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 Thursday, December 10, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, December 11, 2015, at 1:30 Saturday, December 12, 2015, at 8:00 Tuesday, December 15, 2015, at 7:30 Sunday, December 20, 2015, at 3:00 Bernard Labadie Conductor Lydia Teuscher Soprano Allyson McHardy Mezzo-soprano Jeremy Ovenden Tenor Philippe Sly Bass-baritone Chicago Symphony Chorus Duain Wolfe Director Handel Messiah Part 1 INTERMISSION Part 2 Part 3 These concerts are generously sponsored by Mr. & Mrs. Dietrich M. Gross, in memory of Francis Cardinal George. The appearance of the Chicago Symphony Chorus is made possible by a generous gift from Jim and Kay Mabie. 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 Phillip Huscher George Frideric Handel Born February 23, 1685, Halle, Saxony, Germany. Died April 14, 1759, London, England. Messiah On April 6, 1759, trained in Italy, a resident of England, famous just eight days throughout Western Europe, fluent in four before he died, languages, and exceptionally well traveled for Handel appeared a citizen of the eighteenth century, when most in public for the people lived and died within a few miles of last time, blind their birthplace. and partially para- But Messiah was an exception—recognized as lyzed by a series of a landmark almost at once and loved more than strokes, to attend any other piece of vocal music by generation London’s annual after generation, each with its own ideas about performance of how Handel’s music should sound. Its history his Messiah. Not followed a very different course from Bach’s Saint a year has passed Matthew Passion, composed just fourteen years without a perfor- before Messiah, which was all but forgotten after mance of it since. In 1993, Messiah was even sung Bach’s death and waited until Mendelssohn’s in a Zulu translation by a black choir, performing famous revival in 1729—a century after the first with a white orchestra, at the Pietermaritzburg performance—for its rediscovery. City Hall in Natal, South Africa, for an enthu- Unlike Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or siastic, if somewhat puzzled, audience that Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, works that today also included the king of the Zulu nation. are considered icons, Messiah was acclaimed from Handel couldn’t have imagined such a fate for the start. After the public rehearsal that preceded his oratorio—even though its annual presenta- the first performance in Dublin in 1742, the local tion was already something of a London ritual Journal reported that Messiah “was allowed by at the end of his life—for the idea of playing the greatest Judges to be the finest Composition music of previous generations was nearly unheard of Musick that ever was heard,” an opinion that of during his lifetime. The concept of music was challenged surprisingly little in the years speaking to an entirely different culture wasn’t ahead (although London, Handel’s adopted something that would have occurred even to as hometown, was indifferent at first). Performances worldly a man as Handel—born in Germany, of Messiah quickly became a kind of sacred rite. COMPOSED December 26 & 27, 1957, Orchestra INSTRUMENTATION August 22–September 14, 1741 Hall. Adele Addison, Russell Oberlin, vocal soloists, mixed chorus, two David Lloyd, Donald Gramm, and oboes, bassoon, two trumpets, FIRST PERFORMANCE Gavin Williamson as soloists; Apollo timpani, strings, continuo April 13, 1742; Dublin, Ireland Musical Club (Henry Veld, director); Fritz Reiner conducting CSO RECORDING FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES 1984. Kiri Te Kanawa, Anne Gjevang, December 25, 1891, Auditorium MOST RECENT Keith Lewis, Gwynne Howell, and Theatre. Jennie Patrick Walker, Pauline CSO PERFORMANCES David Schrader as soloists; Chicago Rommeiss Bremmer, William J. March 11, 12, 13, 14 & 16, 2004, Symphony Chorus (Margaret Lavin, Emil Fischer, and Clarence Orchestra Hall. Esther Heidemann, Hillis, director); Sir Georg Solti Eddy as soloists; Apollo Musical Jane Gilbert, Randal Rushing, conducting. London Club (William L. Tomlins, director); Kevin Burdette, and Patricia Lee William L. Tomlins conducting as soloists; Chicago Symphony Chorus (Duain Wolfe, director); Peter Schreier conducting 2 With the 1784 presentation in Westminster (The speed, the concentration of energy, and Abbey, which commemorated the twenty-fifth the lavishness of invention weren’t unusual for anniversary of the composer’s death and fea- Handel—he moved on to Samson as soon as he tured 261 singers, 229 orchestral musicians, and finished Messiah, completing it a month later.) 