classically developed forms is strongly characteristic of the com- release. poser's compositional approach throughout his life. The Andante first-movement fugue is built entirely of quoted tunes, with the theme of the fugue being "Missionary Thomas Oboe Lee (b.1945) Hymn" by Lowell Mason. The song "Coronation" is a second subject. The brighter Morango . almost a tango second movement has "Beulah Land," "Bringing in the Sheaves," and other tunes Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, for six within an intricate contrapuntal texture. The third movement, Adagio cantabile, erst- years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the Uni- while heart of the piece, is based at the start on a tune called "Nettleton." A quicker versity of Pittsburgh, he studied composition with William Thomas McKinley, middle section reminds us more of the extrovert faster movements. The finale (Allegro George Russell, and Gunther Schuller at the New England Conservatory (1972-76), marziale) begins in a march-like tempo with a tune from the song "Webb" and moves Betsy Tolas at Tanglewood (1976), and Earl Kim at Harvard University (1977-81). He into a contrasting triple-meter second theme borrowed from the second movement. has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. The recipient This is combined with the "Webb" theme for a coda. of numerous commissions for chamber and orchestral works, he has also received —Robert Kirzinger many awards, among them the Rome Prize, the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, first prize at the Kennedy David L. Post (b.1949) Center Friedheim Awards for his String Quartet No. 3, child of Uranus, father of String Quartet No. 2 Zeus, the Koussevitzky Composition Prize at Tanglewood, recording grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and David L. Post was born in New York City in 1949; he holds degrees from the Univer- residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Charles Ives Center in Dan- sity of Chicago, the New School for Social Research, and Brandeis University.