Program One Hundred Twenty-Third 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, December 5, 2013, at 8:00 Saturday, December 7, 2013, at 8:00 Stéphane Denève Conductor James Ehnes Violin Weber The Ruler of the Spirits Overture, Op. 27 First Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concert performances Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 77 Nocturne: Moderato Scherzo: Allegro Passacaglia: Andante Burlesque: Allegro con brio Presto James Ehnes Intermission Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 Dreams Passions (Largo Allegro agitato e appassionato assai) A Ball (Waltz: Allegro non troppo) A Scene in the Country (Adagio) March to the Scaffold (Allegretto non troppo) Dream of a Witches Sabbath (Larghetto Allegro) The program for December 10 appears on page 29B. These violin concerto performances are made possible by the Paul Ricker Judy Fund. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Program One Hundred Twenty-Third 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 Tuesday, December 10, 2013, at 7:30 Stéphane Denève Conductor Gabriel Cabezas Cello Weber The Ruler of the Spirits Overture, Op. 27 Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 107 Allegretto Moderato Cadenza Allegro con moto Gabriel Cabezas Intermission Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 Dreams Passions (Largo Allegro agitato e appassionato assai) A Ball (Waltz: Allegro non troppo) A Scene in the Country (Adagio) March to the Scaffold (Allegretto non troppo) Dream of a Witches Sabbath (Larghetto Allegro) 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 Carl maria von Weber Born November 18, 1786, Eutin, near Lübeck, Germany. Died June 5, 1826, London, England. the Ruler of the Spirits overture, op. 27 Related by marriage to Mozart his cousin Constanze married Wolfgang after her sister Aloysia rejected him Carl Maria von Weber was pushed from an early age to follow in Mozart s footsteps. (He was born the year of Mozart s Th e Marriage of Figaro and trained in Salzburg and Vienna not long after Mozart s death.) He studied composition with Michael Haydn (Joseph s brother) and immediately showed great promise he wrote his first opera at the age of fourteen. Like Mozart, he excelled both as a composer and as a performer he was one of the most brilliant pianists of his day and a fine conductor. But he earned his greatest fame writing for the opera house and he secured his place in history as the composer of a single work, Der Freischütz, which was an overnight sensation in 1821, quickly became the best-loved opera in all Germany, and changed forever the course of the German art form. Richard Wagner later said that there was never a more German composer. Weber made himself at home in the world of opera early on. He was appointed conductor of the opera house in Breslau in 1804; he was not yet eighteen years old. Almost immediately, he agreed to collaborate with the theater director, Johann Rhode, who had written the libretto for an opera, Rübeazhl, based on a German folk tale. (The story involves a monarch of the spirit realm who tries, without success, to win the love of a beautiful princess.) Weber started writing music, but quickly abandoned the project. Just three numbers survive, including the overture, which he set aside and then decided to revise as a concert piece in 1811, with a new title, The Ruler of the Spirits. The significance is not that Weber chose to recycle preexisting music that had been a specialty of composers for centuries but that he knew that orchestral music designed to raise the curtain in the opera house could hold its own as an independent piece in the concert hall. As a result, Weber is sometimes credited as one of the founders of a new genre, the concert overture, when, in fact, he simply recognized that music this fine shouldn t go to waste. From the powerful and driven opening pages through lyrical interludes, contrapuntal passages, and wonderfully colorful soloistic music, The Ruler of the Spirits is, whatever its origins, one of Weber s most inspired creations. ComPoSED 1804 1805, revised 1811 first PErformanCE November 11, 1811; Munich, Germany. The composer conducting first CSo PErformanCES July 26, 1980, ravinia Festival. James Conlon conducting These are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra s first subscription concert performances. InStrumEntatIon flute and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings approximate PErformanCE time 6 minutes 3
