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Home , Chout, Der Schwanendreher, Kammermusik (Hindemith), Nobilissima Visione, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Paul Hindemith

PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Zell Music Director Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, October 1, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, October 2, 2015, at 8:00 Saturday, October 3, 2015, at 8:00

Riccardo Muti Conductor Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b Mozart Piano No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466 Allegro Romanza Rondo: Allegro assai LEIF OVE ANDSNES

INTERMISSION

Hindemith Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass, Op. 50 Part 1: Moderately fast and with power—Very broad but always flowing Part 2: Lively—Slow—Lively Prokofiev , Op. 20 The Adoration of Veles and Ala The Enemy God and the of the Black Spirits Night Lolly’s Glorious Departure and the Ceremonial Procession of the Sun

This performance is generously sponsored by the Randy L. and Melvin R. Fund for the Canon. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. 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

Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria. Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b

Of the four overtures no. 2), it does not avoid the dilemma of telling us Beethoven wrote for his everything about the , in music of unfor- opera Leonore—later gettable substance and power, before the curtain renamed Fidelio—only goes up. Beethoven ultimately understood the the one called Leonore situation well and wrote his fourth and final no. 3 has gained favor overture to Fidelio—less powerful music, but both in the concert hall, better stagecraft. (Leonore no. 1 was written in where it is much loved, 1807 for a production in Prague that never took and in the opera house, place; the score was discovered after Beethoven’s where it is often played, death, mistaken for his earliest effort, and inappropriately, just before the finale. That it is assigned the number one.) an intruder in the opera house, where it can too easily overshadow all but the greatest perfor- n the concert hall, where it has ultimately mances of Fidelio, is something Beethoven retired, the Leonore Overture no. 3 is a himself easily could have told us. miracle of dramatic music, as compelling The Leonore Overture no. 3 is as dramatic as Ias any symphonic poem in the literature. The any music Beethoven wrote, and that is part of overture tells, or at least distills, the essence of the problem. Placed before the curtain rises, it the story. Beethoven begins in the darkness of overshadows much of what follows. Playing it the prison cell where Florestan has been unjustly just before the final scene—a convention never sent. Florestan remembers brighter days, and sanctioned by Beethoven, but one loved by many the music, ignited by his hope, is filled with conductors, including Mahler and Toscanini—is fire and action. The distant call of the problematic because it first delays and then gives tower guard, announcing Florestan’s reprieve, away the ending. brings silence and then guarded optimism, but Despite its number, Leonore no. 3 is the trumpet sounds again, and freedom seems Beethoven’s second version of the overture. certain. At the news, the cannot contain its Although it is more concise and less symphonic rapture. Beethoven then treats us to a full-scale, than his first effort (the work we call Leonore symphonic, utterly heroic recapitulation.

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1804–1806 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME August 5, 2007, Ravinia Festival. James 13 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Conlon November 20, 1805, Vienna (the CSO RECORDINGS January 10, 11, 12 & 15, 2013, Orchestra opera Leonore) 1961. Georg Szell conducting. VAI Hall. Edo de Waart conducting (video) March 29, 1806, Vienna (Leonore September 18, 2015, Pritzker Overture no. 3) 1972. Sir conducting. Pavilion, Millennium Park. Riccardo Muti conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES 1988. Sir Georg Solti conducting. January 29 & 30, 1892, INSTRUMENTATION London Auditorium Theatre. Theodore two , two , two , Thomas conducting two , four horns, two July 23, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Isaac , three , , Van Grove conducting strings, offstage trumpet

