PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, May 12, 2016, at 8:00 Saturday, May 14, 2016, at 8:00

Charles Dutoit Conductor Javier Perianes Daniela Mack Mezzo- Ravel Alborada del gracioso Falla Nights in the Gardens of In the Generalife Distant Dance— In the Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba JAVIER PERIANES

INTERMISSION

Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Falla The Three-Cornered Hat Introduction Part One Afternoon Dance of the Miller’s Wife (Fandango) The Grapes Part Two The Neighbors’ Dance (Seguidilla) The Miller’s Dance (Farruca) The Corregidor’s Dance Final Dance (Jota) DANIELA MACK

The appearances of Daniela Mack and Javier Perianes are endowed in part by the John Ward Seabury Distinguished Soloist Fund. Saturday’s concert is sponsored by S&C Electric Company. 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

Maurice Ravel Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France. Alborada del gracioso

Maurice Ravel was born redundant at first. But, perhaps more than any in the French Pyrenees, musician of his time, Ravel had an extraordinary only a few miles from the ear for sonority and color. The newly redecorated Spanish border, a geo- Alborada is one of his greatest sonic achievements. graphical boundary he often crossed in his music. lborada means morning music, just Even though his family as serenade means night music. It’s moved to Paris while he related to the French aubade and the was still a baby, Ravel troubadour’sA alba (literally “white of dawn”), by came by his fascination which means lovers are warned of the approach- with Spain naturally, for his mother was Basque ing dawn in time to dampen their passions and and grew up in . (His Swiss father part company. (This requires the participation inspired in his son a love for things precise and of a loyal watchman or friend—like Brangäne in mechanical that carried over into his impeccable Tristan and Isolde, whose warnings are famously music, provoking Stravinsky to dismiss him as ignored.) In the more common Spanish tradi- a “Swiss watchmaker.”) tion, it’s simply any music performed at day- In 1905, Ravel composed a set of five piano break, often to celebrate a festival or to honor a pieces he called Miroirs (Mirrors), which included person—or both, such as a bride on her wedding some of the earliest of the Spanish music he day. To his Alborada, however, Ravel adds del wrote from the comfort of his Paris apartment. gracioso, or “of the buffoon,” clouding the picture Alborada del gracioso, one of the three pieces with the introduction of the standard grotesque which he later transcribed for full orchestra, lover, akin to Don Quixote of ancient Castilian immediately became one of his most popular comedy. And so we have a highly spirited, almost works. The original piano version, with its impos- outrageous dance that begins with the strum- sibly fast repeated notes (it remains a challenge ming of a guitar (here given to the pizzicato to all but the most skilled ), is so rich and strings and the harp) and concluding with a evocative that orchestrating it must have seemed grand and glorious racket.

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1905, for piano; orchestrated in 1918 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME July 26, 1990, Ravinia Festival. 7 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Gianluigi Gelmetti conducting May 17, 1919; Paris, France CSO RECORDINGS February 27, 28 & March 1, 1957. Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA 2014, Orchestra Hall. Marcelo FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Lehninger conducting 1968. Jean Martinon conducting. RCA March 6 & 7, 1925, Orchestra Hall. Frederick Stock conducting 1991. conducting. INSTRUMENTATION Erato July 15, 1938, Ravinia Festival. Willem three flutes and piccolo, two oboes van Hoogstraten conducting and english horn, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, crotales, triangle, tambourine, castanets, side drum, cymbals, drum, xylophone, two harps, strings

