Please note that Pierre Boulez has withdrawn from these concerts due to illness. The CSO welcomes Cristian Macelaru, who has graciously agreed to conduct. Please note that Bartók’s Divertimento for String replaces Messiaen’s Chronochromie.

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

Thursday, March 7, 2013, at 8:00 Saturday, March 9, 2013, at 8:00 Tuesday, March 12, 2013, at 7:30 Cristian Macelaru Conductor Yefim BronfmanPiano Debussy Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun Bartók Piano Concerto No. 2 Allegro Adagio—Presto—Adagio Allegro molto

Yefim Bronfman

Intermission Bartók Divertimento for String Orchestra Allegro non troppo Molto adagio Allegro assai Stravinsky The Song of

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

Claude Debussy Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. Died March 25, 1918, Paris, France.

Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun

he year Debussy returned to and the lively exchange of ideas, TParis from Rome—where and in time he and Mallarmé he unhappily served time as the became friends. In 1898, he was upshot of winning the coveted Prix among those first notified of the de Rome—he bought a copy of poet’s death. Stéphane Mallarmé’s The Afternoon Mallarmé’s poem, The Afternoon of a Faun to give to his friend Paul of a Faun, was published in 1876, Dukas, who didn’t get beyond the in a slim, elegantly bound volume preliminary round of the competi- with a line drawing by Edouard tion. Eventually Dukas would Manet on the cover. We don’t establish his credentials with The know when Debussy first thought Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but by then of interpreting Mallarmé’s faun Debussy was already famous for his and his dreams of conquering Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun. nymphs, nor to what degree he and By 1887, Stéphane Mallarmé had Mallarmé discussed the prospect. begun hosting his famous gather- As late as 1891, Mallarmé was ings every Tuesday evening in his still contemplating some kind of apartment, where his daughter dramatized reading of his text, Geneviève served the punch. and perhaps Debussy was meant Debussy sometimes dropped in at to fit into that scheme. Debussy 89, rue de Rome (an unfortunate began sketching his music in reminder of a city he had hap- 1892. In 1893 and again in 1894, pily left) to partake of the punch announcements promised “Prélude,

Composed Most recent CSO Approximate 1892–October 23, 1894 performance performance time February 26, 2011, 10 minutes First performance Orchestra Hall. Esa-Pekka December 22, 1894; Paris, Salonen conducting CSO recordings France 1976. Sir Georg Solti Instrumentation conducting. First CSO three , two and 1990. Sir Georg Solti performance english horn, two , conducting. London November 23, 1906, two , four horns, Orchestra Hall. Frederick two harps, cymbals, strings Stock conducting

2 interludes et paraphrase finale” for detractors, yet even his put down— The Afternoon of a Faun, but the full “It’s as much a piece of music as orchestral score Debussy finished the palette a painter has worked on October 23, 1894, contained from is a painting”—suggests an only the prelude. understanding that Debussy was Mallarmé first heard this music in Debussy’s apartment, where the composer played his score at the piano. “I didn’t expect anything like this,” Mallarmé said. “This music prolongs the emotion of my poem, and sets its scene more vividly than color.” The first orchestral perfor- mance, on December 22, was an immediate success (despite poor horn playing), and an Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé by Manet encore was demanded. Mallarmé was there; he later said constructing a piece of music in a that Debussy’s music “presents no radical way. (Saint-Saëns’s words dissonance with my text: rather, recall Mallarmé’s own famous, it goes further into the nostalgia often misunderstood mission “to and light with subtlety, malaise, paint not the thing but the effect it and richness.” produces.”) Toward the end of his Revolutionary works of art are life, remembered seldom granted such instant, easy that “it was [upon] hearing this success. Inevitably, there was some work, so many years ago, that I first question about the score’s program- understood what real music was.” matic intentions, to which Debussy Pierre Boulez would later date the responded at once: “It is a general awakening of modern music from impression of the poem, for if music Debussy’s score. were to follow more closely it would Saint-Saëns might well have run out of breath, like a dray horse noted how the now-famous open- competing for the grand prize with ing melody, all sinuous curves a thoroughbred.” and slippery rhythms, resembles the The music itself seems to have most popular melody he would ever ruffled few feathers, despite the way write, “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” it quietly, yet systematically, over- (known in English as “My heart turns tradition and opens new fron- and thy sweet voice”) from Samson tiers in musical language. Camille and Dalila. But where Dalila’s Saint-Saëns was one of the few aria is rooted in D-flat major and

