Semyon Bychkov Conductor Bernarda Fink Mezzo-Soprano Women of The

Home , Anima (chorus), Chicago Symphony Chorus

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, November 1, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, November 2, 2012, at 1:30 Saturday, November 3, 2012, at 8:00 Semyon Bychkov Conductor Bernarda Fink Mezzo-soprano Women of the Chicago Symphony Chorus Duain Wolfe Chorus Director Anima—Young Singers of Greater Chicago Emily Ellsworth Artistic Director Mahler Symphony No. 3 in D Minor Part 1 Introduction. With force and decision Part 2 Tempo di menuetto. Very moderately Comodo. Scherzando. Unhurriedly Very slow. Misterioso— Joyous in tempo and jaunty in expression Slow. Calm. Deeply felt BERNARDA FINK WOMEN OF THE CHICAGO SYMPHON Y CHORUS ANIMA—YOUNG SINGERS OF GREATER CHICAGO

There will be no intermission.

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

Gustav Mahler Born July 7, 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia. Died May 18, 1911, Vienna, Austria.

Symphony No. 3 in D Minor

ahler spent the summer of 1893 tiresome chores of administration Min Steinbach on the Attersee during the season in the city. e near Salzburg. at year he became next summer, Mahler had a tiny hut a “summer composer,” establishing built, precisely to his speciﬁcations, the pattern that would suit him on the edge of a giant meadow and the rest of his life—working on his right on the shore of the lake, where music during the long summer days he could compose undisturbed. in the countryside, then returning to (Years later, the man who built the the hectic life of a conductor and the cabin remembered that Mahler said

COMPOSED Symphony Chorus, Chicago Chicago Symphony Orchestra 1895–96, revised 1899 Children’s Choir; Bernard in the Twentieth Century: Haitink conducting Collector’s Choice. FIRST PERFORMANCES November 9, Berlin. CSO RECORDINGS INSTRUMENTATION Movement 2 only. The 1975. Marilyn Horne, Women female vocal soloist, composer conducting of the Chicago Symphony women’s chorus, children’s Chorus, Glen Ellyn Children’s chorus, four ﬂutes and four March 9, 1897, Berlin. Chorus; James Levine piccolos, four oboes and Movements 2, 3, 6. The conducting. RCA english horn, four clarinets, composer conducting bass clarinet and two E-ﬂat 1982–83. Helga Demesch, June 9, 1902, Krefeld. clarinets, four bassoons and Women of the Chicago Complete. The com- contrabassoon, eight horns, Symphony Chorus, Glen poser conducting four trumpets and posthorn, Ellyn Children’s Chorus; four trombones, tuba and Sir Georg Solti conducting. FIRST CSO contrabass tuba, timpani, London PERFORMANCE glockenspiel, snare drum, March 23, 1967, Orchestra 2006. Michelle DeYoung, triangle, tambourine, bass Hall. Regina Resnik, Women of the Chicago drum with cymbal attached, Women of the Chicago Symphony Chorus, Chicago suspended cymbals, Symphony Chorus, Chicago Children’s Choir; Bernard tam-tam, birch brush, two Children’s Choir; Jean Haitink conducting. harps, strings Martinon conducting CSO Resound APPROXIMATE A 1967 performance with MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCE TIME Regina Resnik, Women PERFORMANCE 92 minutes of the Chicago Symphony October 21, 2006, Orchestra Chorus, Chicago Children’s Hall. Michelle DeYoung, Choir, and Jean Martinon Women of the Chicago conducting was released on

2 he composed more easily when he discarded; titles were proposed, could hear the water.) He furnished changed, and dropped. e music it with a piano, a writing desk, a itself is wrapped up in the history bookcase, and a wood-burning stove; from the windows he could see only the lake and the moun- tains beyond. e hut is still there, but now located incongruously in the middle of a trailer park. Vacationers swim and play, suspicious of the occa- sional tourist intent on visiting the cabin where Mahler wrote his ird Symphony, the one inspired by the forces of nature he found in Steinbach, far from the noise of the city and the hubbub of society. ough Mahler enjoyed irony—it colors much of his music—he surely would not appreciate the shouts of children and the aromas of the modern barbecue penetrating the room that became an almost sacred place for him during the summers Mahler’s composing hut at Steinbach am Attersee of 1895 and 1896. He went there every day to write this symphony, beginning around 6:30 in the of Mahler’s other works—of earlier morning. Breakfast was brought songs and later symphonies, and to him on a tray. He was not to be of the ways all these compositions disturbed unless the door to the hut influenced and shaped one another. was open. A scarecrow was put up e genesis of Mahler’s ird in the meadow to discourage loud Symphony is so curious it sounds birds. Villagers were told to stay haphazard in the retelling: the first away; nearby peasants bribed not movement was added after the to sharpen their scythes. He would other movements were finished and break late each afternoon for lunch, the original finale was removed and a nap, reading, and a walk. For two set aside, only to turn up later as the summers, this music was his life. last movement of Mahler’s Fourth e history of this symphony is Symphony. e resulting work, disorderly; like most of Mahler’s with six movements divided into early symphonies it took time and two large parts, is no more idiosyn- thought to reach its final, satisfy- cratic than the way it evolved. ing form. Movements were rear- Perhaps it is simplest to begin ranged; the narrative “program” where Mahler began. e first was refined, debated, and ultimately music he sketched in the hut on

