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, December 13, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, December 14, 2012, at 1:30 Saturday, December 15, 2012, at 8:00 Tuesday, December 18, 2012, at 7:30 Harry Bicket Conductor Jennifer Koh Violin Jaime Laredo Violin Scott Hostetler Oboe d’amore J.S. Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat Major, BWV 1051 [Allegro] Adagio ma non tanto— Allegro Charles Pikler, viola Li-Kuo Chang, viola Clyne Prince of Clouds Jennifer Koh Jaime Laredo Chicago Symphony Orchestra Co-commission First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances
Intermission Stravinsky Concerto in E-flat Major for Chamber Orchestra (Dumbarton Oaks) Tempo giusto— Allegretto— Con moto J.S. Bach Concerto for Oboe d’amore in A Major, BWV 1055 Allegro Larghetto Allegro ma non tanto Scott Hostetler First Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concert performances J.S. Bach Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043 Vivace Largo, ma non tanto Allegro Jennifer Koh Jaime Laredo
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 Phillip Huscher
Johann Sebastian Bach Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany. Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig, Germany.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flatM ajor, BWV 1051
erlin is now only a short with large towns such as Leipzig Bafternoon’s drive from the half and Dresden. a dozen towns in East Central We don’t know exactly when Germany where Bach lived and Bach visited Berlin that year—on worked his entire life. (In sixty-five March 1, the Cöthen court treasury years, he never set foot outside advanced him 130 thalers “for the Germany.) But in his day, the trip harpsichord built in Berlin and was much more arduous, and Bach travel expenses”—or how long didn’t travel that far unless he he stayed. But he found time to was sent on official business. He make several useful contacts, none went to Berlin, apparently for the more beneficial to the future of first time, in 1719, on an expense- music than the margrave Christian account shopping trip, to buy a Ludwig of Brandenburg, who asked new, state-of-the-art harpsichord Bach to send him some of his com- for his patron in Cöthen, a small, positions. At the time, Bach was remote, rural town sometimes preoccupied with inspecting the dismissively called “Cow Cöthen.” harpsichord that had been made to Bach wouldn’t recognize Berlin order by Michael Mietke, who was today, with its traffic jams and famous for the quality of his high- round-the-clock construction, end, elaborately painted instru- but he was probably put off by its ments, and with arranging to have urban bustle even in 1719, for he it shipped back to Cöthen. But he had only a passing acquaintance didn’t forget the margrave’s request.
Composed Most recent CSO Instrumentation date unknown performances strings without violins, April 21, 2002, Orchestra harpsichord First performance Hall. Pinchas Zukerman date unknown playing the viola Approximate and conducting performance time First CSO 18 minutes August 9, 2006, performance Ravinia Festival. Jaime February 23, Laredo conducting 1900, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting
3 It would be another two years he dedicated to the margrave of before Bach handed Christian Brandenburg. Recent scholarship Ludwig the carefully written “pre- suggests that most of them were sentation copy” of the six concertos already finished when he met the we now call the Brandenburgs, margrave (two of them possibly after the margrave’s province just dating from 1713) and that he sim- to the south and west of Berlin (its ply took his time compiling a set capital was Potsdam). Bach’s life, in of pieces, some old and some new, the meantime, had been busy and that he thought made a sufficiently unsettled. He had watched three varied and satisfying whole. The family members (his ten-month-old fifth concerto, for example, with its son, his wife Maria Barbara, and unprecedented star role for harpsi- his brother) die—a sudden spate of chord, was surely written after Bach funerals, even in an age when life returned from Berlin, in order to was short. He had gone to Halle inaugurate the new special-order to compete instrument. The presentation score for the job he gave the margrave is a “gift of organ- edition” of the set, almost entirely ist (he later in Bach’s own meticulous hand- declined the writing, prefaced by an elaborate offer), which dedication page written in French suggests that and dated March 24, 1721. “As I he was grow- had a couple of years ago the plea- ing restless sure of appearing before Your Royal in Cöthen, Highness,” Bach wrote, recounting despite work- how the margrave had praised his ing for an talent at the time and asked for enlightened “some pieces of my composition.” patron, the Bach simply but provocatively Bach’s patron, Prince twenty- describes the contents as “concerts Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen something avec plusieurs instruments”—that Prince is, concertos for many different Leopold, who “both loved and combinations of instruments, a understood music.” (The prince’s modest way of expressing one of the sympathies would suddenly change set’s most innovative features. in 1721 when he married a woman Since we have no record that the who “seemed to be alien to the margrave ever arranged to have muses.”) And, in addition to his his concertos performed, he has daily workload at Cöthen, he was often been unfairly portrayed as trying to finish some of his most an unworthy patron who put the important music, including the unopened score on his bookshelf sonatas and suites for solo violin. and never thanked or paid Bach for his efforts. We probably will never e don’t know when Bach know when or where these works Wwrote the six concertos were first played, but they were
