PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH 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 Thursday, October 8, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, October 9, 2015, at 1:30 Tuesday, October 13, 2015, at 7:30 Semyon Bychkov Conductor Renaud Capuçon Violin Glanert Brahms-Fantasie United States premiere Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 Allegro non troppo Adagio Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace RENAUD CAPUÇON INTERMISSION Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 Un poco sostenuto Allegro Andante sostenuto Un poco allegretto e grazioso Adagio Allegro non troppo, ma con brio 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.
COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Detlev Glanert Born September 6, 1960, Hamburg, Germany. Brahms-Fantasie, Heliogravure for Orchestra For Detlev Glanert, the great Germanic musical tradition is not a burden but an invitation to new realms of understanding. Glanert, who began to study composition at the age of twelve in his native Hamburg, moved to Cologne in the mid-1980s to work with Hans Werner Henze, the often highly political German opera composer, who has remained a guiding spirit throughout his career. Like Henze s output, many of Glanert s works are commentaries on the music of the past. His Symphony no. 1 one of his earliest compositions, written in 1985 is an exploration of Mahler s vast symphonic landscape and even quotes from Das Lied von der Erde. A symphony of today can only be a discussion of the symphonies of yesterday, he once said. Mahler/Skizze, composed four years later, was inspired by a visit to Mahler s grave. The Brahms-Fantasie performed this week offers another way of viewing the past in light of the present day. Although Glanert s purely orchestral works often are satellite scores related to his large music theater pieces Theatrum bestiarum, given its U.S. premiere by the Chicago Symphony in May 2010, is intimately tied to his opera Caligula his Brahms-Fantasie is an independent score. It is one of four works commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony to serve as short companion pieces for Brahms s four symphonies. Glanert s offering the last of the four to be composed was designed to be performed on the same program as Brahms s First Symphony, as it is this week in Chicago. Glanert has visited the world of Brahms s music before, with his 2004 orchestration of the Four Serious Songs, where he not only enhanced Brahms s songs with full orchestral colors (without changing a note of Brahms s scores) but added his own preludes between them a perfect demonstration of the balanced concern for both tradition and innovation that characterizes the newer Brahms-Fantasie. We hear Brahms, yet don t hear him, Glanert says of the piece. We hear my music, yet it isn t entirely my music. In that sense, this is one of his most advanced efforts yet in his quest to inhabit the musical worlds of the past and the present at the same time. Glanert subtitles the piece Heliogravure for Orchestra, referring to the two-part photographic process in which the original image is painted over and transformed by the artist. The result is a kind of musical palimpsest, in which strands of Brahms the powerful opening of the First Symphony, snatches of Hungarian waltzes, rigorous counterpoint, the composer s signature three-against-two rhythmic patterns weave in and out of Glanert s score. Glanert calls it a picture puzzle, music about music, a mind game, and a fantasy along alien, yet familiar paths. T his Brahms-Fantasie reflects the composer s career-long belief that all music has to be connected to the life of people. The fantasy is meant for listeners who have heard music that Brahms did not the daring and adventurous explorations of the twentieth century that Arnold Schoenberg provocatively said were already latent in the seemingly traditional music of Brahms himself. For Glanert, all music, including the revered classics, must tell you something about your life and something about what you are.... If it does not, it will die. COMPOSED 2012 FIRST PERFORMANCE March 22, 2012; Glasgow, Scotland 2 These are the United States premiere performances. INSTRUMENTATION two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 12 minutes
Johannes Brahms Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany. Died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria. Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 Joseph Joachim and Johannes Brahms became instant friends when they met in May 1853. Both men were in their early twenties, and although Brahms was an unknown, with all his greatest music still to come, Joachim was already a celebrity the most brilliant and promising violinist around. Joachim described Brahms as pure as a diamond, soft as snow, reminding us that the composer s familiar portly figure and bushy beard were later acquisitions. With music as their bond, they became close confiding secrets, enjoying each other s company, and sharing the things they loved. It was Joachim who insisted that Brahms meet the Schumanns, a visit that changed the young composer s life Robert wrote his last critic s column to introduce Brahms to the public, and Clara became a confidante and a valued colleague, if not more. It was simply a matter of time before Brahms would offer to write a concerto for his best friend. (Brahms had overcome his fear of tackling the forms in which Beethoven triumphed and had completed two symphonies and a piano concerto.) The violin concerto was sketched during a summer holiday at Pörtschach in 1878, just across the lake from the country house where Alban Berg would write his violin concerto nearly sixty years later. Brahms picked the key of D major (the tonality of the Second Symphony he had recently finished) and planned the concerto in four movements, an unprecedented scheme. While composing, Brahms often turned to Joachim for technical advice about the solo part Joachim not only knew the instrument s capabilities better than anyone, but also was a gifted composer himself. (When they met in 1853, Joachim was the more accomplished composer; Brahms used to let him see everything he wrote, seeking