2 Wolfgang Mozart Born January 27, 1756, , Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466

This is the Mozart piano performance on March 31, 1795, no doubt impro- concerto that Beethoven vising that night the famous cadenza that he later admired above all others. wrote down. (Mozart’s own cadenzas haven’t sur- It’s the only one he played vived, although they are mentioned in one of his in public (and the only father’s letters; at these performances, Leif Ove one for which he wrote Andsnes plays Beethoven’s cadenza in the first cadenzas). Throughout movement and Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s in the nineteenth century, it the finale.) It’s the only time Beethoven is known was the sole concerto by to have played one of Mozart’s in public, Mozart that was regularly although he was certainly well acquainted with performed—its demonic power and dark beauty others and particularly liked the one in C minor. spoke to musicians who had been raised on Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. When it was t’s easy to understand what attracted fashionable to dismiss Mozart as an outdated Beethoven—as well as later nineteenth- with fussy manners and empty charm, century musicians—to this concerto. It this score brought people to their senses. It’s Ibelongs to a handful of works by Mozart that surely one of the most celebrated pieces ever suggested he was the earliest great romantic com- written—“almost as much myth as work of art,” poser. This is his first concerto in a minor key— as Charles Rosen put it. in itself an unusual, forward-looking choice. Like Mozart and Beethoven met for the first time in the terrifying chords that open 1787, two years after this concerto was premiered (and return when is dragged down to in Vienna. Beethoven wanted to study with hell), or the Lacrimosa from the (the Mozart—he may even have had a few lessons with last music Mozart wrote), the concerto estab- him at the time. But it wasn’t until 1792, the year lished D minor as the darkest of keys and seemed after Mozart’s death, that Beethoven settled in at first almost to exhaust its tragic potential. Vienna, and so he ended up studying with Haydn The opening, with its syncopated, throbbing instead, finding little comfort—or truth—in D minor chords, is not about theme or harmony Count Waldstein’s famous prophecy that he would so much as gesture and tension. Like much truly “receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” As a dramatic music, it’s ominously quiet. The piano, favor to Mozart’s widow Constanze, and as tribute surprisingly, doesn’t repeat this music when it to the composer he most admired, Beethoven enters, but begins with its own highly individual played Mozart’s D minor concerto between phrases—in fact, the soloist traverses the entire the acts of at a memorial movement without once playing these signature

COMPOSED July 6, 1961, Ravinia Festival. INSTRUMENTATION February 10, 1785, entered in catalog John Browning as soloist, Josef solo piano, one flute, two oboes, two Krips conducting bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, FIRST PERFORMANCE timpani, strings February 11, 1785; Vienna, Austria. The MOST RECENT composer as soloist CSO PERFORMANCES CADENZA July 8, 2007, Ravinia Festival. First movment: FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Jonathan Biss as soloist, James Third movement: Johann January 14 & 15, 1916, Orchestra Conlon conducting Nepomuk Hummel Hall. Ossip Gabrilowitsch as soloist, May 30, 31, June 1 & 4, 2013, Orchestra conducting Hall. as soloist, Jaap van APPROXIMATE Zweden conducting PERFORMANCE TIME 30 minutes 3 chords. In the same way, the piano’s opening “so strikingly and openly related.” Mozart’s care lines—as pure and unadorned as recitative—are and wisdom are evident everywhere. Once again, not imitated by the orchestra. The relationship it’s the between soloist and orchestra had never before unaccom- been so tense or complex. (When Haydn turned panied pages at a performance some time after Mozart’s piano that death, Leopold Mozart boasted that this allowed launches him to appreciate “the artful composition and the argu- interweaving, as well as the difficulty of the ment, this concerto.”) Their uneasy interplay—sometimes time with accommodating, occasionally unyielding—is unusual what carries this music into the realm of high urgency. drama. This is the first concerto with which This isn’t Mozart so openly reveals not only the form’s a conven- symphonic qualities, but its affinity with the tionally world of opera as well. cheerful The piano alone begins the second movement, rondo, but a serene romance that brings relief without com- a highly pletely banishing the tragic mood. In particular, charged, an explosive G minor interlude—“the noisy forceful part with the fast triplets,” as Leopold called conclusion Mozart’s Walter clavier, which now it—recalls the unrest that came before—and will to a tragic stands in the Geburtshaus, Salzburg. soon return. work. (In The instrument, built by the Viennese When Leopold Mozart arrived in Vienna on its dark- maker Anton Walter in 1780, was purchased by Mozart in 1784. February 10, 1785, the day before the premiere ness and of his son’s new D minor concerto, he noted that power, it there was no time to rehearse the finale, since the anticipates the minor-key finale of Beethoven’s parts were still being copied. (“Your brother did Third Piano Concerto.) Finally, just as the not even have time to play through the Rondo,” chilling D minor of Don Giovanni ends in the he wrote home to Nannerl, “as he had to super- brilliance of D major, so too this drama, in a vise the copying.”) The music shows no sign of radiant coda that is the equivalent of the tidy haste, however. Charles Rosen even argues that happy ending the eighteenth-century opera this is the first concerto with outer movements stage demanded.