2 Born November 23, 1876, Cádiz, Spain. Died November 14, 1946, Alta Gracia, Argentina. Nights in the Gardens of Spain

In 1921, when he was the Ravel’s works, suggested that Falla turn the most celebrated Spanish nocturnes into a piece for piano with orchestra. composer alive, Falla Falla took his recommendation to heart, but this settled in , in a change in direction further delayed completion cottage surrounded by of the score. As Falla became better known in roses, honeysuckle, and Paris, particularly after the success of his jasmine, with an arbor La vida breve in 1913, the long-awaited work and a small fountain. At became legendary in the city’s music circles. the top of a nearby hill sat When Falla fled to Spain as war broke out in the great Alhambra—the August 1914 (he was in such a hurry to catch a fortress of the Moorish kings that Falla had train that he lost his toupee en route) the noc- famously drawn in music in his Nights in the turnes, now called Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Gardens of Spain. At the time he began the score, were still unfinished. Shortly after returning to more than a decade earlier, Falla was living in his homeland, Falla visited the Alhambra for the Paris and had never even been to Granada; he first time, in the company of his friend Maria knew about the Alhambra only from an inexpen- Martínez Sierra, who noticed his “satisfaction at sive book he bought at a bookstall on the rue de having guessed, with the help of some book, the Richelieu. (He was so captivated that he stayed charm which he had never seen before.” up all night reading it.) After settling briefly in Madrid, Falla lived for Nights in the Gardens of Spain began as a set of several months in the beach town of Sitges, near nocturnes for solo piano. Falla started sketching , where he put the finishing touches in 1909, the year his colleague Isaac Albéniz on Nights in the Gardens of Spain. He worked on died, depriving Spain of one of its best-known an old, out-of-tune piano in El Cau Ferrat, the composers. (When died in home of the popular painter Santiago Rusiñol, 1916, less than a month before the premiere of fine-tuning his sense of orchestral color in a Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Falla was thrust house filled with his host’s evocative canvases of into his new role as the country’s preeminent Spanish gardens. (It was once believed, errone- composer.) Ricardo Viñes, the great Catalan ously, that these paintings were the inspiration who introduced many of Debussy’s and for the score.)

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1909–15 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME August 2, 1996, Ravinia Festival. Alicia 23 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE de Larrocha as soloist, Christoph April 9, 1916; Madrid, Spain Eschenbach conducting CSO RECORDINGS 1997. Daniel Barenboim as soloist, May 31, June 1, 2 & 5, 2012, Orchestra FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Plácido Domingo conducting. Teldec Hall. Stewart Goodyear as soloist, December 11 & 12, 1925, Orchestra Ludovic Morlot conducting 1997. Daniel Barenboim as soloist, Hall. Rudolph Reuter as soloist, Plácido Domingo conducting. Arthaus Frederick Stock conducting INSTRUMENTATION Musik (video) July 14, 1949, Ravinia Festival. solo piano, three flutes and piccolo, William Kapell as soloist, Fritz two oboes and english horn, two Reiner conducting clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, cymbals, triangle, celesta, harp, strings

