Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director
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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, January 22, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, January 23, 2015, at 8:00 Saturday, January 24, 2015, at 8:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Alisa Kolosova Mezzo-soprano Sergey Skorokhodov Tenor Chicago Symphony Chorus Duain Wolfe Chorus Director Scriabin Symphony No. 1 in E Major, Op. 26 Lento Allegro dramatico Lento Vivace Allegro Andante ALISA KOLOSOVA SERGEY SKOROKHODOV CHICAGO SYMPHONY CHORUS First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances INTERMISSION Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78 Russia under the Mongolian Yoke A Song about Alexander Nevsky The Crusaders in Pskov Arise, People of Russia The Battle on the Ice The Field of the Dead Alexander’s Entry in Pskov ALISA KOLOSOVA CHICAGO SYMPHONY CHORUS The appearance of the Chicago Symphony Chorus is made possible by a generous gift from Jim and Kay Mabie. Saturday’s concert is endowed in part by the League of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association. 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 Alexander Scriabin Born January 6, 1872 [December 25, 1871, old style], Moscow, Russia. Died April 27, 1915, Moscow, Russia. Symphony No. 1 in E Major, Op. 26 From his youth, when he That influence is reflected not only in his reper- interpreted the signifi- toire, but in the titles and nature of the music he cance of his birth on wrote at the time—sets of preludes, impromptus, Christmas Day as a sign etudes, and even Polish mazurkas. To study the that he should do great first nineteen opus numbers in Scriabin’s catalog, things, Scriabin believed all pieces for piano solo, one would never predict he would play a decisive the important orchestral music that would role in the history of quickly follow. music. But his early death The move away from writing solo piano at the age of forty-three music was a tough and decisive step for all the cut short his career just as he was venturing into pianist-composers of the nineteenth century, pioneer territory. Like many composers of a less but Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms revolutionary bent, Scriabin started his musical already were mature artists with individual and life as a pianist and his composing career writing recognizable styles when they stopped composing only piano pieces. In 1884, he began to study exclusively for the piano. But when Scriabin piano with Nicolai Zverev, who already had wrote a piano concerto in 1896—the first of accepted Sergei Rachmaninov as a pupil. The two his works to call for orchestra—he had not yet students became good friends—Scriabin was discovered the voice that would ultimately make older by just one year—though they were his music unique. The Chopinesque concerto sometimes later portrayed as rivals once their scarcely hints at the direction Scriabin’s career musical ambitions ventured in different direc- would take. Then, three years, later, he began tions. At the time they met, both Scriabin and his first symphony, and a new world of complex Rachmaninov were beginning to compose piano sounds and philosophical ideas opened up before pieces for themselves to play. In 1888, Scriabin him. He was now on the path to becoming, as entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he the novelist Boris Pasternak later said of him, excelled equally as a pianist and composer. When “more than just a composer.” he graduated in 1892, he was awarded the second In retrospect, knowing the pioneering orches- gold medal in composition (Rachmaninov took tral works that would quickly follow from his first place, for his opera Aleko). pen, Scriabin’s First Symphony sounds like After Scriabin left the conservatory, he began a throwback, a last vestige of romanticism. a career as a concert pianist. While his recital But more importantly, it is a score that shows programs often included music by Schumann and Scriabin mastering the language of his day, and, Liszt, two composers who also started out as pia- at the same time, yearning to break free of its nists, Scriabin’s particular favorite was Chopin. conventions and limitations. COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES four horns, three trumpets, three 1899 These are the Chicago Symphony trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, Orchestra’s first performances. harp, strings FIRST PERFORMANCE November 11, 1900; Saint Petersburg, INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE Russia (without soloists or chorus) mezzo-soprano and tenor soloists; PERFORMANCE TIME mixed chorus; an orchestra consisting 51 minutes March 16, 1900; Moscow, Russia of three flutes and piccolo, two (complete) oboes, three clarinets, two bassoons, 