3 common time, Debussy’s portrait rich and provocative sounds from of the faun eludes our attempts his winds (including three flutes, an to tap our feet or to establish a english horn, and four horns) that key; its insistence on the interval we scarcely notice the absence of from C-sharp to G-natural argues , , and timpani. repeatedly against the E major key The only percussion instruments signature printed on the page. necessary are two antique cym- The whole of the Prelude can be bals, each allotted just five notes considered a series of variations on apiece—a triumph of artistry over a single theme, and we can simply cost-efficiency. listen to the ways it changes, almost In 1912, , who imperceptibly, and grows. There’s a would soon create a notorious more conventional middle sec- scandal with Stravinsky’s Rite of tion in D-flat, urgently lyrical and Spring, produced a from more fully scored, which raises the Debussy’s music. It was danced and music to fortissimo for the only choreographed by the celebrated time in the piece and then sinks Nijinsky, who claimed never to down again with the sounds of the have read Mallarmé’s text, and flute melody. who caused a sensation by foisting Debussy uses the orchestra with heavy-duty eroticism on Debussy’s extraordinary finesse, drawing such delicate score.

4 Béla Bartók Born March 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, Transylvania (now part of Romania). Died September 26, 1945, New York City.

Piano Concerto No. 2

n 1939, when the Chicago he wasn’t considered a significant ISymphony gave the United States musical presence, his music wasn’t premiere of Béla Bartók’s new widely played, and when he toured piano concerto, the composer was the country as a pianist, he was still living in his native Hungary. hardly treated like one of the indis- For several more months, he would pensable giants of modern music. agonize over whether to leave Bartók began his career as a his homeland and move to the pianist, and he was an uncommonly United States to escape the threat gifted one, capable of playing not of fascism. Although Bartók had only his own brilliant and chal- played his Second Piano Concerto lenging scores, but—especially some twenty times following its at first—the works of Bach, Frankfurt premiere in 1933, he Beethoven, and Brahms (the other had refused to give the Budapest Bs). Both his parents were pia- premiere as a political protest, and nists—his mother gave lessons to now he let the United States pre- help feed her two children, and miere go to his student, Storm Bull. she was Béla’s first teacher. He Americans weren’t quick to recog- made his first public appearance nize Bartók’s importance. After he as a pianist at the age of eleven, did move to this country in 1940, playing Beethoven’s Waldstein

Composed CSO performances and bass , three bas- October 1930–October 9, with composer as soons and contrabassoon, 1931 soloist four horns, three trumpets, November 20 & 21, 1941, three trombones and , First performance Orchestra Hall. Frederick timpani, bass drum, triangle, January 23, 1933, Frankfurt- Stock conducting military drum, cymbals, am-Mein. The composer tam-tam, strings as soloist Most recent CSO performance CSO recording First CSO January 11, 2005, 1977. Maurizio Pollini, piano; performance Orchestra Hall. Lang Claudio Abbado conducting. March 2, 1939 (U.S. Lang, piano; Daniel Deutsche Grammophon premiere), Orchestra Hall. Barenboim conducting Storm Bull, piano; Frederick Approximate Stock conducting Instrumentation performance time solo piano, three flutes 28 minutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets

