Program

ONE HuNdrEd TwENTiETH 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, March 3, 2011, at 8:00 Friday, March 4, 2011, at 1:30 Saturday, March 5, 2011, at 8:00 Sunday, March 6, 2011, at 3:00 Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Wagner Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Donatoni Esa (In cauda V) First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

IntErmISSIon Bruckner Symphony No. 7 in E Major Allegro moderato Adagio: Very solemn and very slow Scherzo: Very fast Finale: Moving, but not fast

Steinway is the official piano of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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

richard Wagner Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Germany. Died February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy.

Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

ie Meistersinger von Nürnberg abandoned work on the Ring, the Dhas always stood apart from the greatest undertaking of his career, rest of Wagner’s output because it with little hope of ever getting it is, on the surface, a comic opera; on the stage, he turned out two it warrants comparison with few enormously successful master- other comic operas beyond those pieces, Tristan and Isolde (arguably of Mozart because it is essentially the most important score of that so serious and moving. Virgil masterpiece-packed century), and Thomson said that “it is all direct Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The and human and warm and senti- mastersingers of Nuremberg). mental and down-to-earth. It is In listening to the prelude to Die unique among Wagner’s theatrical Meistersinger, there is no need to works in that none of the charac- know Wagner’s story beyond what ters takes drugs or gets mixed up Thomson called a “never-never with magic.” Wagner wrote Die land where shoemakers give vocal Meistersinger in a slump, financially lessons, where presidents of music and emotionally. After having societies offer their daughters as

ComPoSED moSt rECEnt aPProxImatE prelude: 1862 CSo PErFormanCES PErFormanCE tImE opera: 1862–67 October 29, 1996, 10 minutes Orchestra Hall. Takashi FIrSt PErFormanCE Asahina conducting CSo rECorDIngS prelude: November 1, June 26, 1999, ravinia 1926. Frederick Stock 1862, leipzig Festival. Christoph conducting. Victor opera: June 21, 1868, Munich Eschenbach conducting 1959. Fritz reiner conduct- ing. rCA FIrSt CSo InStrumEntatIon 1972. Sir Georg Solti PErFormanCE two flutes and piccolo, two conducting. london oboes, two clarinets, two december 18, 1994. daniel barenboim bassoons, four horns, three 1891, Auditorium conducting. Teldec Theatre. Theodore trumpets, three trombones 1995 (complete opera), Thomas conducting and tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, harp, strings Sir Georg Solti conduct- ing. london

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2 prizes in musical contests, and aspirant Walther, followed by the where music critics believe in festive procession of the masters. the rules of composition and get Those are the three main themes, mobbed for preferring young girls though Wagner also works into to young composers.” Wagner the prelude the eager apprentices wrote the prelude first, reversing and the chattering spectators at the the usual process, and said that song competition. Though designed he saw in it “the clear outlines of as a curtain-raiser, the prelude is the leading themes of the whole a brilliant achievement as pure drama.” Indeed, we begin in music, crowned by the stroke of the majesty of C major with the the triangle, marking the moment important music of the masters- when Wagner brings together, in ingers’ guild and then hear the magnificent polyphony, his three prize-winning song of the young principal themes.

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3 Franco Donatoni Born June 9, 1927, Verona, Italy. Died August 17, 2000, Milan, Italy.

Esa (In cauda V)

lthough Franco Donatoni’s began to compose in the advanced Aparents thought their studi- serial language of Pierre Boulez, ous and unpopular boy was best who was particularly influential at suited for the career of a bank clerk, Darmstadt, which Donatoni visited Donatoni himself was slowly drawn for the first time in 1954, he also to the idea of spending his life in was fascinated by Stockhausen, music. He first took violin lessons as well as by the first twelve-tone in his hometown of Verona—fam- works by Schoenberg. For a while, ily outings to hear opera in the he became obsessed with the iconic celebrated arena there were child- quintet instrumentation of Pierrot hood highlights—and later studied lunaire, Schoenberg’s watershed composition in Milan and Bologna. work of 1912. All of these encoun- A radio broadcast of Bartók’s ters fed into his own understanding Fourth String Quartet impressed of what it meant to be a composer him greatly, suggesting a direction in the mid-twentieth century, for his young career as a composer. although he eventually lost patience The decisive event in his creative with Stockhausen precisely because life, however, was his encounter he was “always perfecting his ego with Bruno Maderna, the Italian and his music, while I want to avant-garde composer, in 1953. destroy both the one and the other.” “Till I was thirty, I copied Bartók,” “Then I got interested in John he later said with characteristic Cage, had my negative period, and candor. “After I met Maderna, I so on,” Donatoni once said, tele- copied Boulez.” scoping years of artistic upheaval. Donatoni’s own language In the sixties, Donatoni began to was certainly changed, almost explore the idea of chance music, as overnight, by the impact of post- a result of his exposure to the work Webern serialism. Although he of Cage. But he quickly became