4 in Chicago

Paul Hindemith appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra several times between 1938 and 1963, both as soloist and guest conductor. He first appeared as soloist in his and as conductor in his Symphonic Dances in 1938. At the Ravinia Festival, he led two concerts that included his Pittsburgh Symphony and , along with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with Gary Graffman, Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture, Schubert’s Great Symphony, and Schumann’s Fourth Symphony. Hindemith’s final appearances in March and April 1963 (at and the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee) included his Concert Music for Strings and Brass, in E, and ; he also led works by Beethoven, Brahms, Reger, Schumann, and Wagner, as well as Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony.

Program biography from ’s final appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in April 1963

5 Paul Hindemith Born November 16, 1895, Hanau, Germany. Died December 28, 1963, , Germany. Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass, Op. 50

On YouTube, you can see back to 1930, the year he composed the Concert Paul Hindemith conduct- Music for String Orchestra and Brass. That year, ing the Chicago Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the Chicago arts Symphony Orchestra in a patron, commissioned the composer to write portion of his Concert a small-scale piece for a contemporary music Music for String festival she was producing. Hindemith sent her a Orchestra and Brass. The score also titled Concert Music, this one written video is taken from a live for piano, two harps, and brass. It was first per- television broadcast in formed by members of the Chicago Symphony, Orchestra Hall on conducted by Hugo Kortshak, a former vio- April 7, 1963, Hindemith’s final appearance with linist in the Orchestra, on October 13, 1930. the Orchestra. He died less than nine months Konzertmusik was a designation Hindemith gave later, lionized in obituaries as one of music’s to several of his works during this time, reflecting greatest modern masters. From the Chicago his taste for plain, utilitarian titles. (They are the video, you can see that as a conductor, counterpart to the seven pieces of Hindemith was all business, unsmiling, slightly from the same period, each for a different com- forbidding. His technique is square, clunky, and bination of instruments, that he simply labeled seemingly uninspired until he suddenly lurches .) The Concert Music for String forward with surprising physical impact, as if he Orchestra and Brass that immediately followed were possessed by the music. He does not convey the Chicago score—the two were published con- what audiences know as charisma. But the overall secutively as op. 49 and op. 50—was completed impact is that of a conductor who knows the in Berlin that December. It is the largest of his orchestra inside out, and who knows precisely various concert music pieces, and, coincidentally, what he wants from it—and how to get it. As the last score he would give an . Thomas Willis wrote in the Chicago Tribune, reviewing Hindemith’s appearance with the indemith’s score was commissioned Chicago orchestra at the Ravinia Festival two by , the music years earlier, “From the first note of the concert director of the Boston Symphony to the last, it was apparent that here was a man HOrchestra. Hindemith was one of several com- the orchestra respected, understood, and was posers invited to honor the Orchestra’s fiftieth willing to play to the limit for.” anniversary, including Prokofiev; Copland; Hindemith had first come to the Respighi; and Stravinsky, who produced his in 1937, but his connection with Chicago dates landmark for the occasion.

