Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO
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PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, May 5, 2016, at 8:00 Saturday, May 7, 2016, at 8:00 Tuesday, May 10, 2016, at 7:30 Donald Runnicles Conductor Britten Sinfonia da requiem, Op. 20 Lacrymosa— Dies irae— Requiem aeternam Strauss Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24 INTERMISSION Elgar Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma), Op. 36 Theme (Andante) 1. C.A.E. (Andante) 2. H.D.S.-P. (Allegro) 3. R.B.T. (Allegretto) 4. W.M.B. (Allegro di molto) 5. R.P.A. (Moderato) 6. Ysobel (Andantino) 7. Troyte (Presto) 8. W.N. (Allegretto) 9. Nimrod (Adagio) 10. Intermezzo (Dorabella). (Allegretto) 11. G.R.S. (Allegro di molto) 12. B.G.N. (Andante) 13. *** Romanza (Moderato) 14. Finale. E.D.U. (Allegro) CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. 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 91.5 FM, 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 Phillip Huscher Benjamin Britten Born November 22, 1913, Lowestoft, Sussex, England. Died December 4, 1976, Aldeburgh, England. Sinfonia da requiem, Op. 20 Benjamin Britten and his Th at winter, Britten toured the Midwest; friend Peter Pears left he came back from Chicago in February with England for North a “vile cold & fl u” that he couldn’t shake. He America in May 1939. was further troubled by homesickness, “war or After spending several no war,” and by the growing European confl ict days in Canada, they viewed from afar. Around this time, Britten crossed into this country was asked by the British Council to compose a in June, stopping fi rst in new work to celebrate “the reigning dynasty of Grand Rapids, Michigan, a foreign power.” He agreed to this enigmatic then moving on to New commission as long as “no form of musical York City and the Catskills, where they visited jingoism” was required. By the time the details Aaron Copland. Th ere Britten composed some had been worked out and Britten learned that music “inspired by such sunshine as I’ve never the score would honor the 2,600th anniversary seen before.” He wrote home to his sister Beth: “I of the Japanese Imperial dynasty, there was little am certain that N. America is the place of the time left to compose the music. On April 26, future . & though certainly one is worried by a 1940, he wrote to his sister, “I now fi nd myself lack of culture, there is terrifi c energy & vitality with the proposition of writing a symphony in in the place.” about three weeks!” Britten described the score Copland later recalled that Britten was deeply as “a short symphony—or symphonic poem,” and worried about the prospect of war at that time, he told a reporter for the New York Sun that he and he couldn’t decide whether to return to would dedicate it to the memory of his parents England or not. After Britten left for New York (his father died in 1934, his mother in 1937) as City, Copland wrote to him: “I think you abso- an expression of his own antiwar conviction. lutely owe it to England to stay here . After all anyone can shoot a gun—but how many can he Sinfonia da requiem was composed write music like you?” Britain declared war on in “a terrible hurry” and was completed September 3, and Britten settled in New York, in early June. Britten wrote a draft for struggling with antiwar sentiments that would pianoT duet so that he and Pears could try it out. eventually explode into courageous, controver- In November, however, the Japanese government sial, and unequivocal pacifi sm. reviewed the score, with its three movement COMPOSED INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE 1940 three fl utes, piccolo and alto fl ute, PERFORMANCE TIME two oboes and english horn, three 18 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE clarinets, E-fl at clarinet and bass March 30, 1941, New York City clarinet, two bassoons and contra- CSO RECORDING bassoon, alto saxophone, six horns, 1983. Rafael Kubelík conducting. CSO FIRST CSO PERFORMANCE three trumpets, three trombones and (From the Archives, vol. 16: A Tribute to February 8, 1949, Orchestra Hall. Fritz tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, Rafael Kubelík II) Busch conducting two harps, xylophone, snare drum, tambourine, whip, piano, strings MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES May 31 & June 3, 2014, Orchestra Hall. Jaap van Zweden conducting 2 titles derived from of the composition or its antiwar theme. He Christian liturgy, described the first movement