3 the Attersee, in June 1895, is the In the summer of 1895, Mahler’s charming minuet that is now the work evolved into a seven-movement symphony’s second movement. It symphony, with a large-scale was, as Mahler recognized, “the introductory movement before the most carefree thing that I have ever flower minuet and the song “Das written—as carefree as only flowers himmlische Leben” (Heavenly life), are. It all sways and waves in the composed in 1892, as the finale. air . . . like flowers bending on their Here is the schematic program for stems in the wind.” But, as Mahler the symphony as Mahler envisioned later realized, when this one move- it in August 1895, at the end of the ment was performed on its own—it first summer’s work: was the first music from the symphony ever played in public—it gave Symphony No. III people the wrong impression. “It ‘THE JOYFUL SCIENCE’ always strikes me as odd that most [Die fröhliche Wissenschaft] people, when they speak of ‘nature’, A Summer Morning’s Dream think only of flowers, little birds, I Summer marches in. and woodsy smells. No one knows II What the flowers in the the god Dionysus, the great Pan.” meadow tell me. Nature was Mahler’s chosen III What the beasts of the subject, one that he absorbed daily forest tell me. in his mountain retreat, staring out IV What the night tells me. the window as storms swept across (Alto solo.) the lake, or walking in the forest V What the morning bells after a long day’s work. He later tell me. (Women’s chorus wrote to the soprano Anna von with alto solo.) Mildenburg: “Just imagine a work VI What love tells me. of such magnitude that it actually Motto: ‘Father, behold mirrors the whole world—one is, these wounds of mine! so to speak, only an instrument, Let no creature played on by the universe. . . . My be unredeemed!’ symphony will be something the (from Des Knaben like of which the world has never Wunderhorn) yet heard! . . . In it the whole of VII Heavenly life nature finds a voice.” In fact, when [Das himmlische Leben]. Bruno Walter went to visit Mahler (Soprano solo, humorous.) in Steinbach the next summer and stopped to admire the mountain e symphony’s title, taken from view, Mahler said, “No need to Nietzsche’s book of the same name, look. I have composed all this was added at the end of the sum- already.” Mahler played through the mer. e sequence of the central score at the piano. “His whole being movements, over which Mahler had seemed to breathe a mysterious previously fussed, now expressed affinity with the forces of nature,” “the successive orders of being,” as Walter wrote. “I saw him as Pan.” Mahler put it: flowers, animals,

4 man, and angels. Of the movement brooding summer midday heat; addressed to love, Mahler wrote, not a breath stirs, all life is sus- “I could almost call this movement pended, and the sun-drenched ‘What God tells me’!” air trembles and vibrates. At e following summer, Mahler intervals there come the moans wrote the unexpectedly vast and of the youth—that is, captive complex opening movement which life—struggling for release depicts summer marching in and from the clutches of lifeless, sweeping winter away. It is a kind rigid Nature. At last he breaks of summation of all the other through and triumphs. movements that Mahler neverthe- less placed first, not last. By now, Ultimately, as with his First however, a child’s vision of heavenly and Second symphonies, Mahler life was the wrong finale, even decided audiences did not need though it had served as the musical to know any of the things that destination all along, with traces of inspired this music, and he chose to its melodies and sounds imbedded delete the titles altogether. When throughout the symphony. e great the complete symphony was per- and spacious slow movement (What formed for the first time in 1902, love tells me) would stand at the end it was simply listed as Symphony instead, unconventional as a finale, no. 3, and the movements were perhaps, but music destined to be labeled only with generic tempo followed by nothing but silence. markings. Listeners could make of At the beginning of the sum- it what they wished. When Arnold mer of 1896, when Mahler was Schoenberg attended the Vienna unfolding the giant canvas of his premiere in 1904, he wrote to first movement, he wrote to Natalie Mahler: “I think I have experienced Bauer-Lechner: your symphony. I felt the struggle for illusions; I felt the pain of one It has almost ceased to be disillusioned; I saw the forces of music; it is hardly anything evil and good contending; I saw a but sounds of nature. I could man in a torment of emotion exert- equally well have called the ing himself to gain inner harmony. movement “What the moun- I sensed a human being, a drama, tain tells me”—it’s eerie, the truth, the most ruthless truth!” way life gradually breaks We do not know how Mahler through, out of soul-less, rigid responded. We only know that matter. And, as this life rises for Schoenberg, the struggle from stage to stage, it takes on within man was an issue worthy ever more highly developed of such music, just as for Mahler, forms: flowers, beasts, man, up the subject was nature in its most to the sphere of the spirits, the complete form. “angels.” Over the introduction to this movement, there Afew details, and some essen- lies again that atmosphere of tial information. e first

