Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director

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PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH 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, December 17, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, December 18, 2015, at 1:30 Saturday, December 19, 2015, at 8:00

James Conlon Conductor Alexander Hanna Bass Mozart Overture to Lucio Silla, K. 135 Molto allegro—Andante—Molto allegro First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Vanhal Double Bass Concerto in D Major Allegro moderato Adagio Finale: Allegro ALEXANDER HANNA First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

INTERMISSION

Dvořák The Wild Dove, Op. 110 Dvořák The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109

This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to 93XRT, WBEZ 91.5FM, and RedEye for their generous support as media sponsors of the Classic Encounter series. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. COMMENTS by Daniel Jaffé Phillip Huscher

Wolfgang A. Mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Overture to Lucio Silla, K. 135

It is only this past the more prestigious of the two operas would be September that Mozart’s produced after the company had been “warmed Lucio Silla, composed in up” by one by a less celebrated composer. Mozart, 1772, received its Chicago being the relatively inexperienced youngster, took premiere, in Chicago that first slot. Opera Theater’s strikingly The Regio Ducal’s resident librettist, Giovanni updated production. That de Gamerra, created the opera’s libretto espe- an opera originally set in cially for Mozart (though it would subsequently ancient Roman history be reused by, among others, J.C. Bach): the should have enjoyed such story concerns a historical figure much favored a critically acclaimed revival reflects Mozart’s in eighteenth-century opera—Lucius Cornelius keen interest in and ability to portray, even as a Sulla, the Roman dictator who won the first teenager, perennial human motivations and civil war recorded in Roman history. Gamerra passions: political ambition, rivalry, and love, are, included in the libretto references to several other of course, recognizable motivations even today. historical figures, including Sulla’s opponent, Mozart was fifteen in 1771 when he was Gaius Marius, father in the opera of (the prob- commissioned to compose a new opera for the ably fictitious) Giunia; she provides the opera’s Teatro Regio Ducal in Milan. This followed the love interest, who eventually persuades the title successful production of two of his works at that character to renounce his dictatorship and allow theater—the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto in 1770, Giunia to be united with her beloved, announc- and, in the following year, the serenata Ascanio ing that it is better to rule by justice and mercy in Alba, performed in honor of the wedding rather than by awe and fear. of Archduke Ferdinand, governor general of Lombardy, and Princess Maria Beatrice d’Este n November 4, 1772, Mozart, now aged in October 1771. Yet it seems that it was entirely sixteen, arrived in Milan with his father the success of these, rather than any political Leopold. Mozart had by then already motivation, which spurred the director of the Ocomposed several of the opera’s recitatives in Regio Ducal to present an opera commission to Salzburg, though he subsequently made several such a very young non-Italian composer. amendments to these. The rest of the opera had Mozart’s opera was to be performed during the to be composed piecemeal as Mozart had to tailor carnival season, held from just after Christmas the showy arias to the capabilities and strengths 1772 until the start of Lent in 1773—a tradi- of the principal singers, some of whom—such as tional time in Italy for new seria operas to be the prima donna due to sing the role of Giunia— staged. As was customary, two new operas were were not due to arrive in Milan until early to be presented during that season, and, as usual, December. Indeed, just twenty-one days before

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES APPROXIMATE 1772 These are the first Chicago Symphony PERFORMANCE TIME Orchestra performances. 9 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE December 26, 1772, Milan INSTRUMENTATION two oboes, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings

2 the premiere, the original tenor was reported who had charmed the courts of Europe. A lively too ill to take part, and Mozart had to write two opening movement (Molto allegro) includes a pair new arias for his replacement in a single day. of trumpets and timpani for ceremonial flavor— In a letter dated November 14, Leopold Mozart well-suited to the opening of the carnival season reported that his son had already composed the as well as the opera itself; then follows a soothing opera’s overture; therefore it was not, as is often central Andante movement, scored for woodwind said, the last part of the work to be written. and strings alone; finally, Molto allegro, a lively In the form of a three-movement sinfonia, the brief rondo including trumpets and drums. overture is both a grand statement in itself, and yet as playful in character as the young prodigy Daniel Jaffé

Johann Baptist Vanhal Born May 12, 1739, Nechanice, Hradec Králové District, Bohemia. Died August 20, 1813, Vienna, Austria. Double Bass Concerto in D Major

