BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Bernard Haitink, Principal Guest Conductor One Hundred and Eighteenth Season, 1998-99 PRELUDE CONCERT III ^ Thursday, January 21, at 6 COMMUNITY CHAMBER CONCERT II Sunday, January 24, at 3, at the Museum of Afro American History, Boston The Community Chamber Concerts are supported by State Street Bank. CHAMBER MUSIC TEA III Friday, January 29, at 2:30 LUCY SHELTON, soprano NANCY BRACKEN, violin FENWICK SMITH, flute EDWARD GAZOULEAS, viola FRANK EPSTEIN, percussion CAROL PROCTER, cello ANN HOBSON PILOT, harp ANDERSON Vocalise for violin and harp (1980) THOMSON Five Phrases from Song of Solomon, for soprano and percussion Thou that dwellest in the gardens Return, O, Shulamite! O, my dove I am my beloved's By night on my bed LUCY SHELTON, soprano WILLIAMS "Adolescence/' for soprano, flute, and cello, from Seven for Luck (1998) Ms. SHELTON ROUSSEL Serenade, Opus 30, for flute, harp, violin, viola, and cello Allegro Andante Presto GINASTERA Cantos del Tucuman (1938), for soprano, flute, violin, harp, and percussion Yo naci en el valle Solita su alma Vida, vidita, vidala, vidalita Algarrobo, algarrobal Ms SHELTON HM Weeks 13/14 TNf mm NOTES Thomas Jefferson Anderson was born August 17, 1928, in Coatesville, Pennsylva- nia. He was the first black composer-in-residence at the Atlanta Symphony Orches- tra, holding that post from 1969 to 1971. He then served as chairman of the music department at Tufts University in Somerville, MA, from 1972 to 1980. As with many American composers of his generation, jazz was a big influence, and Anderson toured with a jazz band in his youth. He went on to earn degrees from West Virginia State College, Perm State, and the University of Iowa, where he received a Ph.D. The combined influence of jazz and popular music with the musical language of the classical avant-garde can be heard in much of his work, resulting in very colorful, often improvisatory use of instruments and beautifully lyrical, expressive melody. Vocalise was commissioned by sculptor Richard Hunt for Jacques and Gail Israe- livitch, who premiered the work in 1980 in St. Louis. Ann Hobson Pilot and Joel Smirnoff gave the Boston premiere in 1982 with Collage New Music. In Vocalise, we can hear the influence of blues and jazz as well as music of other cultures. These are evoked by way of Anderson's rhythmic language and his use of melodic elements such as quarter-tones (intervals smaller than the traditional Western half- step and common in Asian, African, and Middle Eastern music). The title refers to the melodic style throughout the piece, which is close to that of vocal writing. The composer and music critic Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City, Mis- souri, in 1896 and, like his near-contemporary Hemingway, became famously expa- triot in Paris, first in 1921-22 and later from 1925 to 1940. The artistic scene in 1920s Paris was a hotbed of "exotic" influence: jazz imported by American soldiers after World War I, an influx (at least partly due to European imperialism) of anthropologi- cal artifacts from Africa and Asia, and at least a handful of Russians, including Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Chagall, exiled from a homeland in turmoil. The young Thomson, having studied with Boulanger and become exposed to the Parisian avant- garde, adopted a compositional style that is a kind of "sophisticated primitivism." His harmonic and rhythmic materials are similar to, though for the most part much simpler than, the Stravinsky of L'Histoire du soldat, yet, like the music of Copland, Thomson's music seems the very embodiment of Americana. In Five Phrases from Song of Solomon, Thomson's music reaches an extreme of refinement, pared down as it is to pure melody and rhythm. The vocal part within each song remains almost entirely in a single mode (that is, with very little chromaticism) and achieves a char- acter of improvisation through its rhythm. The very simple percussion accompani- ment (entirely absent in the second song) reflects the timeless nature of the texts. John Williams, for many years conductor of the Boston Pops and now Conduc- tor Laureate of that orchestra, is probably best-known for his movie scores, includ- ing the Star Wars trilogy, Saving Private Ryan, and Schindler's List. Many of his fans may not realize that he's also a prolific composer for the concert hall. His Cello Concerto was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and premiered on July 7, 1994, by the BSO, with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist and John Williams conducting, for the inauguration of Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. Other works include a Violin Concerto and Five Sacred Trees for bassoon and orchestra. A new orchestral work by John Williams will receive its world