Listen

Thursday, April 23, 8pm
Friday, April 24, 1:30pm | THE LIFE TRUSTEES CONCERT
Saturday, April 25, 8pm | THE ALAN AND LISA DYNNER CONCERT
Tuesday, April 28, 8pm
BERNARD HAITINK
conducting
RAVEL
“MOTHER GOOSE” (COMPLETE)
Prelude
Spinning-Wheel Dance and Scene
Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
Conversations of Beauty and the Beast
Tom Thumb
Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas
Apotheosis. The Fairy Garden
RAVEL
PIANO CONCERTO IN G
Allegramente
Adagio assai
Presto
JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET
{INTERMISSION}
ADÈS
“THREE STUDIES FROM COUPERIN” (2006)
1. Les Amusemens [The amusements]
2. Les Tours de passe-passe [The sleight-of-hand]
3. L’Âme-en-peine [The soul in distress]
MOZART
SYMPHONY NO. 36 IN C, K.425, “LINZ”
Adagio—Allegro spiritoso
Andante
Menuetto
Presto
BANK OF AMERICA AND EMC CORPORATION ARE PROUD TO SPONSOR THE BSO ’S 2014-2015 SEASON.
The Thursday, Saturday, and Tuesday concerts will end about 10:10, the Friday concert about 3:40.
Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe performs on a Stradivarius violin, known as the “Lafont,” generously donated
to the Boston Symphony Orchestra by the O’Block Family.
Steinway and Sons Pianos, selected exclusively for Symphony Hall.
Special thanks to Fairmont Copley Plaza and Commonwealth Worldwide Chauffeured Transportation.
The program books for the Friday series are given in loving memory of Mrs. Hugh Bancroft by her daughters,
the late Mrs. A. Werk Cook and the late Mrs. William C. Cox.
Broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are heard on 99.5 WCRB.
In consideration of the performers and those around you, please turn off all electronic devices during the
concert, including tablets, cellular phones, pagers, watch alarms, and messaging devices of any kind. Thank
you for your cooperation.
Please note that taking pictures of the orchestra—whether photographs or videos—is prohibited during
concerts.
The Program in Brief...
The great French composer Maurice Ravel loved animals, children, and exotica of all sorts, as reflected in
such works as the masterful ballet score Daphnis et Chloé, his moving single-act opera L’Enfant et les
sortilèges (“The Child and the Magic Spells”), the atmospheric Rapsodie espagnol and song cycle
Shéhérazade, and Mother Goose. Ravel’s musical treatment of Mother Goose originated as a suite of fourhand piano pieces for the two young children of some close friends. After completing the five-movement
piano suite in 1910, he expanded it the following year into a full-scale orchestral ballet score, adding
introductory material and transitional passages that help unify the whole through a network of recurring
motifs. The ingeniously inventive musical representations of several beloved stories are heightened in the
expanded version by the composer’s extraordinary feel for the individual colors of the orchestral instruments,
whether treated separately or in varying combinations.
The Piano Concerto in G dates from twenty years later. In 1930 and 1931, upon receiving commissions from
two different pianists, Ravel, himself a master pianist, turned to the genre of the piano concerto, writing his
Concerto for the Left Hand for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (who had lost his right arm in World War I) and
the G major concerto for his own longtime interpreter Marguerite Long. In typical three-movement concerto
form (fast-slow-fast), Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G illustrates his singular affinities for both the piano and the
instruments of the orchestra. The outer movements are full of energy, even incorporating hints of the blues.
The gorgeous slow movement inhabits an entirely different world, maintaining a remarkably gentle,
meditative tone.
Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 36 in the space of about four days, starting it soon after his arrival in the
Austrian city of Linz on the morning of October 30, 1783, and having it ready for performance there on
November 4. It offers a noteworthy combination of ceremonial elegance (as in the slow introduction, the first
of just three such introductions in Mozart’s symphonies), energy, rhythmic lilt, and poise. Between the two
fast-paced outer movements come a graceful Andante and a sturdy yet courtly minuet (with instrumentation
notably reduced for its contrasting Trio section)—all of this befitting the genre of symphony as a large-scale
orchestral work designed to impress and elate such listeners as the family friend who hosted Mozart and his
wife Constanze in Linz during their visit.
A conductor and pianist, English composer Thomas Adès has led the BSO in his own music and that of
composers he admires on several occasions in recent years. His Three Studies from Couperin is in keeping
with the French and Classical themes that underscore this program. The three contrasting pieces in this little
suite are transcriptions of solo harpsichord works by François Couperin (1668-1733), one of the great
composers of the Baroque era. Writing for a chamber orchestra with two independent string ensembles, Adès
brilliantly illuminates and magnifies the rhythmic and textural fascinations of Couperin’s small masterpieces.
Marc Mandel/Robert Kirzinger
Mozart’s Piano Concertos as Self-Portrait
by Thomas May
Already this season, BSO audiences have heard Mozart piano concertos performed by Christian Zacharias
(No. 17 in G, K.453, last October), Lars Vogt (No. 24 in C minor, K.491, in January), and Emanuel Ax (No.
14 in E-flat, K.449, in March). The season’s final weeks offer two more of Mozart’s great works in the genre,
his last piano concerto, No. 27 in B-flat, K.595, being played by Richard Goode, and No. 23 in A, K.488,
which brings the return of Maria João Pires to Symphony Hall after a long absence. Thomas May here looks at
how the inexhaustible riches of Mozart’s piano concertos reflect his life, work, and times.
Though Mozart himself is to be credited with elevating the genre of the solo concerto to its lofty status,
varying concepts of the concerto would predominate in later times—with the virtuosity that contributes only
one layer in Mozart’s mature concertos later taking on an inflated significance in the heyday of Romanticism,
for example. Such relatively superficial associations would in turn dampen interest in Mozart’s concerto
legacy. Indeed, the piano concertos now guaranteed to attract listeners were for a long time largely neglected,
and only came back into favor in the period approaching the composer’s bicentennial, along with a deeper
appreciation of his musical significance overall.
Even a composer as beholden to Mozart’s piano concerto masterpieces as Beethoven—who particularly
admired the two minor-mode concertos, nos. 20 in D minor and 24 in C minor—chose to develop a fairly
narrow spectrum of the facets Mozart explored in his concertos. In his landmark study Mozart: The Man, the
Music (1945), one of the books that helped turn the tide of Mozart appreciation, Alfred Einstein observes that
Mozart got there first, even if Beethoven is often credited with what Einstein famously refers to as “The
Synthesis” of symphonic and concertante (i.e., “concerto-like”) aspects in the keyboard concerto: “a fusion
resulting in a higher unity beyond which no progress was possible, because perfection is imperfectible.”
