Program One Hundred Twenty-first Season Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, January 26, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, January 27, 2012, at 8:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Maria Grazia Schiavo Soprano Max Emanuel Cencic Countertenor Stéphane Degout Baritone Chicago Symphony Chorus Duain Wolfe Director Chicago Children s Choir Josephine Lee Artistic Director Smirnov Space Odyssey World premiere Schubert Symphony No. 3 in D Major, D. 200 Adagio maestoso Allegro con brio Allegretto Menuetto Presto vivace Intermission Orff Carmina Burana Fortune, Empress of the World I. Springtime On the Green II. In the Tavern III. The Courts of Love Blanziflor and Helena Fortune, Empress of the World Maria Grazia Schiavo Max Emanuel Cencic Stéphane Degout Chicago Symphony Chorus Chicago Children s Choir Saturday, January 28, 2012, at 8:00 Tuesday, January 31, 2012, at 7:30 These concerts are generously sponsored in part by Mr. & Mrs. Sanfred Koltun. 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 Gerard McBurney Phillip Huscher Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov Born November 2, 1948, Minsk. Space Odyssey for Large Symphony Orchestra, Op. 156 Among Russian composers emerging from the USSR in the last half century, one of the most prolific and adventurous is Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov. He was born in 1948 in Minsk (now the capital of the Republic of Belarus), but his parents, both opera singers, then moved their family several thousand miles to Siberia, Ulan-Ude (the capital of Buryat-Mongolia), and later to the Central Asian town of Frunze (now Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan), where the young composer grew up, on the edge of the Tian Shan mountains, and not far from the western borders of China. In his late teens, Smirnov returned to European Russia, where he studied at the Moscow Conservatory with two composers, Nikolai Sidelnikov and Edison Denisov, and with musical theorist Yuri Kholopov. He also took private lessons with the elderly Philip Gershkovich, a remarkable musician from Rumania who had lived in Vienna in the 1930s and been a pupil of both Berg and Webern before the rise of Hitler forced him to the Soviet Union. For many Russian composers of Smirnov s generation, Gershkovich seemed, as one of his friends somewhat bluntly put it, like an apostle sent by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern to the barbarians. In 1972, Dmitri Smirnov graduated from the conservatory. In the same year, he married a fellow student, the equally distinguished composer Elena Firsova. The couple have two children, one an artist; the other a composer, pianist, and conductor. For nearly two decades, Smirnov earned his living in Moscow, partly working in publishing and writing film music, but mostly concentrating on being a freelance composer. Quite quickly, his work and that of Composed 2008, revised 2011 These are the world premiere performances. Approximate performance time 7 minutes Instrumentation three flutes, piccolo and alto flute, three oboes and english horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, gongs, snare drum, bass drum, tam-tam, glockenspiel, tubular bells, vibraphone, marimba, harp, strings 2
his wife began to attract attention in the West, and this led to their both being publically castigated by the notorious Tikhon Khrennikov, head of the Composers Union, for their failure to write the kind of music officially sanctioned by the Soviet authorities. Undaunted by this criticism, Smirnov and Firsova soon found themselves unofficial leaders in the world of new Soviet music of the nonofficial kind, in touch with their colleagues all over the world and frequently having their works performed in Europe and North America. Over the last forty years, Dmitri Smirnov has built up an impressive work list of more than 160 pieces, with several symphonies, many concertos, and a huge output of chamber music. Especially notable are his many compositions, including two operas, inspired by the poetry and painting of William Blake, whom the young composer discovered quite early in his artistic journey, and to whom he has remained faithful ever since. In 1991, faced with threats and chaos in their native land, Smirnov and Firsova took the difficult decision to emigrate to the U.K. with their young children. After residencies at various British universities, the couple eventually settled in St. Albans, just north of London. Since 2003, Smirnov has taught at Goldsmith s College, London, an