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 Saturday, October 17, 2015, at 8:00 Tuesday, October 20, 2015, at 7:30 James Feddeck Conductor Christopher Martin Trumpet Franck Les Éolides Haydn Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major Allegro Andante Finale: Allegro INTERMISSION Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27 Largo Allegro moderato Allegro molto Adagio Allegro vivace CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. 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 César Franck Born December 10, 1822, Liège, Belgium. Died November 8, 1890, Paris, France. Les Éolides Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective César Franck matured as a composer very late in life, but he first won acclaim as a child prodigy. He was born in Liège, in the French-speaking Walloon district of the Netherlands; this heritage was reflected in the mixture of French and Flemish in his name. Early on he showed unusual musical talent, which his father, Nicolas-Joseph, set about nurturing, promoting, and finally exploiting. In 1830, his father enrolled him in the Liège Conservatory, and César made his first tour as a virtuoso pianist at the age of eleven, traveling throughout the newly formed kingdom of Belgium. (His specialty was playing variations on popular opera themes à la Liszt.) Having outgrown the Liège Conservatory, César moved to Paris, with his entire family in tow, for advanced study in 1835. When the Paris Conservatory initially rejected his application because of his Belgian birth, Nicolas-Joseph sent for French naturalization papers. César was an exemplary student, and he walked off with many top prizes. He was always interested in composing, but his father discouraged him from entering the prestigious Prix de Rome competition in the hope that he would devote his life to concertizing. Nicolas-Joseph even pulled César out of school in 1842 to send him off on another recital tour, which was highlighted by a meeting with Franz Liszt, who encouraged him to keep composing. Franck next won fame as an organist and a composer of organ music (his impassioned organ improvisations were greatly celebrated). Then, in middle age, he devoted himself to teaching, and, in the process, influencing an entire generation of French composers, including Vincent d Indy and Ernest Chausson, who were nearly idolatrous in their devotion. I n November 1874, Franck heard the prelude to Wagner s Tristan and Isolde for the first time. As with so many composers, his initial encounter with Wagner s pioneering score both overwhelmed and inspired him. For Franck, those few pages of the orchestral prelude opened up the most important chapter of his composing career, leading directly into the astonishingly productive final decade of his life. The symphonic poem Les Éolides is among the earliest of Franck s works to bear the imprint of Tristan. It is, in fact, the most Wagnerian of all his works in its harmonic richness, the chromaticism of its lines, and the urgency with which it unfolds. (At first glance, Franck s opening, with its short, breathless phrases of rising half steps, could be mistaken for a page from Tristan and Isolde.) Although Franck had written very little purely orchestral music when he heard the Tristan prelude his most recent effort was a symphonic COMPOSED 1875 76 FIRST PERFORMANCE May 13, 1877; Paris, France FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES U.S. premiere November 8 & 9, 1895, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting 2 MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES October 21 & 22, 1943, Orchestra Hall. Désiré Defauw conducting July 30, 1946, Ravinia Festival. Pierre Monteux conducting INSTRUMENTATION two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, percussion, harp, strings APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 11 minutes
poem on a text by Victor Hugo begun some thirty years earlier he soon began Les Éolides, which was in turn followed by three more symphonic poems, and then, finally, by his great Symphony in D minor. Les Éolides is based on these lines by his contemporary, the French poet Leconte de Lisle: O floating breezes of heaven Sweet breaths of gentle spring That touch with fitful kisses The mountains and the plains Aeolus virgin, peace-loving daughters Eternal nature awakens to your songs. Franck s music, gently surging forward in grand Wagnerian arcs of delicate sonorities, gives sound to his title Les Éolides, the daughters of Aeolus, a companion of the gods and master of the winds. Theodore Thomas and the Chicago Orchestra, as it was then known, introduced the score to the U.S. in 1895, during the Orchestra s fifth season. It was often played during the Chicago Symphony s early decades, but, like many characteristic Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle products of the romantic era, it has been unfairly overlooked in recent times. These are the first CSO performances in more than seventy years. Joseph Haydn Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau, Lower Austria. Died May 31, 1809, Vienna, Austria. Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major, Hob. VIIe:1 Perhaps because Haydn was not a virtuoso performer himself (unlike his friend Wolfgang Mozart), he showed little interest in composing solo concertos. This was not so much a question of talent or skill he was a perfectly decent pianist and violinist as personal character. Haydn was not by nature a showman. Few of his compositions are ostentatious in fact, much of his best music is actually much harder to play than it sounds, and the difficulties are not the more obvious, crowd-pleasing ones the high wire acrobatics on which many a solo career depends. Although Haydn wrote one hundred and eight symphonies, sixty-eight string quartets, and forty-seven piano sonatas, the catalog of his complete works lists a scant seventeen concertos composed over three decades and most of those are lost. Many apparently were written quickly, for a single performance, and then set aside, with no eye to the future. Of those that remain including two cello concertos and a concerto apiece for violin and piano (compared to Mozart s groundbreaking twenty-seven) the E-flat trumpet concerto is the most popular of all. This is the last concerto of Haydn s career; it also is one of the few instrumental works composed during the final years of his life, when he had given up writing symphonies and piano sonatas for good, and had begun to concentrate on vocal music. It was prompted, sometime in 1795 or early in 1796, by a request for a concerto from Anton Weidinger, a trumpet player in the Vienna Court Orchestra. Weidinger had spent his career perfecting an organized trumpet designed to fill in the gaps between the notes of the natural series; five or six holes drilled in the instrument and covered by padded keys provided the missing chromatic notes. In Weidinger s hands, the natural trumpet became a melodic instrument, like the oboe or the flute. Weidinger 3