as “a slow marching and rejected it lament.” The title Lacrymosa comes from the outright as “purely closing section of the Dies irae, the medieval a religious music of sequence describing the Day of Judgment: Christian nature” that didn’t “express Full of tears and full of dread felicitations” for that Is that day that wakes the dead, country’s anniver- Calling all, with solemn blast, sary. The government To be judged for all their past. had already paid Britten his fee, but The movement begins with fierce timpani at the Tokyo con- blows; a solemn funeral march builds, in a long cert the only music arch, against a steady drumbeat. A wavering performed was by Britten with Aaron Copland saxophone rises above the dark, inexorable music. Richard Strauss and (center) and Peter Pears, in Britten described the Dies irae, the second Jacques Ibert, the upstate New York in 1939 movement, as a kind of “Dance of Death, with two other composers occasional moments of quiet marching rhythm.” who submitted works for that occasion. It symbolizes the full outbreak of war, in music of undisguised anger and grim intensity. The he premiere of the Sinfonia da scene dissolves, leaving only a fragile melodic requiem was given by the New York thread of hope in the harp and bass clarinet. The Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall on third movement, Requiem aeternam (Eternal March 30, 1941. Britten provided a program rest), builds slowly toward consolation and a T note that made no mention of the circumstances peace that, in 1940, was far from certain. Richard Strauss Born June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany. Died September 8, 1949, Garmisch, Germany. Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24 Shortly before he died at summing up his life’s work, he wove it into the the age of eighty-five, closing pages of his Eichendorff setting, now Richard Strauss told his known as the last of the Four Last Songs. daughter-in-law that he It’s the Marschallin, in Strauss’s Der wasn’t afraid of death: it Rosenkavalier, who says, “To be afraid of time was just as he had is useless, for God, mindful of all his children, composed it in Death and in his own wisdom created it.” But like the Transfiguration. Only a Marschallin, Strauss always heard the ticking of few months before, the clock, and he couldn’t help thinking about Strauss had read Joseph death. He claimed that from an early age he Eichendorff’s poem “Im Abendrot” (At sunset). had wanted to compose music that followed the When he came to the lines “How tired we are of dying hours of a man who had reached toward wandering—could this perhaps be death?,” he the “highest ideal goals,” and who, in dying, sees took his pencil and jotted down the magnificent his life passing before him. theme from Death and Transfiguration that he In 1888, without a gray hair on his head and had written nearly sixty years earlier. And then, with another sixty years of life and music ahead 3 of him, Strauss wrote knowingly of a man’s last art, but which he has been unable to perfect, days on earth. It’s a young man’s view of death because it was not for any human being to and a romantic vision of old age, scarcely touched perfect it. by the chilling truths of infirmity and hopeless- ness, but it apparently still satisfied Strauss at the The hour of death approaches, and the soul end of his own life. The first edition of the score, leaves the body, in order to find perfected in as well as the earliest printed programs, included the most glorious form in the eternal cosmos a poem by Alexander Ritter (a fervent Wagnerian that which he could not fulfill here on earth. who had married Wagner’s niece Julie) that was written after Strauss had finished the music and born opera composer, Strauss begins with was offered as a literary guide to the piece. At the a deathbed scene, dark and uncertain, time, Strauss thought Ritter’s scenario indispens- and filled only with the sounds of the able to an understanding of the score, but the sickA man’s faltering heartbeat. A sudden, convul- best guide is really the one the composer himself sive passage, depicting the struggle with death, wrote in a letter to a friend in 1894: ultimately gives way to the work’s central theme, an impressive six-note motif characterized by an It was about six years ago when the idea octave leap, which represents the artist’s ideals. occurred to me to represent the death of The flood of memories begins pointedly with his a person who had striven for the highest storybook-like infancy.