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BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Seiji
Ozawa, Music Director
Bernard Haitink, Principal Guest Conductor
One Hundred and Sixteenth Season, 1996-97
SUPPER CONCERT VI
Thursday, February 6, at 6
Saturday, February 8, at 6
VALERIA VILKER KUCHMENT, violin
AMNON LEVY, violin
MICHAEL ZARETSKY, viola
JOEL MOERSCHEL, cello
STEPHEN DRURY, piano
SCHUMAN
String Quartet
I.
II.
III.
Ms.
Sinfonia (Vigoroso)
Passacaglia (Adagio)
Fugue (Allegro moderato)
VILKER KUCHMENT,
Messrs.
COPLAND
Mr. LEVY,
ZARETSKY and MOERSCHEL
Vitebsk, for
piano
Messrs. LEVY,
GERSHWIN
No. 2
trio
MOERSCHEL, and DRURY
Lullaby, for string quartet
Mr. LEVY, Ms.
Messrs.
VILKER KUCHMENT,
ZARETSKY and MOERSCHEL
Baldwin piano
Please exit to your
left for
supper following the concert.
Week 15
Mi
I
William Schuman
String Quartet No. 2
The list of William Schuman's work in Bruce Savior's article about the composer
for The New Grove Dictionary of American Music includes five string quartets and
ten symphonies. These abstract musical genres are the heart of his output, his most
fundamental response to the creative impulse. But Schuman was a late starter as a
symphonist; though he studied the violin as a young man, his first compositions
were in the style of the popular songs of the '20s and '30s, an area in which he was
almost completely self-taught. When he discovered symphonic music almost by
accident at nineteen, he determined that it was the musical world he wished to
inhabit and began to take some private lessons in harmony and counterpoint. The
premiere of Roy Harris's Symphony 1933 by Serge Koussevitzky and the BSO in
January 1934 opened the path to the kind of music Schuman wished to write;
indeed that was the year in which he finally gave up the composition of popular
songs. It is often said that Schuman studied with Harris, but the lessons were never
so formal as a course in composition. William Schuman told me in 1980 that they
were essentially more-or-less regular conversations during the summer of 1936
centered around music that he was then writing, with helpful observations and
hints from the slightly older and more experienced composer.
During these learning years from 1932 to 1937 Schuman created four orchestral
works two small pieces and his first two symphonies and two string quartets;
these early works were later withdrawn by the composer and can no longer be
heard. All, that is, except the String Quartet No. 2, which can thus be regarded as the
first work of his early maturity. Certainly there can be little question that Schuman's
String Quartet No. 2 comes from the same wellsprings as the magnificent Symphony
No. 3 of four years later. Simply on the surface one can see that the idiosyncratic use
of Baroque genres (here Sinfonia, Passacaglia, and Fugue) turned to vigorous and
vivid modern use anticipates a similar approach in the Third Symphony. More profound is the composer's interest in the long line, the careful preparation of climax
and dramatic effect through the operation of contrapuntal techniques.
From the beginning of the opening Sinfonia, there is a tautness to the four lines of the
quartet, a feeling of energetic competition between one part and another, that was to
remain characteristic of Schuman's music throughout his career. The muscular opening
theme yields to a more songful solo utterance with a pizzicato accompaniment.
—
—
—
—
The Passacaglia functions as the slow movement of the three and is also the longest
and darkest. (A passacaglia is a special type of theme-and-variations in which the
"theme" is usually a bass line repeated over and over again this is called "ostinato," the Italian word for "obstinate"
while newer melodies continually unfold on
—
top of it.)
It
—
opens in a stark unison presentation of the ostinato theme, nine individ-
Over the course of the numerous variations, the countermelodies are for
and gently lilting. In the end, the music dies gently away.
The final Fugue opens with three brusque, attention-getting chords, then a fidgety nervous passage that prepares the listener for the fugue proper. The brusque chords recur to
close the introduction, and the fugal exposition begins, a fast-moving melody that does
ual pitches.
the most part subdued
not sound as if designed for contrapuntal use, not obviously "fugal"
—but so
it
proves to
But this is no academic exercise. The intersecting lines build to dramatic moments
where occasionally the brusque chords punctuate the flow and set it off in a new direction. Here already Schuman has turned the formality of the fugue into a very personal
be.
musical
medium such as he was later to use for the climax of his Third Symphony.
Aaron Copland
Vitebsk
Copland's first work to employ a folk melody was inspired by hearing a Jewish folk
tune in a performance of The Dybbuk, a well-known Yiddish drama by S. Ansky.
He was fascinated by the tune and decided to use it as the basis of a composition.
Upon learning that Ansky had first heard the tune in the Russian village of Vitebsk,
he decided to use the geographical reference as his title. In the intervening years,
Vitebsk has changed character, and Copland recalled in his autobiography Copland
to 1942, "Years later when I traveled to the Soviet Union, the Russians were amazed
any composer would name a piece of music after the city of Vitebsk, a large
complex resembling Pittsburgh or Cleveland !" He completed the work
at the MacDowell Colony in September 1928. It was first performed in New York's
Town Hall on February 16, 1929, by pianist Walter Gieseking and two members of
that
industrial
the Pro Arte Quartet.
