PROGRAM. Thursday, February 16, 2017, at 8:00 Friday, February 17, 2017, at 1:30 Saturday, February 18, 2017, at 8:00 YEFIM BRONFMAN INTERMISSION

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1 PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIXTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Thursday, February 16, 2017, at 8:00 Friday, February 17, 2017, at 1:30 Saturday, February 18, 2017, at 8:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Yefim Bronfman Piano Rossini Overture to Semiramide Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 Allegro moderato Andante con moto Rondo: Vivace YEFIM BRONFMAN INTERMISSION Mendelssohn Symphony No. 5 in D Major, Op. 107 (Reformation) Andante Allegro con fuoco Allegro vivace Andante Chorale: Andante con moto Allegro vivace These performances are generously sponsored by the Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Family Fund for the Canon. This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the National Endowment for the Arts.

2 COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Gioachino Rossini Born February 29, 1792; Pesaro, Italy Died November 13, 1868; Passy, a suburb of Paris, France Overture to Semiramide Time has not been kind to Rossini. Today he is primarily identified with a handful of comic operas (often dismissed as implausible and frequently staged as sophomoric slapstick) and a dozen or so overtures, the most famous of which brings to mind a television cowboy who rode high in the ratings from 1949 until 1965 instead of the heroic figure of William Tell. The opening sentence of Philip Gossett s article in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the industry standard, offers a healthy corrective: No composer in the first half of the nineteenth century enjoyed the measure of prestige, wealth, popular acclaim, or artistic influence that belonged to Rossini. Rossini was born less than three months after the death of Mozart ( He was the wonder of my youth, Rossini later wrote, the despair of my maturity, and he is the consolation of my old age ), was a professional contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert (as well as the young Mendelssohn and Berlioz), and lived into the era of Wagner and Brahms. But he retired in 1830, at the height of his career, leaving behind the world of opera where he had reigned since 1812, when his La pietra del paragone triumphed at La Scala. During the remaining thirty-eight years of his life, he didn t write another opera (for a while he contemplated a treatment of Goethe s Faust), choosing instead to preside over his celebrated salon (one of the most famous in all Europe) and to putter in the kitchen (tournédos Rossini are his most famous concoction). Only occasionally did he put pen to manuscript paper. The second decade of the nineteenth century was Rossini s heyday, and in the middle years of that period he turned out a rapid-fire string of delectable comic works for the stage that has rarely been matched: The Italian Girl in Algiers in 1813, The Turk in Italy the following year, The Barber of Seville in 1816, and Cenerentola in the first half of But beginning with Tancredi, which was premiered in 1813, Rossini began to concentrate on serious opera as well. And, as Gossett says, it is these works, not the comedies, which are historically more important. Many of them, including his own version of Otello in 1816, were written for the great dramatic soprano, Isabella Colbran, who was at that time his mistress and who became his wife in Together they visited Venice that year, and there he wrote the last of his Italian serious operas, Semiramide. It was premiered there in February 1823, at the Teatro La Fenice, with his new wife in the title role. (Based on a tragedy by Voltaire, the plot revolves around the plight of Semiramide, the queen of Babylon, who has killed her husband, Above: Oil portrait of Rossini by Vincenzo Camuccini, ca Museo Teatrale, Teatro alla Scala; Milan, Italy COMPOSED 1822 FIRST PERFORMANCE February 3, 1823; Venice, Italy INSTRUMENTATION flute and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, strings 2 APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 11 minutes FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES December 16, 1933, Orchestra Hall. Frederick Stock conducting July 8, 1952, Ravinia Festival. Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES May 19, 20, and 21, 1988, Orchestra Hall. Sir Georg Solti (May 19 and 20) and Kenneth Jean (May 21) conducting August 1, 1993, Ravinia Festival. Carlo Rizzi conducting CSO RECORDING Sir Georg Solti conducting. London (video)