As for Beethoven, “at bottom he developed only one type among Mozart’s concertos...the ‘military’ or
‘martial’ type,” with its emphasis on the dramatic juxtaposition of the soloist and orchestra (another way of
thinking about the “symphonic-concertante” dichotomy). Mozart’s approach to concerto form, on the other
hand, “is a vessel of far richer, finer, and more sublime content.” Einstein adds: “It is one of the perfections of
Mozart’s music that its dramatic element remains latent, and that it contains more profound depths than the
struggle between opposing forces.”
It’s all the more astonishing, then, to recall the context in which Mozart came to accomplish this
transformation of a genre he had inherited from German and Italian predecessors, most significantly Johann
Christian Bach (whom, while still a touring prodigy, Mozart had met in London). J.S. Bach, J.C.’s father, is
sometimes regarded as the “inventor” of the keyboard concerto, though his harpsichord concertos were likely
unknown to Mozart. (Those works themselves show a debt to Italian models and are in some cases outright
transcriptions of concertos by Vivaldi.) In his thought-provoking study of the evolution of form in the first
movements of Mozart’s concertos (1971), Denis Forman describes the concertos of Bach’s sons J.C. and Carl
Philipp Emanuel as supplying “the missing link between the age of polyphony and the Classical period of
Mozart.”
Thanks to the biases of traditional music-history writing, our collective image of the Classical period—and of
Mozart’s piano concertos in particular— tends to conjure such associations as rationally agreed-upon rules for
composition and formal principles crystallized into unchanging aesthetic ideals. The irony is that the works we
now so revere for conveying a sense of timelessness originated in a period of rapid change. Along with the
revolutionary political and economic developments in society at large, music-making, which had continued
bursting through its traditional ecclesiastical confines earlier in the 18th century, was also spreading beyond
courts into venues for an emerging middle class. And technological developments made possible the
development of a fortepiano with a wider range.
Mozart’s own career as a freelance artist during his final decade (1781-91), when he produced almost all of the
piano concertos we prize as masterpieces today, exemplifies a radical change in lifestyle and attitudes toward
the composer’s role in society. Once again, Mozart in a sense got there before Beethoven, even blazing the
trail his successor would follow as a performer-composer: a virtuoso who expanded his following through
performances, thus encouraging interest in what he was up to in his latest compositions. Shortly after he
moved to Vienna—which he once hailed as “the land of the clavier”—Mozart depended for his income on
performances at aristocratic gatherings and at “academies,” as the subscription concerts he organized were
called. These typically featured his latest piano concertos, which he would perform with a good deal of
improvisation extending even beyond the cadenzas. The musicologist Richard Taruskin observes that for
Mozart, “the acts or professions of composing and performing were not nearly so separate as they have since
become in the sphere of ‘classical’ music.”
The older system of patronage was swiftly dying out—the system his Vienna friend Haydn had depended on,
and which made him independently wealthy before he set out on his own—and Mozart had been forced to
adapt as he searched for a permanent position. But the freelance life subjected him to the vagaries of his
Viennese public: his independence from his hated former employer in Salzburg came at a heavy price.
Changes in taste, as Handel had discovered with regard to opera earlier in the century in London, necessitated
a change in compositional focus. Mozart didn’t create the piano concertos as “art for art’s sake” but as marketdriven commodities, even while testing the furthest boundaries of that market. Within a few years the novelty
factor of Mozart as a captivating pianist may have worn off—the days of his prodigy feats were only a distant
memory—and in any case a terrible recession and the social anxiety of revolution to the west killed off the
enthusiasm from Mozart’s supporters for this sort of undertaking.
This accounts for the uneven distribution of the nineteen piano concertos Mozart composed in Vienna:
seventeen date from his early years there (between 1782 and 1786), but then only two more followed in the
second half of the Vienna decade, and these were written under different circumstances (No. 26 in 1788 and
No. 27 in his final year, 1791). Back in Salzburg, Mozart had crafted his first four concertos and an
unnumbered one in 1767 simply by transcribing music by other composers (apparently an assignment from his
father); the remaining seven from the Salzburg years are also unevenly spread out, with No. 9 in E-flat, from
1777, marking a watershed in Mozart’s overall command of instrumental form.
While Mozart’s stock as a concerto soloist remained high, his gigs could earn impressive takings. The scholar
Neal Zaslaw points out that for the composer’s contemporaries, “his concertos were not ‘classics’ but ‘popular
music,’ to be enjoyed, used up, and replaced by newer works.” This, Zaslaw believes, helps account for the
curious fact that the press ignored this phenomenon as it was actually happening, so we have no contemporary
reviews to reference: the concertos were simply taken for granted as part of the business of making music,
here today, gone tomorrow.
As for the typical makeup of the audiences, Zaslaw categorizes Mozart’s patrons as “Viennese high society”
(whose homes he also played in), with only 8% from the subscription lists of his concerts in 1784 coming
from the bourgeoisie. Zaslaw also cites a figure of 83% of the subscribers being men, “in striking contrast with
Parisian salon concerts of the period, which were dominated by women.” Where would they have gathered to
listen? In addition to the court theater, one of the venues Mozart rented out for academy concerts was the
grand hall of a casino, which saw the premieres of three concertos in 1784. This is where the Concerto No. 14
in E-flat was first unveiled, though Mozart wrote it to be used exclusively by one of his pupils, Barbara von
Ployer. It was for Ployer that he also composed the Concerto No. 17 in G major, which Richard Taruskin
selects as “a plausible candidate” for the “representative” Mozart concerto.
With No. 14, Mozart wrote to his father that he had earned “extraordinary applause” and that he had written
on a more intimate scale, “in an entirely different style.” The final one, No. 27, which was introduced at a
benefit concert for a musician friend, explores another kind of intimacy. Charles Rosen observes that No. 27
and its close cousin, the Clarinet Concerto, are “private statements” in which “the form is never exploited for
exterior effect.” The Concerto No. 23 in A major goes in still another entirely different direction, with its
unusual marking of Adagio for the slow movement. In this concerto, writes Einstein, “Mozart again succeeded
in meeting his public half-way without sacrificing anything of his own individuality.”
Indeed, the variety of solutions Mozart employs to handle the unique challenges posed by the piano-orchestra
dichotomy underscores how essential this genre was to his creative thinking. “Each [concerto] sets its own
problems,” observes Rosen, “and resolves them without using a pre-established pattern, although always with
a Classical feeling for proportion and drama.” The significance of the piano concerto for Mozart is matched
only by that of opera, and the concertos include many passages and even movements that seem to borrow
directly from Mozart’s operatic sensibility. Taruskin notes that the finales, whether in rondo or variation form,
often aim “to put a fetchingly contrasted set of characters on stage and finally submerge their differences in
conviviality.”