Saint-Saëns’s caricature of composer’s own practice) and his career is based the double bass as the on relatively few sources. There is an irresistible Elephant in Carnival of anecdote by the Irish tenor Michael Kelly (who the Animals is so widely sang Don Basilio in the premiere of Mozart’s known that it has Marriage of Figaro): in 1784, he witnessed a precluded the perception performance by a string quartet with Joseph for many that the instru- Haydn on first violin, Dittersdorf on second, ment could sing with Mozart on viola, and Vanhal on cello. Then we eloquence and grace. Yet have the not altogether consistent testimony of the double bass has had the contemporary English composer and music its champions—most famously in the last historian Charles Burney in his book Continental century, before he became a renowned conductor, Travels 1770–1772; and the reminiscences by Serge Koussevitzky—and we know of several Vanhal’s Bohemian contemporary Gottfried double bass concertos dating from the late Johann Dlabacž, who stayed with the composer eighteenth century in the so-called classical era: for an appreciable time in Vienna in 1795. From no less than three by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf these, and a very few secondary sources from (1739–1799), two by Franz Anton Hoffmeister the period, we know that Vanhal was born a serf (1754–1812), and—performed at tonight’s to the family of Schaffgotsch in the Bohemian concert—the sole but highly distinguished essay town of Nechanice. As a child, he was taught to by Johann Baptist Vanhal. play the organ and string and wind instruments, Our knowledge of Vanhal (or Wanhal as and was trained to sing. After a period as his name is sometimes spelled, following the organist and choirmaster, he studied violin

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES CADENZA ca. 1785 These are the first Chicago Symphony Johannes Sperger, Orchestra performances. arr. Alexander Hanna FIRST PERFORMANCE unknown INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE solo bass, two oboes, two PERFORMANCE TIME horns, strings 22 minutes

3 under Mathias Nowak, and himself became an was written by an unidentified copyist with outstanding virtuoso player; Nowak also taught cadenzas written in Sperger’s own hand. At least Vanhal sufficient compositional technique to one musicologist has speculated on this evidence write concertos. that the concerto originally was composed for Sometime in 1760–61, Countess Schaffgotsch Sperger. However, other scholars and musi- arranged for Vanhal to move to Vienna, where he cians have contested this, since the manuscript was released from bondage to the Schaffgotsch includes several problematic octave transposi- family and established himself as a leading tions, apparently written by the original copyist, composer, writing at least thirty-four sympho- more than reasonably difficult to play or of ques- nies. He attracted the patronage of Baron Riesch tionable aesthetic taste, making it dubious that of Dresden, who sponsored Vanhal to spend time the manuscript fully reflects Vanhal’s intentions. studying in Italy in 1769. However, after just over Despite this, such is the beauty of the concerto’s a year traveling in that country, Vanhal rejected intrinsic music that it has been widely recognized Riesch’s offer to become Kappelmeister at his as the greatest of all double bass concertos from Dresden estate for reasons unknown to us. There the classical period. have been persistent rumors, based on a cryptic observation by Charles Burney, that Vanhal at anhal’s Concerto is in the standard three this time lost his sanity and burned several of his movements of a classical concerto. First, compositions; however, the little hard evidence an Allegro moderato, where after a brief that remains rather suggests that Vanhal instead Vorchestral introduction the double bass soloist returned to Vienna and there, with the patronage makes its entry; as is standard in a classical of Count Ladislaus Erdödy, continued to live a concerto, the soloist given an opportunity to more or less independent existence writing sym- shine in a solo cadenza towards the movement’s phonies, chamber music, and music for liturgical end. Then follows the slow movement, an use. From the late 1770s, Vanhal worked closely Adagio whose lyrical beauty is one of the most with the nascent Viennese music publishing striking in concerto literature, certainly justify- industry, gaining considerable control over the ing the reputation Vanhal’s concerto enjoys as wide propagation of his music. the greatest classical work for the instrument. Alas, Vanhal’s Double Bass Concerto was not Finally, a playful finale, in which the bass one of those works so favored. Indeed, we know soloist is able to demonstrate his instrument’s very little about the origin of this work: the only ability to join in a light-footed dance. surviving manuscript, property of the double bass player Johann Matthias Sperger (1750–1812), Daniel Jaffé

In Memoriam The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association recalls with sorrow the recent passing of Orchestra and Chorus musicians.

JACQUES ISRAELIEVITCH (1948–2015) Violin, Assistant Concertmaster, 1972–1978

SUSAN TURNEY (1953–2015) Alto, 1973–2012

4 CSO11_Dec15_in_memoriam_half-page_salute.indd 1 12/9/15 10:28 AM Antonín Dvořák Born September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic). Died May 1, 1904, Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Wild Dove, Op. 110 Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109 Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective

Antonín Dvořák wasn’t he treasured the memory of playing a concert the first composer to there in 1863 under his idol, Richard Wagner, reject the family business which included the overture to Tannhäuser, the for a life in music. Robert prelude to Tristan and Isolde, and excerpts from Schumann was the only Die Meistersinger and Die Walküre. In 1871, one of four brothers to Dvořák left the orchestra to devote more time to abandon his father’s book composition, but he soon realized that he would publishing company for have to teach to get by. For many years, his father another career. František doubted the wisdom of his son’s choice of music Dvořák, a butcher in a over the life of a butcher. village just north of Prague, also expected his son Then in 1873, Dvořák’s works began to attract to continue in the trade. František played the attention. The successful premiere of his patriotic zither and even wrote a few tunes for the local cantata Heirs of the White Mountain on March 9 band, but he didn’t think of composing as an launched his fame in his homeland. Later that occupation. He was irate when his thirteen-year- year, he married Anna Cermáková, the sister old son dropped out of his apprenticeship as a of the Prague actress Josefina, who had, nearly butcher and moved to nearby Zlonice to a decade before, rebuffed his advances. (Like study music. Mozart and Haydn, he married not his first love, Antonín Dvořák learned to play the violin as a but her sister.) In 1874, Dvořák took stock of his small boy, and he composed marches and waltzes situation: he had begun to taste success; his wife for the village band. In Zlonice, he studied was pregnant with their first child; and he looked piano, organ, and viola, eventually becoming forward to the pleasures, comforts, and traditions a decent enough violist to earn a living as an of family life. But he craved recognition and he orchestra musician when he couldn’t make any needed money. In July, he entered fifteen of his money from his compositions. After he moved to newest works in a competition for the Austrian Prague in 1857, he became principal viola in the State Music Prize, a government award designed orchestra for the new Provisional Theater (later to assist struggling young artists. The judges the National Theater). For the rest of his life, included Johannes Brahms, the biggest name in

The Wild Dove, Op. 110

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES four horns, three trumpets, three October–November 1896 U.S. premiere trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, October 20 & 21, 1899, harp, strings FIRST PERFORMANCE Auditorium Theatre. Theodore March 20, 1898, Brno Thomas conducting APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME INSTRUMENTATION 19 minutes two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons,

5 Viennese music. Dvořák won the first prize of but that spoke to him even more forcefully now four hundred gulden, and he felt a kind of encour- that he was back in his homeland. In 1896, agement and validation that money can’t buy. Dvořák composed four symphonic poems based Over the next few years, several of Dvořák’s on tales drawn from Erben’s anthology—The works were published, first in Prague and then Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, The Golden more widely, and his music quickly became well Spinning Wheel, and The Wild Dove. A fifth, not known throughout Europe and in the United based on Erben, followed the next year. They States. By the time he accepted Jeannette were his last orchestral works. Thurber’s invitation to take up temporary resi- Dvořák began the first three Erban pieces in dence in the United States, beginning in 1892, he the early days of January, and worked on them at was enjoying extraordinary critical and popular the same time for several weeks. In late February, success. Dvořák’s American years cemented after he had finished the first two and was still his reputation in writing The Golden Spinning Wheel, Dvořák vis- this country, and ited Brahms, who urged him to move his family also inspired some to Vienna—an invitation that Dvořák couldn’t of his best-loved seriously consider, since he now felt more music, including attached than ever to his native land. Dvořák the American String finished The Golden Spinning Wheel at the end of Quartet and his last April. Then, in October, he began work on his symphony—the final symphonic poem inspired by Erban, The ninth, known Wild Dove. He completed it in less than a month. as From the New We don’t know if Dvořák ever told Brahms, the World. After he great symphonist—and, pointedly, the composer returned home in of no symphonic poems—of the new direction April 1895, Dvořák his music had taken. In March of 1897, when he composed two last Jeannette Thurber learned of Brahms’s failing health, he went back string quartets that (1852–1940), founder of the to Vienna to visit him; he returned the very next were his final essays National Conservatory of month for Brahms’s funeral. And then, after in abstract music, Music, New York writing one final symphonic poem, A Hero’s Song, cleared his head, and which he began that August, he turned away then unexpectedly turned his attention to the from the form as quickly as he had embraced symphonic poem. it. In his last years, Dvořák wrote nothing This late-in-life career move was inspired by but operas, arguing that this was the way to the rediscovery of The Garland, a collection of reach more people. Yet it is Dvořák’s orchestral ballads by the nationalist poet Karel Jaromír music—the symphonies and these symphonic Erben—poetry that Dvořák had loved for years, poems—that keeps his name alive.

