Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti Conductor Xavier De Maistre Harp Chabrier España

Home , Emmanuel Chabrier, Nicanor Zabaleta

PROGRAM

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

Tuesday, September 29, 2015, at 7:30 Riccardo Muti Conductor Xavier de Maistre Harp Chabrier España Ginastera Harp Concerto, Op. 25 Allegro giusto Molto moderato Liberamente capriccioso—Vivace XAVIER DE MAISTRE

INTERMISSION

Charpentier Impressions of Italy Serenade At the Fountain On Muleback On the Summits Napoli Ravel Boléro

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. 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

Emmanuel Chabrier Born January 18, 1841, Ambert, France. Died September 13, 1894, Paris, France. España

España is the sole survivor several of his canvases, including his last major of a once-prestigious work, the celebrated Bar aux Folies-Bergère, career. The only work by which he hung over his piano. (At the time of his Emmanuel Chabrier that death in 1894, Chabrier owned a small museum’s is still performed with any worth of significant art, including seven oils by regularity, it began as a Manet, six by Monet, three by Renoir, and one simple souvenir of six by Cézanne.) months in Spain. Although Chabrier dabbled in composition Chabrier and his wife from childhood and became a pianist of impres- spent the latter half of sive virtuosity, at first he followed the family tra- 1882 traveling the country, stopping in Toledo, dition and pursued law as his profession. He con- Seville, Granada, Malaga, Valencia, and tinued to write music on the side while working Barcelona. Chabrier’s score is one of the high as a civil servant in the Ministry of the Interior points in the late-nineteenth century’s fascination in Paris, but, in a sense, Chabrier only came into with the Iberian peninsula that also inspired his own as a composer after hearing Tristan and Édouard Manet’s paintings of the 1860s, Lalo’s Isolde in Munich in 1880. He resigned from the Symphonie espagnole in 1873, and Bizet’s Carmen ministry later that year, became a confirmed—if the following year (joined in the next century by not obsessive—Wagnerian, and decided to Debussy’s Ibéria and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole). devote the rest of his life to composition. It was Chabrier’s close friendship with Manet—his España, however, a very non-Wagnerian musical neighbor from 1879 to 1883—may have first postcard, that made him an overnight sensation. given him the idea to compose a Spanish piece. Chabrier had once thought of being a painter hile touring Spain, Chabrier filled himself, and he closely followed the work of his notebooks with details about the the groundbreaking French artists during his rhythms of Spanish dance music lifetime, regularly noting how closely their ideas (heW concluded it was impossible to notate the paralleled his own. Chabrier posed for Manet actual rhythm of a malagueña); the cut of the on three occasions, the last time in 1881, only dancers’ black felt hats; “the admirable Sevillan months before the Chabriers set off for Spain. derrière, turning in every direction while the When Manet died in 1883, Chabrier bought rest of the body stays immobile.” Near the end

COMPOSED MOST RECENT INSTRUMENTATION 1883 CSO PERFORMANCES two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two July 13, 1991, Ravinia Festival. clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, FIRST PERFORMANCE Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducting two trumpets and two cornets, three November 4, 1883; Paris, France trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, February 23 & 24, 2012, Orchestra Hall. snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, two Alain Altinoglu conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES harps, strings January 25 & 26, 1895, June 20, 2012, Orchestra Hall. Edwin Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Outwater conducting (Donor APPROXIMATE Thomas conducting Appreciation concert) PERFORMANCE TIME 6 minutes July 9, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Hans Lange conducting CSO RECORDING 1961. Andre Kostelanetz conducting. Video Images (video) 2 of the Spanish tour, for piano duet—it was called Jota, after the lively Chabrier wrote Spanish dance—but soon realized he would need home to his friend, the full range of orchestral colors to do justice the Wagnerian to his vivid memories. España, as the piece was conductor Charles finally called, is not only full of memorable Lamoureux, that as folklike tunes, but it also benefits from Chabrier’s soon as he returned keen attention to the rhythmic patterns of to Paris he intended Spanish dance. As the composer predicted, to compose an España was a great success from the start—it was “extraordinary fanta- encored at the premiere and was praised by com- sia”—a reminiscence posers as different as Manuel de Falla (who knew of the music and a thing or two about authenticity in Spanish Charles Lamoureux dance that he had music) and Gustav Mahler (who conducted found so intoxicating España on several occasions). Even Chabrier, in Spain. It would, however, cannot have imagined the popularity its he promised, incite the audience to a fever pitch main theme would achieve seventy-three years of excitement. Chabrier began the piece as a work later as a Perry Como single on the Hit Parade.

