BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS Sunday, March 14, 2010, at 3 p.m. at Jordan Hall BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS Malcolm Lowe, violin Elizabeth Rowe, flute Haldan Martinson, violin John Ferrillo, oboe Steven Ansell, viola William R. Hudgins, clarinet Jules Eskin, cello Richard Svoboda, bassoon Edwin Barker, double bass James Sommerville, horn MOZART Quartet in F for oboe, violin, viola, and cello, K.370(368b) Allegro Adagio Rondeau. Allegro Messrs. FERRILLO, LOWE, ANSELL, and ESKIN VILLA-LOBOS Bachianas brasileiras No. 6, for flute and bassoon Aria (choro) Fantasia (Allegro) Ms. ROWE and Mr. SVOBODA GANDOLFI Plain Song, Fantastic Dances (2005), for violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, horn, and bassoon I. St. Botolph's Fantasia II. Tango Blue III. QuickStep Messrs. LOWE, ANSELL, ESKIN, BARKER, HUDGINS, SVOBODA, and SOMMERVILLE INTERMISSION BRAHMS Quintet in B minor for clarinet and strings, Opus 1 15 Allegro Adagio Andantino Con moto Messrs. HUDGINS, LOWE, MARTINSON, ANSELL, and ESKIN BSO Classics, Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, RCA, and New World records Wolfgang Amade Mozart (1756-1791) Quartet in F for oboe, violin, viola, and cello, K.370(368b) Mozart composed his F major Quartet for Oboe and Strings in early 1781 in Munich, where he was busy finishing up his opera Idomeneo ; he wrote the quartet for the oboist Friedrich Ramm (1744-.? 1811), who had become a member of the Mannheim court orchestra at fourteen. In 1777, when Mozart first encountered him at Mannheim, Ramm was already using the composer's Oboe Concerto as something of a calling card; according to a letter of Mozart's, he played the concerto five times in Mannheim in 1778. That same year, Ramm and other members of the Mannheim court orchestra relocated to Munich, where Mozart later encountered him in 1781 and wrote the Oboe Quartet. In letters to his father Leopold, Mozart praised the oboist particularly for his "pleasingly pure tone" as well as for his "decent, cheerful, and honest" character. Throughout the Oboe Quartet, which moves from an opening Allegro to central slow movement to closing rondo (here "rondeau"), Mozart is at his most typically inventive, making every moment of the music "speak" (whether in slow- or quick-moving passages) and fully exploiting the particular timbre, range, and character of the featured wind instrument. Particularly worth noting in the piece is its deeply expressive, aria-like Adagio in D minor—just thirty-seven measures long, but clearly more than enough to display the extraordinary communicative depth for which Friedrich Ramm was famed: "no one has yet been able to approach him in beauty, roundness, softness, and trueness of tone," observed one contemporary account. Also worthy of comment are the first- movement passage, early on, in which the violin's statement of the main theme provides a springboard for the oboe to jump to its topmost range (a passage with no parallel in the recapitulation); the quietly restrained opening gesture (already implicit in the exposition) of that same movement's development section; the harmonic feints also to be found in the first-movement development; and the final movement's startling central episode in which the oboe seems almost to run rampant in cut time against the continuing 6/8 of the strings before finally realigning itself with its cohorts. —Marc Mandel Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) Bachianas brasileiras No. 6, for flute and bassoon One of the most exceptional and unique of South American composers in the twentieth century was the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos. Villa-Lobos learned cello from his father and made his living playing in cafes. He later entered the National Institute of Music in Rio de Janeiro, but was largely self-taught as a composer. His interest in folk music led him out into the Brazilian hinterlands, where from 1905 to 1912 he traveled collecting folk and Indian music. Rio, a fairly sophisticated city with a large population of Europeans, witnessed a concert of Villa-Lobos's work in 1915; he met Artur Rubinstein, and traveled finally to Paris only in 1923. Though he remained a prolific composer, he also became deeply involved in music education, eventually founding a conservatory (1942) and the Brazilian Academy of Music (1945), which he headed until his death. Villa-Lobos composed more than 2000 pieces in all genres, including three finished operas, twelve symphonies, seventeen string quartets, songs, choral music, piano pieces, and much else (including an invaluable set of guitar etudes). The Bachianas brasileiras are a loose collection of nine pieces for a wide variety of forces that bring together two central concerns of his compositional approach: Bach, and indigenous Brazilian music. The first, written in 1930, was for "at least" eight cellos; others include works for orchestra — — orchestra (no. (nos. 2, 7, and 8), chorus and string orchestra (no. 9), piano and 3), eight 2004 and was performed in January 2005 