5 Sonata. During his student days at in the correct sequence, but with the Budapest Academy (he gradu- each theme turned upside-down ated in June 1903), his friends and and backwards. teachers predicted a bright future Like many of Bartók’s works for him as a virtuoso pianist—his composed around this time (it gifts as a composer didn’t yet falls between the Fourth and Fifth merit comment. string quartets), the concerto is It was the Budapest premiere designed as a grand arch form: here of ’s Also sprach two fast, related outer movements Zarathustra in 1902 that sparked frame a central adagio. This middle Bartók’s determination to become a movement, too, is a mirror form, composer as well. Eventually these with broad, slow music interrupted two passions merged in a series of midway by a furious, driven presto. uncompromising keyboard works, (In the same paragraph, Bartók particularly the two concertos he gives us both slow movement and wrote to play himself. (A third .) In the slow sections, the concerto, composed in the last strings and the piano engage in year of his life, was written with a dialogue, like and the the full realization that he would Furies that Liszt heard in the slow never perform it; it was intended movement of Beethoven’s Fourth as a birthday present for his wife Piano Concerto (the solo timpani Ditta, who was a fine, though less provides a high-profile running athletic pianist.) commentary). In the fast central Both the First and Second piano section, the heart of the entire concertos are virtuosic pieces of a work, Bartók coaxes fantastic kind Bartók’s fellow students at sounds from the piano, including the academy never envisioned—in tone clusters which can be played the Second, the piano rests for a only by placing both hands flat over mere twenty-three measures in the keys to cover all the notes in the first movement. This Allegro the octave. moves at such a rapid pace—this The last movement—inevitably, isn’t just a question of tempo, but in any of the composer’s big sym- of density of material as well—and metrical structures—retreads the the solo music is so compelling, same ground as the first, although demanding everything from racing Bartók continually finds new things octave scales to entire fistfuls of to say. (Only the first, incisive notes, that we scarcely notice that pounding theme is, in fact, entirely the strings have nothing at all to new.) This is recapitulation in the do. Bartók employs his own blend deepest sense, but Bartók never of sonata form, which involves evokes outright dejá vu, only the a kind of mirror-recapitulation, innate, satisfying feeling of famil- with the opening material reprised iarity and homecoming.

6 Béla Bartók

Divertimento for String Orchestra

fter Bartók’s death in 1945, Paul anniversary in 1936. The second ASacher wrote: “Whoever met is this divertimento for strings, Bartók, thinking of the rhythmic composed during the summer of strength of his work, was surprised 1939, when Bartók, at fifty-eight, by his slight, delicate figure.” Bartók was at the height of his powers and was sickly from early childhood. By reputation, and Europe was at a the time he began writing music terrible crossroads. For perhaps the at the age of nine, he had already last time in his life, Bartók was able suffered a number of ailments, to write music that didn’t reflect the including eczema, pneumonia, world around him. Or perhaps this and curvature of the spine. When divertimento was literally meant as Paul Sacher met him in 1929, the a diversion—an intentional escape power of Bartók’s music was widely from a political situation that would recognized. Sacher would soon only get worse. add to the composer’s catalog by In November 1938, Sacher commissioning two major works for asked Bartók to write something his own Basle Chamber Orchestra. for string orchestra, and the The young Swiss conductor and this following summer he offered the delicate giant of twentieth-century composer his chalet at Saanen in music remained close friends until the Swiss Alps so that he could Bartók’s death. work in peace, now more pre- The first of the works Sacher cious than ever. Sacher even had commissioned from Bartók is a piano transported from Berne. the landmark Music for Strings, “Somehow I feel like a musician of Percussion, and Celesta, written to olden times—the invited guest of a celebrate the Basle orchestra’s tenth patron of the arts,” Bartók wrote to composed Most recent CSO CSO Recordings August 2–17, 1939 performance 1990. Sir Georg Solti November 22, 2009, conducting. London first performed Orchestra Hall. Christoph 1993. Pierre Boulez conduct- June 11, 1940 von Dohnányi conducting ing. Deutsche Grammophon First CSO Approximate performance performance time February 21, 1957, Orchestra 24 minutes Hall. Fritz Reiner conducting