institution with a particular interest in Russian music and musicians. Gerard McBurney Dmitri N. Smirnov on Space Odyssey Ideas for new pieces of music can come from very different and unexpected sources. Sometimes they are simply the result of a chat with friends and colleagues. That is how Space Odyssey came about. A close friend of mine was complaining about how composers now write too many long and turgid pieces, that are nearly all quite impossible to program. And he asked me a strange question: Where are the modern composers who could write something like the oldfashioned overtures that used to open concerts? Whom do you know who could come up with a brilliant concert opener fulfilling ALL five of the following criteria: (1) As fast as the Ruslan and Ludmila overture; (2) As bold and striking as the overture to La forza del destino; (3) As beautifully orchestrated as an overture by Berlioz; (4) Lasting no longer than seven minutes; and (5) Making the audience burst into spontaneous applause, as though they d seen the most beautiful shooting star? Of course, I had no answer to such a ridiculous question. But I also thought, there s no harm in trying. So about three days later, I sent my friend an e-mail with 3
forty pages of orchestral score: Space Odyssey. I have no idea whether this piece fulfills all my friend s demands, but it certainly fulfills one of them: played at the correct tempo, it lasts exactly seven minutes. Why the title? In my youth, growing up in the Far East of the USSR, I was fascinated by astronomy and always thrilled to hear stories about Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts, and the different spaceships and space programs. It was a pleasure to try to reflect these early interests and enthusiasms in this music. I d rather not say anything about the plot or musical narrative, as I hope it will be easily enough picked up, but I would say that while composing these seven minutes of music, I did think about the courage of those brave adventurers who risked their lives setting out on the odysseys of our age. We all know that, unfortunately, such journeys are not always successful and that any tiny insignificant mistake can lead to deadly consequences. But if they are successful, they are triumphant! Gerard McBurney is creative director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra s Beyond the Score series. Symphony Center Information The use of still or video cameras and recording devices is prohibited in Orchestra Hall. Latecomers will be seated during designated program pauses. Please note: Some programs do not allow for latecomers to be seated in the hall. Please use perfume, cologne, and all other scented products sparingly, as many patrons are sensitive to fragrance. Please turn off or silence all personal electronic devices (pagers, watches, telephones, digital assistants). Please note that Symphony Center is a smoke-free environment. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. Note: Fire exits are located on all levels and are for emergency use only. The lighted Exit sign nearest your seat is the shortest route outdoors. Please walk do not run to your exit and do not use elevators for emergency exit. Volunteer ushers provided by The Saints Volunteers for the Performing Arts (www.saintschicago.org) 4
Franz Schubert Born January 31, 1797, Himmelpfortgrund, northwest of Vienna, Austria. Died November 19, 1828, Vienna, Austria. The most productive year of Schubert s life was 1815. He was still a schoolmaster then a prisoner of the classroom who filled his free time writing the music that would one day make him famous. Schubert s off-hours produced an extraordinary harvest that year: two piano sonatas; a set of variations on an original theme; dances for keyboard; a string quartet; two masses and considerable miscellaneous choral music; four operas including Claudine von Villa Bella, which lost its second and third acts when the servants of Schubert s friend, Josef Hüttenbrenner, used the manuscript to start fires during the cold winter of 1848; some 145 songs, including Erlkönig, long considered his greatest; and this Symphony No. 3 in D Major, D. 200 D major symphony. Not all the music is important or memorable (Schubert was only eighteen); he must have been writing at breakneck speed and often well into the night. But much of it is impressive regardless of the circumstances, and some of the songs, in particular, are among his finest works they reveal a gift too strong and an imagination too vivid to be stifled even by the dull rigor of drilling reluctant boys