And Mozart was certainly aware of turning the piano concerto into a “happy medium” (his own term)
comprising multiple layers of meaning and enjoyment. “They are brilliant—pleasing to the ear—natural
without becoming vacuous,” he wrote to his father describing the very first set of Viennese concertos he had
prepared, while at the same time containing “passages here and there that only connoisseurs can fully
appreciate” even while “the common listener will find them satisfying as well, although without knowing
why.” In this sense, as Einstein remarks, “Listeners who can really appreciate Mozart’s piano concertos are the
best audience there is.”
THOMAS MAY
writes about the arts, lectures about music and theater, and blogs at memeteria.com.
Maurice Ravel
“Ma Mère l’oye” (“Mother Goose”), complete ballet score
JOSEPH MAURICE RAVEL was born in Ciboure near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Basses-Pyrénées, in the Basque
region of France just a short distance from the Spanish border, on March 7, 1875, and died in Paris on
December 28, 1937. He composed “Ma Mère l’oye” originally for piano four-hands in the years 1908-10 and
orchestrated it as a ballet in 1911. The original piano version was premiered by a pair of children, six and
seven years old, at a concert of the Société Musicale Indépendante in Paris in 1910. The ballet version was
first performed in January 1912 at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris.
THE SCORE OF “MOTHER GOOSE” calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second
doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons (second doubling contrabassoon), two horns (but no other
brass instruments), timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, xylophone, glockenspiel, celesta, harp, and
strings.
He is a child and he is an old man.
—the critic Émile Vuillermoz on Ravel (1922)
Ravel frequently visited his friends Ida and Cipa Godebski and their two children, Mimi and Jean, at their
country house, La Grangette. And, as Mimi recalls in her fond memoir, when he was not polishing off what
was meant to be “the next day’s cold meat” or arguing about Mozart, whom he idolized and Cipa detested,
Ravel was most likely to have engaged himself with the children in all manner of practical jokes and
storytelling. Their favorites were “Laideronette” and “Beauty and the Beast,” both of which Ravel put into the
original four-hand version of Ma Mère l’oye, which he finished at La Grangette in 1910 and dedicated to the
children. He even proposed that they premiere it, but Mimi and Jean “froze” at the idea, so the task was given
over to two other youngsters, Jeanne Leleu, a pupil of Marguerite Long who later won the Grand Prix de
Rome, and Geneviève Durony. Ravel was delighted with the performance, and responded in writing the very
next day to Mademoiselle Leleu: “When you are a great virtuoso and I either an old fogey, covered with
honors, or else completely forgotten, you will perhaps have pleasant memories of having given an artist the
very rare joy of hearing a work of his, of a rather special nature, interpreted exactly as it should be.”
Young people more often than not inspired such openness and generosity, for this Lewis Carroll of a composer
was far less forthcoming with adults, even secretive, and especially about his creative processes. As the
French icon Colette recalls, her experience as librettist for Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges was not the
interactive collaboration of Verdi and Boito or Mozart and Da Ponte; after accepting her libretto, Ravel made
no further comment and emerged years later with the completed work in hand, his only worry being the duet
between the two cats. Colette remembers it with a sigh: “He asked me most seriously if I would mind his
changing ‘mouaô’ into ‘mouain’—or perhaps it was the other way round.”
Ravel rejoiced in animals and children, and many of his works reflect a soul brought to life by fantasy, fable,
exotic places, and romanticized history. That he took pleasure in Mother Goose is no surprise, especially given
“her” French roots. As William and Ceil Baring-Gould have pointed out in their introduction to The Annotated
Mother Goose, early references to her in France suggest she might have been “Goose-footed Bertha,” mother
of Charlemagne. She was “represented as incessantly spinning, with hordes of children clustered about her,
listening to her stories,” an image that gave rise to the “French custom of referring to any tall tale as one told
‘at the time when good Queen Bertha spun’.” Ravel’s main source was the collection by Charles Perrault, Les
Contes de la Mère l’oye (1697), which includes “La Belle au bois dormant” (“Sleeping Beauty”) and “Le Petit
Poucet” (“Tom Thumb”). He also turned to Marie-Catherine, Comtesse d’Aulnoy (c.1650-1705) for
“Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes” (“Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas”), and Marie Leprince de
Beaumont (1711-1780) for “Les Entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête” (“Conversations of Beauty and the
Beast”). One could imagine Ravel asking the young Mimi, “What would happen if, on a moonlit night,
Sleeping Beauty and Tom Thumb met Beauty and the Beast and the rest of the fairies in the forest?” In this
sense we may view the ballet version as Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream transferred to the bois
with Goose-footed Bertha in control at her spinning wheel.
Arbie Orenstein notes that Ravel made a practice of refashioning his music in an “attempt to draw out every
ounce of its inherent possibilities.” The complete ballet Ma Mère l’oye is just that, the final lap in a journey
from a collection of five discrete impressions in miniature for piano to a thematically and dramatically
integrated full-scale orchestral narrative for the stage. Ravel expanded his petite suite by adding a “Prélude”
and the “Danse du Rouet et Scène” (“Spinning-Wheel Dance and Scene”). He also nearly doubled the length
of individual movements, eliminated their closed endings (and hence the pauses in between), and translated
their delicate pianism into vivid but transparently Mozartian orchestral colors. He provided momentum not so
much by percussion (now an exotic spice) as by dance—a pavane, a waltz—to underscore the physicality of
slumber, conversation, bath, and music-making.
The Prelude opens with the hushed wind sound of two flutes and bassoon, as a muted solo horn intones a
distant fanfare, “Once upon a time.” Eerie harmonics accompany thematic fragments—to be fully realized in
each of the stories—all leading in a crescendo to the Spinning-Wheel Dance and Scene, Mother Goose herself
spinning out her tales over a perpetual-motion pedal that passes among the instruments. We can hear the
“click” of her treadle in the tambourine. The activity dissolves into an ancient and serene woodland lullaby of
flutes and violins that gently rock Sleeping Beauty over a spare accompaniment of pizzicato strings and harp
harmonics. Following a sudden piccolo interjection, col legno strings break the stillness and yield to the
moderate waltz tempo characterizing the Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, with Beast as contrabassoon
proposing marriage and revealing himself upon Beauty’s acceptance to be a handsome prince, once bewitched.
