UMS Concert Program, March 2, 1957: Seventy-eighth Annual Choral Union Concert Series -- The Cleveland Orchestra

Season: 1956-1957
Concert: Tenth
Complete Series: 3208
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Charles A. Sink, President
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Lester McCoy, Conductor
First Concert 1956-1957 Complete Series 3209
Sixty-fourth Annual
MAY FESTIVAL
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
ALEXANDER BRAILOWSKY, Pianist
Thursday Evening, May 2, 1957, at 8:30 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
PROGRAM
Compositions of LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN "Leonore" Overture No. 3, Op. 72
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 Allegro vivace e con brio Allegretto scherzando Menuetto e trio
Finale: allegro vivace
INTERMISSION
Concerto No. 3 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 37 Allegro con brio Largo
Rondo: allegro
Alexander Brailowskt
Mr. Brailowsky uses the Steinway piano
The Steinway is the official piano o) the University Musical Society. The Lester Piano is the official piano of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
ARS LONGA VITA BREVIS
1957 -UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY CONCERTS -1958
Seventy-ninth Annual Choral Union Series
Lily Pons, Soprano........Thursday, October 3
Boston Symphony Orchestra.....Thursday, October 17
Charles Munch, Conductor
Yehudi Menuhin, Violinist......Tuesday, October 29
The Cleveland Orchestra......Sunday, November 10
George Szell, Conductor
William Warfield, Baritone.....Tuesday, November 26
Prague Philharmonic Orchestra .... Thursday, February 13
Karel Ancerl, Conductor
Obernkirchen Children's Choir .... Tuesday, February 25 Chicago Symphony Orchestra......Sunday, March 2
Fritz Reiner, Conductor
Myra Hess, Pianist.........Saturday, March 8
Vienna on Parade.........Wednesday, April 2
Capt. Julius Herrmann, Conductor
Season Tickets: Remaining unclaimed seats in Block A, $17.00; Block B, $14.00; Block C, $12.00; Block D, $10.00
Twelfth Annual Extra Concert Series
The NBC Opera Company....... Sunday, October 6
Peter Herman Adler, Conductor
Florence Festival Orchestra..... Thursday, October 24
Carlo Zecchi, Conductor
Rudolf Serkin, Pianist....... Friday, November IS
Vienna Choir Boys (2:30 p.m.)..... Sunday, January 12
Mantovani and his New Music..... Tuesday, March 11
Season Tickets: Block A, $8.50; Block B, $7.00; Block C, $6.00; Block D, $5.00
Annual Christmas Concerts
Messiah (Handel).......December 7 and 8, 1957
Adele Addison, Soprano Paul Matthen, Bass
Eunice Alberts, Contralto Choral Union and Orchestra
Harold Haugh, Tenor Lester McCoy, Conductor
Tickets: 75c and 50c (either concert). On sale beginning October 15.
Eighteenth Annual Chamber Music Festival
Budapest String Quartet......February 21, 22, 23, 1958
Joseph Roisman, First Violin Boris Kroyt, Viola
Alexander Schneider, Second Violin Mischa Schneider, Violoncello Assisted by Robert Courte, Viola
Season Tickets: $3.50 and $2.50. On sale beginning October 15.
Sixty-fifth Annual May Festival
Six Concerts..........May 1, 2, 3, 4, 1958
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, William R. Smith, Assistant Conductor. University Choral Union, Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor, and Lester McCoy, Conductor. Festival Youth Chorus, Marguerite Hood, Conductor. Soloists to be announced.
The right is reserved to make such changes in dates and personnel as necessity may require.
For tickets or information, address Charles A. Sink, President, University Musical Society, Burton Memorial Tower, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
maypole, and which, far from being a danger, gives rise to 'happy and thankful feelings' afterwards. In the whole symphony there is not a note of which the musical value would be altered if cuckoos and nightingales, and country folk, and thunder and lightening, and the howling and whistling of the wind, were things that had never been named by man, either in connexion with music or with anything else. Whether we have words for common objects and events of the countryside, or whether we have no words, there are feelings evoked by these objects in proportion to our intelligent susceptibility; and the great master of any language, whether that language be music, painting, sculpture, architecture, or speech, can invoke the deepest part of these feelings in his own terms. And his art will always remain pure as long as he holds to Beethoven's dictum; which may be philosophically re-translated 'more the expression of feelings than the illustration of things' . . ."
Music For Orchestra, Op. 50.....Wallingford Riegger
Mr. Riegger writes as follows about his Music for Orchestra: "The work embodies a fugue theme taken from 'Consummation,' one of my earlier works (1937), which I have since destroyed. Otherwise the material is new, beginning with a slow introduction (12-tone), which by degrees leads into an animated fugal section (non-12-tone). There are various digressions, including a passage for four solo 'cellos, a statement of the fugue theme in large chord blocks, some soft tone-clusters in the brass, a stretto and other contrapuntal devices."
Mr. Riegger has composed many works for orchestra and various chamber com?binations. He has also written several ballet scores, music for solo voice and chorus, and teaching materials for violin and piano students. Much of this music has been published.
