Programnotes Rachmaninov Si
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Program ONE huNDrED TwENTy-SECOND 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 Friday, February 15, 2013, at 8:00 Saturday, February 16, 2013, at 8:00 Sunday, February 17, 2013, at 3:00 Tuesday, February 19, 2013, at 7:30 Sir mark Elder Conductor garrick ohlsson Piano Dvo ˇrák The Water Goblin, Op. 107 First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30 Allegro ma non tanto Intermezzo— Finale GArrICk Ohlsson IntErmISSIon Sibelius Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 39 Andante, ma non troppo—Allegro energico Andante (ma non troppo lento) Scherzo: Allegro Finale (Quasi un fantasia): Andante—Allegro molto The appearance of Garrick Ohlsson is endowed in part by the Johnson & Livingston Families Fund for Piano Performance. Saturday’s concert is sponsored by Mayer Brown LLP. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. These concerts are part of the CSO’s 2012–13 Rivers exploration, which is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. 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 antonín Dvo ˇrák Born September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic). Died May 1, 1904, Prague. The Water Goblin, op. 107 ntonín Dvořák wasn’t the first compositions. After he moved to Acomposer to reject the family Prague in 1857, he became prin- business for a life in music. Robert cipal viola in the orchestra for the Schumann, for example, was the new Provisional Theater (later the only one of four brothers to leave National Theater). For the rest of his father’s book publishing com- his life, he treasured the memory pany for another career. František of playing a concert there in 1863 Dvořák, a butcher in a village just under his idol, Richard Wagner, north of Prague, also expected which included the overture to his son to continue in the trade. Tannhäuser, the prelude to Tristan František played the zither and and Isolde, and excerpts from Die even wrote a few tunes for the local Meistersinger and Die Walküre. In band, but he didn’t think of com- 1871, Dvořák left the orchestra posing as an occupation. He was to devote more time to composi- irate when his thirteen-year-old son tion, but he soon realized that he dropped out of his apprenticeship would have to teach to get by. For as a butcher and moved to nearby many years, his father doubted the Zlonice to study music. wisdom of his son’s choice of music Antonín Dvořák learned to play over the life of a butcher. the violin as a small boy, and he Then in 1873, Dvořák’s works composed marches and waltzes began to attract attention. The for the village band. In Zlonice, successful premiere of his patriotic he studied piano, organ, and viola, cantata Heirs of the White Mountain eventually becoming a decent on March 9 launched his fame in enough violist to earn a living as his homeland. Later that year, he an orchestra musician when he married Anna Cermáková, the couldn’t make any money from his sister of the Prague actress Josefina, ComPoSED InStrumEntatIon aPProxImatE January 6–February 11, 1896 two flutes and piccolo, two PErFormanCE tImE oboes and english horn, 20 minutes FIrSt PErFormanCE two clarinets and bass November 14, 1896; london, clarinet, two bassoons, four England horns, two trumpets, three trombones and two tubas, These are the CSO’s timpani, percussion, strings first performances 2 who had, nearly a decade before, This late-in-life career move was rebuffed his advances. (Like Mozart inspired by the rediscovery of The and Haydn, he married not his first Garland, a collection of ballads by love, but her sister.) In 1874, Dvořák the nationalist poet Karel Jaromír took stock of his situation: he had Erben—poetry that Dvořák had begun to taste success; his wife was loved for years, but that spoke pregnant with their first child; and to him even more forcefully now he looked forward to the pleasures, that he was back in his homeland. comforts, and traditions of fam- In 1896, Dvořák composed four ily life. But he craved recognition symphonic poems based on tales and he needed money. In July, he drawn from Erben’s anthology; a entered fifteen of his newest works fifth, not based on Erben, followed in a competition for the Austrian the next year. They were his last State Music Prize, a government orchestral works. award designed to assist struggling The Water Goblin is the first of young artists. The judges included the symphonic poems that Dvořák Johannes Brahms, the biggest name wrote in the early months of in Viennese music. Dvořák won the 1896—he began all three early in first prize of four hundred gulden, January, and worked on them at and he felt a kind of encouragement the same time for several weeks. and validation that money can’t buy. (Sir Mark Elder led the CSO in Over the next few years, several the second one, The Midday Witch, of Dvořák’s works were published, in the June 2009 Dvořák Festival, first in Prague and then more and the third, The Golden Spinning widely, and his music quickly Wheel, this past December.) In late became well known throughout February 1896, after he had finished Europe and in the United States. the first two Erben pieces and was By the time he accepted Jeannette still at work on the third, Dvořák Thurber’s invitation to take up visited Brahms, who urged him to temporary residence in the United move his family to Vienna—an invi- States, beginning in 1892, he was tation that Dvořák couldn’t seriously enjoying extraordinary critical consider, since he now felt more and popular success. Dvořák’s attached than ever to his native American years cemented his land. We don’t know if Dvořák told reputation in this country, and also Brahms, the great symphonist— inspired some of his best-loved and, pointedly, the composer of music, including the American no symphonic poems—of the new String Quartet and his last direction his music had taken. symphony—the ninth, known Taking a cue from Liszt’s pio- as From the New World. After he neering tone poems, Dvořák assigns returned home in April 1895, a musical theme to each central Dvořák composed two last string character in the action, allowing quartets that were his final essays it to be transformed by the events in abstract music, cleared his head, in the unfolding drama. This was and then unexpectedly turned his also the model for the series of new attention to the symphonic poem. orchestral works begun by Richard 3 Strauss in the preceding decade; the entire score, although each of the he was composing Also sprach other main characters, a mother and Zarathustra at the time Dvořák her daughter, has her own musical was working on the Erben scores. signature. As the narrative unfolds, Theodore Thomas, the first music the mother recounts a terrible dream director of the Chicago Symphony she has had and, filled with pre- Orchestra, followed the careers of monitions, warns her daughter not both Dvořák and Strauss closely and to go near the lake. Nevertheless, was eager to bring their new works or perhaps inevitably, the daughter to this country. In Chicago, he ignores the warning; as she dips her gave the U.S. premiere of Strauss’s dress into the water, the bridge she Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks on stands on collapses and she falls into November 15, 1895—only weeks the lake. The goblin delights in the before Dvořák began The Water realization that he has now found Goblin. He and the Orchestra gave the victim who will become his wife. the first performances in this coun- They soon have a child, which brings try of Dvořák’s The Golden Spinning the only joy to the young woman in Wheel in January 1897, but never got her bleak new subterranean prison. around to The Water Goblin. This She sings a lullaby for her baby. week’s performances are the first in The goblin interrupts, saying her the Orchestra’s history. singing is hideous. She tries to calm him and eventually begs to leave n all of his Erben scores, Dvořák just once in order to see her mother Ilets the shape of the poet’s narra- again. The goblin reluctantly agrees tive determine the basic form of the on the condition that she leave their music. But the influence of Erben’s child behind with him, and that language had a more profound and she return after one day, as soon as subtle impact on Dvořák’s music. the vesper bells ring. The mother Throughout each score, the rise and and daughter are reunited. In the fall of his melodic lines suggest the work’s climax, Dvořák telescopes declamation of Erben’s verses. In The and selects incidents to make for a Water Goblin in particular, certain powerful, tightly woven final scene. passages of the poem could almost The gist of the action: After the bells be sung, word for word, to Dvořák’s sound, the mother tries to persuade corresponding themes. This is her daughter to stay. The goblin similar to the “speech-melody” goes to find his wife. He knocks on that Janáček was developing in his the cottage door, saying their child operatic writing at this time.