Solo violin and cello in a falling chromatic line, reminiscent of the opening of Debussy’s Faun prelude,
announce the next tableau: Tom Thumb is lost in the woods, and Ravel’s long-breathed melody circles
appropriately around itself as chirping birds eat the crumbs Tom has left as a guide. The gentle but constant
motion leads to a harp and celesta cadenza followed by Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas. With its
black-key pentatonicism and shimmering orchestral colors, this is the liveliest of the movements. Porcelain
girls and boys regale the exotic little empress in her bath with music, their instruments mimicked in the
orchestra by harp, celesta, glockenspiel, piccolo, and flute. As the movement ends, we are treated to a
summary of previous themes, most notably a return of the opening horn fanfare and the Sleeping Beauty motif
heard now in the solo violin. The final movement begins with a recomposition of the opening theme
transferred to strings in triple meter and leads to The Fairy Garden with its brilliant combination of celesta,
harp, and solo violin. This quintessential, delicate and mysterious “fairy music” builds to a majestic
Apotheosis with full orchestra as the Sleeping Beauty opens her eyes.
Helen M. Greenwald
Musicologist HELEN M. GREENWALD, who has taught at the New England Conservatory since 1991, writes and
lectures internationally on a wide range of musical subjects. She is editor of "The Oxford Handbook of Opera"
published in October 2014 by Oxford University Press.
THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE OF “MOTHER GOOSE” in the form of the familiar, fivemovement suite was given by Walter Damrosch with the New York Symphony Orchestra on November 8, 1912.
THOUGH THE “MOTHER GOOSE” SUITE has been performed frequently in Boston Symphony concerts
(first in December 1913 under Karl Muck, and most recently in a series of subscription concerts shared by
conductors Stéphane Denève and Marcelo Lehninger in February 2012, followed by a Denève-led Carnegie
Hall performance of the suite that March), the BSO’s first performance of the complete ballet score was given
only on April 21, 1974, as part of a Pension Fund concert under Seiji Ozawa’s direction, subsequent BSO
performances being led by Michael Tilson Thomas, Ozawa again, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Haitink, André
Previn (including the most recent subscription performances, in April 2007), and Ludovic Morlot (the most
recent Tanglewood performance, on August 20, 2010).
Maurice Ravel
Piano Concerto in G
JOSEPH MAURICE RAVEL was born in Ciboure near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Basses-Pyrénées, in the Basque
region of France just a short distance from the Spanish border, on March 7, 1875, and died in Paris on
December 28, 1937. He composed his Piano Concerto in G, along with his other piano concerto (the one for
left hand), in 1930 and 1931; he conducted the first performance of the G major concerto, with pianist
Marguerite Long, at a Ravel festival concert in the Salle Pleyel, Paris, on January 14, 1932, with the
Lamoureux Orchestra.
IN ADDITION TO THE PIANO SOLOIST, the score calls for an orchestra of piccolo, flute, oboe, English
horn, clarinets in E-flat and B-flat, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, triangle, snare drum,
cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, wood block, whip, harp, and strings.
At about the same time that Paul Wittgenstein, a concert pianist who had lost his right arm during World War
I, asked Ravel if he would write a concerto for him, Ravel's longtime interpreter Marguerite Long asked for a
concerto for herself. Thus, although he had written no piano music for a dozen years, he found himself in 1930
writing two concertos more or less simultaneously. The concerto for the left hand turned out to be one of his
most serious compositions, but the G major concerto, dedicated to and first performed by Madame Long, falls
into the delightful category of high-quality diversion. Ravel's favorite term of praise was divertissement de
luxe, and he succeeded in producing just such a piece with this concerto.
The motoric high jinks of the first movement are set off by the cracking of a whip, though they occasionally
yield to lyric contemplation. The second movement is a total contrast, hushed and calm, with a tune widely
regarded as one of the best melodies Ravel ever wrote. The effort cost him dearly, and it may have been here
that he first realized that his powers of composition were failing; they broke down completely in 1932, when
the shock of an automobile collision brought on a nervous breakdown, and he found himself thereafter
incapable of sustained work. For this concerto, he found it necessary to write the Adagio assai one or two
measures at a time. The final Presto brings back the rushing motor rhythms of the opening, and both
movements now and then bear witness that Ravel had traveled in America and had become acquainted with
jazz and recent popular music. He also met George Gershwin and told him that he thought highly of his
Rhapsody in Blue; perhaps it is a reminiscence of that score that can be heard in some of the “blue” passages
here and there.
Steven Ledbetter
STEVEN LEDBETTER
was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.
THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCES of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G were given by two
orchestras—the Boston Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra—on the same date, April 22, 1932, a
Friday afternoon, with the Ravel concerto as the second piece on each of their programs. Both concerts began
at 2:30 p.m., but the Boston performance of the Ravel would have been somewhat earlier, since the BSO’s
program opener (Henri Martelli’s Concerto for Orchestra) was shorter than Philadelphia’s (the Sibelius
Fourth Symphony).
THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCES of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G
were led by Serge Koussevitzky on April 22 and 23, 1932, with soloist Jesús María Sanromá, on which
occasion the program book stated that “This concerto was intended for the Jubilee of the Boston Symphony
Orchestra; but though, it is said, Ravel had worked continuously at it for more than two years, he was not
satisfied.” As reported in the BSO’s 1938 program book when the orchestra next performed the concerto,
again with Sanromá and Koussevitzky (followed by out-of-town performances in New York, Rochester,
Buffalo, Toledo, Pittsburgh, and Brooklyn), Ravel had been asked to write a piece for the BSO’s fiftieth
anniversary and did speak of a piano concerto, but “the score was not forthcoming from the meticulous and
painstaking composer.” Subsequent BSO performances featured pianists Leonard Bernstein (doubling as
conductor), Nicole Henriot (with Charles Munch), Jocy De Oliveira (Eleazar de Carvalho), Lorin Hollander
(Erich Leinsdorf), Alexis Weissenberg (William Steinberg), Peter Serkin (Seiji Ozawa), Alicia de Larrocha
(Edo de Waart and Leonard Slatkin), Tzimon Barto (Christoph Eschenbach), Cecile Licad (Carl St. Clair),
Mitsuko Uchida (Ozawa), Hélène Grimaud (James Conlon), Louis Lortie (Emmanuel Villaume), Martha
Argerich (Charles Dutoit), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (Sir Andrew Davis; later with James Levine at Tanglewood
in August 2007, followed by European tour performances in Lucerne and Berlin), Jean-Yves Thibaudet (first
with Emmanuel Krivine in August 2002 at Tanglewood; more recently with James Levine in October 2007, for
Opening Night, subscription performances, and a repeat performance at Carnegie Hall in New York; and
again with Krivine on July 24, 2011, the most recent Tanglewood performance), and Cédric Tiberghien (the
most recent subscription performances, with Christoph Eschenbach in March 2012, followed by a
performance at Carnegie Hall).