4 obviously not widely known during concertos demand and celebrate Bach’s life. (The obituary prepared the performers’ virtuosity as by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel much as they demonstrate Bach’s doesn’t even mention them.) Only amazing skill. The union of joyful the Fifth, with its remarkable harp- music making and compositional sichord solo, was performed with brilliance combine to put the any regularity in the years after the Brandenburgs among those rare composer’s death; eventually, the works that delight connoisseurs and whole set was forgotten. The earliest amateurs alike. documented public performance of a Brandenburg Concerto dates from cored exclusively for low strings, 1835, more than a century after they Sthe Sixth Brandenburg has the were written. Today they are argu- most unusual sonority of all these ably Bach’s most popular works. concertos. What is most remark- Like many of Bach’s sets, such as able, however, is that Bach has the Goldberg Variations or The Well- managed to write music that is Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg never somber, despite the unremit- Concertos form a kind of master tingly dark sound of his ensemble. anthology—a demonstration, really, Like the Third (the other all-string of all the imaginable possibili- Brandenburg, which at least benefits ties inherent in a certain musical from the brilliance of high violins), form. Each of these six concertos this concerto is a marvel of end- calls for a different combination of less variety, in color and texture, soloists—every one unprecedented within a monochromatic world. in its choice of instruments and The first movement, especially, is still without parallel today. Perhaps very densely woven and insistently they represent Bach’s ideal, for repetitive, but in Bach’s hands it their instrumentation corresponds comes out lively and transparent. neither to the Cöthen ensemble he It is as if Bach had set himself the conducted nor to the margrave’s task of achieving the maximum own resident group of musicians. contrast—both in the overall design Bach gives solo roles to members of two full-ensemble movements of all three orchestral families, and surrounding an intimate viola often groups them in unexpected duet, and within the shaping of combinations, such as the trumpet, the movements themselves—using flute, oboe, and violin ensemble a completely homogenous cast of the second concerto. All the of instruments.
5 Anna Clyne Born March 9, 1980, London, England.
Prince of Clouds
rince of Clouds is Anna Clyne’s presence of musical lineage—a Pfirst concerto. For a composer family tree of sorts that passes from known for her love of collabora- generation to generation,” Clyne tion, this double concerto is an writes of her piece. “This transfer extended family affair that links of knowledge and inspiration many strands in Clyne’s own life. between generations is a beauti- The process began, in a sense, when ful gift.” Concertos often become violinist Jennifer Koh heard Clyne’s collaborative affairs, because many Within Her Arms, a haunting, composers, including Brahms and deeply expressive work for fifteen Berg, have taken advantage of the solo strings (it was performed here opportunity to try things out on on a MusicNOW concert in 2011) their soloists as they write. Early that Clyne completed in 2009 after on, Clyne began a dialogue with the death of her mother. Clyne and Koh and Laredo, sending them Koh became friends and began to snippets that she had composed—a follow each other’s careers. Clyne dialogue that echoes the kind of heard Koh play a wide range of close relationship that Koh and music, from Beethoven to Sibelius Laredo have long enjoyed, as and Saariaho. Koh heard each well as the musical dialogue that of Clyne’s new works, and when Clyne writes for them in Prince of she asked for a new piece to play Clouds itself. herself, that idea quickly developed Prince of Clouds was commis- into a double concerto for Koh sioned by an unusually diverse and violinist Jaime Laredo, who group of organizations, includ- was Koh’s teacher and mentor at ing the Chicago Symphony, the Curtis Institute of Music in where Clyne has served as Mead Philadelphia. “When writing Prince Composer-in-Residence since of Clouds, I was contemplating the 2010, and the Curtis Institute of