Dmitri Shostakovich Born September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia. violin Concerto no. 1 in a minor, op. 77 (Performed December 5 & 7) In February 1948, for the second time in his life, Shostakovich found himself the object of a bitter, politically motivated public attack. (The first came on January 28, 1936, with the Pravda article Muddle instead of Music, to which Shostakovich ultimately responded with his powerful Fifth Symphony.) He and a number of Soviet composers, including Prokofiev, were now accused of antidemocratic tendencies in music, formalistic perversion, and a fondness for confused, neurotic combinations which transform music into cacophony. Shostakovich was at work on his first violin concerto when he read this latest criticism. He finished the score as if nothing had happened he could point to the exact spot where his work was interrupted by this news, but, as a friend recalled, The violin played semiquavers [sixteenth notes] before and after it. There was no change evident in the music. But Shostakovich didn t know how to proceed, and, at first, he even considered suicide. Although each of the composers attacked confessed complicity with the cult of atonality, dissonance, and discord, it was difficult to figure out how to write music of atonement that was, at the same time, honest work. For a while, Shostakovich turned to writing mass-audience works such as patriotic choral pieces and film scores in a popular style the puzzling products of a private, deeply introspective artist who suddenly set his sights on the marketplace and the Cineplex. (The film work at least put money in his pocket. After the February announcement, he was dismissed from his teaching position at the Moscow Conservatory.) At the same time, he chose to withhold his song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, the Fourth String Quartet, and the First Violin Concerto, which he labeled op. 77 the first because the late Stalin years were fiercely anti-semitic, and the latter because its dark and dissonant idiom was precisely what the authorities didn t want to hear. Stalin died on March 5, 1953. (Prokofiev died an hour before him; the April issue of the official Soviet music journal carried Stalin s obituary on page 1 and Prokofiev s on page 117.) With Stalin s death, the road ahead appeared more welcoming to an artist of Shostakovich s sensibilities. In due time, he released the works he had relegated to the shelf and wrote a new, magnificent, and fearless symphony his tenth. Shostakovich also made some apparently minor changes in the Violin Concerto and gave it a new, up-to-date opus number: 99. His friend David Oistrakh played it with the Leningrad Philharmonic in October 1955, accepted the composer s dedication, took the work on tour (he gave the American premiere in December in New York City), and made the first recording. ComPoSED 1947 48 first PErformanCE October 9, 1955, Leningrad. David Oistrakh as soloist first CSo PErformanCES October 31 & November 1, 1963, Orchestra hall. yehudi Menuhin as soloist, Jean Martinon conducting most recent CSo PErformanCES December 11, 12, 13 & 16, 2008, Orchestra hall. Julia Fischer as soloist, David zinman conducting August 1, 2009, ravinia Festival. Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg as soloist, Christoph eschenbach conducting CSo recordings 1966. Leonid Kogan as soloist, irwin hoffman conducting. CSO (From the Archives, vol. 10: Great Soloists) InStrumEntatIon solo violin, three flutes and piccolo, three oboes and english horn, three clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, tuba, timpani, tambourine, tam-tam, celesta, xylophone, harp, strings approximate PErformanCE time 36 minutes 4
Shostakovich s musical monogram In several compositions, beginning with the First Violin Concerto of 1948, Shostakovich spells out his initials in musical notation. This four-note motive is derived from the German transliteration of the composer s own name, D. SCHostakowitsch. In German notation, E-flat is called es and B-natural is H. Thus, DSCH is D, E-flat, C, B. The tradition for this kind of musical signature dates back at least to the time of Bach. Shostakovich eventually chose to revert to the concerto s original opus number both as a way of pointing out that it was an earlier work and as a silent reminder of the reasons he had chosen to hide it for seven years. Ultimately op. 99 was reassigned to music for the film The First Echelon, which was written in 1955 56. The Violin Concerto, however, is still sometimes known by the later number its confused identity a lasting mark of its composer s double life. T he concerto that Shostakovich dared not release is, as its composer obviously knew at the time, a troubled and troublesome work. It begins with music as profoundly sad and searching as anything he was to write a long, rhapsodic nocturne that comes from the blackest hour of the night. The scherzo that follows is neither playful nor light it certainly is no joke, as the Italian word implies. It does play with Shostakovich s four-note musical monogram (see sidebar, above) an egocentric outburst that wouldn t have found favor with Stalin. The scherzo relieves the pent-up tensions of the first movement only as a nightmare ends a night of tossing and turning. Oistrakh, in a 1956 article explaining and also defending the concerto, speaks of the tremendous vital force which is undeniably impressive here, as is the ominous and demonic tone. The third movement finally offers a certain sense of reason and calm as the bass line measures out the steady repetitions of a passacaglia theme. This does, in its own straitjacketed way, provide some release. Shostakovich writes nine variations over this somber tread, with the theme given to different instruments each time. Eventually the solo violin takes wing, launching an enormous cadenza a brilliant high-wire act Shostakovich might well have set apart as a movement of its own that plays freely with material from the previous movements and sails off at last directly into the finale. Above this boisterous, headlong music, Shostakovich writes the word burlesque, setting his Allegro con brio apart from other finales in the way that Mahler often cast an unsettling, satirical light over familiar dance music. Oistrakh, in his discussion, mentions merriment and the sense of a joyful folk holiday, but that, as in much of Shostakovich s most outgoing music, barely masks a deeper sorrow and anger. 5