Thomas Adès
“Three Studies from Couperin” for chamber orchestra (2006)
THOMAS JOSEPH EDMUND ADÈS was born in London on March 1, 1971, and lives there. “Three Studies
from Couperin” was commissioned by the Paul Sacher Foundation in association with the Siemens
Foundation, for Kammerorchester Basel (the Basel Chamber Orchestra). The composer led the
Kammerorchester Basel in the first performance on April 21, 2006, at the Martinskirche, Basel, Switzerland.
THE SCORE OF “THREE STUDIES FROM COUPERIN” calls for small orchestra of two flutes (with alto
and bass flute), clarinet, bassoon, two horns, B-flat trumpet, percussion (one player: bass marimba, two small
metal bars or anvils, bass drum, three timpani, five roto-toms), and two small string orchestras. The duration
of the piece is about twelve minutes.
As with a painter copying the work of an older master, musical transcription is a time-honored activity. For
instrumentalists and conductors, it’s a good way to expand the repertoire of one’s own instrument or
ensemble; it’s often simultaneously an act of reverence and study. This is particularly the case for
transcriptions by composers: J.S. Bach learned much from reworking concertos of Vivaldi and Telemann, in
the process creating a new genre (the keyboard concerto) and a repertoire for use in his Collegium Musicum
concerts. Mozart, apparently to assimilate Baroque counterpoint, transcribed Bach keyboard fugues for string
trio; Liszt, going from large to small, transcribed Beethoven symphonies for solo piano. In his arrangements of
music from opera, which range from virtuosic show-stoppers to deep artistic contemplations, he carried the art
further, verging on the “fantasia” approach that had great currency in the later 19th century. (Meanwhile
virtually everyone was transcribing folk and vernacular music, too—Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, for
example.) In the 20th century, side-by-side with such more or less true-to-life recastings as Ravel’s
orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (originally for solo piano), we have Webern coaxing
Bach and Schubert into the new Modernist age of diverse and specific instrumental timbre.
The response of the transcriber is not merely simply to map keyboard notes onto orchestral instruments, but to
amplify those aspects of the piece that seem particularly pertinent and interesting. Radical examples (such as
Webern’s) dissect and disassemble their models. We can find transcription in any musical era, including the
present. The BSO has recently performed Colin Matthews’s orchestrations, made within the past decade, of
Debussy piano preludes, as well as Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos’s of piano works by Albéniz.
In his Three Studies from Couperin, Thomas Adès indulges his love for the French Baroque composer
François Couperin (1668-1733), sometimes called “le Grand” to distinguish his mighty career from that of a
lesser-known musical ancestor by the same name. (The family was extensive: the New Grove Dictionary calls
the more significant François “the most important member of the Couperin dynasty.”) Along with a large
catalogue of works in other media, Couperin was, with the Spain-dwelling Italian Domenico Scarlatti, the
greatest harpsichord composer of his time—which is the same as saying the greatest in history, since that
instrument’s heyday passed with the development of the fortepiano beginning in the mid-1700s. We make the
judgment based not only on the sheer quantity and consistent quality of his works, but also on the variety of
his compositional techniques and the range of his poetic imagination. Like Scarlatti’s similarly broad
catalogue, these pieces, which number in the hundreds, also display an absolutely idiomatic response to the
harpsichord and make the most of its quite specific performance capabilities, such as its greater range of
distinct timbres compared to the piano.
Most of Couperin’s harpsichord compositions are collected in four Livres de pièces de clavecin, published
between 1713 and 1730. Those four books alone (and leaving aside much vocal and chamber music) amount
to more than 200 pieces, collected into suites or “ordres” each exploring a single compositional or poetic idea
via several short and imaginatively varied pieces in a single key, almost like variations of one another. For
example, Ordre XIII from the third book contains four distinct pieces in B minor: “The young lilies”; “The
cane”; “The engaging one”; “French follies, or the Dominos”; and “The soul in anguish” (one of the works
Adès has transcribed). Within the Dominos movement are twelve tiny pieces on a single chord progression,
each a domino of a different color and mood, e.g., “Fidelity, or the blue domino,” and “Taciturn jealousy, the
dark-gray domino.” It’s a quite extraordinary feat of compositional technique and imagination—and this is
just one suite in one book. Couperin brought compositional tools both modern and archaic to bear on these
pieces, and it’s the range and quirkiness of these works, and the particularly focused, self-contained musical
points he makes, that are the main attraction for Thomas Adès.
Adès’s own works are, virtually without exception, based on what’s usually called an extramusical idea. This
is most explicit in his dramatic works, naturally, the Shakespeare-based opera The Tempest, commissioned by
the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and premiered there in 2004, and the chamber opera Powder Her Face
(1995). (He is in the midst of writing a third, a work for the Salzburg Festival based on the filmmaker Luis
Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel.) Character, narrative, place, and the relationships among them are part and
parcel of the larger conception that is the work itself. In his instrumental works such as the violin concerto
Concentric Paths and the piano concerto In Seven Days, narrative infrastructures support and are supported in
turn by intricate musical forms, among which Adès’s favorite is a spiraling, harmonically transforming
structure similar to the Baroque form of the passacaglia (or chaconne). The composer has also worked broadly
in pastiche and stylistic imitation (particularly in Powder Her Face), which are other ways of engaging with
musical models. A talented pianist and conductor as well, Adès as a performer has publicly explored the
repertoire that interests him most, including conducting the BSO on several occasions here at Symphony Hall
in music of such composers as Sibelius and Prokofiev, and performing as pianist with the Boston Symphony
Chamber Players.
Adès’s interest in adapting and modernizing traditional ideas illuminates his interest in Couperin, whose music
has been a persistent presence in Adès’s work. He had already orchestrated one of Couperin’s pieces as a
standalone transcription, Les Baricades mistérieuses (“The Mysterious Barricades,” 1994) for five players,
based on a piece from Couperin’s Book II, and part of the first movement of his orchestral near-symphony
Asyla (1997) was also based on Couperin. The present triptych, for chamber orchestra with a double string
section, takes works from three different books. “Les Amusemens” (“Amusements”) is the final work in
Ordre VII, from Book II. Ordre VII’s pieces are in G major or minor; “Amusements” is in G major, with an
elusive metrical profile that keeps one guessing where the downbeat is, with bass line and melodic line often
not seeming to align. Adès sets this piece for low instruments, with alto and bass flutes blurring the surface of
the heavily ornamented main melodic line; things become yet fuzzier when flute gives way seamlessly to
clarinet. Interior and bass accompaniments shift between orchestras, with surging changes in timbre deemphasizing what the listener would typically expect to be the most important, foreground details.
