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PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOURTH 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, May 21, 2015, at 8:00 French Friday, May 22, 2015, at 1:30 Saturday, May 23, 2015, at 8:00 & Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Festival Samuel Coles Flute Jean-Yves Thibaudet Piano Valérie Hartmann-Claverie Ondes Martenot Debussy Syrinx SAMUEL COLES Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major Allegramente Adagio assai Presto JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET INTERMISSION Messiaen Turangalîla-symphonie Introduction. Modéré, un peu vif Chant d’amour 1. Modéré, lourd Turangalîla 1. Presque lent, rêveur Chant d’amour 2. Bien modéré Joie du sang des étoiles. Vif, passionné, avec joie Jardin du sommeil d’amour. Très modéré, très tendre Turangalîla 2. Un peu vif Développement d’amour. Bien modéré Turangalîla 3. Bien modéré Final. Modéré, presque vif, avec une grande joie JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET VALÉRIE HARTMANN-CLAVERIE The CSO thanks Julie and Roger Baskes, lead sponsors of the Reveries & Passions Festival concert programming. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional sponsorship support for the Reveries & Passions Festival has been provided by: The Jacob and Rosaline Cohn Foundation, Mr. & Mrs. Richard J. Franke, The Gilchrist Foundation, Jim and Kay Mabie, and Burton X. and Sheli Rosenberg. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBEZ 91.5FM for its generous support as a media sponsor of the French Reveries & Passions Festival. This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Roger Nichols Claude Debussy Born August 22, 1862, Saint Germain-en-Laye, France. Died March 25, 1918, Paris, France. Syrinx In 1913, the year of two water’s edge, admire themselves. At intervals big revolutionary works— they all pause, astonished, listening to the Stravinsky’s Sacre du syrinx of the invisible Pan, moved by the printemps and Debussy’s song that escapes from the hollow reeds. final orchestral score, Jeux—Debussy’s friend In a single thread of music—a little more Gabriel Mouray contacted than two hundred notes—Debussy seems to the composer about encompass an entire world. Deeply expressive, providing incidental music volatile, and endlessly mysterious, Syrinx quickly for his three-act dramatic became one of the anchors of the flute repertoire poem, Psyché. Mouray asked for a number of and was recognized as one of the landmarks of pieces, including “the last music Pan plays before twentieth-century music. Syrinx is the ultimate his death,” which he wanted performed from the descendant of the famous sinuous flute melodies wings of the stage. In Greek mythology, Syrinx is that open Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un the nymph pursued by the god Pan; she is faune, composed two decades earlier, in which ultimately transformed into a water reed in order “the flute of the faun brought new breath to the to escape Pan’s amorous advances. Finally, at the art of music,” as Pierre Boulez wrote. But it also water’s edge, Pan cuts the reeds—making the set the stage for a long line of flute monologues first pan pipe—and plays his dying lament. As it in the future, including Edgard Varèse’s seminal turned out, Debussy wrote nothing for Mouray’s Density 21.5. play but Pan’s little solo, originally titled Flûte de Over the years, Syrinx has been analyzed, Pan and later published as Syrinx. Yet seldom debated, and discussed extensively, quite out have three minutes of music had such of proportion to its tiny size. Yet, like so much long-reaching influence. of Debussy’s music, its true magic and power Here are Mouray’s stage directions for the continue to defy explanation. Perhaps no one opening of act 3: has captured the essence of the score better than Mouray himself, who called it “a real jewel of The moon spreads over the country- restrained emotion, of sadness, of plastic beauty, side . In the clearing, the nymphs of discreet tenderness and poetry.” dance . adorned in white . Some collect flowers . some, stretched out at the Phillip Huscher COMPOSED INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE 1913 solo flute PERFORMANCE TIME 3 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE December 1, 1913; Paris, France 2 Maurice Ravel Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France. Piano Concerto in G Major Ravel wrote home from glory and delight of his beloved country, a man his first tour of the United mighty with talent both lively and tender, who States in 1928, “I am persuades the learned that Pan is not dead.” But seeing magnificent cities, Ravel would only live to compose three more enchanting country, but major works—a ballet, Boléro, which quickly the triumphs are exhaust- became so popular it embarrassed him, and two ing.” In Chicago, at the piano concertos. matinee concert of the Chicago Symphony that he concertos, one for the left hand, he conducted on and this one in G major, were written January 20, Ravel accepted thunderous applause simultaneously. The