toured Europe, demonstrating his invention, and became something of a celebrity (although his instrument was superseded by the valve trumpet after 1820). He eventually commissioned a concerto from Hummel that now rivals Haydn s in popularity. Oddly, Weidinger did not play the concerto Haydn wrote for him until March 1800, perhaps because he needed the four years after the work was completed to master its technical challenges. Haydn fully enjoys the advances of Weidinger s invention. The soloist s opening phrase, for example, would have been impossible to play on a natural trumpet in E-flat, since it contains six notes accessible only with Weidinger s padded keys. The opening movement, in particular, is unusually showy and brilliant. The slow movement is richly lyrical, with the same melodic luxury one hears in The Creation that Haydn began the same year he wrote Weidinger s concerto. The jubilant finale suggests that Haydn had not forgotten how to bring down the curtain in fine style. COMPOSED 1796 FIRST PERFORMANCE date unknown FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES January 25, 1955, Orchestra Hall. Adolph Herseth as soloist, George Schick conducting July 17, 1964, Ravinia Festival. Adolph Herseth as soloist, Seiji Ozawa conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES August 8, 1993, Ravinia Festival. Adolph Herseth as soloist, Riccardo Chailly conducting November 15, 17 & 20, 2007, Orchestra Hall. Christopher Martin as soloist, Nicholas Kraemer conducting June 27, 2015, Morton Arboretum. Christopher Martin as soloist, James Feddeck conducting INSTRUMENTATION solo trumpet, two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings CADENZA Christopher Martin APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 14 minutes CSO RECORDING 1984. Adolph Herseth as soloist, Claudio Abbado conducting. Deutsche Grammophon Sergei Rachmaninov Born April 1, 1873, Semyonovo, Russia. Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, California. Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27 It is astonishing that Rachmaninov ever wrote a second symphony. He was so shattered by the disastrous, ill-received premiere of his first symphony in 1897 the most agonizing hour of my life, as he later put it that, for the next three years, he suffered from chronic depression, and struggled day after day with a composer s worst fear the inability to write a page of music worth saving. Sketches for a new symphony were abandoned, and work on an opera, Francesca da Rimini, was shelved. Rachmaninov visited Leo Tolstoy, hoping that contact with the great, larger-than-life novelist would stimulate his creativity, but their conversations discouraged him even more. Finally, at his friends insistence, in 1900 he went to see Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a psychiatrist noted for treating alcoholism through hypnosis. (Dahl also was an amateur violinist and a great music lover.) After four months of Dahl s hypnosis You will work with great facility was one of the doctor s often-repeated leitmotifs Rachmaninov suddenly recovered. He not only began to compose again and with great facility but he also soon finished the 4
Composers in Chicago Sergei Rachmaninov appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on numerous occasions between 1909 and 1943. In addition to his performances as a piano soloist, he also conducted his symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead in December 1909. Rachmaninov also led the Orchestra in his choral symphony The Bells in 1941 with soprano Janet Fairbank, tenor Jan Peerce, baritone Mack Harrell, and the Apollo Musical Club of Chicago (prepared by its director, Edgar Nelson). Program biography for Sergei Rachmaninov s debut appearances with the Theodore Thomas Orchestra (as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was then known) in December 1909. 5
score that became his most popular work the Second Piano Concerto, which he dedicated to Dahl. Rachmaninov played the piano solo at the triumphant premiere of the concerto in 1901, proving to the public that he had left his difficulties behind with the old century. The writing block had been overcome, but if the piano concerto marked the turning point, it was his second symphony that proved his ultimate victory, as well as his vindication. After the success of the concerto, Rachmaninov returned to composition on a regular basis (although he still made time for concert appearances both as pianist and as conductor a new role he had taken up during his creative crisis). He now wrote steadily piano pieces, songs, a cello sonata, and two operas, including the shelved Francesca da Rimini. By the fall of 1906, Rachmaninov was such a celebrity in his native land that, in order to escape the public eye, he moved, with his wife and infant daughter, to Dresden, chosen with no more reason than the memory of a fine performance of Die Meistersinger he had attended there. (He also liked being near Leipzig, the home of his favorite conductor, Arthur Nikisch, and the celebrated Gewandhaus Orchestra.) In Dresden, where he once again became a full-time composer, Rachmaninov at last began to sketch a new symphony, with sudden difficulty and in total secrecy obviously he had not banished the painful memories of his first. Finally, in February 1907, when word of his newest project leaked out in the German press, he confessed to a friend, I have composed a symphony. It s true!... I finished it a month ago and immediately put it aside. It was a severe worry to