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which has cellos and soprano (no. 5), solo piano (no. 4, later orchestrated), and the present work also performed his Points of Departure. for flute and bassoon. In these works Villa-Lobos juxtaposes movements alluding to Plain Song, Fantastic Dances was written on commission from the St. Botolph Club characteristically Brazilian its Bach-style form and counterpoint with movements of char- for 125th anniversary; the Boston Symphony Chamber Players gave the first per- acter. In No. 6 the Aria takes on the Brazilian idea of choro, which is really a loose idea formance on October 28, 2005, in Boston, in Jordan Hall at the New England Conserva- of Brazilian popular street music rather than a rigorous form. The second movement tory of Music. The St. Botolph Club is a venerable institution, originally an arts-oriented the "Bach" movement—is more chromatic, with less of a folk-music flavor, but both are men's club, whose members over the years have included such luminaries as Henry Lee on the fast side and feature sinuous lines for each instrument. The high-low contrast and Higginson, John Singer Sargent, William Dean Howells, and Robert Frost. Now including difference in timbres keep the duo separate even as these lines intertwine. both genders, its mandate is "for the purpose of promoting social intercourse among per- sons connected with, or interested —Robert Kirzinger in the arts, humanities and sciences...." In 2004, a committee of club members decided to commission a work for performance by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players. Michael Gandolfi's name was chosen from a short Michael Gandolfi (b. 1958) list of composers suggested by the club committee, and the resulting work Plain Song, Plain Song, Fantastic Dances (2005) Fantastic Dances—was premiered by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in Jordan Michael Gandolfi's musical interests encompass not only contemporary concert music, Hall on October 23, 2005. but also the jazz, blues, and rock genres by which route he came to music as a guitar St. Botolph was a 7th-century monk who established a monastery in what is now breadth of his musical investigation is paralleled by his cultural curiosity, player. The Lincolnshire, in England. A corruption of "Botolph's stone" became the name of the resulting in many points of contact between the world of music and other disciplines, Lincolnshire town of Boston, from which the Massachusetts city takes its name. Gandolfi, science, film, theater. faculty of the England Conservatory including and A member New cognizant of the historical import of his commission, drew on several different sources the Center for years, he has written music for such groups and Tanglewood Music many from the past in creating his three-movement work for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, as Speculum Musicae, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Boston Musica Viva, the wind viola, cello, and double bass. The composer's own program note, written for the first ensemble Vento Chiari, and the Weilerstein Trio, and has had his music performed by performance, follows below. such ensembles as the Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Nieuw BBC —Robert Kirzinger Sinfonietta Amsterdam, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, among others. In 2004 Impressions Speculation" he wrote from "The Garden of Cosmic on commission from Plain Song, Fantastic Dances was commissioned by the St. Botolph Club for the Boston the Tanglewood Music Center. This was premiered by the TMC Orchestra in August Symphony Chamber Players in celebration of the Club's 125th anniversary. At the time I set out to compose this work I was studying Stravinsky's Apollon Musagete, admiring the paintings and photographic collages of David Hockney, and reading Boris Vian's Autumn in Peking. Among other things, I was impressed by the bold strokes and clarity of line apparent in the Stravinsky and Hockney works as well as the strong connection THE BSO ONLINE to their respective traditions. This was complemented by the surreal, humorous, and irreverent nature of Vian's writing. All of the works shared a vibrant, vivid, and assured purposefulness that I sought to create in Plain Song, Fantastic Dances. I selected an early plainsong (Gregorian chant) to serve as the primary theme for the watch tti listen 4)) explore opening movement of the work, St. Botolph's Fantasia, in tribute to St. Botolph, a 7th- century English monk. I also found a 12th-century Notre Dame School melismatic organum based on this chant melody, which I quote at the beginning and end of the movement. (Melismatic organum is a two-part composition in which an elaborate BUY TICKETS • SUBSCRIBE • DONATE melody is composed over a pre-existing chant.) The overall design of this movement is a variation form that presents the Gregorian melody in increasingly elaborate contrapuntal • PROGRAM LISTINGS SPECIAL EVENTS treatments, culminating in a seven-part texture in which the theme is stated in multiple speeds and keys.