Dmitri Shostakovich Born September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia. Cello Concerto no. 1, op. 107 (Performed on December 10) Dmitri Shostakovich made three trips to the United States. On the first, in 1949, he was asked to play the scherzo from his famous Fifth Symphony on an upright piano in Madison Square Garden for a crowd of 30,000 curious spectators. The last, in 1973, just two years before his death, brought him to Evanston to accept an honorary doctorate from Northwestern University. In between came a month-long stay in 1959, arranged as part of a cultural exchange allowed by the new Khrushchev regime. Shostakovich and several other Russian musicians traveled from New York to a number of major American cities, including Philadelphia, where Mstislav Rostropovich played the American premiere of Shostakovich s First Cello Concerto. Rostropovich had given the world premiere of this new concerto only a month before in Leningrad. Composed early in 1959, the concerto marked the beginning of Shostakovich s brief but intense fascination with the solo cello, which was inspired by Rostropovich s exceptional playing. Over the next six years, Shostakovich wrote a second cello concerto (also dedicated to Rostropovich) and reorchestrated the cello concerto by Robert Schumann. Aside from an early, lightweight piano concerto which he wrote when he was in his twenties, Shostakovich became interested in the concerto form relatively late in his life and as a direct result of his contact with important performers like Rostropovich, or, in the case of the two violin concertos, David Oistrakh. A second piano concerto was written for his son Maxim (who played it for the first time on his nineteenth birthday). The small number of concertos in his vast output is surprising considering that Shostakovich produced fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets; three dozen film scores; several opera and ballet scores; and a great many songs, choral works, piano pieces, and arrangements of other music (including, of all things, Tea for Two, which became the Tahiti Trot). T he First Cello Concerto begins with the solo cello playing a four-note motive (G, E, B, B-flat) that will surface again and again throughout the work. At one point, the motive is transposed and its intervals tightened to produce C, B, E-flat, D, a variant of the composer s personal musical motto D, E-flat, C, B (see sidebar). The music is lightly scored, with important solos for the horn, the only member of the brass section Shostakovich included in the orchestra. The tone throughout is lively and energetic, but not lighthearted. The following movement, although not slow (marked moderato), suggests repose and ComPoSED 1959 first PErformanCE October 4, 1959, Leningrad. Mstislav rostropovich as soloist first CSo PErformanCES August 4, 1968, ravinia Festival. Frank Miller as soloist, Seiji Ozawa conducting September 26, 27 & 28, 1985, Orchestra hall. Lynn harrell as soloist, Sir Georg Solti conducting most recent CSo PErformanCES February 17, 18, 19 & 20, 2005, Orchestra hall. John Sharp as soloist, Lorin Maazel conducting InStrumEntatIon solo cello, two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, one horn, timpani, celesta, strings approximate PErformanCE time 28 minutes 6
Shostakovich s musical monogram In several compositions, beginning with the First Violin Concerto of 1948, Shostakovich spells out his initials in musical notation. This four-note motive is derived from the German transliteration of the composer s own name, D. SCHostakowitsch. In German notation, E-flat is called es and B-natural is H. Thus, DSCH is D, E-flat, C, B. The tradition for this kind of musical signature dates back at least to the time of Bach. introspection and is crowned by a long, singing line from the cello. Lyrical solos for the horn are prominent, and, near the end, the celesta and the solo cello engage in dialogue. The soloist then begins an extended cadenza, which Shostakovich indicates as a separate movement, placing a roman numeral III above the word cadenza. Although Shostakovich still maintains the cadenza s historical definition as brilliant, unaccompanied virtuosic display music for the soloist, he has now elevated it in size and function to its own movement moving even beyond its role in his earlier First Violin Concerto, where it linked the slow movement and the finale. Here, too, the cadenza leads without pause into the last movement, a tight, brief, ferocious allegro that concludes by recalling the concerto s opening four-note theme. Symphony Center Reminders 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) 7
