Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36 Andante sostenuto Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco

Transcription

1 PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOURTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Tuesday, September 30, 2014, at 7:30 Riccardo Muti Conductor Tchaikovsky The Tempest, Op. 18 Debussy La mer From Dawn to Noon on the Sea Play of the Waves Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea INTERMISSION Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36 Andante sostenuto Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco This concert series is made possible by the Juli Grainger Endowment. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

2 COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Pyotr Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Viatka, Russia. Died November 18, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Tempest, Op. 18 It was the power of Shakespeare that helped Tchaikovsky to find his voice as a composer, first in Romeo and Juliet, the fantasy-overture composed in 1869, and then four years later in this grand and sweeping symphonic fantasia inspired by The Tempest. The idea for writing music based on The Tempest came from Vladimir Stasov, the powerful but often prickly Russian critic. Stasov was with Tchaikovsky at the Rimsky-Korsakovs for Christmas in 1872, and he was so taken with Tchaikovsky s piano rendition of his new Little Russian Symphony that he asked what the composer had planned for his next work. When Tchaikovsky vacillated, Stasov intervened, as he regularly did with artists he favored. In a letter a few days later, he suggested three subjects worthy of musical treatment: Gogol s novel Taras Bulba; Scott s Ivanhoe; and The Tempest. Having succeeded with Shakespeare in the past, Tchaikovsky did not hesitate to try again. Stasov outlined a Tempest scenario for Tchaikovsky, but, although the composer agreed to the blueprint, he put off starting work immediately. One of his first quandaries, in fact, was whether there needed to be a tempest in The Tempest (and if so, where should he put it at the start or in the middle?), and if not, should he call the work Miranda instead, after the play s captivating heroine. Is it essential to depict the fury of elements in an overture written on a piece where this incidental circumstance serves simply as the point of departure for all the dramatic action? he asked. Stassov s reply was swift and unequivocal: Of course there must be, he fired back, and he suggested representing the sea twice at the beginning and at the end. He also recommended that the storm itself should erupt in a flash and at full strength, unlike storms in nature, to show that it was created by supernatural forces. Let your storm suddenly take hold and howl, he wrote. Still, Tchaikovsky hesitated, claiming, in the words of a true procrastinator, that he preferred to wait for exactly the right moment to begin. But begin he finally did. He finished the rough draft in August evidently after two weeks of solid work in the peaceful countryside, as if moved by some supernatural force. The score was ready for performance by early December. As with Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest is a highly selective reading of Shakespeare s drama. Stassov s original outline was succinct: The sea. Ariel, spirit of the air, raising a tempest at the bidding of the magician Prospero. Ferdinand s ship sinks. The enchanted island. The first shy awakening of love between Miranda and Ferdinand. Ariel. COMPOSED 1873 FIRST PERFORMANCE December 7, 1873; Moscow, Russia FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES November 23 & 24, 1894, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES May 10, 11 & 12, Claudio Abbado conducting INSTRUMENTATION two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 23 minutes CSO RECORDING Claudio Abbado conducting. CBS 2