2 criabin writes six movements and calls he first five, relatively short movements for two soloists and a chorus in his finale, represent Scriabin’s vision of the late a grand ode to the power of art. Its for- nineteenth-century symphony. The first, Smal design alone makes it a work of unusual luxuriouslyT scored—there is a particularly rich ambition. The music came to him quickly. He violin solo—and majestically paced as its rises worked on nothing else during the summer of and falls, acts as a kind of a substantial slow 1899. “He would write a measure and rush to introduction. It is followed by four movements the piano to make certain the sound was exactly that suggest the outlines of a standard sym- as he wanted it,” his friend, the composer Lev phony, crowned by a big chorale finale (which, Konyus, said. He took the score to bed with like Beethoven’s before it, recalls themes from him at night. “All summer long he kept saying earlier in the symphony). The second movement, this was his best music yet,” Konyus recalled. an Allegro, is colored by music of high drama But when the symphony was first performed in and governed by the powerful contrast and Saint Petersburg in November 1900, conducted development of sonata form. Next, Scriabin by Anatoly Liadov, it fell flat. There were boos writes a magnificent and spacious slow move- and catcalls. Scriabin complained that the ment, followed by a fast, delicate, and playful tempos were too slow and Liadov’s interpretation scherzo. A surging Allegro—with wonderfully “flabby.” Since the Saint Petersburg choral soci- lyrical episodes—suggests an air of climax and ety had refused to perform for no fee, Scriabin’s finality, but it merely paves the way for Scriabin’s finale was done without voices, depriving it of big last movement. This unusual finale with both its message and its blazing musical impact. voices—echoing those by Beethoven, Liszt, and, However, Vasily Safonoff, the director of closer to Scriabin’s own time, Mahler—begins the Moscow Conservatory and the conductor with mezzo-soprano and tenor soloists singing later credited as the first to lead without using a alternately, and then blossoms, in its last pages, baton, declared the score a “divine creation,” and into music for full chorus and orchestra. (The gave a second performance, for the full forces, entry of the chorus is underlined by the switch in Moscow the next March. “Safonoff had the from the symphony’s prevailing triple meter— look of a man opening a treasure and displaying throughout five and a half movements—to it,” recalled the composer Leonid Sananeyev, common time.) This is a glorious hymn to the who sat in on the rehearsals. But still it failed to sovereignty of Art, one of the themes that is impress the public. “The reason is the complexity integral to Scriabin’s entire output. Once, when of this brain child,” wrote one of the critics. “The the directness of Scriabin’s text was criticized, average man is not prepared for it.” Scriabin he defended the grand rhetoric of his finale: “I reportedly threw the score across the room the wanted something simple, something inter- next day. But, within little more than a decade, national, common to all peoples.” The poem, the symphony was played and even acclaimed in shared by soloists and chorus, is Scriabin’s own: Europe, as well as in Russia. Like all of Scriabin’s visionary orchestral works, it has since fallen in O wonderful image of the Divine, and out of favor. (Because of the unusual forces Harmony’s pure Art! Scriabin calls for, the symphony is not often To you we gladly bring programmed, and, in fact, these are the Chicago Praise of that rapturous feeling. Symphony’s first performances. The first work You are life’s bright hope, by Scriabin the Orchestra played, oddly, was his You are celebration, you are respite, final completed score, Prometheus, in its U.S. pre- Like a gift you bring to the people miere in 1915. The performance of such advanced Your enchanted visions. and unconventional music drew hisses from the In that gloomy and cold hour, Orchestra Hall audience, which one critic said When the soul is full of tumult, proved “the dynamic vitality of the composer.” Man finds in you Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, however, soon became The spry joy of consolation. a Chicago favorite: Frederick Stock, the CSO’s Strength, fallen in battle, you second music director, programmed it almost Miraculously call to life, annually for nineteen years, from 1922 to 1941.) In the exhausted and afflicted mind 3 You breed thoughts of a new order. After his Fifth Piano Sonata, composed in An endless ocean of emotion you 1907, he broke with tonality. A single dissonant Breed in the enraptured heart, chord, the so-called mystic chord, provided the And sings the best songs of songs, foundation for all of his final compositions.