and anticipating their mischief. Schubert s manuscript tells us he began this symphony on May 24, the same day he wrote a piece for women s chorus and horns. (He had finished a one-act Singspiel five days earlier.) Over the next few days, he wrote several more choral Composed May 24 July 19, 1815 First performance Private: probably 1815, Vienna Public: February 19, 1881, London First CSO performances July 2, 1955, Ravinia Festival. Eduard van Beinem conducting January 31, 1959 (Popular concert), Orchestra Hall. Sir Thomas Beecham conducting Most recent CSO performance November 27, 2004, Orchestra Hall. Pinchas Zukerman conducting Instrumentation two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings Approximate performance time 25 minutes 5
works and a number of songs; he completed the Adagio maestoso introduction and the first few pages of the Allegro of the symphony and then put the score aside. He returned to the Allegro on July 11; the symphony was completed in eight days. History is filled with stories of fine music written at astonishing speed, but Schubert often did his best work in great haste he once jotted down a song, fully formed, on the back of a café menu. We might well guess, from listening to this symphony, that Schubert played in an orchestra that regularly performed symphonies by Haydn and Mozart as well the earliest ones by Beethoven. But we also notice a distinctive way with traditional forms any composer capable of writing one of the most extraordinary songs in the literature, Gretchen am Spinnrade, at the age of seventeen had found his own voice at an early age. By the time he wrote that song in 1814, Schubert had finished his first symphony. And by the time he finished this one, his third, less than a year later, Schubert had written what many composers would gladly claim as a life s work and he had traveled light years in the perfection of his own style. The first movement begins, like many of Haydn s, with a slow introduction. The manuscript shows that Schubert struggled with the bubbling clarinet theme that launches the Allegro con brio, scoring it first for oboe and horns, and then for strings before finding the right sound. The movement itself is fluent and highly untroubled; the coda returns to the ascending scales of the introduction. Schubert originally planned to write an adagio for the second movement he even sketched a theme in this tempo. But he settled on a fresh and unassuming allegretto instead. The third movement is a forceful minuet, its trio a charming waltz. The finale, marked presto vivace, begins pianissimo and then explodes with energy. Schubert s first six symphonies were rarely performed for many years. It was Antonín Dvořák who began to play them in Prague near the end of the nineteenth century, and who wrote about them while he was in this country, saying, the more I study them, the more I marvel. Even though Schubert s name was engraved on the front of Orchestra Hall when it was built in 1904, his third symphony wasn t played here for another fiftyfive years. 6
Carl Orff Born July 10, 1895, Munich, Bavaria. Died March 29, 1982, Munich, Bavaria. Carmina Burana When Carmina Burana made him an overnight celebrity at the age of forty-two, Carl Orff decided to start his career over from scratch. Immediately after the premiere in 1937, he wrote to the Schott company in Munich, which had been his publisher for a full decade: Everything I have written to date, and which you have, unfortunately, printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana my collected works begin. Before the premiere of Carmina Burana in 1937, Orff s career had proceeded nicely, if routinely, on track. His infatuation with music began at an early age he took music lessons and composed songs as a young child and at the age of four he became enchanted with the theater during a traditional Punch and Judy show. He was essentially self-taught. At fourteen he heard his first opera, Wagner s The Flying Dutchman; it started an avalanche, as Orff later recalled. The young composer s grandfather kept a notebook in which he recorded the progress of Carl s musical education: Wagner s entire Ring cycle and Tristan and Isolde, the Composed 1935 1936 First performance June 8, 1937 (staged), Frankfurt Opera First CSO performance March 17, 1955, Orchestra Hall. Lois Marshall, Leslie Chabay, Morley Meredith as soloists; The Concert Choir; Fritz Reiner conducting Most recent CSO performances January 31, 1995, Orchestra Hall. Janet Williams, Frank Lopardo, Boje Skovhus as soloists; Chicago Symphony Chorus; Chicago