Boston Philharmonic

Benjamin Zander, Conductor

Thursday 4/25/2 Sanders Theater, Harvard University

Charles Ives (1874 – 1954): The Unanswered Question
Aaron Copland (1865 – 1957): Old American Songs – The Little Horses, I Bought Me a Cat, Ching-a-ring Chaw. William Warfield, Bass-baritone
Joseph Schwantner(1943 -): New Morning for the World (Daybreak of Freedom) William Warfield, narrator
Gustav Holst (1874 – 1934): The Planets

This was the last of this year’s four concerts.

Karen and I have concluded that these evenings have been so successful for us that we have already signed up for next year, though we have put in for seats further back, in the center mezzanine. This year’s row E seats were very close to dead center but too close for my tastes. So next year we will see how a bit more distance and a little elevation may improve our experience.

This evenings program started with the 1906-1908 piece, The Unanswered Question. I have heard this piece in recording, but clearly never understood anything about it until this performance. Ives called for a string orchestra with a trumpet and flutes off stage. Zander took full advantage of Sanders layout to stage a startling bit of ethereal music. The lone trumpet was up in the balcony on the left. The flutes were placed across the hall on the opposite balcony. The stage was dark and empty. The string orchestra was heard coming from back stage. The music is a strange amalgam of fairly straight forward tonal choral sonorities from the strings juxtaposed to the antiphonal janglings and calls back and forth between the trumpet and flutes.

The Copland adaptations of folk songs were sung by William Warfield, (here is a profile (opens new window) from the Riverwalk site) who is now 82 years old and whom both Karen and I remember from his appearances on TV in the 50’s. As an aside, he was born in West Helena, Arkansas very close to the site of the King Biscuit Flour Blues Festival that Karen and I attended a couple of years ago. Age has taken a predictable toll, but the spirit and heart is very much still there.

Warfield was thrilling.

The Schwantner piece is large and filled with an extensive percussion section. Warfield read the text of selections from Martin Luther King speeches. The program notes point out that the origins of this piece are with the Director of the Eastman School suggesting in 1979 that Schwantner compose something that would use Willie Stargell, a baseball player, as narrator. Schwantner and Stargell came to the King text selections collaboratively

The final piece, The Planets, was composed in 1914 – 1916 only a decade later than the Ives’ piece that opened the concert. This is another piece that I have heard only in recording. The opening section, Mars, the bringer of war, contains music later appropriated by Hollywood studio composers and would probably sound familiar to most. The orchestra is huge, including two harps, and several very obscure instruments, bass oboe and baritone tuba. Like the Ives the last section, Neptune, the mystic, fads away to only the sounds of an off stage women’s chorus.

Zander’s introductory remarks about each piece were as usual, fun and informative. The orchestra played with obvious gusto and pleasure throughout. Although I began the season with niggling complaints about the woodwinds not being completely up to their task, I close with much more enthusiasm for that section and a continuing enjoyment of the sound and precision of the strings.

4/26/2