In “Les Tours de passe-passe” (“The sleight-of-hand,” Book IV, Ordre XXII, No. 6, D major), Couperin’s
original is a perpetuum mobile of constant speed. Adès creates the illusion of multiple, shifting speeds through
emphasis, via changing instrumental textures, on different layers of the music, with little flecks of color in the
muted brass punctuating the mutating surfaces. In “L’Âme en peine” (“The soul in distress,” Book III, Ordre
XIII, No. 5, B minor), Adès carefully alters Couperin’s straightforward notated rhythms to reflect the kind of
tempo push-pull a solo player, intensifying the chromatic expressivity of the piece, might add to a
performance. The shifting timbres and spaces between the two string orchestras, with shadings in the winds
and percussion (the latter accenting what would have been the harpsichord’s deep bass cadences), might be
compared to the chiaroscuro blending of colors in Baroque painting.
Robert Kirzinger
Composer and annotator ROBERT KIRZINGER is Assistant Director of Program Publications of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra.
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Symphony No. 36 in C, K.425, “Linz”
JOANNES CHRISOSTOMUS WOLFGANG GOTTLIEB MOZART—who began calling himself Wolfgango
Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777 (he used “Amadeus” only in jest)—was born in Salzburg,
Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. He composed his “Linz” symphony in
about four days, beginning sometime after his arrival at Linz at 9 a.m. on October 30, 1783, and having it
ready for performance by Count Thun’s orchestra on November 4.
THE SCORE OF THE “LINZ” SYMPHONY calls for two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets,
timpani, and strings.
Linz is Austria’s third largest city, industrial, not especially attractive, but renowned for a heady chocolate,
almond, and jam cake, and for this symphony of Mozart’s. Wolfgang and Constanze Mozart visited there for
three weeks in the fall of 1783 as guests of Count Johann Joseph Thun, an old friend of the Mozart family.
They had gone from Vienna to Salzburg to present Constanze to Wolfgang’s father and in the hope of
reconciling him to their marriage. Leopold Mozart, however, was adamantly difficult, and the young couple,
unhappy about the storm clouds chez Papa, were relieved to get away. When they got to Linz after stops at
Vöcklabruck, Lambach (where Mozart arrived just in time to accompany the Agnus Dei at Mass), and
Ebelsberg they were met at the city gates by a servant of the Thun household, to make sure they not stop at an
inn, but go instead to the family’s house in Minorite Square. A letter from Mozart to his father tells us that
Count Thun had already scheduled a concert for the following Tuesday, November 4; since he had no
symphony with him, Mozart had to “work on a new one at head-over-heels speed.”
It is a grandly inventive work that Mozart made in such a hurry. For the first time, he begins a symphony with
a slow introduction, declamatory at first, then yielding and full of pathos, and cannily creating suspense. The
Allegro to which it leads is energetic, festive, with a touch of the march about it. And how delightful the first
theme is, with those slow notes that so carefully fail to prepare us for the sudden rush of the third and fourth
bars. Only the recapitulation—more of a repeat than the continuation of development we are apt to expect
from Mozart at this point in his life—reminds us of the daunting deadline against which he wrote, as does the
regularity of the recapitulation of the finale.
Some editions give a marking of “Poco adagio” for the second movement, but that is incorrect, though not
altogether wrong in spirit. This Andante, touched by the 6/8 lilt of the siciliano, is in F major, but yearns
always for minor-mode harmonies. Unusual is the presence of trumpets and drums, most often silent in the not
necessarily so slow “slow movements” of classical symphonies. It seems likely that it was from this Andante
that Beethoven got the idea of using trumpets and drums so effectively in the second movement of his
Symphony No. 1, and the Mozart scholar Neal Zaslaw suggests that here could be the inspiration for the
dramatic trumpet-and-drum interventions in the great Largo of Haydn’s Symphony No. 88.
The minuet is courtly; the Trio, which is piano all the way through, demurely rustic. The scoring in the Trio,
for oboe an octave above the violins and bassoon an octave below (sometimes in canon, sometimes a sixth
below), is delicious. The finale brings back the first movement’s exuberance, but in heightened form: the first
page alone contains three distinct ideas. Here is Mozart at his most dazzlingly prodigal. The development
begins with an ordinary G major chord, made not at all ordinary by being laid out as a descending zigzag, like
lightning in slow motion. This zigzag proves to be a powerful motor indeed as first violins, cellos, bassoon,
oboes, and violas (in a most striking touch of color) explore it by turns. The recapitulation proceeds as
expected, which is to say, delightfully. There is no coda.
Michael Steinberg
was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1976 to 1979, and after
that of the San Francisco Symphony and New York Philharmonic. Oxford University Press has published
three compilations of his program notes, devoted to symphonies, concertos, and the great works for chorus
and orchestra.
MICHAEL STEINBERG
THE FIRST UNITED STATES PERFORMANCE of Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony was given by the Orchestral
Union under Carl Zerrahn’s direction on March 28, 1860, at the Boston Music Hall.
THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCES of Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony were
given by Georg Henschel on November 16, 1882, in Providence, Rhode Island, and then on the 18th in
Symphony Hall, subsequent BSO performances being given by Wilhelm Gericke, Pierre Monteux, Leonard
Bernstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, David Zinman, Seiji Ozawa, William
Steinberg, Charles Dutoit, James Conlon, André Previn, Federico Cortese, Sir Colin Davis (including the
most recent subscription performances, in January 2008), and Kurt Masur (including the most recent
Tanglewood performance, on July 22, 2012).
To Read and Hear More...
Thomas Adès’s website, thomasades.com, is the most comprehensive source for up-to-date information about
the composer. Basic information can also be found on the websites of his publisher, Faber Music
(fabermusic.com), and his record label, EMI Classics (emiclassics.com). The Faber site features a works-list
and program notes for many of Adès’s pieces. A recently published book, Thomas Adès: Full of Noises,
conversations with Tom Service, presents Adès as a widely knowledgeable polemicist and offers some
commentary on method and on specific pieces, but be aware that this is neither a biography nor a methodical
survey of the composer’s music (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Tom Service is a respected and thoughtful
English critic writing for The Guardian. The brief Adès article in the 2001 New Grove, not yet updated, was
written by Arnold Whitall.