hector Berlioz Born December 11, 1803, Côte-Saint-André, France. Died March 8, 1869, Paris, France. Symphonie fantastique, op. 14 I come now to the supreme drama of my life, Berlioz wrote in his Memoirs, at the beginning of the chapter in which he discovers Shakespeare and the young Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Shakespeare, coming up on me unawares, struck me like a thunderbolt, he wrote after attending Hamlet, given in English a language Berlioz did not speak at the Odéon Theater on September 11, 1827. But it was Smithson appearing as Ophelia, and then four days later as Juliet, who captured his heart and set in motion one of the grandest creative outbursts in romantic art. Berlioz began the Symphonie fantastique almost at once, and it immediately became a consuming passion. Throughout its composition, he was obsessed with Henriette, the familiar French name for her he had begun to use, even though they wouldn t meet until long after the work was finished. On April 16, 1830, he wrote to his friend Humbert Ferrand that he had just written the last note of his new symphony, one of the most shockingly modern works in the repertoire and surely the most astonishing first symphony any composer has given us. Here is its subject, he continued, which will be published in a program and distributed in the hall on the day of the concert. Then follows the sketch of a story as famous as any in the history of music: the tale of a man who falls desperately in love with a woman who embodies all he is seeking; is tormented by recurring thoughts of her, and, in a fit of despair, poisons himself with opium; and, finally, in a horrible narcotic vision, dreams that he is condemned to death and witnesses his own execution. Berlioz knew audiences well; he provided a title for each of his five movements and wrote a detailed program note to tell the story behind the music. A few days before the premiere, Berlioz s full-scale program was printed in the Revue musicale, and, for the performance on December 5, 1830, two thousand copies of a leaflet containing the same narrative were distributed in the concert hall, according to Felix Mendelssohn, who would remember that night for the rest of his life because he was so shaken by the music. No one was unmoved. It is hard to know which provoked the greater response Berlioz s radical music or its bold story. For Berlioz, who always believed in the bond between music and ideas, the two were inseparable. In an often-quoted footnote to the program as it was published with the score in 1845, he insisted that the distribution of this ComPoSED January April 1830 first PErformanCE December 5, 1830, Paris first CSo PErformanCES December 2 & 3, 1892, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting most recent CSo PErformanCES September 23, 24, 25 & 28, 2010, Orchestra hall. riccardo Muti conducting April 16, 2011, Carnegie hall. riccardo Muti conducting July 7, 2011, ravinia Festival. Christoph eschenbach conducting InStrumEntatIon two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and two english horns, two clarinets and e-flat clarinet, four bassoons, four horns, two trumpets and two cornets, three trombones and two ophicleides (traditionally played by tubas), timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, low-pitched bells, two harps, strings approximate PErformanCE time 49 minutes CSo recordings 1972. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London 1992. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London 1983. Claudio Abbado conducting. Deutsche Grammophon 1995. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec 8
Berlioz s program note for the Symphonie fantastique Part One: Dreams Passions The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted with that moral disease that a well-known writer calls the vague des passions, sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in his dreams, and he falls desperately in love with her. Through an odd whim, whenever the beloved image appears before the mind s eye of the artist, it is linked with a musical thought whose character, passionate but at the same time noble and shy, he finds similar to the one he attributes to his beloved. This melodic image and the model it reflects pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe. That is the reason for the constant appearance, in every movement of the symphony, of the melody that begins the first Allegro. The passage from this state of melancholy reverie, interrupted by a few fits of groundless joy, to one of frenzied passion, with its gestures of fury, of jealousy, its return of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations this is the subject of the first movement. Part Two: A Ball The artist finds himself in the most varied situations in the midst of the tumult of a party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beauties of nature; but everywhere, in town, in the country, the beloved image appears before him and disturbs his peace of mind. Part Three: A Scene in the Country Finding himself one evening in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds piping a ranz des vaches in dialogue. This pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently brushed by the wind, the hopes he has recently found some reason to entertain all concur in affording his heart an unaccustomed calm, and in giving a more cheerful color to his ideas. He reflects upon his isolation; he hopes that his loneliness will soon be over. But what if she were deceiving