me and I am not going to think about it any more. But by the summer he was back at work, polishing the symphony for its public unveiling. Rachmaninov conducted the work at the Saint Petersburg premiere in January 1908, with great, reassuring success. The symphony won the Glinka Prize of 1,000 rubles that year and quickly made the rounds of the major orchestras of the world (It was performed in Chicago for the first time in 1911). But Rachmaninov s vindication was a qualified one, for wherever the symphony was performed, except under the composer s own baton, it was so extensively cut that this almost hour-long symphony was sometimes reduced to a mere forty-five minutes. Few other major works of orchestral music, including Bruckner s most misunderstood symphonies, were regularly presented to the public in such a savagely butchered state. These traditional cuts (the New York Philharmonic has kept a list of twenty-nine cuts supposedly approved by the composer) range from tiny, but still disfiguring snips a measure or two of introductory accompaniment, for example to major surgery, such as the removal of the main theme from the recapitulation of the Adagio. The true stature of Rachmaninov s Second Symphony was largely unsuspected. Ironically, a score that was routinely cut because its material was considered too insubstantial to sustain its length ended up sounding even more inconsequential, with its balance skewed and its forward sweep blunted. Only in recent years, when conductors have begun to play the piece in its entirety, has Rachmaninov s true achievement as a composer been revealed. (At these performances, James Feddeck conducts the symphony uncut.) Throughout Rachmaninov s life, it was fashionable if not in fact honorable in progressive music circles to disparage his music. Rachmaninov had always worried that by splitting his time between playing the piano, conducting, and composing, he had spread COMPOSED October 1906 April 1907 FIRST PERFORMANCE January 26, 1908, Saint Petersburg. The composer conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES November 3 & 4, 1911, Orchestra Hall. Frederick Stock conducting 6 July 24, 1937, Ravinia Festival. Hans Lange conducting MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES July 10, 2004, Ravinia Festival. Leonard Slatkin conducting April 22, 23, 24 & 27, 2010, Orchestra Hall. Jaap van Zweden conducting INSTRUMENTATION three flutes and piccolo, three oboes and english horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, strings APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 56 minutes
himself too thin. I have chased three hares, he once said. Can I be certain that I have captured one? For many years, Rachmaninov s stature as a pianist was undisputed. (He regularly performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, beginning in 1909, when he played his Second Piano Concerto here during his first American tour; he appeared with the Orchestra for the last time in 1943, just six weeks before his death, as the soloist in Beethoven s First Piano Concerto and his own Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.) But by the time of his death in 1943, he had been written off as an old-fashioned composer hopelessly sentimental, out-of-touch, and irrelevant. As Virgil Thomson told the young playwright Edward Albee in 1948, It is really extraordinary, after all, that a composer so famous should have enjoyed so little the esteem of his fellow composers. (Rachmaninov s great Russian contemporary, Igor Stravinsky, for example, never could stomach the music or the man, even when they were neighbors in Los Angeles. A six-foot scowl, was his summation of his famously grim-faced colleague.) The sacrosanct Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, in its fifth edition, concluded its dismal appraisal of his output: The enormous popular success some few of Rachmaninov s works had in his lifetime is not likely to last and musicians never regarded it with much favor. But in the past few years, his star has been on the rise. Now, as Rachmaninov always hoped, it is his music and not his piano playing that keeps his name alive. Even Rachmaninov eventually admitted that his first symphony was in fact a weak, childish, strained, and bombastic work words no more sympathetic than those of César Cui s devastating opening-night review. (Cui suggested that Rachmaninov s music sprang straight from a conservatory in hell.) The new symphony proves how seriously Rachmaninov took the challenges of the form the second time around. The first movement is quite long, but it only demonstrates Rachmaninov s command of extended paragraphs and his mastery of carefully controlled suspense. As a conscious effort to unify the entire work, Rachmaninov begins quietly and slowly, with a low string motto theme that reappears, already disguised, as early as the main violin melody that takes over once the tempo picks up. The second movement is a very lively, brilliantly orchestrated scherzo that unexpectedly makes way for a broad, lyrical melody of characteristic lushness. The trio midsection begins with a fugue launched by the second violins. After the return of the scherzo, Rachmaninov introduces the same Dies irae chant melody that he also cites in his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and The Isle of the Dead. The Adagio opens with a lovely, sighing violin gesture it would sustain an entire movement for many a romantic composer that Rachmaninov quickly pushes aside for a generous, long-breathed clarinet melody. (It unfolds slowly, circling, but never repeating itself, for some twenty-two measures.) At the end, the clarinet and violins exchange roles. The finale begins with festive, dancing music; continues with a big theme destined to return, triumphantly, at the end; and even stops, for just six measures, to reconsider the melody from the slow movement. The development section crests with an astonishing passage of descending scales, cascading at different speeds and from different heights, like the clangorous pealing of bells. And the big melody, one of Rachmaninov s finest, does not disappoint, but returns, in octaves, to sweep in the final cadences. Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987. 2015 Chicago Symphony Orchestra 7