5 movement is approximately one- she lives in the green copse third of the entire symphony; it is and when the cuckoo’s time one of the largest single movements is up in all music, and one of the most she’ll start singing! original and daring in the variety of music it includes. e opening ere are two trios, the first a theme, for eight horns, might well vision of birds and beasts at play; be a child’s song. It is followed the second a still summer day, by a panoramic view of a great disturbed only by the distant, long- landscape. Summer marches in, drawn-out call of the posthorn. from afar. e movement ends with a great e next four movements are eruption of sound, as if Pan has relatively brief character pieces— arrived to transcend the world of with flowers, animals, people, and birds and animals. angels as their generating images. e fourth movement introduces e second movement, the flower the sound of the human voice. minuet, includes music that pre- is is a setting of the “Midnight views “Heavenly Life,” even though Song” from Nietzsche’s Also sprach that now belongs to the next Zarathustra. It is as still and power- symphony. e third movement, ful as anything in music. e fifth a kind of scherzo, is an orchestral movement, just four minutes long, version of the setting of “Ablösung follows without pause, shifting im Sommer” (Relief in summer), a from the hush of midnight to the song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn brightness of angels and morning (e youth’s magic horn). Here is bells. e text is drawn from Des the text of the song, unsung, but Knaben Wunderhorn. e voices are felt throughout the music: those of women’s chorus, children, and the soloist; the violins are Cuckoo has collided with a silent throughout. Again there are green willow tree, glimpses of “Heavenly Life.” is cuckoo is dead—he lies dead! brief and rowdy episode, full of Who should pass away the laughing children and angels, clears time for us all summer long? the air for Mahler’s great hymn Ah! Mrs. Nightingale will to love. do that— e final movement does not she sits on the green branch, need description. It is marked that small and graceful “Slow. Calm. Deeply felt.” It tells nightingale, us, in unforgettable ways, how deep that lovely and sweet Mahler’s understanding was, though nightingale. he was only thirty-six years old, and She hops and sings, how vast was his vision, even from she’s cheerful all the time, the window of his tiny hut. when other birds are silent. We’re waiting for Phillip Huscher is the program annota- Mrs. Nightingale, tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

6 SYMPHONY NO. 3

O Mensch! Gib Acht! O Man, give heed! Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? What does deep midnight say? Ich schlief! I slept! Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht! From a deep dream have I waked! Die Welt ist tief! e world is deep, Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht! And deeper than the day had thought! Tief ist ihr Weh! Deep is its pain! Lust tiefer noch als Herzeleid! Joy deeper still than heartbreak! Weh spricht: Vergeh! Pain speaks: Vanish! Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit! But all joy seeks eternity, Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit! Seeks deep, deep eternity.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Es sungen drei Engel einen ree angels were singing a sweet song: süssen Gesang, Mit Freuden es selig im Himmel klang; With joy it resounded blissfully in heaven. Sie jauchzten fröhlich auch dabei, At the same time they happily shouted with joy Dass Petrus sei von Sünden frei. at Peter was absolved from sin.

Denn als der Herr Jesus zu Tische sass, For as Lord Jesus sat at table, Mit seinen zwölf Jüngern das Eating supper with his twelve apostles, Abendmal ass, So sprach der Herr Jesus: “Was stehst So spoke Lord Jesus: “Why are you du denn hier? standing here? Wenn ich dich anseh’, so weinest When I look at you, you weep.” du mir.”

“Und sollt ich nicht weinen, du “And should I not weep, you gütiger Gott!” kind God!” “Du sollst ja nicht weinen!” “No, you mustn’t weep.” “Ich hab übertreten die Zehen Gebot; “I have trespassed against the Ten Commandments. Ich gehe und weine ja bitterlich.” I go and weep bitterly.” “Du sollst ja nicht weinen!” “No, you mustn’t weep.”

7 “Ach komm und erbarme dich “Ah, come and have mercy on me!” über mich!” “Hast du denn übertreten die “If you have trespassed against the Zehen Gebot, Ten Commandments, So fall auf die Knie und bete zu Gott, en fall on your knees and pray to God, Liebe nur Gott in alle Zeit, Love only God forever, So wirst du erlangen die And you will attain heavenly joy.” himmlische Freud.”

Die himmlische Freud ist eine Heavenly joy is a blessed city, selige Stadt, Die himmlische Freud, die kein End Heavenly joy, that has no end. mehr hat; Die himmlische Freud war Petro bereit Heavenly joy was prepared for Peter Durch Jesum und allen zur Seligkeit. By Jesus and for the salvation of all.