Afterwork Masterworks Susanna Mälkki Conductor Leila Josefowicz Violin Adès . . . but All Shall Be Well, Op. 10 Stravinsky
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PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTy-THIRD 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 Thursday, October 17, 2013, at 6:30 Afterwork Masterworks Susanna Mälkki Conductor Leila Josefowicz Violin Adès . but all shall be well, Op. 10 First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance Stravinsky Violin Concerto in D Toccata Aria 1 Aria 2 Capriccio LEILA JOSEFOWICZ Debussy La mer From Dawn to Noon on the Sea Play of the Waves Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea There will be no intermission. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association is grateful to WBBM Newsradio 780 and 105.9 FM for its generous support as media sponsor of the Afterwork Masterworks series. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTy-THIRD 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 Saturday, October 19, 2013, at 8:00 Tuesday, October 22, 2013, at 7:30 Susanna Mälkki Conductor Leila Josefowicz Violin Sibelius Suite No. 1 from The Tempest, Op. 109 The Oaktree Humoresque Caliban’s Song The Harvesters Canon Scene Intrada, Berceuse Entr’acte, Ariel’s Song The Storm Stravinsky Violin Concerto in D Toccata Aria 1 Aria 2 Capriccio LEILA JOSEFOWICZ INTERMISSION Adès . but all shall be well, Op. 10 First Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concert performances Debussy La mer From Dawn to Noon on the Sea Play of the Waves Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea 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. 2 COMMENTS by Daniel Jaff é Phillip Huscher Jean Sibelius Born December 8, 1865, Hämeenlinna, Finland. Died September 20, 1957; Ainola, Järvenpää, Finland. Suite No. 1 from The Tempest, Op. 109 On May 1, 1925, just over As early as 1901, Axel Carpelan, one of seven months before his Sibelius’s closest friends, had suggested the play sixtieth birthday, Sibelius to him as a subject: “Th e Tempest would suit you received an unexpected ideally. Prospero, Miranda, the spirits of earth query from his Danish and air, etc.” Now, with Sibelius more worried publisher, Wilhelm about his ultimate standing as a composer and Hansen: “Have you feeling increasingly bereft of those who truly written any music to Th e understood him—Carpelan having died in Tempest?” Hansen 1919—the play had a particular resonance, informed Sibelius that the most particularly its presiding genius, Prospero, Royal Th eatre in Copenhagen was planning to and his renunciation of magic at the play’s end. stage Shakespeare’s fi nal play, and the producer, Sibelius’s biographer, Erik Tawaststjerna, has Johannes Poulsen, who had earlier staged further suggested that Prospero’s two servants, Sibelius’s ballet-pantomime Scaramouche, wanted Ariel and Caliban, came to represent respectively to use his incidental music. Sibelius’s inspirational and his earthy sides. It is tempting to see some kind of portent Sibelius was well aware of the strains both these in this commission. Shakespeare’s Th e Tempest aspects of his personality had placed on his has long been seen as a fi nal summing up by marriage, his increasing struggle to achieve the the playwright himself, with Prospero’s curtain perfection glimpsed while composing his sym- speech interpreted as a plea from Shakespeare phonies too often weighed down by his perennial himself to be liberated from the burden of con- drinking problem, not to mention his love of juring characters and dramas in which they play such luxuries as well-cut suits and cigars. out their existence: ibelius composed Th e Tempest with appar- Now I want ent fl uency, easily meeting his deadline Spirits to enforce, art to enchant, of September 1 that year. His incidental And my ending is despair, Smusic consists of some thirty-four pieces of Unless I be relieved by prayer, music, ranging from the briefest of cues just Which pierces so that it assaults a few seconds long to fairly substantial pieces Mercy itself and frees all faults. of around four minutes. In all lasting well COMPOSED FIRST (anD ONLY) APPROXIMATE 1925–1928 CSO PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE TIME December 24, 1946, Orchestra Hall. 20 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Tauno Hannikainen conducting March 15, 1926 (complete incidental music), Copenhagen, Denmark INSTRUMENTATION three fl utes and three piccolos, two oboes, two clarinets, e-fl at clarinet and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings 3 over an hour, The Tempest also turned out to By contrast follows the rustic charm of The be the most extensive score Sibelius had writ- Harvesters, Sibelius’s artful combination of ten since 1900; Tapiola apart, it also was the two separate