Composed Commissioned by IRIS Instrumentation 2012 Orchestra, the Los Angeles two solo violins, strings Chamber Orchestra, First performance the Curtis Institute of Approximate November 3, 2012; Music, and the Chicago performance time Germantown, Tennessee Symphony Orchestra 15 minutes These are the first CSO performances
6 Music, the musical home, as it How did the idea of writing were, of both Koh and Laredo. specifically for Jennifer Koh The premiere was given in and Jaime Laredo serve as a November by the IRIS Orchestra, point of departure? another commissioner, and, after Knowing that Jaime was Jenny’s these Chicago performances, mentor at the Curtis Institute, I it will be played by the Curtis instantly connected to the idea Chamber Orchestra on an East of musical lineage and musical Coast tour in March. Throughout family—a family that you recreate this series of performances, Prince through the artistic community. of Clouds is being paired with It’s the same connection that I have Bach’s landmark concerto for two with my composition teachers. You violins—composed some three can trace back your heritage in hundred years before Clyne’s a way. score—which provided the germ for the commission itself and What is the nature of the served as a touchstone for Clyne as relationship between your two she was writing. solo violins? Last season, Chicagoans heard From the beginning, I really Night Ferry, premiered by the CSO wanted to create a sort of dialogue and Riccardo Muti in February, of intertwining melodies—actually which was the first of Clyne’s the whole piece is based on the works to be performed by the opening melody—a dialogue of Chicago Symphony. Clyne was passing ideas back and forth, which born in London and raised in the I think is one of the beautiful U.K.—she wrote and performed things about having a mentor- her first fully notated piece for flute student relationship—that bounc- and piano at the age of eleven—and ing ideas off each other. she also has lived and worked in Edinburgh, Ontario, and New But the shape of the piece— York City. She holds degrees from the nature of their dialogue— Edinburgh University and the is complicated. Manhattan School of Music. Clyne I knew that they could play very is now a full-time Chicagoan. delicate, expressive melodies, but that they also could perform very spoke with Clyne about Prince of rhythmic, fast, energetic music, IClouds shortly after the premiere in so the piece really contrasts those November. We talked in her studio, two musical languages. The soloists where a poem by Emily Dickinson, move together through those two written out on a large canvas on contrasting sound worlds. one wall, is always in view: it is the source for the new work, A Sudden Shut, she is now compos- ing to be premiered on the CSO’s MusicNOW series on February 25.
7 You knew all along that your in England, I heard a lot of early piece was to be paired with the music, a lot of period instruments, Bach double concerto. What and that sound is very familiar to does that work mean to you? me. In a way, it’s about keeping the It’s a piece that I love. I’m a big emotive power locked in a little bit, vinyl junkie, and I have a record of so that when it opens up, you feel Isaac Stern and Yehudi Menuhin it more. I’m very precise about the that is scratched beyond belief. use of vibrato in this piece, so that vibrato is a color rather than a con- Was Bach somehow in the back stant within the piece. As a string of your mind as you composed? player, your natural instinct is to As a composer, to have a piece of add vibrato, to warm the sound. So yours played back to back with if that’s not the sound you want, Bach is the ultimate challenge. So you have to say so. I thought, why not use this as an opportunity to challenge myself— Has Bach’s music always played to really strip it down? What’s so a role in your life? incredible about Bach’s music is The two most influential composers that every note is totally present. for me are Bach and Stravinsky. I was thinking of this when the Their music is completely timeless. CSO played Stravinsky’s The Rite And it speaks to something a bit of Spring in November: every line, more universal. My introduction to every note is essential. classical music was playing the cello As a composer, it’s much more in the Bach suites. It’s a world you challenging to take it to the bare can get totally lost in. I remember bones and find the skeleton of the once performing one of the suites piece. So, in the case of my piece, and completely forgetting that there it’s just five lines of the ensemble was an audience there. and the two soloists. Has writing this piece in any In the score, you specify that way changed the way you will the work should be played in a compose in the future? baroque style throughout. What I think I’ll be more mindful of does that mean? simplicity and think more about the It’s a sound that I’m more drawn musicians and their contribution to—I feel like it has a certain to the whole. Exposed simplicity earthiness and less vibrato. It’s as if is a real challenge. I’m taking that the sound is being stripped down idea into the piece I’m writing for to its element in a way. Growing up MusicNOW.
8 Igor Stravinsky Born June 18, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia. Died April 6, 1971, New York City.