The work is
in a single
movement of rhapsodic character divided
into three sections:
The opening harshly juxtaposes simultaneous major and minor triads
combination seemed to Copland to imply a pitch somewhere in
between the major third and the minor third: in other words, quarter-tones, which
appear in the violin and cello, emphasizing the Hebraic atmosphere of the piece. They
set the scene for the folk tune, played by the cello. The tempo changes to an Allegro
vivace for a section that to the composer displays a "Chagall-like grotesquerie." The
unrelenting scherzo is filled with offbeat rhythms and inklings of the folk tune's opening notes. At the return to the opening tempo, Grave, the theme reappears in violin
and cello, with the piano again commenting in harsh major/minor chords. The coda
resolves the tensions thus established in a solemn hush.
slow-fast-slow.
in the piano. This
George Gershwin
Lullaby, for string quartet
George Gershwin came out of Tin Pan Alley and made his first income in music as
a "song plugger," tirelessly sitting at a piano in a publisher's music shop, demonstrating the latest hit songs to customers who might be persuaded to buy the sheet
music themselves. Gradually he had an opportunity to demonstrate some of his
own tunes and soon was contributing songs to reviews, then writing the scores of
entire shows. But he also aspired to serious musical respectability. Even after
becoming wealthy and successful, he continued to study music with the best teachers he could find, even undertaking extensive work in orchestration (with which
few Broadway composers would trouble themselves, since there was never time
for the composer to orchestrate a show anyway). In addition to his Broadway
shows, Gershwin wanted to write for the concert hall and opera house, so he also
undertook work in many of the standard "classical" genres. His Lullaby for string
quartet, composed about 1919 or 1920, is one of the earliest examples of this aspiradetermination to learn part-writing and scoring for a standard classical
a far more delicate work than the bouncy show tunes he was writing at the same time, but that probably reflects his own understanding of the
dichotomy between popular and classical. In any case, he still imbues his Lullaby
with a subtle touch of syncopation.
tion, of his
ensemble.
It is
— Notes by Steven Ledbetter
Kuchment graduated from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow;
became a faculty member at the Tchaikovsky ConservaA prizewinner in a number of international violin and chamber music com-
Valeria Vilker
upon
finishing her studies she
tory College.
and in chamber music. In the Boston area
she has been concertmaster of SinfoNova, the Harvard Chamber Orchestra, the Handel
and Haydn Society, and the Boston Philharmonic. Ms. Vilker Kuchment joined the BSO
petitions,
at the
she has appeared as
recitalist,
beginning of the 1986-87 season.
soloist
A faculty member at the New England Conser-
vatory of Music, the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, she has recorded for Melodiya and
Sine
Qua Non.
BSO first violinist Amnon
After hearing
Levy's musical career began in Tel Aviv, where he
him play, Jascha
Heifetz urged Mr. Levy's teachers to send
him
was born.
to the
United States for advanced studies; there he attended the Juilliard School of Music in
New York and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he studied with Ivan Galamian.
After graduating from Curtis he participated in the Marlboro Music Festival, where he
performed chamber music with Rudolf Serkin. A BSO member since 1964, Mr. Levy has
performed with orchestras and given solo recitals throughout the United States and in
Mexico City. He has recently undertaken a conducting career as well, making his conducting debut at Jordan Hall in February 1988 with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra.
Born in the Soviet Union,
Central Music School in
violist
Michael Zaretsky studied originally as a
violinist at the
Moscow and at the Music College of the Moscow State Conserva-
where he then continued his education as a violist. In 1972 Mr. Zaretsky immigrated
where he became principal violist of the Jerusalem Broadcasting Symphony
Orchestra and a soloist of Israeli Radio. In 1973 he auditioned for Leonard Bernstein, who
helped him obtain an immigration visa to the United States and brought him to Tanglewood. There, while a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, he successfully auditioned
for the BSO, which he joined that fall. An established soloist and chamber musician, Mr.
Zaretsky teaches at the Boston University School of Music and the Longy School of Music.
tory,
to Israel,
Born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois, Joel Moerschel received his early musical training
from Chicago Symphony cellist Nicolai Zedeler and from Karl Fruh at the Chicago
Musical College. Advanced studies with Ronald Leonard at the Eastman School of Music
earned him a bachelor of music degree and a performer's certificate. A member of the
Boston Symphony since 1970, Mr. Moerschel has also been an active member of Boston's
musical community, exploring chamber music with groups such as the Wheaton Trio and
Francesco String Quartet, and contemporary music with Boston Musica Viva and Collage
New Music.
Stephen Drury has appeared as soloist with orchestras from San Diego to
Bucharest and in music festivals on both sides of the Atlantic.
prizewinner in several
Pianist
A
and Carnegie
Hall/Rockefeller competitions, his repertoire stretches from Bach, Mozart, and Liszt to
the music of today. He has directed the world premiere of George Russell's Time Line
for orchestra, chorus, jazz band, and soloists; premiered the solo part of John Cage's
1 Ol with the BSO; and gave the first performance of John Zorn's Aporias with Dennis
Russell Davies and the Cologne Radio Symphony. Mr. Drury has commissioned new
works from John Cage, John Zorn, Terry Riley, Lee Hyla, and Chinary Ung. His recordings include music by Elliott Carter, Frederic Rzewski, John Cage, and Colin McPhee.
competitions, including the Concert
Artists Guild, Affiliate Artists,