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Home , Dmitri Shostakovich, Violin Concerto (Rózsa)

Program

One Hundred Twenty-Third Season Chicago Orchestra Riccardo Muti Music Director Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, June 5, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, June 6, 2014, at 1:30 Saturday, June 7, 2014, at 8:00 Sunday, June 8, 2014, at 3:00

Jaap van Zweden Conductor Simone Lamsma TRUTH TO Britten POWER Violin , Op. 15 Moderato con moto— Vivace— : Andante lento (un poco meno mosso) Simone Lamsma

Intermission

Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in , Op. 47 Moderato—Allegro non troppo—Largamente Allegretto Largo Allegro non troppo—Allegro

The Truth to Power Festival is made possible with a generous leadership gift from The Grainger Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Richard and Mary L. Gray; U.S. Equities Realty, LLC and the Susan and Robert Wislow Charitable Foundation; Mr. & Mrs. Richard J. Franke; and The Wayne Balmer Grantor Trust. The appearance of Simone Lamsma is endowed in part by the Nuveen Investments Emerging Artist Fund. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBEZ 91.5FM for its generous support as media sponsor of the Truth to Power Festival.

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

Benjamin Britten Born November 22, 1913, Lowestoft, Sussex, England. Died December 4, 1976, Aldeburgh, England. , op. 15

Benjamin Britten was in from Wozzeck, he said that Strauss’s Death and the Barcelona audience on Transfi guration seemed dull and banal. For a the historic night Alban while, Britten had even contemplated going to Berg’s Violin Concerto Vienna to study with Berg. (He was discouraged received its posthumous by the director of the Royal College of Music premiere in April 1936. in London, where he was studying, for fear of Britten and the Spanish musical corruption.) Now with Berg dead less violinist Antonio Brosa than six months, Britten found the experience had gone to Barcelona to of listening to his last fi nished work, the great perform Britten’s Suite for Violin Concerto, “just shattering—very simple Violin and Piano, which had been chosen for the and touching.” It’s no coincidence that in another ISCM festival. Th e International Society for two years Britten would begin his own violin Contemporary Music festival, held in a diff erent concerto, designed for his Barcelona companion city every two years, was a major event on the and performing partner, Antonio Brosa. contemporary-music calendar. Britten had been invited once before, to the 1934 festival in ritten began the concerto in Florence, Italy, where, despite the honor, he November 1938. When his friends found much of the music “pretty poor.” He had a W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood far better time in Barcelona, taking in everything Bleft England for the United States early in from the cathedral (he was intoxicated by the 1939, Britten decided to follow, hoping to “sensuous beauty of darkness and incense”) and fi nd a climate more accepting of his left-wing the restaurants (“where the food was taken politics and pacifi st stance, his artistic beliefs, seriously,” as he recalled once back in cuisine- and his homosexuality. Britten was obviously challenged Britain) to the disorienting red-light at a crossroads in his life and in his career—he district, with “sexual temptations of every kind at later called himself “a discouraged young each corner.” composer—muddled, fed-up, and looking for But it was Berg’s dark and elegiac violin work, longing to be used”—and he believed concerto that made the strongest impression on that the change of scene would do him good. him. Britten had already discovered the power of In April 1939, he set off for North America Berg’s music—a 1933 diary entry mentions the with Peter Pears, the who would become “imagination and intense emotion” of the Lyric his great interpreter and lifelong companion. Suite, and after hearing the orchestral fragments Th ey stopped fi rst in Montreal, and from there

ComPoSeD InStrUmentatIon aPProXImate 1938–39 solo violin, three fl utes and two picco- PerFormanCe tIme los, two and english horn, two 32 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe , two , four horns, March 28, 1940, three , three , , , , triangle, snare FIrSt CSo PerFormanCeS drum, tenor drum, , , June 9, 10 & 11, 2005, Orchestra Hall. harp, strings Frank Peter Zimmermann as soloist, Manfred Honeck conducting