3 rushing torrents.” And they’re all gathered here in Falla’s wondrously evocative and fragrant music. The second movement, set in an unidentified distant garden, is an exotic dance. The piano, with its arabesques, trills, arpeggios, and stomping octaves, suggests a guitar, then a dancer, and later a singer. Without pause, Falla transports us to festivities in the Sierra de Córdoba. Music historians like to attribute this brilliant finale to the zambra gitano—a night festival characterized by lively Granada’s Alhambra, with the Sierra Nevada in the background gypsy dancing and singing traditionally held for the feast of Corpus Christi. But Falla, ights in the Gardens of Spain is neither a no fan of explicit program music, didn’t care to concerto, although it’s scored for a solo be pinned down. As he wrote: piano with orchestra, nor a tone poem, Neven though it vividly portrays the spirit of a If these “symphonic impressions” have place. Falla referred to it simply as “symphonic achieved their object, the mere enumeration impressions.” The piano role, prominent but of their titles should be a significant guide to rarely dominant, is characterized by elaborate, the hearer. Although in this work—as in all brilliant, and eloquent writing. (Falla’s piano which have a legitimate claim to be consid- teacher studied with a pupil of Chopin.) The ered as music—the composer has followed a score is dedicated to Viñes, who didn’t play the definite design regarding tonal, rhythmical, first performance, but, like the composer himself, and thematic material . . . the end for which often performed the work in public in later years. it was written is no other than to evoke The orchestral writing is lush but never excessive; places, sensations, and sentiments. it’s Falla’s most “impressionistic” (and arguably his most “French”) score, and as an evocation of The themes employed are based (as is much atmosphere and setting, it ranks with Debussy’s of the composer’s earlier work) on the rhythms, and Ravel’s greatest symphonic works. modes, cadences, and ornamental figures which Falla depicts three gardens. The first is the cel- distinguish the popular music of Andalusia, ebrated Generalife, the jasmine-scented gardens though they are rarely used in their original surrounding the summer palace of the king’s forms; and the orchestra frequently employs, and harem at the Alhambra. (The word “Generalife” employs in a conventional manner, certain effects comes from the Moorish “Jennat al Arif”—the peculiar to the popular instruments used in those builder’s garden.) “Nowhere,” wrote Alexander parts of Spain. The music has no pretensions to Dumas, “were so many orange trees, so many being descriptive; it is merely expressive. But roses, so many jasmines gathered in so small something more than the sounds of festivals and a place . . . . Nowhere will you see so many dances has inspired these “evocations in sound,” springs, so many leaping waterfalls, so many for melancholy and mystery also have their part.

4 Born October 1, 1865, Paris, France. Died May 17, 1935, Paris, France. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective

“This interesting novelty is them; although he lived nearly another quarter by a composer little known century, Dukas composed very little during to the musical world and those years and destroyed virtually everything he whose name now appears wrote. (Among Dukas’s projected and discarded for the first time on the works are three , including a Tempest programs of these con- drawn from Shakespeare.) certs,” were the words that Dukas was a fiercely self-critical and fastidi- introduced this music ous craftsman, an exemplary orchestrator, and when Theodore Thomas an adventuresome musical thinker. Despite conducted the U.S. the brevity of his career and the paucity of his premiere of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Chicago on compositions, he managed to wield a certain January 13, 1899. The orchestral scherzo quickly influence. Although the theatrics of a work like became an audience favorite—the Chicago The Sorcerer’s Apprentice are overly familiar today, Symphony played it nearly every season in the first both Stravinsky and Debussy were quite taken decades of the twentieth century—and with the with the piece at the time of its premiere in 1897, 1940 release of Walt Disney’s Fantasia, in which and admired his later music as well. Debussy Mickey Mouse gives technicolor life to each wrote an effusive review of Dukas’s piano sonata gesture in Dukas’s score and the poem by Goethe when it appeared in 1901, and later said it was on which it is based, Dukas’s novelty became one worthy of standing alongside Beethoven’s—it of the best known of all symphonic works. was the only one that was “representative of Although he lived a long life in good health, our time.” Stravinsky dropped an almost literal Dukas left only seven major compositions, each a quotation of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in his 1908 single example in a different genre—an overture orchestral piece, Fireworks. (Stravinsky’s Scherzo (, his first published work), a symphony, fantastique, written the previous year, is also a piano sonata, a set of piano variations, one indebted to Dukas.) opera (Ariane et Barbe-Bleu), the ballet score for La péri, and the tone poem The Sorcerer’s he essence of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Apprentice. Those works span just two decades of is the same in Goethe’s ballad Der Dukas’s nearly seventy years. La péri is the last of T Zauberlehrling, in Dukas’s scherzo, and COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1897 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME November 23, 24 & 25, 2012, Orchestra 10 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. Ludwig Wicki conducting May 18, 1897; Paris, France. The CSO RECORDING July 12, 2015, Ravinia Festival. Ted composer conducting 1968. Jean Martinon conducting. CSO Sperling conducting (From the Archives, vol. 12: A Tribute to FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Jean Martinon) INSTRUMENTATION January 13 & 14, 1899, Auditorium two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, Theatre. Theodore Thomas conduct- two clarinets and bass clarinet, three ing (U.S. premiere) bassoons and contrabassoon, four July 10, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Hans horns, two trumpets and two cornets, Lange conducting three trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, strings