3 conductors, its status as the ultimate musical The first performance was given not in blockbuster—a guaranteed box office smash, an London, where Handel had lived for nearly unparalleled spiritual experience—was secure. thirty years, but in Dublin, Ireland, during the (As was the tradition of monster performances, nine months he spent there beginning in late which lasted more than a century and a half, 1741, following a disastrous London season for climaxing with the 1883 production in London’s his operas at the box office. Handel was already Crystal Palace with 500 orchestral players and popular in Dublin, and there was great interest 4,000 singers—a fashion George Bernard Shaw, in the concerts he announced for the winter and a lone voice of reason at the time, dismissed as spring. The climax was to come on April 13 with “the silly notion that big music requires big bands a new work that hadn’t yet even been performed and choruses.”) in London—Messiah. In 1789, Mozart made his own orchestration Anticipation was high. The concert announce- of Messiah “arranged for greater serviceability ment that ran in the Dublin papers requested for our day,” as the title page explained, that is a “the Favour of the Ladies not to come with labor of love, though also a misrepresentation of Hoops this Day,” and asked the men, likewise, Handel’s score. No one, it seemed, was immune to leave their swords at home, to make room for to Messiah. “I would uncover my head and kneel a bigger crowd. The performance was scheduled down at his tomb,” Beethoven said, when he for noon (allowing the audience to get home in was asked what he thought of the composer of time for dinner, normally served at four), and the Messiah, an appraisal confirmed by the way he doors opened at eleven in the morning. Denied emulated Handel’s “And he shall reign” fugue their hoops and swords, some seven hundred in the “Dona nobis pacem” of his own great Dubliners jammed Neale’s Music Hall, designed Missa solemnis. Inevitably, for a work of such for no more than six hundred. Handel con- widespread popularity, there have been skeptics, ducted from the keyboard and even played organ beginning with Charles Jennens himself, who concertos, demonstrating his celebrated skill at wrote, “His Messiah has disappointed me” after improvising, during the breaks. If subsequent the very first performance, later admitting that London performances are any judge, he wore his Handel had made a “fine Entertainment” of the huge signature white wig, and, as Burney later text, “tho’ not near so good as he might & ought reported, “when things went well at the Oratorio, to have done.” Attending a performance later in it had a certain nod, or vibration, which man- the seventeenth century, Samuel Johnson chose ifested his pleasure and satisfaction.” Things to compose a Latin poem extolling the virtues of apparently went very well, and Messiah found staying at home rather than listening, and Ezra such a large and eager public with its first perfor- Pound eventually wrote his own verdict, lumping mance that a repeat was scheduled for June 3. together “Heer Haendel and boiled potatoes.” London didn’t share Dublin’s enthusiasm at first, and the performances that Handel gave essiah was mentioned for the first time there both in March 1743 and April 1745 failed in a letter dated July 10, 1741, from to generate excitement. That all changed with Charles Jennens, who is best known the revival Handel led in 1750 to benefit the Mtoday for compiling the oratorio’s text: “Handel Foundling Hospital, which launched the suc- says he will do nothing next Winter, but I hope cessful series of annual charity performances that I shall perswade him to set another Scripture continued till the composer’s death nine years Collection I have made for him . The Subject later. By then, Messiah had become a tradition. is Messiah.” Handel apparently was easily In all, Handel gave thirty-six performances of persuaded, and he composed the music—more his most popular work during the last seventeen than 250 pages of manuscript—in little more years of his life, making adjustments of various than three weeks, beginning on August 22. kinds—vocal lines rewritten and arias transposed 3 to suit different singers, entirely new pieces The arias range from the grand (“The trumpet added—nearly every time. shall sound”) to the deeply introspective (“He Messiah is unique, even in Handel’s output. was despised”), and often demand opera-house Unlike traditional oratorios, it has no dramatic virtuosity. There’s an unusual amount of music characters. The story, as pieced together by for the chorus in Messiah—more than in any Jennens (drawing texts from the Old Testament other Handel oratorio except Israel in Egypt— and from the Book of Common Prayer, the ser- although the subtlety, imagination, and variety vice book of the Church of England), is told by of Handel’s choral writing has long been over- an anonymous narrator.