him! This mingling of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness disturbed by black presentiments, form the subject of the Adagio. At the end, one of the shepherds again takes up the ranz des vaches; the other no longer replies. Distant sound of thunder loneliness silence. Part Four: March to the Scaffold Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned and led to the scaffold, and that he is witnessing his own execution. The procession moves forward to the sounds of a march that is now somber and fierce, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled noise of heavy steps gives way without transition to the noisiest clamor. At the end of the march the first four measures of the idée fixe reappear, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow. Part Five: Dream of a Witches Sabbath He sees himself at the sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troop of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind, come together for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it is no more than a dance tune, mean, trivial, and grotesque: it is she, coming to join the sabbath. A roar of joy at her arrival. She takes part in the devilish orgy. Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies irae [a hymn previously sung in the funeral rites of the Catholic Church], sabbath round-dance. The sabbath round and the Dies irae are combined. program to the audience, at concerts where this symphony is to be performed, is indispensable for a complete understanding of the dramatic outline of the work. [Berlioz s own program note appears above.] E ven in 1830, the fuss over the program couldn t disguise the daring of the music. Berlioz s new symphony sounded like no other music yet written. Its hallmarks can be quickly listed: five movements, each with its own title (as in Beethoven s Pastoral Symphony), and the use of a signature motif, the idée fixe representing Harriet Smithson that recurs in each movement and is transformed dramatically at the end. But there is no precedent in music just three years after the death of Beethoven for his staggeringly inventive use of the orchestra, creating entirely new sounds with the same instruments that had been playing together for years; for the bold, unexpected harmonies; and for melodies that are still, to this day, unlike anyone else s. There isn t a page of this score that doesn t contain something distinctive and surprising. Some of it can be explained Berlioz developed his idiosyncratic sense of harmony, for example, not at the piano, since he never learned to play more than a few basic chords, but by improvising on the guitar. But explanation doesn t diminish our astonishment. None of this was lost on Berlioz s colleagues. According to Jacques Barzun, the composer s biographer, one can date Berlioz s unremitting influence on nineteenth-century composers from 9
the date of the first performance of the Symphonie fantastique. In a famous essay on Berlioz, Robert Schumann relished the work s novelty; remembering how, as a child, he loved turning music upside down to find strange new patterns before his eyes, Schumann commented that right side up, this symphony resembled such inverted music. He was, at first, dumbfounded, but at last struck with wonderment. A portrait of Harriet Smithson Mendelssohn was confused, and perhaps disappointed: He is really a cultured, agreeable man and yet he composes so very badly, he wrote in a letter to his mother. For Liszt, who attended the premiere he was just nineteen years old at the time and took Berlioz to dinner afterwards, the only question was whether Berlioz was merely a talented composer or a real genius. For us, he concluded, there can be no doubt. (He voted for genius.) When Wagner called the Symphonie fantastique a work that would have made Beethoven smile, he was probably right. But he continued: The first movement of Beethoven s Fifth Symphony would seem an act of pure kindness to me after the Symphonie fantastique. In fact, it was Berlioz s discovery of Beethoven that prompted him to write symphonies in the first place. (There are two more which followed shortly: Harold in Italy in 1834 and Romeo and Juliet in 1839.) At the same time, Berlioz also seems to foreshadow Mahler, for whom a symphony meant the building up of a world, using every available technical means. The Symphonie fantastique did, for its time, stretch the definition of the symphony to the limit. But it didn t shatter the model set by Beethoven. For it was a conscious effort on Berlioz s part to tell his fantastic tale in a way that Beethoven would have understood, and to put even his most outrageous ideas into the enduring framework of the classical symphony. At the premiere, Berlioz himself was on stage playing in the percussion section, as he often liked to do to witness the audience cheering and stomping in excitement at the end. Later, in his Memoirs, he admitted that the performance was far from perfect it hardly could be, with works of such difficulty and after only two rehearsals but that night he knew that he had the public in his camp, and that with the recent, coveted Prix de Rome under his belt, his career was about to skyrocket. Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 2013 Chicago Symphony Orchestra 10