5 in Disney’s animation. A magician’s apprentice has observed his master’s ability to bring a broomstick to life in order to do the sorcerer’s bidding. Left on his own, the apprentice orders the broomstick to fetch water, only to realize that he has no power to stop it. As the magician’s house begins to overflow with water, the apprentice tries to avoid disaster by chopping the broom in half, which merely produces two brooms and even more water. Only with the return of the sorcerer himself, and a masterful wave of his hand, is the disaster stopped and calm restored. As the Chicago Orchestra’s program annotator Hubbard William Harris wrote in 1899,

Dukas’s composition is, as its name signifies, in a single movement and is constructed from thematic mate- rial so easily grasped as to require neither quotation nor extended explanation. . . . The instrumen- tation is exceedingly rich and effective and in point of difficulty of execution the work stands side by side with the brilliant composi- tions of Strauss, d’Indy, and other modern writers.

The program for January 13 and 14, 1899—including the U.S. premiere of Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, conducted by Theodore Thomas—had to be revised at the last minute. Bruno Steindel, the Orchestra’s principal cello, originally was scheduled to be soloist in Raff’s Cello Concerto; however, he canceled due to illness and Chabrier’s “interesting novelty,” the composer’s Suite pastorale, replaced the concerto.

6 Manuel de Falla The Three-Cornered Hat

One of music’s great many beautiful poses in bullfighting.) Picasso international collaborative designed sets and costumes that were character- efforts, The Three-Cornered istically witty and brilliant, and devised a front Hat began life in 1916 as drop curtain depicting a bullfight in ochre, pale a modest pantomime pink, white, blue, and gray that was so magnif- called El corregidor y la icent that Falla wrote some new music at the molinera (The magistrate last minute just to show it off. (Picasso finished and the miller’s wife). painting the curtain during final rehearsals.) (The 1875 novel by Pedro Shortly before the premiere, Garcia became ill Antonio de Alarcón, on and Massine had to take over his role. And on which it’s based, also is the source for Hugo the afternoon of the first performance, Falla was Wolf’s 1896 opera Der Corregidor.) Sergei summoned by telegram back to Madrid to his Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes were visiting mother’s deathbed, and Ernest Ansermet stepped Madrid during the initial run of El corregidor, in to conduct. But The Three-Cornered Hat was a and the impresario asked Falla to transform it triumph, and Massine later said that of his more into a ballet, expanded and rescored for large than one hundred ballets, it was the one of which orchestra. (Diaghilev had been urging Falla to he was most proud. (He continued to dance the write something for his troupe for years—at one role of the miller into the 1950s.) Misia Sert gave point, they talked seriously about producing a post-premiere party at which Rubinstein played Nights in the Gardens of Spain as a ballet.) In no the piano and Picasso drew a laurel crown on the time, Diaghilev put together an extraordinary composer’s bald head with his hostess’s eyebrow cast of characters for Falla’s ballet, with Léonide pencil. (Incidentally, The Three-Cornered Hat Massine as choreographer and Pablo Picasso was the last ballet danced by Diaghilev’s com- as designer. pany, on August 4, 1929, a fortnight before the To help devise the choreography, Massine took impresario’s death.) flamenco lessons from Felix Fernandez Garcia, a phenomenal dancer whom Diaghilev found in a he Three-Cornered Hat begins with the working-class café in the back streets of Madrid brief introduction Falla added to show and persuaded to join the company as the star of off Picasso’s curtain—a minute or so of the new ballet. (Massine also admitted to finding poundingT drums and sizzling castanets (used COMPOSED MOST RECENT castanets, tam-tam, xylophone, harp, 1918–19, as a revision of the panto- CSO PERFORMANCES celesta, piano, strings mime El corregidor y la molinera of September 21 & 23, 2003, Orchestra 1916–17 Hall. Susanne Mentzer as soloist, APPROXIMATE William Eddins conducting PERFORMANCE TIME FIRST PERFORMANCE 38 minutes June 20, 2012, Orchestra Hall. Edwin July 22, 1919, in London’s Alhambra Outwater conducting (Suite no. 2) Theater by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes CSO RECORDINGS July 17, 2015, Ravinia Festival. Michelle 1997. Jennifer Larmore as soloist, FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES DeYoung as soloist, Carlos Miguel Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec March 23 & 24, 1923, Orchestra Hall. Prieto conducting 2001. Elisabéte Matos as soloist, Daniel Frederick Stock conducting (Suite Barenboim conducting. EuroArts no. 2) INSTRUMENTATION (video) female vocal soloist, three flutes July 10, 1937, Ravinia Festival. Ernest and piccolo, two oboes and english Ansermet conducting (Suite no. 2) horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, June 7 & 8, 1973, Orchestra Hall. Teresa four horns, three trumpets, three Orantes as soloist, Rafael Frühbeck de trombones and tuba, timpani, snare Burgos conducting drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle,