Children s Chorus; Zubin Mehta conducting July 23, 2004, Ravinia Festival. Harolyn Blackwell, Donald Kaasch, Rodney Gilfry as soloists; Chicago Symphony Chorus; Glen Ellyn Children s Chorus; James Conlon conducting Instrumentation three solo voices (soprano, tenor or countertenor, and baritone), large mixed chorus, small mixed chorus, children s chorus, three flutes and two piccolos, three oboes and english horn, three clarinets, E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, three glockenspiels, xylophone, castanets, ratchet, small bells, triangle, antique cymbals, crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, tam-tam, tubular bells, tambourine, snare drum, bass drum, celesta, two pianos, strings Approximate performance time 60 minutes CSO recording 1984. June Anderson, Philip Creech, Bernd Weikl as soloists; Chicago Symphony Chorus; Glen Ellyn Children s Chorus; James Levine conducting. Deutsche Grammophon 7
principal Mozart operas, Strauss s Salome and Elektra. By the age of seventeen, Orff had composed some sixty songs, which revealed the unmistakable influence of Debussy and early Schoenberg. (He was particularly taken with Schoenberg s Five Pieces for Orchestra, and he made a piano duet arrangement of his Chamber Symphony.) Orff s interests were wide he studied the great Renaissance and baroque masters as well as African music and he eventually composed in a number of forms. The catalog he asked Schott to destroy in 1937 included an operatic treatment of the Japanese play Terakoya, a symphony based on the poetry of Maurice Maeterlinck, and choral settings of texts by Franz Werfel (Orff s favorite writer) and Bertold Brecht. Carmina Burana marked a shift Carl Orff and Riccardo Muti backstage following the performance of Carmina Burana in Berlin, 1980 in direction. It was Orff s first attempt at total theater a combination of music, word, movement, and visual spectacle and his earliest essay in a potent and accessible musical style designed to engage listeners who had lost their way in the complexities of twentieth-century music, although it was Orff more than anyone who found his way as a result of the piece. The work was wildly popular at once, and its exceptional appeal has never waned. After Carmina Burana, Orff did not tamper with his formula: he composed virtually nothing but vocal works for the stage few are operas in the traditional sense that place a high value on simplicity of musical language and directness of expression. At its most extreme, as in Die Bernauerin, composed in 1947, Orff s output hardly resembles music as we know it: spoken word alternates with rhythmic chanting; notated pitch is virtually nonexistent. The life-changing idea of composing Carmina Burana began in a rare book shop in Würzburg on Maundy Thursday in 1934, when Orff s eye fell upon a collection of medieval poems. The texts most of them are in Latin, but a few are Middle High German and French celebrate springtime, love, and the varied pleasures of a full, if self-indulgent, life. The tone, however, is dark, even bitter. (The very first poem in the collection, and the one Orff chose for his opening and closing chorus, ends: Weep with me. ) These songs Orff was not aware that melodies for these texts also existed had been preserved for centuries in the Benedikbeuern monastery in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps thirty miles south of Munich. In the early nineteenth 8
century, the manuscript was transferred to Munich, and in 1847, selections were published by Johann Andreas Schmeller, the Munich court librarian. (Schmeller also was a self-appointed censor: he omitted the raciest numbers.) Schmeller s title, Carmina the accent is on the first syllable Burana, means songs of Bavaria. (Beueren, the site of the Benedictine monastery, is a variant of Bayern, the German name for Bavaria.) It was Schmeller s edition that Orff picked up during an afternoon of fortuitous browsing. On opening the first page, Orff later remembered, I found the familiar image of Fortune with her wheel, and under it the lines O Fortuna velut Luna statu variabilis... (O fortune, like the moon ever-changing). Picture and words seized hold of me. That very day he sketched the opening chorus, with its great, inexorable wheel of fate. Orff picked twentyfour poems, already imagining a stage piece with chorus and dancers, and, with the help of poet Michael Hofmann, he arranged a libretto. He composed the music quickly, in a single burst of inspiration; visitors to his Munich apartment recall the red-faced excitement with which