ComPoSED InStrumEntatIon tuba, timpani, percussion 2000 two flutes, piccolo and (xylophone, glockenspiel, alto flute, two oboes and marimba, vibraphone, bells, FIrSt PErFormanCE english horn, two clarinets, gong), piano, harpsichord, February 16, 2001. los E-flat clarinet and bass harp, strings Angeles Philharmonic, Esa- clarinet, three bassoons Pekka Salonen conducting and contrabassoon, six aPProxImatE These are the first CSO horns, four trumpets, PErFormanCE tImE performances four trombones and 12 minutes

4 disillusioned with the lack of (The first of the pieces he titled In form in Cage’s works, which “was cauda—cauda is Latin for ‘tail’— putting music in great danger, so was commissioned by Boulez and that its survival as an art was being premiered in 1982.) Since by 2000, put into doubt.” In time, Donatoni he was no longer able to write began to question everything himself, he dictated the score to his about his own work as well—he assistants from his bed in Milan’s became painfully aware of “the Niguarda Hospital, where he died impossibility of being the author that August. Commissioned by of one’s own intellect, of one’s the Los Angeles Philharmonic, own will”—which led to a long, the score was dedicated to Esa- dark period. The tragic death of Pekka Salonen, who was one of Maderna in 1973 devastated him. Donatoni’s composition students In 1975, Donatoni quit composing, and makes abundant use of the gave up the lease on his studio, and notes E and A, the “musical” let- took a job as an editor in his music ters in Salonen’s name. When he publisher’s office. premiered the piece in Los Angeles He only began to compose again in February 2001, only six months when his wife begged him to honor after Donatoni’s death, Salonen an earlier commitment to write told the audience that at first he a new chamber piece. With that thought the score was too private score, Ash, for eight instruments, to perform on the stage. But then and in particular with the 1977 he saw the joy in the music and work Spiri, he found that he was understood it as “my old teacher’s liberated and able to work with a message to me, something like new freedom and that he was filled ‘Carry on, son, it will be OK.’” with new ideas. The composer “Donatoni was himself as a himself described Spiri as “joy- craftsman, an artisan, i.e., a manu- ous, almost euphoric.” Suddenly, facturer of music, not the lonely Donatoni had entered a dazzling romantic genius who wanders in late summer of creativity—in forests and feels Weltschmerz,” 1983 alone he composed ten new Salonen wrote before the premiere works—with a focus on scores of the work. “His point of view is for novel chamber groupings, as typically Italian: clear, practical, well as a sequence of pieces for light (as opposed to heavy), unsen- solo instruments, comparable to timental. The key to composing is Berio’s Sequenze series. Although to work meticulously and precisely: Donatoni’s earlier music was dif- ‘lavorare e lavorare, sempre lavorare’ ficult to characterize—he was a he used to say. . . . I love the serial composer with a lifelong love kaleidoscopic world of Donatoni, of Rossini’s operas—his late music the sudden twists and turns and the is almost uniformly expressive, sheer beauty of the surface of the brilliant, and even playful. music. Not only did he manage to Esa (In cauda V), composed in develop his very own language: he 2000, is Donatoni’s last work. also learned to speak it.”

5 anton Bruckner Born September 4, 1824, Ansfelden, Upper Austria. Died October 11, 1896, Vienna, Austria.