3 Caliban. The young couple s love grows to overwhelming passion. Prospero renounces his magic powers and quits the island. The sea. From this, Tchaikovsky crafted a piece in arch form a series of linked episodes of varying weight and drama. He opens with the sea, placid and luminous at first, and then, with the roll of the timpani, surging with violence and unexpected power, as the magician Prospero raises the tempest. The emotional heart of the piece although not the capstone of the arch is the expansive and lyrical music for the lovers Miranda and Ferdinand. Brilliantly colored shorthand portraits of the spirit Ariel, fleet and fantastic, and the monstrous Caliban, crude and blundering, sit at the center of the score. But the love music returns as if it has never been interrupted, and it is even more impassioned and yearning. (At the climax, Tchaikovsky writes fffff for the first time in his music.) Prospero then renounces his magic powers, and we are left once again with the sounds of the sea, fading toward silence, with distant, happy Italy just beyond the horizon. Claude Debussy Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. Died March 25, 1918, Paris, France. La mer (Three Symphonic Sketches) Although Debussy s parents once planned for him to become a sailor, La mer, subtitled Three Symphonic Sketches, proved to be his greatest seafaring adventure. Debussy s childhood summers at Cannes left him with vivid memories of the sea, worth more than reality, as he put it at the time he was composing La mer some thirty years later. As an adult, Debussy seldom got his feet wet, preferring the seascapes available in painting and literature; La mer was written in the mountains, where his old friend the sea, always innumerable and beautiful, was no closer than a memory. Like the great British painter J.M.W. Turner, who stared at the sea for hours and then went inside to paint, Debussy worked from memory, occasionally turning for inspiration to a few other sources. Debussy first mentioned his new work in a letter dated September 12, 1903; the title he proposed for the first of the three symphonic sketches, Calm Sea around the Sanguinary Islands, was borrowed from a short story by Camille Mauclair published during the 1890s. When Debussy s own score was printed, he insisted that the cover include a detail from The Hollow of the Wave off Kanagawa, the most celebrated print by the Japanese artist Hokusai, then enormously popular in France. We also know that Debussy greatly admired Turner s work. His richly atmospheric seascapes recorded the daily weather, the time of day, and even the most fleeting effects of wind and light in ways utterly new to painting, and they spoke directly to Debussy. (In 1902, when Debussy went to London, where he saw a number of Turner s paintings, he enjoyed the trip but hated actually crossing the channel.) The name Debussy finally gave to the first section of La mer, From Dawn to Noon on the Sea, might easily be that of a Turner painting made sixty years earlier, for the two shared not only a love of subject but also of long, specific, evocative titles. T here s something in Debussy s first symphonic sketch very like a Turner painting of the sun rising over the sea. They both reveal, in their vastly different media, 3

4 those magical moments when sunlight begins to glow in near darkness, when familiar objects emerge from the shadows. This was Turner s favorite image he even owned several houses from which he could watch, with undying fascination, the sun pierce the line separating sea and sky. Debussy s achievement, though decades later than Turner s, is no less radical, for it uses familiar language in truly fresh ways. From Dawn to Noon on the Sea can t be heard as traditional program music, for it doesn t tell a tale along a standard time line (although Debussy s friend Eric Satie reported that he particularly liked the bit at a quarter to eleven ). Nor can it be read as a piece of symphonic discourse, for it is organized without regard for conventional theme and development. Debussy s audiences, like Turner s before him, were baffled by work that takes as its subject matter color, texture, and nuance. Debussy s second sketch too is all suggestion and shimmering surface, fascinated with sound for its own sake. Melodic line, rhythmic regularity, and the use of standard harmonic progressions are all shattered, gently but decisively, by the fluid play of the waves. The final Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea (another title so like Turner s) captures the violence of two elements, air and water, as they collide. At the end, the sun breaks through the clouds. La mer repeatedly resists traditional analysis. We must agree, Debussy writes, that the beauty of a work of art will always remain a mystery, in other words, we can never be absolutely sure how it s made. La mer was controversial even during rehearsals, when, as Debussy told Stravinsky, the violinists tied handkerchiefs to the tips of their bows in protest. The response at the premiere was mixed, though largely unfriendly. It is hard now The front cover of the first edition of La mer, for which Debussy chose Hokusai s print The Hollow of the Wave off Kanagawa to separate the reaction to this novel and challenging music from the current Parisian view of the composer himself, for during the two years he worked on La mer, Debussy moved in with Emma Bardac, the wife of a local banker, leaving behind his wife Lily, who attempted suicide. Two weeks after the premiere of La mer, Bardac gave birth to Debussy s child, Claude-Emma, later known as Chou-Chou. Debussy married Emma Bardac on January 20, The night before, he conducted an orchestra for the first time in public, in a program which included La mer. This time, it was a spectacular success, though many of his friends still wouldn t speak to him. COMPOSED 1903 March 1905 FIRST PERFORMANCE October 15, 1905; Paris, France FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES January 29 & 30, 1909, Orchestra Hall. Frederick Stock conducting July 8, 1937, Ravinia Festival. Ernest Ansermet conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES August 7, 2012, Ravinia Festival. James Conlon conducting October 17, 19 & 22, 2013, Orchestra Hall. Susanna Mälkki conducting INSTRUMENTATION two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets and two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, glockenspiel, bass drum, two harps, strings APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 26 minutes CSO RECORDINGS Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA Sir Georg Solti conducting. London Erich Leinsdorf conducting. (From the Archives, vol. 5: Guests in the House) Sir Georg Solti conducting. London Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec Daniel Barenboim conducting. EuroArts (video) 4