2 crossed over to the U.S., staying in Grand notify his publisher, Ralph Hawkes: “So far it is Rapids, Michigan, for ten days and then settling without question my best piece.” in New York City. Over the next two ears after playing the premiere, Brosa and a half years, told a radio interviewer that the snappy Britten wrote little figure in the timpani that opens the music, but he came concertoY was a “Spanish” rhythm—a refer- of age as a com- ence to the violinist’s nationality and also poser nevertheless. perhaps to the Barcelona collaboration that Although the U.S. set this piece in motion. A violin concerto wasn’t quite what he that begins with the solo timpani followed expected—he hated by a high-flying melody for the soloist auto- the noise and dirt of matically evokes the celebrating opening of New York, froze in Beethoven’s great score, and like Beethoven’s , whose Violin Chicago, and found famous motto, Britten’s rhythmic pattern later Concerto made a strong Hollywood “really returns as a signpost throughout his work. impression on Britten horrible”—it offered Britten writes three movements, turning the Britten a neutral traditional fast-slow-fast pattern inside out, so setting in which that the concerto begins and ends with expan- to address both personal and artistic issues. sive, contemplative music. The first movement When he returned to England in March 1942, switches between dreamy, luminous music, over he took with him a book of poems by George which the violin lingers and soars, and more Crabbe that he had bought in a Los Angeles energized Spanish rhythms. There’s a bookstore, and he was already plotting the particularly haunting passage near the end for Peter Grimes, based on Crabbe’s The Borough, lush high strings accompanied by the pizzicato that would soon make him the most celebrated rhythms of the solo violin—followed immedi- composer in England since Henry Purcell. ately by the reverse, with a lyrical solo song over The Violin Concerto was one of two unfin- plucked string chords. ished scores Britten brought with him to the U.S. The central is demonic and driven. (the other was the Les illuminations, a Again Britten demonstrates his ear for unexpected setting of poems by Rimbaud). He resumed work colors, including an astonishing passage for two on the concerto in Amityville, New York, over piccolos and tuba over string tremolos. A brilliant the summer and finished it on September 29 in , which recalls the Spanish rhythms of the Saint Jovite, Quebec. Although Les illuminations opening, moves directly into the finale. This is the was performed first (in London in January 1940, first of Britten’s grand , a set of varia- while the composer was still in the States), the tions over a repeating bass line. (There’s a par- Violin Concerto is Britten’s first “American” ticularly spectacular one in Peter Grimes.) It’s the work—the first work he completed here and the trombones, making their first appearance in the first to get a high-profile New York premiere, on piece, who get to deliver the passacaglia theme, March 28, 1940, in Carnegie Hall. Although an arresting progression of whole and half steps Britten was still trying to shake the “vile cold and moving up the scale and then back down. In the flu” he caught in Chicago, he rallied once Brosa nine variations that follow, each different in color arrived in New York to prepare for the perfor- and character, the theme moves from orchestra to mance. The concerto was well received, and even solo and back. The final variation, consisting of “the N.Y. Times’s old critic (who is the snarkyest nothing but slow chords and a stuttering, pleading [sic] and most coveted here),” Britten wrote, “was violin line, is as eloquent and moving as anything won over, so that was fine.” Britten was quick to Britten ever wrote.

3 Dmitri Shostakovich Born September 25, 1906, (formerly Leningrad), . Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia. Symphony no. 5 in D minor, op. 47

Dmitri Shostakovich fi rst Th e facts are few, but telling. On January 28, came to the United States 1936, while Shostakovich was working on his in March 1949. Before a Fourth Symphony, denounced his opera crowd of 30,000 people in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in an article called Madison Square Garden, “.” Although the he sat at a piano and opera had been triumphantly received in both played the scherzo from Moscow and Leningrad during the previous two his Fifth Symphony. He years—and in more than 175 performances—it arrived here as an offi cial was suddenly and decisively attacked as fi dgety, participant in the Cultural screaming, neurotic, coarse, primitive, and and Scientifi c Conference for World Peace, and he vulgar. Although Shostakovich himself was not came, against his better judgment, because Stalin the recipient of such well-chosen adjectives, there had telephoned him and asked him to come. was no question of where he now stood in the It is a disturbing and symbolic image: this eyes of Soviet authorities. great man, so shy and unassuming behind his Shostakovich went ahead and fi nished his thick glasses, being trotted out to perform his Fourth Symphony—a vast, exploratory, tragic best-known symphonic music on a piano in a work—but when it came time to unveil it in sports arena. Th is was but one of many battles public, he had second thoughts and withdrew Shostakovich fought in his war between the the score. (It waited twenty-fi ve years to be public platform and his private thoughts. A pho- performed.) Th en, after a long silence, came his tograph taken at the time shows Shostakovich, offi cial response, written in just three months. his eyes avoiding the camera, standing uneasily Shostakovich now issued “the creative reply of a between Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller. Soviet artist to justifi ed criticism,” the astonish- ing phrase that is forever linked with the work’s mitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony offi cial title, Symphony no. 5. is perhaps the best-known work of Sorting fact from fi ction is no mere pastime art born from the marriage of politics in discussing Soviet music. On such distinctions Dand music. In 1949, when the Soviet composer hangs our understanding of important musical came to America, the circumstances of its impulses. Many a listener, as well as political creation were as famous as the music itself. historian, has pondered the justifi cation for the