Symphony no. 7 in E major

ruckner was sixty years old quickly became as famous as those Bwhen he tasted public success of his contemporaries, Brahms for the first time. The ovations and Wagner. that greeted him following the What is surprising isn’t that premiere of his Seventh Symphony public acceptance came so late to lasted a full fifteen minutes, and Bruckner, but that he survived that the press was not only ecstatic, but long without it. Bruckner was the also dumbfounded by the discovery most insecure of composers—he of this mature talent. “How is it regularly caved in to the advice of possible,” a local Leipzig critic his detractors, revised his scores to wrote, “that he could remain so please his critics, and often faced long unknown to us?” Although long stretches of writer’s block Bruckner never again enjoyed when his confidence was entirely the easy success of his Seventh spent. Of all the major composers, Symphony, from that point on, Bruckner also took the longest to he was recognized as one of the find his own voice. After years of few composers whose every work composing for the church, he wrote demanded attention, and his name his first significant instrumental

ComPoSED moSt rECEnt CSo rECorDIngS September 1881–September CSo PErFormanCE 1979. daniel barenboim 1883 december 9, 2008, conducting. deutsche Orchestra Hall. bernard Grammophon FIrSt PErFormanCE Haitink conducting 1986–87. Sir Georg Solti december 30, 1884. leipzig conducting. london Gewandhaus Orchestra, InStrumEntatIon 2007. bernard Haitink Arthur Nikisch conducting two flutes, two oboes, two conducting. CSO resound clarinets, two bassoons, four FIrSt CSo horns, four wagner tubas, A 1963 performance (first PErFormanCE three trumpets, three trom- movement only) with Paul March 9, 1906, Orchestra bones and tuba, timpani, Hindemith conducting and Hall. Frederick cymbal, triangle, strings a 1984 performance with Stock conducting Klaus Tennstedt conducting aPProxImatE were released on Chicago PErFormanCE tImE Symphony Orchestra in 64 minutes the Twentieth Century: Collector’s Choice.

CSO subscription concert performances and audio recordings only, unless otherwise indicated

6 music in 1862, at the age of thirty- wide-ranging finale that gath- eight; the following year he ers many threads together in a composed his first symphony (a new light—in Beethoven’s Ninth Studiensymphonie, as he called Symphony. Six of Bruckner’s it)—one last student exercise, at symphonies start with the kind of thirty-nine. mysterious, unformed material that Bruckner’s sudden and unlikely he picked up from the opening of decision to begin writing sym- Beethoven’s Ninth and then focus phonies is one of music’s miracles. on an important theme. Bruckner’s The mid-nineteenth century was role as the principal heir to this the time of Wagner and Liszt, the symphonic tradition wasn’t lost heyday of the music drama and on his admirers, and when Arthur the symphonic poem. The classical Nikisch conducted the premiere of symphony was no longer of inter- the Seventh Symphony, he com- est to serious, forward-thinking mented, “Since Beethoven there composers. Schumann, the last has been nothing that could even master of the form, had died nearly approach it.” a decade before Bruckner began After its premiere in Leipzig, his first symphony, and no one yet the Seventh Symphony began to knew that Brahms was working on make the rounds of the major music one. Still, some time around 1863 centers. Over the next few months, or 1864, Bruckner, the least self- it was played in Munich (under confident of composers, realized Hermann Levi, who had recently that the symphony was to be his led the premiere of Wagner’s ideal form, despite his almost total Parsifal in Bayreuth), Dresden, lack of experience in writing for Frankfurt, Utrecht, The Hague, orchestra. But from that point on, New York City, and Chicago. (Only it was his main interest. Bruckner’s in Chicago, with Theodore Thomas discovery of Wagner’s music in conducting his own orchestra in the 1863, when Tannhäuser was staged symphony’s United States premiere, in Linz for the first time, was the did Bruckner’s score fall flat. It most decisive event in his creative was Frederick Stock who later life. The experience unlocked introduced the work to the Chicago something inside Bruckner, freeing Symphony.) The members of the the boldness and individuality of Vienna Philharmonic (Bruckner’s his own ideas. Once he tackled the hometown orchestra) wanted to symphony, form and content came play his Seventh Symphony right together, and Bruckner became away, but Bruckner talked them the first composer to translate the out of it, fearing “the influential essence of Wagnerian language to Viennese critics, who would be instrumental music. only too likely to obstruct the Bruckner found his model for a course of my dawning fame in large-scale structure—a big first Germany.” And, in fact, when the movement, a spacious adagio, score was performed there in 1886, a scherzo in sonata form, and a Eduard Hanslick did bemoan the