5 Pyotr Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36 Tchaikovsky was at work on his Fourth Symphony when he received a letter from Antonina Milyukova claiming to be a former student of his and declaring that she was madly in love with him. Tchaikovsky had just read Pushkin s Eugene Onegin, hoping to find an opera subject, and he saw fateful parallels between Antonina and Pushkin s heroine, Tatiana. Perhaps Tchaikovsky confused art and life; in any event, the consequences were dire. It is hard to say which letter provoked the stronger response from Tchaikovsky the despairing letter Tatiana writes to the cold-hearted Onegin, or the one he himself received from Antonina, threatening suicide. The first inspired one of the great scenes in opera; the latter precipitated a painful and disastrous marriage. We have since learned enough about Tchaikovsky, and about the agony of repressed homosexuality, to understand why he would choose to marry a woman he didn t even know as a kind of cover. (Less than a year earlier, Tchaikovsky had begun an extraordinary relationship, conducted exclusively by correspondence, with Nadezhda von Meck, and he delighted in the combination of intellectual intimacy and physical distance.) On June 1, 1877, Tchaikovsky stopped work on the first three movements of this symphony and visited Antonina Milyukova for the first time. A day or two later he proposed. He didn t tell Nadezhda von Meck of his plans until three days before the wedding. In that letter he confessed that he had lived thirty-seven years with an innate aversion to marriage.... In a day or two my marriage will take place, he wrote in closing. What will happen after that I do not know. Tchaikovsky quickly learned that, in addition to the obvious strain of living with someone to whom he felt profound physical aversion, he would grow to disdain Antonina, particularly after the stunning discovery that she knew not one note of music. My heart is full, he wrote to von Meck. It thirsts to pour itself out in music. It was music that kept him going. When he was able to escape, temporarily, to Kamenka, he found solace in his fourth symphony and by working intermittently on Eugene Onegin. He returned to Moscow in late September, barely in time to begin the fall term at the conservatory, and discovered, surely without surprise, that he could maintain the façade no longer. Many years later, he confessed that he waded into the Moscow River, hoping to contract a fatal chill, and stood with the icy water up to his waist until he could, literally, stand no more. He then fled to COMPOSED May 1877 January 19, 1878 FIRST PERFORMANCE March 4, 1878; Moscow, Russia FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES November 3 & 4, 1899, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting July 17, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Willem Van Hoogstraten conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES July 29, 2012, Ravinia Festival. James Conlon conducting March 21, 22, 23 & 24, 2013, Orchestra Hall. Tugan Sokhiev conducting June 29, 2013, Morton Arboretum. Carlos Miguel Prieto conducting INSTRUMENTATION two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, strings APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 44 minutes CSO RECORDINGS Rafael Kubelík conducting. Mercury Fritz Reiner conducting. CSO (Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the Twentieth Century: Collector s Choice) Sir Georg Solti conducting. London Sir Georg Solti conducting. ICA Classics (video) Claudio Abbado conducting. CBS Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec 5