Concerto in E-flat Major for Chamber Orchestra (Dumbarton Oaks)
magnificent Federal-style premiered in this room to celebrate Ahouse, Dumbarton Oaks sits their thirtieth wedding anniversary. on the crest of a wooded valley near Stravinsky visited Dumbarton Washington, D.C. After Mr. and Oaks in 1937, before he started Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss bought composing, and he is said to have the estate in 1933, it immediately been influenced in his design of the became the scene of regular musical piece by the perfect layout of the soirées. At the time, Mr. Bliss, the Blisses’ elaborate formal gardens. former ambassador to Argentina, When his publisher later asked him was chairman of the Visiting about the work, Stravinsky called Committee of the Harvard Music it “a little concerto in the style Department, and his wife Mildred of the Brandenburg Concertos.” was an unusually astute music lover, Bach’s scores had already served patron of the arts, and cultural as a general model for the violin maven (Sir Kenneth Clark called concerto Stravinsky had composed her “the Queen of Georgetown”). six years earlier. Now they became The great music room at a more direct source of inspiration. Dumbarton Oaks, with its tap- “I played Bach very regularly during estries and paintings (including the composition of the concerto,” El Greco’s The Visitation) and its Stravinsky later recalled, grand piano autographed by Jan Paderewski, a family friend, was the and I was greatly attracted to scene of many concerts hosted by the Brandenburg Concertos. the Blisses. It was their idea to com- Whether or not the first mission Stravinsky to write a cham- theme of my first movement ber orchestra work that would be is a conscious borrowing from
Composed First CSO Instrumentation 1937–March 29, 1938 performance flute, E-flat clarinet, December 18, 1986, bassoon, two horns, strings First performance Orchestra Hall. Erich May 8, 1938; Dumbarton Leinsdorf conducting Approximate Oaks, outside performance time Washington, D.C. Most recent CSO 15 minutes performance October 31, 2009, Orchestra Hall. Sir Andrew Davis conducting
9 the third of the Brandenburg ike most of Bach’s concertos, set, however, I do not know. LStravinsky’s has three move- What I can say is that Bach ments, in the inevitable arrange- would most certainly have been ment of two fast movements delighted to loan it to me; to surrounding a slower one. (The borrow in this way was exactly movements follow each other the sort of thing he liked to do. without pause, linked by quiet chordal cadences.) Echoes of the Bach’s spirit does hover over Brandenburgs are everywhere, from the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, the bustling figuration, spare sonor- although, despite the efforts of ities, and textbook counterpoint to Stravinsky’s detractors at the its concerto grosso–like textures, time, no real case can be made for shifting back and forth from one plagiarism or even affectionate group of musicians to another. But imitation. (René Leibowitz publicly there isn’t a measure of this score attacked Stravinsky’s “insolent bor- that Bach would recognize, and, rowing” from Bach.) The essence of Stravinsky’s boasting to the con- Stravinsky’s style in the 1930s (and trary, this has nothing to do with the mark of his genius throughout the neighborly borrowing that Bach his career) is the way he absorbed and his contemporaries enjoyed on the music that influenced him— a regular basis. Stravinsky has rein- from circus marches to Beethoven’s vented the baroque concerto from symphonies—and made it his own. the ground up, and the Dumbarton If the eighteenth century does seem Oaks Concerto is an object lesson in to come alive in the pages of the the distinction between superficial Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, it’s seen resemblance and deeper artistic ties. from the vantage point of some- Throughout his career, Stravinsky one who also knew about Amelia was music’s greatest chameleon Earhart, electric typewriters, color and a master of disguise. Perhaps photographs, Pablo Picasso, and that’s why, as the composer Alfredo the Golden Gate Bridge. And it’s Casella pointed out, the main Bach’s vocabulary interpreted by theme of this second movement someone who spoke the modern quotes Verdi’s Falstaff, who says language of Pierrot lunaire, La mer, that if he were to change his looks and, of course, The Rite of Spring. he would no longer be himself.
Concerto for Oboe d’amore in A Major, BWV 1055
great deal of Bach’s music just the tip of the iceberg. After Asurvives, but, incredibly, there’s Bach moved to Cöthen in 1717 much more that didn’t. Christoph and was no longer tied down with Wolff, today’s finest Bach biog- preparing music for weekly church rapher, speculates that over two services, he had the time to write hundred compositions from the many of what would become his Weimar years are lost, and that best-known works. During his six just 15 to 20 percent of Bach’s years in Cöthen, he composed the output from his subsequent time in six Brandenburg Concertos, the six Cöthen has survived. Two-fifths suites for solo cello, much of the of the cantatas he wrote in Leipzig keyboard music we still play (the have never been found. The familiar first book of The Well-Tempered Bach-Werke-Verzeichneis, a catalog Clavier, the two-part inventions and that attaches a BWV number to three-part sinfonias, the English and each of Bach’s compositions, lists French suites), miscellaneous sonatas 1,120 works nonetheless, and the and partitas, and more than a dozen tally continues to grow as new concertos. That is a lifetime’s output scores are uncovered. all by itself, though for a composer A very large portion of Bach’s whose complete catalog numbers in orchestral music is lost; the existing the four figures, it was probably just twenty-some solo concertos, six business as usual. Brandenburg Concertos, and four This concerto for oboe d’amore, orchestral suites no doubt represent the mezzo-soprano member of the
Composed First CSO Instrumentation date unknown performance solo oboe d’amore, strings, July 31, 1986, Ravinia harpsichord First performance Festival. Heinz date unknown Holliger, oboe; Edo de Approximate Waart conducting performance time These are the CSO’s 17 minutes first subscription con- Most recent cert performances performance August 28, 2000, Ravinia Festival (as Clavier Concerto).Vladimir Feltsman conducting from the keyboard
11 oboe family (and a particular favor- concerts, only the later reworking ite of Bach’s), has not survived in its has survived. By carefully studying original form, although it has been the autograph score of the harp- reconstructed with a fair degree sichord version, and by stripping of certainty from the arrangement Bach’s elaborate keyboard writing Bach later made for harpsichord down to its pure melodic core, and orchestra. In fact, with the both the range and characteristics exception of the Fifth Brandenburg, of the resulting solo line suggest all of Bach’s harpsichord concertos that Bach had the oboe d’amore are believed to be transcriptions of in mind. As usual, there are the scores conceived for other instru- three conventional movements—a ments. In some cases, we have magnificent aria in F-sharp minor both the original and the keyboard bracketed by two spirited A major arrangement—which helps us movements—and each is marked by understand how Bach got from one the ingenuity and imagination that to the other—but for the A major carry them far beyond convention, concerto performed at these in detail and in overall design.