7 “interminable stretches of dark- in unexpected ways. (Schoenberg ness, leaden boredom, and feverish marveled at how its irregularly over-excitement.” But Hanslick was shaped phrases, sometimes of three swimming against the public tide, or five measures, sound completely and he had to admit, with obvious “natural.”) The entire Allegro is irrita- conceived as a single paragraph of tion, great breadth, with three large and that important themes, a broad develop- he had ment section, and an extensive coda never grounded by the unchanging E in before the bass (through much of the coda seen a this foundation is stubbornly at com- odds with rest of the orchestra). poser When Bruckner began the called to Adagio late in January 1883, he the stage was troubled by premonitions of four Wagner’s death. “One day I came or five home and felt very sad,” he wrote times to conductor Felix Mottl. “The after thought had crossed my mind each that before long the Master would Three great Bruckner conductors: move- die, and then the C-sharp minor Hermann Levi (left), Hans Richter (right), and Felix Mottl (standing) ment to theme of the Adagio came to me.” accept Bruckner had met Wagner for the the first time at the premiere of Tristan applause. In the end, Bruckner’s and Isolde in Munich in 1865. Seventh Symphony was the greatest (Eight years later, they spent an triumph of his career, and it was afternoon together talking about the most often performed of his music, but Bruckner, a teetotaler, symphonies during his lifetime. drank so much beer out of sheer This symphony calls for the nervousness that he could scarcely largest orchestra Bruckner had recall what they said.) Bruckner yet used, but it is characterized went to Bayreuth for the premieres by pages of unusual delicacy and of the complete Ring cycle in 1876 transparency. (Schoenberg made a and Parsifal in 1882, shortly after chamber orchestra version of the he had started to work on this first movement.) The very begin- symphony. (Wagner sat behind ning—a characteristic Bruckner Bruckner at Parsifal and chastised opening, with a long and noble him for applauding too loudly.) On melody emerging from the shad- that occasion, which turned out ows—is a model of classical seren- to be their last meeting, Wagner ity and simplicity. The first theme said that he wanted to conduct itself, one of Bruckner’s most dis- Bruckner’s symphonies. tinctive ideas, begins as a standard On February 13, 1883, as E major arpeggio and then develops Bruckner was finishing the Adagio

8 of this symphony, Wagner died athletic outdoor music dominated in Venice. When he heard the by a restless string ostinato and news, Bruckner wrote an extraor- a playful trumpet theme. The dinary, quiet yet wrenching coda contrasting trio is spacious and pas- to the movement, which he always toral. The finale begins much like referred to as “the funeral music the opening movement, traverses for the Master.” This magnificent wide and constantly changing Adagio begins with music for territory, and finally returns to the Wagner tubas, the instrument symphony’s first theme in the brac- Wagner designed for Der Ring ing E major fanfares of the closing des Nibelungen, here making their bars. Just before he completed debut in symphonic music. Like this movement, Bruckner went to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Bayreuth, in August of 1883, to Ninth, the music is built on two visit Wagner’s grave and to pay wonderfully contrasted themes, his respects to the man to whom each the subject of further elabora- he owed so much. He finished the tion. Eventually Bruckner reaches score a few days after he returned the summit of his journey (in home. The triumphant premiere of C major, an astonishing destina- the symphony, fifteen months later, tion for a movement that began was at a benefit concert to raise in C-sharp minor), marked by money for a Wagner monument. a cymbal crash and the strik- ing of the triangle, over a drum- roll. (Conductors still debate the authenticity of using the cymbal and triangle here, despite their undeniable effect, since they were clearly an afterthought, and were added to the score just in time for the Leipzig premiere, apparently at the suggestion of Arthur Nikisch, who conducted the premiere, or possibly even Bruckner’s meddle- some students, Ferdinand Löwe and Joseph Schalk.) The scherzo, in contrast to all Phillip Huscher is the program annota- that preceded it, is brilliantly tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2011 Chicago

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