numbers from the play in which last significant piece of music he completed Prospero conjures spirits, mainly focused on the before his virtual creative silence, which lasted masque he stages for his daughter Miranda and the remaining thirty or so years of his life. her beloved Ferdinand. The dreamlike quality of Like Scaramouche, the ballet-pantomime staged those visions is suggested by the Lydian gleam of earlier by Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre, Sibelius’s the gamboling woodwinds. Tempest has traces of neoclassical courtliness, An earthy contrast follows with the Canon, an but nudged even further in the direction of a orchestral transcription of the drunken singing dreamlike eeriness. The music’s haunting atmo- by Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo of “Flout ‘em sphere would capture the imagination of com- and scout ’em.” posers for several decades afterwards, whether Pizzicato strings in a playful mood introduce the otherworldly sounds of Vaughan Williams’s the Scene, which—not too obviously—portrays Magnificat of 1932, or the film scores by Bernard the spirits who, transformed into dogs, chase Herrmann and Richard Rodney Bennett from Caliban and his coconspirators away. A more the 1950s to the ’70s. Sibelius arranged two stern string theme, taken from another number suites from his incidental music, creating musical representing Caliban, serves as a contrasting vignettes or portraits rather than following the central section. dramatic course of the play. The next movement, devoted to Prospero, opens with a strikingly discordant outburst. he Oaktree is effectively a portrait Though the Intrada was intended to represent of Prospero’s spirit servant Ariel—it the “solemn music” to which the magician opens, in fact, with a brief snatch of the renounces his magic, Sibelius presents this act balefulT woodwind chords which herald Ariel’s as a terrible trauma; was it the renunciation, or appearance as a harpy at the banquet. This then the mere thought of losing his “special powers” melts into an earlier episode in the play when, which so horrified the composer? The following to the eerie to-and-fro accompaniment of two Berceuse, taken from early in the play, presents string chords, Ariel—in the guise of a young a more gentle and melancholic side of Prospero oak tree—plays a flute (a conceit invented by as he places an enchantment on Miranda so she the Danish producer Johannes Poulsen, pre- may sleep. (Sibelius once recalled keeping vigil sumably on the basis that Prospero originally himself over his two youngest sleeping daughters: rescued Ariel from imprisonment in a tree). “They lay there sleeping, life awaiting them,” said In an altogether lighter vein is the following the composer, himself often troubled by life.) Humoresque. Over a trotting pizzicato accompa- A long, brooding number combines an niment, a pair of clarinets perkily twine as Ariel Entr’acte portraying Iris, goddess of the rain- appears, followed by Caliban and his coconspira- bow, with Ariel’s Song, an orchestral version of tors Stephano and Trinculo, their potential men- Sibelius’s setting of “Full fathom five.” The eerie ace hinted by the occasional sting of muted brass. sense of foreboding prepares us for Caliban’s Song shows Prospero’s rebellious The Storm—an abbreviated version of the servant at his most defiant. Sibelius portrays play’s original overture, best heard not as music, Caliban as a caricature “Eastern” barbarian with but as a powerful sound-portrait of the tem- shrill piccolos and clarinets accompanied by pest itself, intended to replace Shakespeare’s “Turkish” percussion—bass drum and cymbals, opening scene. triangle and xylophone. —Daniel Jaffé 4 Igor Stravinsky Born June 18, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia. Died April 6, 1971, New York City. Violin Concerto in D Stravinsky did not trust to Strecker’s proposal, but he did his homework virtuosos. “In order to anyway: he carefully studied all the great classical succeed they are obliged violin concertos before he wrote a note of his own. to seek immediate Stravinsky and Dushkin met early in 1931 in triumphs,” he once wrote, Wiesbaden, in Willy Strecker’s house, and hit it “and to lend themselves to off immediately. Stravinsky found Dushkin excep- the wishes of the public, tionally musical and down-to-earth; Dushkin the great majority of was surprised that the notorious composer was whom demand sensational unassuming and aff ectionate. Stravinsky began eff ects from the player.” to compose almost at once. Th at winter, he and Stravinsky was not eager to compose a violin Dushkin met for lunch in Paris. “Stravinsky took concerto when the music publisher Willy Strecker out a piece of paper,” Dushkin remembered, fi rst suggested that he write something for Samuel Dushkin, a remarkable young violinist.