3 King Nino, and choses Arsace to be her new husband, only to discover that he is, in fact King Nino s son.) Semiramide was Rossini s last triumph in Italy before he moved to Paris in 1824, seeking greater fame and a still greater fortune, both of which he easily accomplished. Although Semiramide disappeared from the opera stage for several decades there were two important isolated revivals, at La Scala in 1962 and at the Metropolitan Opera in 1990 the overture has long been familiar in the concert hall. The overture to Semiramide is characteristic of Rossini s established form perfected in more than thirty operas by 1822 but unusual in that it previews thematic material from the opera itself. Befitting a work that is Rossini s longest Italian opera, the overture is grand and spacious and conceived on a heroic scale. From the insistent initial call to attention the Victorian critic Henry Chorley once remarked that every great Rossini overture opens differently to the solemn music intoned by four horns and the expansive allegro themes that follow the first launched by the rapid stutter of repeated notes, the second sent soaring by triplets this is quintessential Rossini. The overture even features the shrewdly calculated effect now known as the Rossini crescendo, in which harmony, phrase structure, instrumentation, and dynamics all conspire to raise the music to a fever pitch. Like all of Rossini s greatest music, the entire overture is characterized by the sure-fire combination of technical finesse and a born sense of musical theater. Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770; Bonn, Germany Died March 26, 1827; Vienna, Austria Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 On December 17, 1808, a Viennese paper announced a concert to be given by Ludwig van Beethoven at the Theater an der Wien five days later: All the pieces are of his own composition, entirely new, and not yet heard in public. Although Beethoven s publicist fudged that last detail ever so slightly, the list of world premieres lined up for one evening is astonishing: both the Fifth and Sixth symphonies; the Choral Fantasy; and this work, Beethoven s fourth piano concerto. (Those who didn t like too much new and unfamiliar music at one sitting surely stayed home that night.) To round out this substantial program long even by the generous standards of the nineteenth century were three movements from the Mass in C, the concert aria Ah! perfido, and improvisations at the keyboard by the composer. There we sat from 6:30 till 10:30, the composer J.F. Reichardt later recalled, in the most bitter cold, and found by experience that one might have too much even of a good thing. What should have been the greatest night of Beethoven s career was ruined by too much music and too little heat. The performances were no doubt wretched, for rehearsals had gone badly. For one thing, Beethoven had so annoyed the members of the Theater an der Wien orchestra the previous month that they now insisted that he sit in the anteroom whenever he wasn t needed at the keyboard and wait for the concertmaster to check with him between movements. Beethoven was so desperate to see this concert take place that he agreed. (It promised him both wide exposure and a nice profit.) Not surprisingly, there wasn t enough time for the orchestra to learn so much challenging new music. Reichardt remembered that it had been found impossible to get a single full rehearsal for all the pieces to be performed, every one of them filled with the greatest difficulties. The Choral Fantasy, which Beethoven composed at the very last moment (inexplicably thinking the concert lacked a blockbuster finish), was scarcely rehearsed at all. When it broke down completely during the performance, Beethoven started it Above: Oil portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Mähler,

4 over again from the beginning, making a very long evening even longer. B y all reports, Beethoven was a terrifically exciting pianist. He played with spectacular technical facility and tremendous emotional expression. According to his student Ferdinand Ries, he cared less about missed notes than character and expression: Mistakes of the other kind, he said, were due to chance, but these last resulted from want of knowledge, feeling, or attention. When Beethoven first stepped out onstage the night of December 22, 1808, it was to play this concerto in G major, and surely most members of the audience were surprised that he went straight to the keyboard and started to play. Anyone who troubled to buy a ticket to this concert would have known that a concerto begins with a long orchestral exposition that gives you all the tunes before the soloist begins. But Beethoven had begun to examine every convention he inherited, to rethink every choice a composer could make. He realized that the only way to call greater attention to the soloist s first line was to do something unexpected. In his Violin Concerto, first performed several months before, he had made the wait almost interminable and then sneaked the violinist in, so that if you weren t paying attention you missed it altogether. And here, he caught his audience completely off guard again by starting with the piano. It s a brilliant trick so perfectly