• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Program One HunDreD TwenTy-FirST 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, October 20, 2011, at 8:00 Friday, October 21, 2011, at 1:30 Saturday, October 22, 2011, at 8:00 Bernard Haitink conductor Frank Peter Zimmermann violin Klara Ek soprano Berg Violin Concerto Andante—Allegretto Allegro—Adagio FrAnk PeTer ZimmermAnn IntErmIssIon mahler Symphony no. 4 in G major Deliberately, without rushing in easy motion, without haste Serene (Poco adagio) Very leisurely klArA ek Performed to commemorate the centenary of Mahler’s death in 1911 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 alban Berg Born February 9, 1885, Vienna, Austria. Died December 24, 1935, Vienna, Austria. Violin Concerto ll works of music balance, played, the Lyric Suite by Alban Ain vastly different ways, the Berg, contained a hidden program public and private concerns of the revealing Berg’s clandestine love composer. It’s often irrelevant— for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, the though tempting—to contemplate wife of a Prague industrialist, how a composer’s private life may and that the notes on the page have shaped a piece of music. were often governed by the lovers’ Occasionally composers leave clues, personal “numbers”; or references some in broad daylight. Schumann’s to Hanna’s children; or to lines of works are full of references to his poetry they held in special, though wife Clara and others, their names secret, affection. or initials plainly woven into the We have since learned that Berg’s music. Elgar depicted his friends in Violin Concerto presents an even the Enigma Variations, though the more complicated kaleidoscope of central enigma itself still remains public events and private lives. The a puzzle. cast of characters is a distinguished In 1977, musicians were surprised one. We begin with Alma Mahler. to learn that a piece they had often After her husband’s death—and ComPosEd most rECEnt aPProxImatE 1935 Cso PErFormanCE PErFormanCE tImE January 19, 2010, Orchestra 22 minutes FIrst PErFormanCE Hall. kyoko Takezawa, violin; April 19, 1936, barcelona, David robertson conducting Cso rECordIngs Spain. louis krasner, 1983. kyung-wha Chung, violin; Hermann InstrumEntatIon violin; Sir Georg Solti Scherchen conducting solo violin, two flutes and conducting. london two piccolos, two oboes and 1992. Anne-Sophie FIrst Cso english horn, three clarinets mutter, violin; James PErFormanCE and bass clarinet, alto levine conducting. February 9, 1939, Orchestra saxophone, two bassoons Deutsche Grammophon Hall. louis krasner, violin; and contrabassoon, four Frederick Stock conducting horns, two trumpets, two trombones and tuba, tim- pani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tam-tam, gong, triangle, harp, strings 2 following a brief affair with my kind of music,” Berg replied. Oskar Kokoshka—she married But Krasner introduced the names the architect Walter Gropius. On of Mozart and Beethoven into the August 22, 1916, Berg wrote to his conversation instead and argued: wife Helene that he had spent the evening in the Gropius home. He The attacking criticism of played his piano sonata for Alma twelve-tone music everywhere and, after a supper of cold chicken, is that this music is only some of his songs; he left at eleven, cerebral and without feeling fearing he had stayed too late, for or emotion. Think of what Alma was pregnant. Six weeks later it would mean for the whole a daughter, Manon, was born. Two Schoenberg movement if a new years later, Alma divorced Gropius, Alban Berg Violin Concerto and in 1929, she married the novel- should succeed in demolish- ist Franz Werfel, who was Hanna ing the antagonism of the Fuchs-Robettin’s brother. “cerebral, no emotion” cliché In April 1934, Manon Gropius and argument. contracted polio. Alma was devastated, for Mutzi, as she called Several days later Berg agreed, her, was “a fairy-tale being; nobody “both dubiously and happily,” could see her without loving her. knowing how much was still to be She was the most beautiful human done on his opera Lulu. Krasner being in every sense. She combined returned to the United States. He all our good qualities. I have never heard from friends in Vienna of known such a divine capacity for Berg’s presence at a number of violin love, such creative power to express recitals. On March 28, Berg wrote and to live it.” (The young writer to Krasner that he would leave for Elias Canetti, just beginning his the Waldhaus, his place on the career in Vienna, said that Manon Worthersee, in May, and he would “radiated timidity still more write the concerto there over the