both criticism and encouragement.) It was Brahms s own decision to abandon the four-movement design and to replace the two inner movements with a single adagio. (The leftover scherzo may have been salvaged for the four-movement B-flat piano concerto Brahms put aside in order to work on this concerto.) He was still making further adjustments after the first performance, in Leipzig, on New Year s Day, 1879. The work was not a success. (At the premiere, the applause was lukewarm, though many in the audience were distracted by Brahms s failure to hook up his suspenders properly.) When Clara COMPOSED 1878 FIRST PERFORMANCE January 1, 1879; Leipzig, Germany. Joseph Joachim as soloist, the composer conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES January 19 & 20, 1894, Auditorium Theatre. Henri Marteau as soloist, Theodore Thomas conducting July 30, 1938, Ravinia Festival. Jascha Heifetz as soloist, Eugene Ormandy conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES March 7, 8 & 10, 2012, Orchestra Hall. Pinchas Zukerman as soloist, Riccardo Muti conducting March 9, 2012, Hill Auditorium, University of Michigan. Pinchas Zukerman as soloist, Riccardo Muti conducting August 10, 2014, Ravinia Festival. Miriam Fried as soloist, Bramwell Tovey conducting INSTRUMENTATION solo violin, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings CADENZA Joseph Joachim APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 40 minutes CSO RECORDINGS 1955. Jascha Heifetz as soloist, Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA 1976. Itzhak Perlman as soloist, Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. Angel 1997. Maxim Vengerov as soloist, Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec 2002. Rachel Barton as soloist, Carlos Kalmar conducting. Cedille 3
Schumann heard it earlier, in a private performance, she commented that the orchestra and soloist were thoroughly blended, but others saw that distinction differently. Hans von Bülow, a man seldom without opinions, said that Brahms had written a concerto against the violin; the violinist Bronislaw Huberman elaborated: It is a concerto for violin against the orchestra and the violin wins. Eventually, Brahms s work was widely performed and greatly admired; it was even deemed worthy of standing beside Beethoven s single violin concerto. Brahms had invited the comparison himself by picking the same key and by writing for the violinist who had recently put Beethoven s concerto back in circulation. B rahms honors the classical model; in the first movement, he writes a double exposition one for the orchestra alone, the second led by the violin. This would be unremarkable, except that most concertos written in the seventy-odd years since Beethoven s had struggled to find novel ways to proceed. Brahms has new things to say, but he says them in a form that Beethoven would have recognized immediately. The first movement is on a grand scale, with a wealth of melodic material. (Brahms once said that melodies were so abundant in Pörtschach that one had to be careful not to step on them.) Brahms presents a full harmonic itinerary that allows a side trip to the distant reaches of C major at the beginning of the development section (Beethoven went there, too) and includes, in the recapitulation, further adventures in F-sharp and B-flat, both a major third in opposite directions from D. As a final bow to tradition, Brahms reins in the orchestra near the end of the movement and gives the soloist the opportunity to improvise a cadenza. This is the last major concerto to grant that license (even Beethoven had started writing his cadenzas down), although with a musician of Joachim s taste and talent, Brahms had nothing to fear. He would surely be relieved to know that the cadenza Joachim eventually committed to paper quickly caught on and is sometimes performed today. (At these concerts, Renaud Capuçon plays the cadenza by Joseph Joachim.) Brahms opens the slow movement with one of his finest melodies, given to the oboe against a woodwind accompaniment. The Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate allegedly refused to play this concerto because he didn t care to stand on the platform, violin in hand, to listen to the oboe playing the only real tune in the whole work. Sarasate would more easily earn our sympathy if Brahms didn t quickly turn from the oboe to the violin, having saved for it an unbroken outpouring of song that carries us through to the end of the movement. We don t immediately associate Brahms with merriment, but the finale of the concerto is unmistakably Joseph Joachim jolly, filled with good-natured themes and flashes of outright wit. The spirit is that of the gypsy violinist, an intentional allusion to Joachim s Hungarian heritage. The final march, with trumpets and drums, rises to a climax and then abruptly unwinds like a mechanical toy before it ends with a bang. A footnote about friendship. Only two years after the premiere of the Violin Concerto, the fellowship between Brahms and Joachim began to falter. Brahms couldn t stand to watch Joachim become increasingly jealous of his wife, and by the time the couple divorced in 1884, the composer and the violinist were no longer speaking. Joachim continued to play Brahms s music everywhere, but refused to answer his letters. Finally, Brahms wrote the Double Concerto as a peace offering, and Joachim like so many others since couldn t resist this warm and heartfelt music. The friendship was restored, but the old spark was missing. 4
Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 Beethoven died six years before Brahms was born, but his presence was felt by almost every composer who came after him. Even Brahms, a master of piano music and songs from an early age, put off writing symphonies and string quartets two Beethoven forms par excellence offering only the pathetic, but honest excuse: You can t have any idea what it s like always to hear such a giant marching behind you. Eventually Brahms turned and faced the giant, but it took him nearly twenty years to do so, and only the magnificence of his own First Symphony gave him the courage to leave the ghost of Beethoven behind him for good. Few great works of music have taken so long to get from sketch to finished product. Obviously, Brahms had his reasons for sitting on his first symphony, but eventually his friends and colleagues began to wonder if he, like Schubert before him, might leave an unfinished symphony in the attic. (In fact, in 1870, Brahms said he would never complete the piece.) His publisher, Fritz Simrock, finally wrote: Aren t you doing anything more? Am I not to have a symphony from you in 73 either? But there was no symphony in 1873, just as there had been no symphony any year since 1854, when Brahms first set out to write one. That earliest effort, in the key of D minor (the key of Beethoven s Ninth Symphony, incidentally) neatly sidestepped the issue to become Brahms s first piano concerto, even though the idea of symphony is written all over it. Brahms also avoided the challenge with the two serenades that gave him needed and valuable experience writing for the orchestra without directly taking on Beethoven. There was further testing of the waters in the substantial orchestral accompaniment to A German Requiem and other important choral works. And finally, a dress rehearsal of sorts the grand Variations on a Theme of Haydn from 1873 though this too, for all its mastery of instrumentation and intellectual rigor, was not a symphony. But Brahms did have a symphony in the works. As early as 1862, he sent a completed first movement to Clara Schumann. Imagine my surprise! she wrote to Joseph Joachim, who would one day play the violin concerto Brahms wrote for him in a single summer. Clara s surprise eventually turned to dismay when Brahms continued to drag things out, sending her the horn call from the finale as a birthday card some six years later, and finally sitting her down to listen as he played the whole symphony at the piano another eight years after that. Although Brahms certainly took his time, he proved to an impatient musical public that there was still music being written that was worth the wait. Unlike his contemporary Anton Bruckner, who made a career out of having second thoughts, Brahms was the COMPOSED 1850s 1876 FIRST PERFORMANCE November 4, 1876; Karlsruhe, Germany FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES February 9 & 10, 1894, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting July 9, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Hans Lange conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES August 7, 2008, Ravinia Festival. James Conlon conducting October 18, 19 & 20, 2012, Orchestra Hall. Osmo Vänskä conducting INSTRUMENTATION two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 45 minutes CSO RECORDINGS 1952. Rafael Kubelík conducting. Mercury 1975. James Levine conducting. RCA 1979. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London 1989. Günter Wand conducting. RCA 1993. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Erato 5
best judge of his own work. When a piece didn t please him, he put it aside or reworked it, or in the case of his Fifth Symphony he destroyed it. But he wouldn t release it. When Brahms sent his completed first movement to Clara Schumann in 1862, it didn t begin with the fierce and arresting introduction we know, but took off like a rocket from the headlong Allegro. Clara confessed to Joachim that the beginning seemed bold and rather harsh, but I have become used to it. Brahms, however, evidently Clara Schumann didn t, because when he played the entire symphony for Clara more than a dozen years later, it began with the powerful, measured drum beat and chromatic unfolding that now lead straight into the Allegro. Even though it was written after the fact or, perhaps because of that Brahms s introduction serves as a preview of what follows: the opening violin line rising by half steps, for example, and the falling thirds in the winds will both be whipped into meaningful shape elsewhere. The Allegro is conceived on the largest scale. The final turn into the recapitulation, in particular, is stretched to incredible lengths and then, with the destination clearly in sight, resolution is further delayed by a daring descent into a remote key. For a moment it appears that Brahms has thrown caution to the wind, but this sudden whim, too, is part of his plan, all calculated with the skill of a master craftsman. From the beginning, Hermann Levi a perceptive German conductor thought the two inner movements more suited to a serenade or a suite. But brevity and conciseness aren t at odds with the symphonic scale although the grandeur of Brahms s first movement might lead one to expect something equally imposing to follow. Instead, Brahms s slow movement, in the surprising key of E major, is intimate and modest, with lovely woodwind solos and a magnificent one for violin at the end. The third movement is no scherzo, but an intermezzo, as warm and ingratiating as Brahms s piano pieces which actually bear the name. With the finale we come again to Beethoven, partly because any symphony that begins in C minor and then forges triumphantly into C major at the end must face comparison with Beethoven s Fifth, and partly because Brahms s big allegro melody suggests nothing more than the great song of Beethoven s Ode to Joy. When the likeness was pointed out, Brahms simply said, Any ass can see that. More to the point, Donald Tovey noted that Brahms s theme is regularly compared with Beethoven s only because it is the solitary one among hundreds of the same type that is great enough to suggest the resemblance. There are other echoes of Beethoven, too. Certainly the finale s extensive introduction, clouded with mystery and flaring up with occasional turbulence, takes a cue from Beethoven s Ninth. But then so do countless works written in the nineteenth century that don t profit from the comparison. There s also much that is pure Brahms, like the unforgettable horn call that parts the clouds and admits the bright sunlight of the C major allegro theme, or the brilliant and hair-raising coda, which nearly beats Beethoven at his own game. The ending, in fact, is as exalted and triumphant as any in music, and it s clear that the triumph is Brahms s alone. Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987. 6 2015 Chicago Symphony Orchestra