Bach and Stravinsky
The last music that Igor his devotion to the straight- room shows a portrait of Stravinsky played at the laced German master. He did Bach hanging on the wall piano was the E-flat minor admit that Bach’s two-part behind him—and the earliest fugue from Bach’s The inventions were “somewhere sign of his affection for Well-Tempered Clavier. (His in the remote back” of his the music of the distant wife Vera left the score open mind when he composed past. “What incomparable to that page for months his Octet and Piano Sonata, instrumental writing is after his death.) During the that his fondness for Bach’s Bach’s,” Stravinsky said. last years of his life, Bach’s two-violin concerto probably “You can smell the resin in preludes and fugues were showed through in his own his violin parts, taste the Stravinsky’s daily diet at the Violin Concerto, and that the reeds in the oboes.” It is keyboard. In the spring of Dumbarton Oaks Concerto this spirit—a love for the 1969, the frail composer— was written in the spirit of counterpoint of vivid, brilliant weighing just eighty-seven the Brandenburgs. Only once, instrumental lines—that pounds in his eighty-seventh in his mid-fifties arrange- pervades the Dumbarton year—began to orchestrate ment of Bach’s Christmas Oaks Concerto and makes it four of them, but he never hymn, “Von Himmel Hoch,” a perfect companion and a found the strength to finish. did their names share logical successor to Bach’s Bach had long been equal billing on the cover of Brandenburg Concertos, Stravinsky’s constant com- a score. written some two hundred panion in many ways, even Stravinsky’s love for Bach years before. though the great Russian was a life-long affair—a firebrand kept quiet about photo of Igor in his childhood —P.H.
12 Johann Sebastian Bach
Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043
his concerto is the only surviv- negotiation and considerate give Ting one by Bach for two solo and take. In the middle movement, violins. The challenge of writing for the second violin appears to be the two identical solo instruments is leader, although the first violin something later composers rejected temporarily gains the upper hand in favor of a contrasting pair by coming in on a higher pitch. (Mozart’s well-known double con- There are three movements in the certo, the Sinfonie concertante, is traditional fast-slow-fast pattern. scored for violin and viola; Brahms The first and last are designed chose the violin and cello). Baroque according to the ritornello prin- composers, however, loved symme- ciple, whereby music for the full try, and Bach takes full advantage ensemble recurs throughout, setting of having twin solos by writing lines off the music for the soloists. The that crisscross, mirror, echo each central slow movement is a spacious other, and toss phrases back and aria for two. The soloists behave forth, like questions and answers. like two friends who, eager to tell One can hardly imagine two the same lovely story, keep inter- violinists fighting over these rupting each other, repeating one parts, for they are equally expres- another’s favorite lines, and urging sive, melodic, and demanding. the tale seamlessly forward. They What Bach writes for one violin speak together only at the end. he quickly offers the other, and the solo writing throughout the Phillip Huscher is the program annota- concerto becomes a model of subtle tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2012 Chicago
Composed Most recent CSO Instrumentation 1717–1723 performance two solo violins, strings, April 5, 2009, Orchestra harpsichord First performance Hall. Robert Chen, violin; date unknown Pinchas Zukerman as soloist Approximate and conducting performance time First CSO 16 minutes performance February 3, 1893, Auditorium Theatre. Johann Marquardt, Franz Esser, violins; Theodore Thomas conducting
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