than beauty, an angelic gazelle summer. Brahms, he mentioned, from heaven.”) had composed his violin concerto In January 1935, a young just across the lake, at Portschach. American violinist named Louis On April 22, Manon Gropius Krasner unwittingly entered the died of polio. When Berg heard scene. He had been blown away the news, he called Alma and by a performance of Wozzeck in asked if he could dedicate his new New York and later by Berg’s violin concerto to Manon—“to the Piano Sonata in Vienna. He now memory of an angel,” as he later put approached Berg with a request for it, recalling Canetti’s snapshot char- a violin concerto. Berg was uninter- acterization. It’s very likely that Berg ested at first. He assumed Krasner had sketched nothing before this; he wanted a virtuosic showpiece—like now wrote at lightning speed. something by Wieniawski or Krasner was summoned to the Vieuxtemps. “You know, that is not Waldhaus in early June, and he 3 and Berg played through part 1 The tone row is the essential together. As Berg began work building block for a twelve-tone on part 2, which was to contain piece. A row with such obvious an elaborate cadenza, he casually tonal references—one that sug- suggested that Krasner stay on and gests major and minor chords in fill up his days improvising around its lineup of notes—is capable the house. “I played and played, for of producing music that is both hours it seemed,” Krasner recalled, tonal and atonal. It also enabled “. everything that chance brought Berg to borrow from earlier to my bow, fingers, and mind.” works—pieces written in the tonal When Krasner returned to the language—and incorporate these United States, Berg had all the passages smoothly into the fabric of material he needed: the skeletal the concerto. score was finished on July 15 and We don’t know when he decided the orchestration by August 12. to place a Carinthian folk song Helene Berg’s claim that the and a Bach chorale in the Violin concerto was composed in six Concerto. Early in the summer, weeks (remarkable for a man who he asked Willi Reich to track managed to write only a handful of down collections of Bach’s chorale large pieces in his entire career) isn’t settings, although Berg apparently far off the mark. Berg told Krasner, had already set his sights on “Es “I have never worked harder in my ist genug” and simply wanted to life, and, what’s more, the work see Bach’s harmonization. It’s the gave me increasing pleasure.” ideal choice: the melody begins On August 28, Berg wrote to with the last four notes of Berg’s Schoenberg describing the divi- tone row—notes that rise by whole sion of the concerto into two parts, steps, giving Berg a natural bridge each subdivided: into Bach’s chorale—and the text made such a fitting memorial I a) Andante (Prelude) to Manon (“. I’m going to my b) Allegretto (Scherzo) heavenly home, / I’ll surely journey II a) Allegro (Cadenza) there in peace, / My great distress b) Adagio (Chorale Variations) will stay below”)—that he wrote the words under the notes on the Berg also wrote out the unusual page. He kept quiet about the folk tone row that governs the piece—a song, and we have recently begun sequence of the twelve notes of the to suspect why. chromatic scale arranged so as to Here is Willi Reich’s introduc- outline two major and two minor tion, prepared under Berg’s supervi- triads in its first nine notes: sion, for the publication of the con- certo as a birthday tribute to Alma (August 31): 4 Insofar as a transcription into the bass while the solo violin words is possible at all, the intones a “plaint” that gradu- “tone”—a favorite expression ally struggles towards the light. of Berg’s—of the whole work The dirge grows continually may be described as follows: in strength; the soloist, with a delicate andante melodies visible gesture, takes over the emerge from the rising and leadership of the whole body falling movement of the of violins and violas; gradually introduction. These crystallize they all join in with his melody into a grazioso middle section and rise to a mighty climax and then dissolve back into before separating back into the waves of the opening. The their own parts. An indescrib- allegretto scherzo rises from ably melancholy reprise of the the same background; this [Carinthian] folk tune “as if in part captures the vision of the the distance (but much slower lovely girl in a graceful dance than the first time)” reminds us which alternates between a once more of the lovely image delicate and dreamy character of the girl; then the chorale, and the rustic character of with bitter harmonies, ends a [Carinthian] folk tune.

Load more

  11

Copy Link