handled that it has hardly ever been imitated and Beethoven quickly follows one Theater an der Wien by Jakob Alt, ca masterstroke with another the orchestra enters six bars later in the unexpected key of B major. The most remarkable thing about this bold and original opening is the sustained quiet dynamics (beginning piano and then falling off to pianissimo), as if Beethoven were sharing confidences. A tone of moderation and nobility persists throughout the first movement, even in the most vigorous and brilliant passages; this, too, was unexpected. The movement is dominated throughout by a gentle version of the same four-note rhythm with which Fate aggressively knocks on the door of the Fifth Symphony. (The German theorist Heinrich Schenker, who always doubted that Beethoven had that image in mind when he wrote the symphony, wanted to know if the concerto depicted another door on which Fate knocked or was someone else knocking at the same door? ) COMPOSED FIRST PERFORMANCES March 1807; Vienna, Austria. The composer as soloist (private) December 22, 1808; Vienna, Austria. The composer as soloist INSTRUMENTATION solo piano, one flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings CADENZAS Beethoven 4 APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 34 minutes FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES November 4 & 5, 1892, Auditorium Theatre. Ferruccio Busoni as soloist, Theodore Thomas conducting July 11, 1942, Ravinia Festival. Artur Schnabel as soloist, George Szell conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES March 17, 18, and 19, 2016, Orchestra Hall. Emanuel Ax as soloist, Michael Tilson Thomas conducting August 5, 2016, Ravinia Festival. Paul Lewis as soloist, Kirill Karabits conducting CSO RECORDINGS Artur Schnabel as soloist, Frederick Stock conducting. RCA Van Cliburn as soloist, Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA Vladimir Ashkenazy as soloist, Sir Georg Solti conducting. London Alfred Brendel as soloist, James Levine conducting. Philips

5 The slow movement has inspired many interpretations (Orpheus taming the Furies is the most familiar one), although Beethoven evidently was thinking of nothing more dramatic than the music itself when he wrote it. This is a conversation between the strings and the piano. The strings, playing in staccato octaves, begin assertively. The piano responds with rich, quiet chords an answer that raises questions of its own. On it goes, back and forth the piano steadfast, the strings gradually weakening. Sensing victory, the piano unleashes a brief, rhapsodic cadenza. Finally everyone plays together, sharing the same chords and the same rhythm. Over the last chord, the piano poses a brand new question, to which Beethoven responds by launching into the finale without a pause. Our sense of boundaries is vague: in retrospect, the entire slow movement sounds like a long introduction to the finale. (That s exactly the case in the Waldstein Sonata, written two years before.) The finale itself doesn t behave like one at first: it s the only one in all of Beethoven s concertos that doesn t begin with the soloist stating the main theme, followed by vigorous confirmation from the full orchestra. Here Beethoven opens softly with the strings, in the wrong key. The piano takes the situation in hand with a brilliant, virtuosic new theme, and the rest of the movement is swift and thrilling. The orchestral sound is enriched by the introduction of trumpets and drums, and the solo part effectively combines lyricism with bravura and elegance with wit. A fter the concert, Beethoven boasted that in spite of the fact that various mistakes were made, which I could not prevent, the public nevertheless applauded the whole performance with enthusiasm. Reichardt particularly remembered the new pianoforte concerto of immense difficulty, which Beethoven executed astonishingly well in the most rapid tempos. There s no record of how much money Beethoven made that night. His days as a celebrity performer, however, were over. His hearing had recently gotten much worse, and it turned out that this was the last time he would appear in public as a soloist. Felix Mendelssohn Born February 3, 1809; Hamburg, Germany Died November 4, 1847; Leipzig, Germany Symphony No. 5 in D Major, Op. 107 (Reformation) In a well-known letter from 1829, Felix Mendelssohn s father, Abraham Mendelssohn- Bartholdy, urged his son to adopt the name Bartholdy and drop Mendelssohn altogether, in order to take full advantage, in an increasingly anti-semitic Germany, of the Lutheran identity available to him. Felix s maternal uncle Jakob Salomon changed his name to Bartholdy (he took the name from the previous owner of a piece of real estate he had bought in Berlin). Jakob had urged the entire family to convert from Judaism to Lutheranism, and, in fact, Abraham had all of his children baptized in 1816, and he himself converted in Felix was reared as a Protestant