left-hand concerto throughout the afternoon, a standing ovation at wasT commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul the end of the program, and a fanfare from the Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during orchestra itself. But Ravel hated the subzero the first weeks of the war. Ravel originally temperatures here and throughout the Heartland intended to play the other concerto himself, but (he shivered in Minneapolis, Omaha, and by the time he put the final touches on the score, Denver, too) and was happy to move on to Los he realized that his health was rapidly declining Angeles, where he had lunch with Douglas and he would never perform it. (He was soon Fairbanks (who spoke French) and declined diagnosed with the brain tumor that ultimately breakfast with Charlie Chaplin (who did not). made it impossible for him even to sign his The greatest thrill of his “crazy” American tour name.) For years, Ravel had contemplated was meeting George Gershwin, who wanted to writing a concerto for Marguerite Long, who study with him. Ravel turned him down flat. had studied with him (as well as with Debussy), “You would only lose the spontaneous quality of and it was she who played the first performance your melody and end up by writing bad Ravel,” in Paris, with the composer conducting. The pre- he said. miere was a triumph (although Ravel’s conduct- Ravel returned home to France weary and ing lacked “clarity and elasticity,” in the words famished—he found American food virtually of one critic). Ravel subsequently ignored his inedible—but assured that his fame was truly doctor’s orders and went on a four-month tour international. Later, in 1928, Oxford University with Long to introduce the concerto through- gave him an honorary doctorate, calling him “the out Europe. (They also recorded it together.) COMPOSED MOST RECENT INSTRUMENTATION 1929–November 14, 1931 CSO PERFORMANCES flute and piccolo, oboe and english November 29, 30, December 1 & 4, horn, B-flat clarinet and E-flat clarinet, FIRST PERFORMANCE 2007, Orchestra Hall. Yundi Li as two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, January 14, 1932; Paris, France. The soloist, Semyon Bychkov conducting trombone, timpani, triangle, snare composer conducting drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, August 7, 2012, Ravinia Festival. woodblock, whip, harp, strings Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist, James FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Conlon conducting July 6, 1944, Ravinia Festival. APPROXIMATE Leonard Bernstein conducting from PERFORMANCE TIME the keyboard 23 minutes January 18, 19 & 23, 1951, Orchestra Hall. Leonard Bernstein conducting from the keyboard 3 Ravel described the work as “a concerto in the begun around 1914. It opens with an allegro that truest sense of the word: I mean that it is written suggests a Spanish fiesta spiked with American very much jazz. Occasional blue notes and trombone smears in the same confirm how carefully Ravel had listened when spirit as those he and Gershwin visited Harlem jazz spots of Mozart and together. A frequently repeated melodic tag Saint-Saëns.” recalls the opening tune of Gershwin’s own (He had orig- Rhapsody in Blue. The velvety slow movement, inally thought for all its lush harmonies and French sonorities, of calling is deeply indebted to Mozart; in fact, Ravel told the work a Marguerite Long that he wrote it slowly and divertissement, painstakingly, “two measures at a time, with to emphasize frequent reference to Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet.” its lighter The opening, uninterrupted melody is much lon- qualities.) ger than any phrase in Mozart—an unadorned The concerto piano solo that unfolds slowly, twisting and turn- makes use of ing in unexpected ways, all in one huge breath. long- The third movement was an afterthought—an discarded exhilarating, saucy finale composed shortly material for before the premiere and designed to leave the a “Basque audience in high spirits. Ravel and Marguerite Long fantasy” Ravel had Phillip Huscher 4 Olivier Messiaen Born December 10, 1908, Avignon, France. Died April 27, 1992, Clichy, France. Turangalîla-symphonie for Piano, Ondes Martenot, and Orchestra This symphony, written destruction, and love. Where turanga urges between July 1946 and ever onward, lîla holds up or at least articu- November 1948—that is, lates the flow of time with dramatic incident. in Messiaen’s late Each depends on the other for its significance, thirties—was one of his as death gives meaning to life, or as an ocean earliest commissioned is defined by its surrounding continents. works. It was also one of The symphony stands as the second part of the most satisfactory from what Messiaen called his Tristan trilogy, between his point of view, since the song cycle Harawi and the Cinq rechants for Serge Koussevitzky, in mixed chorus, and the opposition of love and asking him to write something for the Boston death is central to all three, although, as already Symphony Orchestra, allowed him total freedom explained, opposition here includes justification.