7 his twenty-eight-year-old son, this divertimento, as untroubled as Béla, Jr., back home in Hungary. any work Bartók wrote, was clouded Alone in this rustic cottage, with by regrets, guilt, and sadness. not so much as a cloud or a news- paper to darken his days, Bartók he divertimento is one of worked at unusual speed: he began TBartók’s lightest and most the divertimento on August 2 and accessible scores. It picks up finished it on August 17. The very the tradition of the eighteenth- next day, after taking time only to century concerto grosso—with its write his son a letter, he began his alternating passages for a small sixth string quartet; the piece was group of solo instruments and full well under way when he left Saanen ensemble—and turns it into a series a week and a half later. In the of games for soloists and orchestra. meantime, world events continued The two fast outer movements are at a frightening speed. Sacher dancelike, their easygoing manner went to Saanen to check up on the disguising a wealth of ingenious composer: “I found him completely motivic development. In between without misgivings for the future, comes a powerful slow movement absorbed in his work. The news of with dark harmonies and a tragic the political events which were so tone—an acknowledgement, per- cruelly to interfere in his life had haps, of the terrible events unfold- not yet penetrated to him.” The ing outside the cottage. At the end day he finished the divertimento, there is calm, but not peace. Bartók saw a newspaper for the first Both outer movements toy with time in two weeks. And with his conventional forms. The first takes return to Hungary, he found his on sonata form, though the recapit- life controlled by the events that ulation is more development than made daily headlines and his work restatement. The finale is a complex pushed aside by the pressing need rondo, with a folk-tune theme that for self-preservation. is convincingly transformed at Just before Christmas, Bartók’s each appearance; a thorny fugato mother died. He later wrote to a section; a gypsy fiddler’s cadenza; friend, “Last summer . . . I went to and, near the end, a mock Viennese Saanen to be totally undisturbed, polka. This movement is joyful in a so that I could write two works as way we don’t expect from Bartók, quickly as possible; I spent three and though Paul Sacher remembered a one-half weeks there, the works got man that photographs don’t cap- done, wholly or in part, and those ture: when things were going well, three and one-half weeks I took Bartók “laughed in boyish glee,” away from my mother. I can never and “when he was pleased with the make amends for this. I should not successful solution of a problem, he have done it.” So in the end, even actually beamed.”

8 Born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia. Died April 6, 1971, New York City.

The Song of the Nightingale (Symphonic Poem in Three Parts)

he Song of the Nightingale opens Chinese emperor and the singing Twith an alarming clatter that bird who saves him from death. His later reminded Stravinsky of the teacher liked what he saw. “rude tintinnabulation” of the During the winter of 1908, telephone in his Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov suffered from apartment. He always remembered severe asthma attacks. He died the that the first telephone call he ever following June and was buried near made was to Rimsky-Korsakov. Stravinsky’s father. Stravinsky con- (Their two families were among the tinued to work on The Nightingale city’s first to own this “nuisance.”) and completed the first act by Ever since the death of his father the end of that summer. In the in 1902, young Igor had thought meantime, Stravinsky met Sergei of the great composer as a sub- Diaghilev, who would soon distract stitute father as well as a teacher. the composer with several proposals, Late in 1907, Stravinsky showed beginning with , which Rimsky-Korsakov the preliminary would make them both famous. sketches for act 1 of his first , When Stravinsky finally got back The Nightingale, based on the to The Nightingale four years later, Hans Christian Andersen tale of a his musical language had grown in