There are two commercial recordings of Three Studies from Couperin: the composer’s own, leading the
Chamber Orchestra of Europe (EMI, on a disc with the Concerto for Violin, Concentric Paths, with soloist
Anthony Marwood; Tevot, and the Overture, Waltz, and Finale from Powder Her Face); and the Norwegian
Radio Orchestra’s with conductor Andrew Manze (BIS, with the Violin Concerto). In addition to the above,
much of Adès’s music has been released on EMI. Taking single works from a number of earlier releases, in
fall 2011 EMI released a two-disc “Anthology” that includes the string quartet Arcadiana, the Quintet for
Piano and Strings, America: A Prophecy, and the Adès/Marwood recording of the Violin Concerto, along with
a number of other pieces. Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra recorded his
quasi-symphony Asyla (on a disc including his Concerto Conciso, These Premises Are Alarmed, Chamber
Symphony, and ...but all shall be well). The opera Powder Her Face is also available, performed by the
Almeida Opera and conducted by the composer. Other releases include a live New York Philharmonic
performance of Polaris under Alan Gilbert (released by the Philharmonic for download via iTunes); a disc of
chamber music with the composer and the Calder Quartet (Signum Classics); the piano concerto In Seven
Days with soloist Nicolas Hodges and the London Sinfonietta led by Adès (Signum Classics), and both a CD
and a DVD of the opera The Tempest from Covent Garden performances of March 2007 (EMI). Adès as a
performer of others’ music has released a piano recital disc of works by Grieg, Busoni, Janáˇcek, Stanchinsky,
Kurtág, and Castiglioni, and accompanies tenor Ian Bostridge in Janáˇcek’s song cycle The Diary of One Who
Disappeared (both also EMI). A disc of music for cello and piano with cellist Steven Isserlis, “Lieux
retrouvés,” includes works by Liszt, Fauré, Kurtág, Janáˇcek, and Adès (Hyperion).
Robert Kirzinger
Roger Nichols’s Ravel, published in 2011 (Yale University Press), has now replaced his earlier biography of
the composer that was part of the “Master Musicians” series. Nichols also assembled Ravel Remembered,
which brings together recollections from musicians and non-musicians who knew the composer personally
(Farrar Straus & Giroux). Gerald Larner’s Maurice Ravel is one of the many well-illustrated volumes in the
biographical series “20th-Century Composers” (Phaidon paperback). Also useful are The Cambridge
Companion to Ravel, edited by Deborah Mawer (Cambridge University Press); Arbie Orenstein’s Ravel: Man
and Musician (Dover); Orenstein’s A Ravel Reader: Correspondence, Articles, Interviews (also Dover), and
Benjamin Ivry’s Maurice Ravel: a Life (Welcome Rain). Michael J. Puri’s Ravel the Decadent: Sublimation
and Desire examines the composer’s aesthetic, and that of his time, through close analysis of his music,
particularly Daphnis et Chloé (Oxford University Press). Deborah Mawer’s The Ballets of Maurice Ravel:
Creation and Interpretation is also of interest (Ashgate Publishing). Laurence Davies’s Ravel Orchestral
Music in the series of BBC Music Guides provides a good brief introduction to that subject (University of
Washington paperback). Also out of print but worth seeking is Davies’s The Gallic Muse, a collection of
essays on Fauré, Duparc, Debussy, Satie, Ravel, and Poulenc (Barnes). Michael Steinberg’s program notes on
both of Ravel’s piano concertos are in his compilation volume The Concerto–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford
paperback).
The Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded Ravel’s complete Mother Goose under both Bernard Haitink
(Philips) and Seiji Ozawa (Deutsche Grammophon) as part of their respective Ravel cycles with the orchestra.
Charles Munch recorded the Mother Goose Suite with the BSO in 1958 (RCA). Noteworthy recordings by
French conductors and orchestras of the complete Mother Goose include Jean Martinon’s with the Orchestre
de Paris (Decca) and André Cluytens’s with the Orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire (EMI). Other renditions
of interest include Charles Dutoit’s of the complete score with the Montreal Symphony (Decca), André
Previn’s, also of the complete score, with the London Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon),
Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s of the suite with the Rotterdam Philharmonic (EMI), and Michael Tilson Thomas’s
of the suite with the Philharmonia Orchestra (Sony Classical). For a recording of the four-hand piano suite, try
pianists Martha Argerich and Mikhail Pletnev on Deutsche Grammophon, Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier on
Chandos, or the 1951 recording by Gaby and Robert Casedesus at one point available on Columbia
“Masterworks Heritage.”
Jean-Yves Thibaudet recorded Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony
Orchestra (Decca). The Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded it with soloist Nicole Henriot-Schweitzer in
1958 under Charles Munch (RCA) and with Lorin Hollander in 1963 under Erich Leinsdorf (RCA). Other
recordings include (listed alphabetically by pianist) Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s with Pierre Boulez and the
Cleveland Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), Martha Argerich’s with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin
Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon “Originals”), Leonard Bernstein’s as both soloist and conductor with
the Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Sony Classical), Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’s with Ettore Gracis and
the Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI “Great Recordings of the Century”), and Krystian Zimerman’s with Pierre
Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon). Worth seeking is a noteworthy historic release
that paired the two Ravel piano concertos in recordings with their original soloists: Marguerite Long plays the
G major concerto with Ravel conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra, from 1932; and Paul Wittgenstein plays
Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand with Bruno Walter conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra of
Amsterdam, from 1937 (at one time available on Urania).
The important modern biography of Mozart is Maynard Solomon’s Mozart: A Life (HarperPerennial
paperback). Peter Gay’s wonderfully readable Mozart is a concise, straightforward introduction to the
composer’s life, reputation, and artistry (Penguin paperback). John Rosselli’s The life of Mozart is one of the
compact composer biographies in the series “Musical Lives” (Cambridge paperback). Christoph Wolff’s
Mozart at the Gateway to his Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788-1791 takes a close look at the realities,
prospects, and interrupted promise of the composer’s final years (Norton). For further delving there are
Stanley Sadie’s Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781 (Oxford); Volkmar Braunbehrens’s Mozart in Vienna,
1781-1791, which focuses on the composer’s final decade (HarperPerennial paperback); Julian Rushton’s
Mozart: His Life and Work, in the “Master Musicians” series (Oxford), and Robert Gutman’s Mozart: A
Cultural Biography (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Harvest paperback). Useful reference works include Peter
Clive’s Mozart and his Circle: A Biographical Dictionary (Yale University Press); Neal Zaslaw’s Mozart’s
Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford paperback), and The Mozart Compendium: A
Guide to Mozart’s Life and Music, edited by H.C. Robbins Landon (Schirmer). A Guide to the Symphony,
edited by Robert Layton, includes a chapter by H.C. Robbins Landon on “The Symphonies of Mozart”
(Oxford paperback). Alfred Einstein’s Mozart: The Man, the Music is a classic older study (Oxford
paperback). Michael Steinberg’s program note on Mozart’s Linz Symphony is in his compilation volume The
Symphony–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford paperback). Donald Francis Tovey’s essay on the Linz Symphony is
among his Essays in Musical Analysis (Oxford).
The Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded the Linz Symphony with Erich Leinsdorf conducting in 1967
(RCA). A 1958 telecast from Sanders Theatre of Charles Munch leading the BSO in the Linz Symphony is
available on DVD (ICA Classics). Other recordings include (listed alphabetically by conductor) Sir Colin
Davis’s with the Dresden Staatskapelle (Decca), Christoph von Dohnányi’s with the Cleveland Orchestra
(Decca), James Levine’s with the Vienna Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon), Sir Charles Mackerras’s
with the Prague Chamber Orchestra (Telarc), and Sir Neville Marriner’s with the Academy of St. Martin in the
Fields (EMI).
Marc Mandel
Guest Artists
Bernard Haitink
Bernard Haitink’s conducting career began sixty years ago with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in his
native Holland. He went on to be chief conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra for twenty-seven years, as
well as music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and principal
conductor of the London Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He
is Patron of the Radio Philharmonic and Conductor Emeritus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as an
honorary member of both the Berlin Philharmonic and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. His 2014-15 season
began with an anniversary concert with the Radio Philharmonic in the Concertgebouw, and includes return
visits to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (opening their season with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis),
four programs with the London Symphony Orchestra in London, Madrid, and Paris, and the conclusion of a
Brahms cycle with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Amsterdam and Paris. He also conducts the Berlin
Philharmonic in the Baden-Baden Easter Festival and returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Boston
Symphony Orchestra. Committed to the development of young musical talent, he gives an annual conducting
master class at the Lucerne Easter Festival. This season, in addition, he gives conducting classes to students of
the Hochschule der Kunst, Zurich, in collaboration with the Musikkollegium Winterthur, and a workshop with
students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in conjunction with players from the London
Symphony Orchestra. Bernard Haitink has an extensive discography for Philips, Decca, and EMI, as well as
the many new live recording labels established by orchestras themselves in recent years, such as the London
Symphony, Chicago Symphony, and Bayerischer Rundfunk. He has received many awards and honors in
recognition of his services to music, including several honorary doctorates, an honorary Knighthood and
Companion of Honour in the United Kingdom, and the House Order of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands.
Bernard Haitink made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in February 1971. Besides concerts in Boston,
he has led the orchestra at Tanglewood (where he appeared for the first time in 1994), Carnegie Hall (most
recently in January and February 2014, repeating his two BSO subscription programs of last winter), and on a
2001 tour of European summer music festivals. Prior to this spring, when he closes the BSO’s subscription
season with two weeks of concerts, his most recent BSO appearances were at Symphony Hall for two
subscription programs in January/February 2014, when he led music of Ravel, Stucky, Schumann, and
Brahms, and at Tanglewood in August 2013, leading music of Mozart, Mahler, and the BSO’s traditional
season-ending performance of Beethoven’s Ninth.
Jean-Yves Thibaudet
Combining a poetic musical sensibility with dazzling technical prowess, Jean-Yves Thibaudet has performed
around the world for more than thirty years and recorded more than fifty albums. His 2014-2015 season
encompasses orchestral appearances, chamber music, and recitals, displaying a repertoire including familiar
pieces, unfamiliar works by well-known composers, and new compositions. He also follows his passion for
education and fostering the next generation of performers by becoming the first-ever resident artist at the
Colburn School of Los Angeles this year and for the next two. Among his appearances this season are concerts
with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; a tour of Germany and Austria with Tugan
Sokhiev and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; Gershwin, Ravel, and Liszt with the Stuttgart Radio
Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, and Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne; MacMillan’s
Piano Concerto No. 3 (which he premiered in 2011) with both the St. Louis Symphony and New York
Philharmonic under Stéphane Denève; a duo-recital with Gautier Capuçon at the Festival de Pâques in Aix-enProvence; Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, one of his signature pieces, with the Atlanta Symphony and Boston
Symphony; Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety in San Francisco with Michael Tilson Thomas; and both the Ravel
Piano Concerto and Messiaen’s Turangalîla with the Chicago Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen as part of
that orchestra’s 2015 “Reveries and Passions” Festival. A distinguished recording artist, Mr. Thibaudet has
been nominated for two Grammy awards and won the Schallplattenpreis, the Diapason d’Or, Choc du Monde
de la Musique, a Gramophone Award, two Echo awards, and the Edison Prize. Known for his style and
elegance on and off the traditional concert stage, he has had an impact on the world of fashion, film, and
philanthropy. His concert wardrobe is by celebrated London designer Vivienne Westwood. In 2004 he served
as president of the prestigious Hospices de Beaune, an annual charity auction in Burgundy, France. He had an
onscreen cameo in the Bruce Beresford feature film on Alma Mahler, Bride of the Wind, and his playing is
showcased throughout the soundtrack. He was the soloist on Dario Marianelli’s Oscar- and Golden Globe-
award winning score for the film Atonement and Oscar-nominated score for Pride and Prejudice; he recorded
the soundtrack of the 2012 film Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, composed by Alexandre Desplat; and he
was featured in the 2000 PBS/Smithsonian special Piano Grand!, a piano performance program hosted by
Billy Joel paying tribute to the 300th anniversary of the piano. Jean-Yves Thibaudet was born in Lyon, France,
where he began his piano studies at five and made his first public appearance at seven. At twelve, he entered
the Paris Conservatory to study with Aldo Ciccolini and Lucette Descaves, a friend and collaborator of Ravel.
He won the Premier Prix du Conservatoire at fifteen and, three years later, the Young Concert Artists
Auditions in New York City. In 2001 the Republic of France awarded him the prestigious Chevalier dans
l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2002 he was awarded the Premio Pegasus from the Spoleto Festival in Italy
for his artistic achievements and his longstanding involvement with the festival. In 2007 he received the
Victoire d’Honneur, a lifetime career achievement award and the highest honor given by France’s Victoires de
la Musique. The Hollywood Bowl honored him for his musical achievements by inducting him into its Hall of
Fame in 2010. Previously a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Mr. Thibaudet was promoted to the
title of Officier by the French Minister of Culture in 2012. Jean-Yves Thibaudet made his BSO debut at
Tanglewood in 1992 and has since performed on numerous occasions with the orchestra at Tanglewood, in
Boston, and at Carnegie Hall. His most recent subscription appearances were in November 2012, his most
recent Tanglewood appearance in August 2014. At Tanglewood he has also appeared in Ozawa Hall,
including two 2011 recitals encompassing the complete solo piano music of Ravel.