ComPoSeD moSt reCent aPProXImate 1937 CSo PerFormanCeS PerFormanCe tIme April 8, 2011, Orchestra Hall. riccardo 46 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe Muti conducting november 21, 1937; Leningrad, russia CSo reCorDIngS April 27, 2011, Palazzo Mauro de 1977. conducting. Angel André, ravenna, italy. riccardo FIrSt CSo PerFormanCeS Muti conducting 2006. Myung-whun Chung July 17, 1941, ravinia Festival. nicolai conducting. CSO resound Malko conducting InStrUmentatIon February 10 & 11, 1944, Orchestra Hall. two fl utes and piccolo, two oboes, two Désiré Defauw conducting clarinets and e-fl at , two bas- soons and , four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, , cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, bells, , , piano, two harps, strings 4 Soviet criticism and the motivation for the reply. larity of form and texture is the hallmark For the record, we can consider the composer’s of the large—and not uncomplicated— own words, written at the time, although they first movement. From the jagged Grosse are less than enlightening: “The theme of my CFuge–like opening theme to the climatic, Fifth Symphony is the making of a man. I saw grotesque march over a relentless snare-drum man with all his experiences in the center of the rhythm, Shostakovich takes pains not to lose composition, which is lyrical in form from begin- us in intricate lines of or disori- ning to end. In the finale, the tragically tense enting harmonies. For every page of the score impulses of the earlier movements are resolved in that calls on the full resources of the orchestra, optimism and joy of living.” There is, of course, there are countless others on which few notes some incontrovertible evidence, like the wild are written. The second theme, for example, is success of the Fifth Symphony when it was a serene, soaring violin melody of wide leaps— introduced on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad we are never quite certain where it will land under the baton of Eugene Mravinsky, and the next—over simple chords that slowly change subsequent official embrace of Shostakovich, colors as they repeat their “tum ta-ta” pattern. speedily returned to favor. The Allegretto that follows (a traditional In the end, the music must speak for itself. In scherzo and trio form) is as merry and place of the “screaming,” “primitive” music that good-natured as any music that came from got him into trouble, Shostakovich now gives us Shostakovich’s pen. If this were the only music clarity and of his that we knew, we might not be so quick to brilliance. read a note of irony into the solo violin’s teasing And, despite melody in the trio. But this is music in a singu- intermittent larly untroubled vein, and that is precisely what tensions, we the Madison Square Garden crowd was meant have a happy to hear. ending. Like Shostakovich claimed he wrote the Largo Beethoven, at white heat in three days—information that Tchaikovsky, is hard to digest once one hears this calm and and Mahler controlled music, moving slowly over vast, before him, wide-open spaces. The lucid, thin textures Shostakovich occasionally turn Spartan—a solo melody has written a against a single sustained violin note, a duet fifth sym- accompanied by a quiet harp—but every phrase phony that carries meaning and we hang on each note. sets out to If darkness blankets the eloquent Largo, the triumph over finale erupts with power and brilliance. A trium- The composer with a portrait adversity, with phant conclusion was mandatory—particularly of Beethoven behind him. the major key after the troubled thoughts of the preceding Shostakovich had a strong sense supplanting slow movement. When the D minor struggles of identification—social, historical, the minor finally shift into an affirmative blast, and creative—with the great German symphonist. in the final it is only our hindsight—our knowledge of the movement. undeniable sorrow and despair of Shostakovich’s The power of last works—that suggests this happy ending is this music is undeniable, although not everyone somehow forced. was satisfied that its deeper content was really politically correct—after hearing Shostakovich’s new symphony for the first time, the great novelist Boris Pasternak wrote, “He went and said everything, and no one did anything to him Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago for it.” Symphony Orchestra.

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