he played finished numbers for them at the piano. The title page of Orff s Carmina Burana promises secular songs to be sung by singers and choruses to the accompaniment of instruments and also of magic pictures. Although the premiere, at the Frankfurt Opera House, was staged and costumed, and magic pictures accompanied many early performances, Carmina Burana is best known today through concerts and recordings, where the immediacy Carmina Burana Fortune, Empress of the World 1. O Fortuna (chorus) 2. Fortune plango vulnera (chorus) I. Springtime 3. veris leta facies (small chorus) 4. Omnia Sol temperat (baritone) 5. Ecce gratum (chorus) On the Green 6. Dance (orchestra) 7. Floret silva (chorus) 8. Chramer, gip die varwe mir (chorus) 9. reie (orchestra) Swaz hie gat umbe (chorus) 10. Were diu werlt alle min (chorus) II. In the Tavern 11. Estuans interius (baritone) 12. Olim lacus colueram (countertenor and male chorus) 13. Ego sum abbas (baritone and male chorus) 14. In taberna quando sumus (male chorus) III. The Courts of Love 15. Amor volat undique (soprano and children s choir) 16. Dies, nox et omnia (baritone) 17. Stetit puella (soprano) 18. Circa mea pectora (baritone and chorus) 19. Si puer cum puella (male soloists) 20. veni, veni, venias (double chorus) 21. In trutina (soprano) 22. Tempus est iocundum (soprano, baritone, chorus, and children s choir) 23. Dulcissime (soprano) Blanziflor and Helena 24. Ave formosissima (chorus) Fortune, Empress of the World 25. O Fortuna (chorus) 9
2012 Chicago Symphony Orchestra and physical excitement of Orff s music stand alone. Orff s score has sometimes been criticized for popularizing the musical style of Stravinsky s landmarks Oedipus rex and, in particular, Les noces. Orff was attracted to the most superficial aspects of those Stravinsky scores, such as the glittering and percussive orchestral writing (Les noces is scored for four pianos, Carmina Burana calls for two), the idea of giving the central narrative role to the chorus, and the prominent use of insistent rhythms. But where Stravinsky achieves a certain complexity of style and idea, Orff intentionally keeps his music stripped to its bones. In Carmina Burana, he avoids complicated rhythm and harmony (several numbers subsist on a steady diet of two chords), and eschews polyphony altogether. His melodies are plain and syllabic. Occasionally, a single driving rhythmic pattern alone keeps the music going. (Imagine the courage it must have taken to write a pit-band oom-pah accompaniment in 1935.) Despite the spartan recipe, Orff succeeds brilliantly because of his flair for dramatic pacing, his ear for dazzling and seductive color, the energy of his rhythms, and the number of catchy tunes he composed. The result is a highly charged, expressive work of undeniable power and immediacy claims that can be made for few pieces of serious music written in the twentieth century. Orff begins and ends with the wheel of fate a massive chorus that slowly revolves around the same relentless, unchanging pattern, building in intensity and volume as it goes. In between these two pillars, he writes three large chapters. The first celebrates springtime in a series of songs and dances. The dance music is for orchestra alone; the vocal pieces are scored for baritone solo and various combinations of full chorus and small choir, often singing in alternation. The second section moves indoors to the tavern the exclusive province of male voices and the temple of food and drink. (The saga of the roasted swan, sung by a wailing countertenor, is a marvel of exotic color.) In the sensuous music of the third section, set in the courts of love, we hear the solo soprano and the voices of children for the first time. Almost all of these nine pieces are scored for different vocal forces, and the final sequence of numbers is swift and dramatic. From a rowdy, swinging chorus (no. 20, for split choirs), Orff turns to the soprano, who is lost in thought as she vacillates between chastity and physical love (a measured monologue, set in the soprano s lowest range). Encouraged by the baritone and choruses, she makes her choice, suddenly soaring to the highest reaches of the soprano voice. The music erupts in a magnificent hymn of praise ( Noble Venus, hail ), and the circle starts over as the wheel of fate begins to spin once again. Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For Riccardo Muti s account of his meeting with Carl Orff, see pages 4 5. Supertitles by Sonya Friedman 2012 SuperTitle System courtesy of DIGITAL TECH SERVICES, LLC, Portsmouth, VA 10