and he knew more of the Lutheran faith than of his own religious heritage. Late in 1829, the young Felix who kept his hyphenated, crossover name, Mendelssohn- Bartholdy began this symphony to commemorate the establishment of the Lutheran faith. He had been commissioned to compose music for a ceremony to be held on June 25, 1830, the three-hundredth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the formal document approved by Martin Luther. Although Mendelssohn worked long hours that winter to get the symphony done on time fighting a serious case of the measles as the deadline approached the celebrations were canceled due to the rising political tension spreading across Europe. Antoine Habeneck planned a performance in Paris in the spring of Above: Watercolor portrait of Mendelssohn by James Warren Childe,

6 1832, but that too was canceled after just one rehearsal because the musicians found the score unplayable ( much too learned, too much fugato, too little melody, was one verdict). Mendelssohn was humiliated by the experience, and, as a result, he was unusually defensive about the work even before he introduced it to the public. The symphony was finally performed, under the composer s direction, in Berlin that November, with the subtitle Symphony to Celebrate the Church Revolution. Mendelssohn then withdrew it; he later said this was the one score he wished he could destroy. (Mendelssohn often was unreasonably hard on his compositions; he regularly and obsessively revised works that didn t meet his standards and withheld others from publication.) As a result, it wasn t published until 1868, as part of the posthumous edition of his complete works, when it was designated as the fifth of his five mature symphonies, although it was the second to be written. [The numbering of Mendelssohn s symphonies is seriously out of order the proper chronological sequence is 1, 5 (Reformation), 4 (Italian), 2 (Lobegesang), and 3 (Scottish).] In Mendelssohn s mind, this symphony was inextricably tied to the historical celebration for which it was intended, which only encouraged him to abandon it once that occasion passed. He used two themes with overt Protestant overtones that would ordinarily have no place in a symphony. To honor Luther, Mendelssohn included in his finale the beloved hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A mighty fortress is our God) that Luther had written while the Augsburg Confession was in session. (A century before Mendelssohn, Bach composed a cantata on Luther s hymn for the Augsburg bicentennial.) For the first movement, Mendelssohn borrowed the familiar Dresden Amen, a serene sequence of rising chords familiar to churchgoers then and now. (Wagner, despite his dislike of Mendelssohn s music, uses the same Amen cadence to famous effect in Parsifal.) Both outer movements are unusually ceremonial and festive; the inner two, with no specific ties to the occasion, belong squarely within the classical symphonic tradition (Beethoven, one of Mendelssohn s earliest heroes, had been dead for only two years when Mendelssohn began this work). T he symphony opens with the well-known four-note theme (transposed) of Mozart s Jupiter finale, which sets a serious, dignified, historical tone as it leads to the first quiet statement of the Dresden Amen. The main body of the movement is rapid, stern, and forceful. It has a standard sonata form, but after the Amen cadence returns to announce the recapitulation, the main theme is as hushed as it originally was assertive. The second movement is a scherzo (in substance if not in name) triggered by a single rhythmic figure that s repeated in nearly every measure till the very last. The tone is one we now know as quintessential Mendelssohnian fleetness, offset by a genial waltzlike middle section. The Andante is a brief, gracious song for violins. At its final chord, a flute begins to sing Luther s great hymn, unaccompanied at first and quickly drawing in more and more voices until it is richly harmonized and proudly proclaimed. The strings then lead the music in a new direction, climaxing with a grand, vaulting theme of triumph and celebration. Ein feste Burg weaves in and out of the development section and then takes over, in majestic splendor, at the symphony s close. Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since COMPOSED FIRST PERFORMANCE November 15, 1832; Berlin, Germany. The composer conducting INSTRUMENTATION two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings 6 APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 28 minutes FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES March 13, 1943, Orchestra Hall. Howard Barlow conducting August 5, 1950, Ravinia Festival. Pierre Monteux conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES August 1, 1999, Ravinia Festival. Christoph Eschenbach conducting April 8, 9, and 10, 2010, Orchestra Hall. Sir Mark Elder conducting 2017 Chicago Symphony Orchestra