6 Saint Petersburg, where a psychiatrist prescribed a complete change of scenery and a permanent separation from Antonina. Nicolai Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky s brother Anatoly rushed to Moscow to tell Antonina. She listened calmly and served them tea. Tchaikovsky s marriage lasted less than three months. On October 13, Anatoly took Tchaikovsky to Switzerland, then on to Paris and Italy. Tchaikovsky asked that the unfinished manuscript of the Fourth Symphony be sent from Moscow and he completed the scoring in January He finished Eugene Onegin the following month. That March he sketched the violin concerto in just eleven days. When he returned to Russia in late April, his problems with Antonina were still unresolved she first accepted and then rejected the divorce papers, and later extracted her final revenge by moving into the apartment above his but the worst year of his life was over. T he temptation to read a program into Tchaikovsky s Fourth Symphony is as old as the work itself. Since Nadezhda von Meck allowed Tchaikovsky to dedicate the symphony to her (without mentioning her name) and was contributing generously to support his career, she demanded to know what the work was about. Tchaikovsky s response, often quoted, is a detailed account, filled with emotional thoughts and empty phrases words written after the fact to satisfy an indispensable patron. When Tchaikovsky mentions fate, however, his words ring true; this was a subject that had haunted him since 1876, when he saw Carmen and was struck by the death of the two principals who, through fate, fatum, ultimately reach the peak of their suffering and their inescapable end. He wrote to Nadezhda von Meck: The introduction is the seed of the whole symphony, undoubtedly the main idea. This is fate, that fatal force which prevents the impulse to happiness from attaining its goal, which jealously ensures that peace and happiness shall not be complete and unclouded, which hangs above your head like the sword of Damocles, and unwaveringly, constantly poisons the soul. Tchaikovsky with his wife, Antonina Milyukova, 1877 Indeed, the icy blast from the horns that opens this symphony returns repeatedly in the first movement (and once in the finale), each time wiping out everything in its path. It s like the celebrated fate motive from Beethoven s Fifth Symphony the one the composer himself compared to fate knocking at the door except that it s more of a disruption than a compositional device. Later, Tchaikovsky wrote to the composer Sergei Taneyev, a former student: Of course my symphony is programmatic, but this program is such that it cannot be formulated in words. That would excite ridicule and appear comic. Ought not a symphony that is, the most lyrical of all forms to be such a work? Should it not express everything for which there are no words, but which the soul wishes to express, and which requires to be expressed?... Please do not think that I aspire to paint before you a depth and grandeur of thought that cannot be easily understood in words. I was not trying to express any new thought. In essence my symphony imitates Beethoven s Fifth; that is, I was not imitating its musical thoughts, but 6

7 the fundamental idea. Do you think there is a program in the Fifth Symphony? Not only is there a program, but in this instance there cannot be any question about its efforts to express itself. My symphony rests upon a foundation that is nearly the same, and if you haven t understood me, it follows only that I am not a Beethoven, a fact which I have never doubted. Taneyev was perhaps the first to question the preponderance of what he called ballet music in the symphony. In fact, the lilting main theme of the opening movement (marked in movimento di valse ) and the whole of the two inner movements the slow pas de deux with its mournful oboe solo, and the brilliant and playful pizzicato scherzo remind us that the best of Tchaikovsky s ballet scores are symphonic in scope and tone. Tchaikovsky was angered by the comment and asked Taneyev if he considered as ballet music every cheerful tune that has a dance rhythm? If that s the case, he concluded, you must also be unable to reconcile yourself to the majority of Beethoven s symphonies in which you encounter such things at every turn. The finale is more complex, emotionally and musically, swinging from the dark emotions of the first movement to a more festive mood. If you cannot discover reasons for happiness in yourself, Tchaikovsky wrote to Mme von Meck, look at others. Get out among the people. Look what a good time they have simply surrendering themselves to joy. There is one final intrusion of the fateful horns from the symphony s opening, but this time the music quickly recovers, rousing itself to a defiantly triumphant and heroic Beethovenian ending, in intention if not in substance. Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Chicago Symphony Orchestra 7