Prelude to Irmelin........Frederick Delius
Delius wrote his first opera, Irmelin, to a fairy-tale text of his own devising during those early years in Paris when his music was just beginning to make its way. The opera was completed in 1892 and remains unknown even though a piano reduction of the score was prepared by no less a hand than Florent Schmitt. At the end of his life the composer turned once again to the poetic ideas that had inspired the opera. As an old man, crippled and blind, he dictated this prelude, along with many another new or revised score, to his youthful English amanuensis, Eric Fenby.
The prelude is a brief suggestive page that distills a mood of dreaming expectancy. The key is F sharp major, the tempo Lento, 4-4. The theme is quietly announced in imitation by flute and clarinet, oboe and clarinet, then violins and violas. The violas add a new figure which is continued by bass clarinet and bassoon. There is develop?ment and a return to the imitative scheme of the opening bars, now played by a solo violin and a solo viola. The bass clarinet reiterates the theme in a whisper, the last notes dying into silence.
"Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, After the Old-Fashioned
Roguish Manner--in Rondo Form," Op. 28 . . Richard Strauss
Strauss was consistent in his reluctance to provide literary programs for his tone poems, preferring to let his descriptive music tell its story unaided. Occasionally, how?ever, a conductor was fortunate enough to call forth a letter explaining the purpose of a particular work. Franz Wiillner, preparing this score for performance in Cologne, received such a letter from Strauss:
"It is impossible for me to furnish a program to 'Eulenspiegel'; were I to put into words the thoughts which its several incidents suggested to me, they would seldom suffice, and might even give rise to offence. Let me leave it, therefore, to my hearers to crack the hard nut which the rogue has prepared for them. By way of helping them to a better understanding, it seems sufficient to point out the two 'Eulenspiegel' motives, which, in the most manifold disguises, moods, and situations, pervade the whole up to the catastrophe, when, after he has been condemned to death, Till is strung up to the gibbet. For the rest, let them guess at the musical joke which a rogue has offered them."
Strauss noted three themes: the opening of the introduction; the horn motive of Till; and the portentous descending interval of the rogue's condemnation.
MAY FESTIVAL
MAY 2, 3, 4, 5, 1957
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA AT ALL CONCERTS
THURSDAY, MAY 2, 8:30 P.M.
All-Beethoven program. Alexander Brailowsky, pianist, in Concerto No. 3 in C minor. Overture to "Leonore," No. 3; and Symphony No. 8 in F major. Eugene Ormandy, Conductor.
FRIDAY, MAY 3, 8:30 P.M.
Verdi's "ATda" (concert form), with University Choral Union; Leontyne Price, Soprano; Martha Lipton, Contralto; Kurt Baum, Tenor; Robert McFerrin, Baritone; Nicola Moscona, Bass. Thor Johnson, Conductor.
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2:30 P.M.
Joseph Szigeti, Violinist--Concerto in D minor (Tartini); Portrait No. 1, Op. 5 (Bartok); and "La Folia" (Corelli). Overture, "La Scala di Seta" (Rossini); and Symphony No. 4 in A major (Mendelssohn). William R. Smith, Conducting.
Festival Youth Chorus in Fletcher's "Walrus and the Carpenter," Geneva Nelson, Conductor.
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 8:30 P.M.
Robert Merrill, Baritone, in operatic arias: "Adamastro, roi des vagues profondes" from "L'Africaine" (Meyerbeer); Farewell and Death of Roderigo, from "Don Carlo" (Verdi); "Deh vieni" from "Don Giovanni" (Mozart); "Nemico del la patria" from "Andrea Chenier" (Giordano); and "Eri tu" from "Un Ballo in Maschera" (Verdi). Overture to "Die Meistersinger" (Wagner); Symphony No. 88 in G major (Haydn); Adagio for Strings (Barber); and "Russian Easter" Overture (Rimsky-KorsakofF). Eugene Ormandy, Conductor.
SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2:30 P.M.
Gina Bachauer, Pianist, in Concerto No. 2 (Brahms). University Choral Union; Martha Lipton, Contralto; and Donald Gramm, Bass; in Vaughan Williams' "Five Tudor Portraits." Concerto in A minor for Piccolo and Orchestra (Vivaldi), John Krell, soloist. Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor.
SUNDAY, MAY 5, 8:30 P.M.
Rise Stevens, Mezzo-soprano, in: "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (Mahler); "Connais-tu le pays" from "Mignon" (Thomas); Air de Lia, from "L'Enfant prodigue" (Debussy); and "Amour, viens aider" from "Samson et Dalila" (Saint-Saens). "Academic Festival" Overture (Brahms); Symphony No. 3 (Harris); Prelude to "Afternoon of a Faun" (Debussy); and La Valse (Ravel). Eugene Ormandy, Conductor.
SINGLE CONCERTS (on sale beginning March 11): $3.50-$3.00--$2.50--$2.00--$1.50
For tickets or information address: Charles A. Sink, President, University Musical Society, Burton Memorial Tower.