7 so sparingly elsewhere in the score), as trumpet savage stamp of the foot as I landed. . . . The fanfares and shouts of “olé” set off a young mental image of an enraged bull going into woman’s warning: the attack unleashed some inner force which generated power within me. . . . For one Casadita, casadita, Little wife, little wife, moment it seemed as if some other person cierra con tranca fasten your door with within me was performing the dance. la puerta; a bar; que aunque el diablo even if the devil is A knock at the door—parodying the opening esté dormido asleep now, of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—announces !a lo mejor se when you least expect soldiers who have come to arrest the miller, on despierta! it he’ll wake up! the corregidor’s orders. Once again, a female voice sounds a warning: Afternoon. The miller tries to teach his pet blackbird to imitate the striking of a clock. (The Por la noche canta el The cuckoo sings in bird resists until the miller’s wife bribes him with cuco the night grapes.) The miller draws water for the garden advirtiendo a los warning husbands (the wheel squeaks noisily, in the piccolos and casados violins). A dandy passes by and flirts with the que corran bien los to fasten their latches miller’s beautiful wife. The corregidor, wearing cerrojos as well, the huge three-cornered hat that is his badge of !que el diable esta for the devil is office, now enters. desvelado! vigilant! Dance of the Miller’s Wife. Pretending not to notice the corregidor, the miller’s wife dances a The cuckoo clock strikes nine (answered by the fandango. He tries to get her attention by bowing learned blackbird). to the ground (a low-lying bassoon solo). She The Corregidor’s Dance. The corregidor, curtsies, to seductive string chords. thinking himself a true Don Juan, approaches The Grapes. The miller’s wife teases the and dances a courtly number. In the dark, he falls corregidor with a bunch of grapes held just out of into the mill stream. The miller returns to find the reach. Humiliated, he storms off while the miller corregidor’s clothes hung up to dry, misconstrues and his wife continue the fandango. the evidence, puts on his rival’s outfit, and sets off The Neighbors’ Dance. That evening, Saint to try his luck with the corregidor’s wife. John’s Eve, the neighbors celebrate by dancing Final Dance. The finale, propelled by mistaken a seguidilla (Falla refashions a gypsy song identities and general confusion, eventually ends from Granada). happily, with the miller and his wife reunited. The The Miller’s Dance. The miller begins to villagers toss the corregidor into the air, and every- dance. In his memoirs, Massine recalls: one joins in the jota, a wild dance from Aragon.

I began by stamping my feet repeatedly and twirling my hands over my head. As the music quickened I did a series of high Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the jumps, ending with a turn in mid-air and a Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.

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