premiere performance in April with Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Williams's orchestral song cycle Seven for Luck sets seven poems of former Poet Laureate Rita Dove. Such is the breadth of color and orchestration Williams uses that one of the songs, "Ado- lescence," requires only flute and cello in accompaniment to the voice. Thus what — we hear in these performances of "Adolescence" isn't a reinstrumentation for cham- ber ensemble, but the original scoring. Dove's poetry, like the other pieces on this concert, joins the apparently skew lines of the vernacular language of American and black popular culture with the "high" art of modernism. The Frenchman Albert Roussel was born in 1869, seven years after Debussy and six before Ravel; he died a few months before Ravel in 1937. Like his slightly more well-known compatriots, Roussel wrote in an idiom that, in spite of wide-ranging influences, is immediately identifiable as French. Roussel, in the footsteps of Gau- guin and Rimbaud, absorbed the world's culture through travel, for many years as a commissioned naval officer (like his younger contemporary, the composer Jean Cras). He resigned his commission in 1894 to study music in Paris; later he became a professor of counterpoint, with both Satie and Varese as pupils. His travel in the navy, and an extended tour of India and southeast Asia in 1909, strongly affected Roussel's music; along with Debussy (and Ravel less so) he was to heighten the interest in world culture that would culminate in the excitement of 1920s Paris. The Opus 30 Serenade was written in 1925. It can nearly be called a concertante for flute, since that instrument presents the lion's share of the melodic material (there is an extended viola melody in the second movement). Roussel's use of modal melody and harmony, as well as the gamelan-like rhythms of the accompaniment, provide the exotic coloring that characterizes much French music of the era. Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) almost single-handedly brought Argentina into the cosmopolitan mainstream of modern classical music. Like the American T.J. Anderson, Ginastera was strongly influenced by the folk and popular traditions of his native country. Though he first worked in a nationalistic idiom influenced by Argentina's "gauchesco tradition," Ginastera's music in the 1950s used twelve-tone techniques (already hinted at in his folk-influenced earlier music) and a more objec- tive stance influenced by Stravinsky's neoclassicism. The combination of Argentine sensibilities and this mastery of the Modernist musical languages led to a couple of wild and wildly popular operas Don Rodrigo (1964) and Bomarzo (1967), which one critic referred to as "porno in bel canto." Ginastera had, since the 1940s, devel- oped strong ties to the United States, both as a musician and as a kind of diplomat for South American culture. Among many other performances, his opera Beatrix Cenci (1971) was premiered at the inaugural concerts of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Among later works, his Cello Concerto No. 2, written for his sec- ond wife, cellist Aurora Natola, was premiered by Natola in Buenos Aires in 1981. Cantos del Tucuman (1938) is one of Ginastera's earliest acknowledged works, and in it we can readily hear the influence of Argentine folk music. The title refers to a remote mountainous region in northern Argentina. Ginastera's settings of the poetry of Rafael Jijena Sanchez evoke the traditions of the area without direct quotation of folk sources—an approach already common with Stravinsky. The music's beautiful, almost naive surface is achieved by the intricate interplay of long-breathed melodies in each part. The yearning melancholy of the voice and the spaciousness of the set- tings begin almost to paint that landscape in our mind's eye. —Notes by Robert Kirzinger Jul m TEXTS VIRGIL THOMSON Five Phrases from Song of Solomon I Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions harken to thy voice, thy voice, cause me to hear it. II Return, O, Shulamite! Return that we may gaze upon thee. Ill O, my dove, that art in the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stars, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice. IV I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. V By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth I sought him but I found him not. I will arise /and go about the city in the streets and in the broad ways will I seek him whom my soul loveth. JOHN WILLIAMS "Adolescence" from Seven for Luck (poem by Rita Dove) In water-heavy nights behind grandmother's porch We knelt in the tickling grasses and whispered: Linda's face hung before us, pale as a pecan, And it grew wise as she said: "A boy's lips are soft, As soft as baby's skin." The air closed over her words.