COMPOSED MOST RECENT INSTRUMENTATION 1930 CSO PERFORMANCES four horns, four trumpets, three July 15, 1965, Ravinia Festival. Seiji trombones, , strings FIRST PERFORMANCE Ozawa conducting April 3, 1931; Boston, Massachusetts APPROXIMATE March 26, 27 & 28, 1998, Orchestra PERFORMANCE TIME Hall. Daniele Gatti conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES 17 minutes January 13, 1959, Orchestra Hall. Hans CSO PERFORMANCES, Rosbaud conducting CSO RECORDING THE COMPOSER CONDUCTING 1963. The composer conducting. VAI July 25, 1961, Ravinia Festival. The March 28, 29 & April 7, 1963, (video) composer conducting Orchestra Hall April 1, 1963, Pabst Theater, Milwaukee 6 Hindemith, just thirty-four, was probably not prominently in the exhibition of Entartete Musik an obvious choice. He was still young and had () in 1938, he had little choice a reputation as something of an enfant terrible. but to leave his native Germany for good. He But Koussevitzky had known Hindemith both had already set his sights on the U.S. On his first as an unusually gifted composer and a virtuoso trip to this country in 1937, he appeared as viola violist for several years (he had hired him as soloist in his Der Schwanendreher with members soloist in his own Kammermusik no. 5 for Viola of the Chicago Symphony at the Chicago Arts and Chamber Orchestra in in 1928). Club. When he returned to this country the next It was Hindemith’s idea to score the concert year, he made his American conducting debut music for brass and strings only (the are with the CSO, leading the Kammermusik no. 1 not divided into firsts and seconds, but play and the Symphonic Dances. In 1939, he returned together)—a wonderfully bracing instrumenta- to Chicago to attend a concert of his music tion choice, especially coming from a composer given by University of Chicago students, but he who could play nearly every instrument in the didn’t appear with the Orchestra. During his orchestra at least passably and knew how to visit, however, he met with CSO music director write for each one with uncommon expertise. Frederick Stock, who asked him to write a piece There are two movements—the first moving for the Orchestra’s fiftieth anniversary, then dramatically from a moderate tempo into slower, two seasons away. “The specifics still need to be broadly flowing music; the second in the familiar discussed,” Hindemith wrote home to his wife fast-slow-fast pattern. Throughout the piece, Gertrude in March. Hindemith began a piece Hindemith writes distinctive, idiomatic music for the Chicago Symphony’s anniversary—a for the two instrumental groups. The opening kind of free fantasy, as he called it, on an old pits energetically racing strings against somber Virginian ballad about poor Lazarus and the brass chords, but then the tables are turned and rich man—but then abandoned it midway the dialogue between forces grows more complex. when he realized he had been so busy work- Sometimes the two operate in opposition; at other ing on other scores that he couldn’t finish it times, they toss ideas back and forth. The second in time. Hindemith’s score for Poor Lazarus movement begins and ends with a bristling, was later published in its incomplete state. rapid-fire fugato; yet the slow middle paragraphs are richly expressive, inventive, and unexpect- everal footnotes. The video of Hindemith’s edly poetic (at one point, Hindemith specifies televised Chicago Symphony concert, “very tender”). After the successful premiere which includes Brahms’s Academic under Koussevitzky in Boston in April of 1931, SFestival Overture and the first movement of Hindemith himself often picked the Concert Bruckner’s Symphony no. 7—he conducted Music for the concerts he conducted around the complete symphony that week in concert, the world, regularly pairing it with Bruckner’s but the final three movements were omitted Seventh Symphony, as he did in Chicago in 1963. from the broadcast in order to keep the telecast to an hour—is available from VAI Music. he 1930s were a difficult—and ultimately I am indebted to Michael Henoch, the decisive—time for Hindemith. After Chicago Symphony’s assistant principal the Nazis came to power in Germany since 1972, for his research into Hindemith’s inT 1933, he was branded as a degenerate com- early connection to Chicago. poser, largely because Hitler had walked out of Starting this season, the Chicago Symphony Hindemith’s opera Neues von Tage (News of the Orchestra principal viola chair will be named day), scandalized by the sight of a soprano sing- after Paul Hindemith, who was one of the great ing from her bathtub. Hindemith’s subsequent violists of his time. In June 2015, the donors opera, , a powerful and pointed who endowed the chair in perpetuity during the statement on the value of the arts and the role 2012–13 season decided that it will be known of the artist in society, was officially attacked as “The Paul Hindemith Principal Viola Chair, and later banned. After Hindemith figured endowed by an anonymous benefactor.”

7 Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine. Died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia. Scythian Suite, Op. 20 Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective

Prokofiev and Sergei several meetings and further posturing back and Diaghilev met for the first forth, they agreed that Prokofiev would write time on June 3, 1914, in a ballet on a prehistoric Russian theme, and London. Diaghilev was Diaghilev picked the poet Sergei Gorodetsky one of the most powerful to prepare the scenario. Before he returned to figures in the arts—his Russia, Prokofiev attended seven celebrated and scandalous premieres, and he left London in July prepared to staging of Stravinsky’s add a new ballet, his first, to their company. Rite of Spring with the After many months, Gorodetsky finally pro- Ballets Russes in Paris the duced a story called Ala and Lolly, and Prokofiev previous spring had made him a real celebrity. began to write music at once. (Prokofiev told the Prokofiev, only twenty-three, had just graduated composer Nicolai Miaskovsky that it involved from the Conservatory—the “the ninth century, idols, bulls in the sky, and trip to London was a present from his mother— so on,” although in fact it is set in the Scythian and, although he was clearly on the threshold of Empire, which flourished around 400 b.c.) In the fame in Russia, he was out of his element in this spring of 1915, Prokofiev went to to play heady world of international high culture and through the score for Diaghilev, who dismissed avant-garde fashion. the scenario as a “Petersburg trifle appropriate Diaghilev, always on the lookout for another for the Mariinsky Theater ten years ago, but Stravinsky—or at least another sensation— inappropriate for us,” and found the music unsat- agreed to have lunch with Prokofiev and after- isfactory. Although Prokofiev told his mother wards to listen to some of his works. Diaghilev that “the ballet needs major changes, to which I found Prokofiev naive, brash, and insolent, but he have agreed,” Diaghilev privately saw no hope. liked his music. He was particularly taken with “Prokofiev says he is not looking for Russian the powerful and noisy Second Piano Concerto, effects—it’s just music in general,” he wrote and proposed staging it with choreography by to Stravinsky. “It certainly is music in general, Nijinsky. Prokofiev said he preferred to write an and very bad music at that. . . . We must now opera on Dostoevsky’s short novel ; start absolutely everything all over again from Diaghilev said he hated opera. Finally, after scratch,” Diaghilev said, and asked Stravinsky to

COMPOSED MOST RECENT , triangle, tam-tam, 1914–15, ballet CSO PERFORMANCES , , , July 19, 1991, Ravinia Festival. , , piano, two 1915, orchestral suite conducting harps, strings FIRST PERFORMANCE May 17, 18, 19 & 22, 2007, Orchestra APPROXIMATE January 16, 1916; Saint Petersburg, Hall. Alan Gilbert conducting PERFORMANCE TIME Russia. The composer conducting 20 minutes INSTRUMENTATION FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES three flutes, piccolo and , CSO RECORDINGS U.S. premiere three oboes and english horn, 1945. Désiré Defauw conducting. RCA December 6 & 7, 1918, Orchestra Hall. three clarinets, E-flat and The composer conducting , three bassoons and 1977. conducting. , eight horns, three July 11, 1950, Ravinia Festival. Antal trumpets, piccolo trumpet and alto Doráti conducting 2007. Alan Gilbert conducting. trumpet, three tenor trombones, bass CSO Resound , tuba, timpani, , 8 Composers in Chicago

Sergei Prokofiev appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra numerous times between 1918 and 1937, both as piano soloist and guest conductor. He was soloist in the U.S. premiere of his First Piano Concerto in 1918 as well as the world premiere of his Third Piano Concerto in 1921, and he also appeared in his Second and Fifth concertos. As conductor, Prokofiev led the Orchestra in the U.S. premieres of his Scythian Suite (1918), Divertimento (1930), and the first suite from the ballet Romeo and Juliet (1937). He also conducted his First Symphony (Classical) and suites from his ballets Le pas d’acier and and his opera The Gambler.

Prokofiev on Avenue, 1933

Program biography for Sergei Prokofiev’s final appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in January 1937