Composed CSO performances triangle, tambourine, tenor 1907–1909, 1913–14 (the with the composer drum, cymbals, bass drum, opera The Nightingale) conducting tam-tam, military drum, February 20 & 21, 1925, snare drum, celesta, piano, 1916 (symphonic poem The Orchestra Hall two harps, strings Song of the Nightingale) Most recent CSO Approximate First performances performance performance time opera: May 26, 1914; Paris, October 26, 2002, 20 minutes France Orchestra Hall. Andrey symphonic poem: Boreyko conducting CSO recording December 6, 1919; Geneva, 1956. Fritz Reiner Switzerland Instrumentation conducting. RCA two flutes and piccolo, two First CSO oboes and english horn, two performance clarinets and E-flat clarinet, February 22, 1924, two bassoons, four horns, Orchestra Hall. Frederick three trumpets, three trom- Stock conducting bones and tuba, timpani,

9 ways that had already altered the long with its modernist course of music, and he himself was Atendencies—strong disso- a changed man. No longer Rimsky- nances, fierce and jagged rhythms, Korsakov’s student, he was now the and an abrupt, discontinuous composer of and style—The Song of the Nightingale as famous as any musician alive. is richly colored by oriental effects, with a particularly powerful use of the pentatonic “black-key” scale. , who designed sets and costumes for Stravinsky, recalled that he con- cocted highly eclectic visuals to reflect Stravinsky’s music, which oscillated between a “style of authenticity,” such as the Chinese march, and passages that “sounded rather ‘European.’ ” The Song of the Nightingale is a fusion of East and West, fact and fiction, old Sergei Diaghilev (left) and Igor Stravinsky, 1921 and new—and as such it perfectly suggests Europe’s complex and Stravinsky returned to The sometimes conflicted attitude Nightingale at the request of the toward the East in the early years of Moscow Free Theatre. (When it the twentieth century. went bankrupt, Diaghilev’s Russian Although The Song of the Ballet agreed to produce the opera Nightingale omits the music from instead.) Stravinsky was concerned the first act of the opera, it still that his musical style had changed follows the outline of Andersen’s beyond recognition since he had tale about an emperor who forsakes finished act 1, but he proceeded a live nightingale for a mechanical with the second and third acts, one. The opening of the symphonic and the work was completed in poem—with its clanging “tele- time for the scheduled premiere in phone” —depicts the festive May 1914. Two years later, when atmosphere at the palace in honor Diaghilev proposed staging The of the nightingale, who has been Nightingale as a ballet, Stravinsky invited to sing for the emperor of offered to prepare a symphonic China. The nightingale is brought poem that Diaghilev could cho- in and placed on a perch (the flutes reograph instead. He used music trill and sing). Announced by a exclusively from acts 2 and 3 of the solemn , the emperor opera, as if to divorce himself from enters to a percussive, ceremonial his pre-Firebird, Rimsky-Korsakov Chinese march. days for good. Stravinsky com- In the second section, the pleted The Song of the Nightingale in nightingale sings (beginning April 1917. with a rhapsodic cadenza), to the

10 emperor’s great pleasure. More festive music from the palace is interrupted by the ominous arrival of envoys from Japan, who come bearing a large mechanical nightingale. The wind- up bird sings tirelessly (the , echoed by flute). In the meantime, the real nightingale flies away, offended by the Alexandre Benois (left) and Igor Stravinsky emperor’s obvious delight in her rival’s brilliant display. (A lone , playing a simple fisher- man’s song, suggests that the nightingale has gone home to the seashore.) In the third section, the ailing emperor now lies on his deathbed; the mechanical nightingale refuses to sing for him. The real nightingale returns and begins a poignant song, ulti- mately defeating death One of Benois’s designs for Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and saving the emperor. A lumbering funeral march greets his attendants. In the closing announces the courtiers, who have moments, the nightingale returns come to view their dead ruler. But to her home by the sea. then—in a sudden, rabbit-out-of- the-hat moment—the emperor Phillip Huscher is the program annota- appears, the picture of health, and tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2013 Chicago

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