The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109

COMPOSED July 20, 1971, Ravinia Festival. István INSTRUMENTATION January–April 1896 Kertész conducting two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets, FIRST PERFORMANCES MOST RECENT two bassoons and contrabassoon, June 3, 1896, Prague (private) CSO PERFORMANCES four horns, two trumpets, three November 28, 29, 30 & December 1, trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, October 26, London (public) 2012, Orchestra Hall. Sir Mark cymbals, triangle, harp, strings Elder conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES APPROXIMATE U.S. premiere PERFORMANCE TIME January 1 & 2, 1897, 27 minutes Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting

6 Composers in Chicago

“Bohemia ruled the World’s Columbian Exposition yesterday. It was the special date set apart for that nationality, and its citizens invaded the White City at every entrance by the thousands,” wrote the reviewer in the Chicago Daily Tribune.

On August 12, 1893, 8,000 people packed into the fair’s Festival Hall to hear the Exposition Orchestra—the Chicago Orchestra expanded to 114 players—under the batons of Vojtěch I. Hlaváč, professor of music at the Imperial University in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Antonín Dvořák, the director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music in America.

The Tribune reviewer continued: “As Dvořák walked out upon the stage a storm of applause greeted him. For nearly two minutes the old composer [age fifty-one!] stood beside the music rack, baton in hand, bowing his acknowl- edgements. The players dropped their instruments to join in the welcome. Symphony no. 4 in G major [now known as no. 8], considered a severe test of technical writing as well as playing, was interpreted brilliantly. The Orchestra caught the spirit and magnetism of the distinguished leader. The audience sat as if spell-bound. Tremendous outbursts of applause were given.” On the second half of the program, Dvořák conducted selections from his Slavonic Dances and closed the program with his overture My Country.

Frank Villella is the director of the Rosenthal Archives. For more information regarding the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s anniversary season, please visit cso.org/125moments.

7 aking a cue from Liszt’s pioneering tone day is depicted in frenetic, joyous music that poems, Dvořák assigns a musical theme opens into a broad lyrical melody. Then, “from to each central character in the action of the branches of a fresh green oak, which over- hisT symphonic poems, allowing it to be trans- shadows the grave of her first husband, whom formed by the events in the unfolding drama. she had poisoned, the mournful cooing of the (This also was the model for the series of new wild dove is heard. The melancholy sounds orchestral works begun by Richard Strauss in the pierce to the heart of the criminal woman, who, preceding decade; he was composing Also sprach tormented by pangs of conscience, becomes Zarathustra at the time Dvořák was working on insane and drowns herself.” In the epilogue, we the Erben scores.) Although the shape of Erben’s are left with the haunting last calls of the dove. narrative largely determined the forms of The Wild Dove and The Golden Spinning Wheel, the he Golden Spinning Wheel tells the tale of influence of a young king, out hunting on horseback, his language who stops at a cottage to ask for a drink had a more ofT water, and, immediately falling in love with profound and Dornička, the young girl at the spinning wheel, subtle impact becomes caught in an ill-fated romance. When on Dvořák’s the king later returns to pursue Dornička, he music. encounters her stepmother, who has a young, Throughout unmarried daughter of her own. In a turn of these scores, events that in our time would surely dominate the rise and the media for weeks, the stepmother takes the fall of his two girls into the woods, murders and dismem- melodic lines bers Dornička, and sends her own daughter off suggest the to marry the king. (Dornička’s feet, hands, and declamation eyes are later sent along to the king’s castle.) of Erben’s After the wedding—celebrated by a wonderfully verses (certain Dvořákian polka—the king goes off to war. In passages of the meantime, an old man, wandering in the Karel Jaromír Erben the poems woods, discovers the remains of Dornička’s could almost body and is determined to bring her back to be sung to life, a makeover process that ultimately involves Dvořák’s corresponding themes). This is sim- exchanging a golden spinning wheel for her ilar to the “speech-melody” that Janáček was feet, a golden distaff for her hands, and a golden developing in his operatic writing at this time. spindle for her eyes. When the king returns from his triumphant wartime action, the spinning he Wild Dove (sometimes translated wheel begins to play a song describing the crimes as The Wood Dove) tells the story of a committed by the stepmother and her daughter. woman who has poisoned her husband; The king races to the forest, where he finds althoughT she later remarries, she is haunted by Dornička alive and even well, and he takes her the cooing of a dove sitting in the tree over her back to his castle. Although Erben has the two first husband’s grave. She eventually is driven murderers torn apart by wolves, Dvořák’s ending to kill herself. Dvořák himself outlined the is uncomplicated and unequivocally happy. action in the preface to his score. A funeral Phillip Huscher march, launched by muted brass and timpani, introduces the woman’s theme as she follows Daniel Jaffé, author of a biography of Sergey Prokofiev the coffin of her dead husband. In a spirited (Phaidon) and the Historical Dictionary of Russian Music Allegro section (that eventually slows to an (Scarecrow Press), currently is researching a biography Andante), a handsome young man meets the of Gustav Holst. widow, comforts her, and persuades her to forget Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the her grief and marry him. The happy wedding Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.