9 work with Prokofiev. (“He must change totally,” With its strong rhythmic profile, abundant Diaghilev concluded. “Otherwise we will lose and aggressive dissonance, extravagant orches- him forever.”) In the meantime, to bolster tration, and primitive Russian theme, Prokofiev’s Prokofiev’s spirits, Diaghilev arranged for him to score has give a recital of his piano works in Rome (where, regularly for the first time in his career, he was criticized been com- for not being modern enough). pared to That winter, Stravinsky did spend time with Stravinsky’s Prokofiev in Italy, and when Prokofiev returned The Rite to Russia he boasted that they had become “very of Spring, good friends—both in our shared composing composed a sympathies and just because,” a judgment that year earlier. was as naive as it was premature. Diaghilev had Diaghilev not given up on Prokofiev, but he had given may, in fact, up on Ala and Lolly, and he now proposed that have feared Prokofiev begin a new ballet, based on folk tales, that Ala and advised him to write real Russian music this and Lolly time (“You’ve all forgotten how to compose in could not Russian in that rotting Petersburg of yours”). stand the comparison rokofiev threw himself into the com- when he position of The Buffoon, with which he rejected Leon Bakst’s portrait of Diaghilev with was destined to mark his debut with Prokofiev’s his housekeeper (1906) PDiaghilev’s company, but he was reluctant work, to waste the Ala and Lolly music and he now although recycled its best passages into a four-part he later insisted that “the only resemblance Scythian Suite for orchestra. The premiere, in between Prokofiev and Stravinsky is that both Saint Petersburg in January 1916, was greeted are Russian, and both are living in the same with hostility, both from the orchestra—the century.” It is not clear when Prokofiev first timpanist broke his instrument pounding out heard Stravinsky’s seminal work. (Ironically, he Prokofiev’s insistent rhythms—and from the was in Paris in 1913, but missed the notorious audience. Glazunov, a popular and conservative premiere by a few weeks.) Later, in his autobi- composer, pointedly walked out eight measures ography, he claimed that he knew The Rite of before the end. Although Miaskovsky said it Spring by the time he wrote Ala and Lolly, and was one of Prokofiev’s best compositions, later admitted that he was perhaps “searching for the that same year Rachmaninov threw a fit when same images in my own way.” Stravinsky himself he learned that his publisher planned to issue only commented, with characteristic modesty, this “barbaric, impudently innovative, and that Prokofiev “adored and cacophonous music.” (The publisher relented.) was for many years quite unable to recover from Koussevitzky planned to conduct the Scythian the effect of it.” For all their surface similarities, Suite in Moscow the following December, these two scores are fundamentally different. but when many of the players were unexpect- Prokofiev’s rhythms, in particular, are regular edly called for military duty, he substituted a and largely unsyncopated—as opposed to the less demanding work by another composer. jagged contours of The Rite—and his Nevertheless, the next day’s paper included a are more traditional, even tuneful. Prokofiev’s scathing review of the Scythian Suite, written music moves and develops in conventional by Leonid Sabaneev, a local critic who hated ways, in contrast to the shifting, kaleidoscopic Prokofiev’s music on principle and had not building blocks of Stravinsky’s Rite. Prokofiev’s bothered to attend the concert. Prokofiev wrote style is very much his own, and the best of his an open letter to the editor, exposing Sabaneev, music, like the Scythian Suite, has a strong and who was forced to resign. unforgettable presence, almost from the opening

10 notes—what Stravinsky admiringly called “the Orchestra concert was the most startling and, instant imprint of personality.” in a sense, important musical event that has happened in this town for a long time,” wrote he four sections of the Scythian Suite Henriette Weber in the Herald and Examiner. follow the sequence of the ballet. The “Personally he is middle-sized and blond, some- Scythians were a nomadic people what gangling about the arms and shoulders, and whoT lived along the north shore of the Black entirely business-like in demeanor,” reported the Sea. The sun, named Veles, was their supreme Journal. “His business is his music, while he is on god; Ala was his daughter; and Lolly was the stage, and he would seem to resent even the one of their great heroes. Prokofiev’s ballet time that it takes to bow.” depicts the great harm inflicted on Ala by an The music itself caused quite a stir. “Russian evil god, and her eventual rescue by Lolly. Genius Displays Weird Harmonies” was the headline in the American. “The music was of such Chicago postscript. In 1917, savagery, so brutally barbaric” Henriette Weber Chicago businessman Cyrus Hall wrote, “that it seemed almost grotesque to see McCormick, Jr., the son of the farm civilized men, in modern dress with modern machineA magnate, met Prokofiev while on a busi- instruments performing it. By the same token it ness trip to Russia. McCormick was interested was big, sincere, true.” The public loved it. “Every in the composer’s new music, and he agreed to man and woman there reacted to it,” Weber con- pay for the printing of the unpublished Scythian tinued, “and Prokofieff was given a thundering Suite; he also encouraged Prokofiev to come to ovation that at least in a slight degree expressed the United States. Prokofiev (or Prokofieff, as the the tumultuous emotions he inspired.” U.S. press spelled his name at the time) appeared with the Chicago Symphony the following year, playing his First Piano Concerto under Frederick Stock, and conducting the Orchestra himself in the American premiere of his Scythian Suite. “The appearance here of the young Russian, Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the Serge Prokofieff at the Chicago Symphony Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.

© 2015 Chicago Symphony Orchestra 11