Alberto Ginastera Born April 11, 1916, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Died June 25, 1983, Geneva, Switzerland. Harp Concerto, Op. 25

In his native Argentina, for study in the States. His diary entry for Alberto Ginastera was September 26 reads: recognized as a major composer from the first There is a young man here who is gener- public performance of his ally looked upon as the “white hope” of music. His ballet suite Argentine music. He is now twenty-five Panambí was an overnight and is certainly the first candidate for a trip sensation when it was to the States from any standpoint. Alberto played at the Teatro Ginastera would profit by contacts outside Colón in Buenos Aires in Argentina. He is looked upon with favor 1937; the complete ballet was successfully staged by all groups here, is presentable, modest three years later. (Ginastera eventually destroyed almost to the timid degree, and will, no all of his scores composed before Panambí, giving doubt, someday be an outstanding figure in the impression that he burst on the scene a fully Argentine music. formed talent.) In 1941, the U.S. government sent Aaron But Ginastera was slow to make his entry into Copland, a brand-name composer as American the musical life of the United States. In 1941, the as hot dogs and baseball, on a good-will, success of Panambí persuaded Lincoln Kirstein fact-finding tour of Latin America. Before to commission a ballet from Ginastera for the Copland left—his itinerary planned by the American Ballet Caravan, a company he was Committee for Inter-American Artistic and then managing for George Balanchine. But by Intellectual Relations (its title a marvel of the time Ginastera had completed Estancia, the high-handed bureaucratic prose)—he agreed troupe had disbanded and the premiere was off. to take careful notes so that he could give (Estancia wasn’t staged for another ten years, a full report and recommend composers even in Argentina; the complete original score

3 wasn’t played in the United States until 1991, Ginastera began sketching the new concerto although by then a suite of dances from the ballet in 1956, but by the time he had finished it in had become popular concert fare.) 1964, Phillips had retired. (Although she never In 1942, Ginastera was awarded a played Ginastera’s score—the 1965 premiere Guggenheim Foundation grant to visit the was given by the big-name international soloist United States, but the trip was postponed Nicanor Zabaleta—Phillips claimed it was the because of the war. Finally, in 1945, the com- best of the many works for harp that she and poser and his family came to this country as her husband had commissioned over the years.) temporary political refugees following Perón’s Ginastera wanted to write a concerto assumption of power. This was the first of that extolled virtuosity and challenged many visits. For sixteen months beginning in the performer, but he quickly realized December 1945, he lived and composed in the that the harp presented difficulties for a United States; he spent the summer of 1946 mid-twentieth-century composer: at Tanglewood, where he again met up with Copland. Ginastera continued to roam, but The special features of harp technique— after Perón was removed from power in 1955, so simple and at the same time so he returned to Argentina, where he became an complicated—the possibility of writing for indispensable part of the country’s cultural life. twelve sounds on only seven strings, the eminently diatonic nature of the instrument, nlike nearly every other composer drawn and many other problems make writing to the concerto form, Ginastera began for the harp a harder task than writing for by writing one for the harp. (He went piano, violin, or clarinet. Uon to write concertos for more familiar subjects: piano, violin, and In the end, he spent eight years (and com- cello.) The idea of a posed two other concertos, one for piano and harp concerto came another for violin) before he was satisfied from Edna Phillips, that the harp part was not only virtuosic, but the first harp of playable—not only colorful and imaginative, the Philadelphia but idiomatic. Orchestra, who, along with her inastera writes three movements. The husband Samuel R. first charts an unexpected course: it Rosenbaum, com- begins with fiery, percussive music, but missioned a work Ggradually becomes more conversational, lead- from Ginastera in ing to a soft, dreamy close. The harp interjects 1956. “I could hardly itself into the dancing rhythms of the opening dream that it was Edna Phillips and plays nearly nonstop. The harp writing is going to be the most brilliant and challenging throughout (although difficult work I have it’s very different from the avant-garde pyro- ever written,” the composer later confessed, “and technics of Berio’s Sequenza II, the landmark that it would take several years to see the light.” harp monologue composed at the same time).

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES APPROXIMATE 1956–1964 October 16 & 17, 2003, Orchestra PERFORMANCE TIME Hall. Sarah Bullen as soloist, Daniel 21 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Barenboim conducting February 18, 1965; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania INSTRUMENTATION solo harp, two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, percussion, celesta, strings

4 The movement recalls the “objective nation- and elusive as one of Bartók’s famous pieces of alism” of Ginastera’s earlier works, because of night music. its debt to Argentine folk song (it also relies The solo harp launches the final movement heavily on the contrast between 3/4 and 6/8 with a large, rhapsodic cadenza characterized time that characterizes much Latin American not just by display and special effects (glissandos music). But at the same time, it’s steeped in played with the fingernails, “whistling sounds”), the international language of modernism. but by the greatest imaginable contrast, from The slow movement begins as a dialog between single bell-like tones to powerful chords and low, somber strings and harp. Ginastera has great sweeps of sound. Once the orchestra enters, a remarkable ear for atmosphere and delicate the music settles into a wild, driving dance that sonorities. The heart of the music is as mysterious carries straight through to the very end.

Gustave Charpentier Born June 25, 1860, Dieuze, Moselle, France. Died February 18, 1956, Paris, France. Impressions of Italy Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective

“Perhaps on the whole, culture, discontinued the honor. The names of the most enchanting place most of the winners mean nothing to us today, in Rome,” the and Maurice Ravel is the most famous of those thirty-year-old Henry who attempted—five times, in his case—and James said after he visited failed to win the coveted award. Among the the Villa Medici in 1873. few nineteenth-century Prix de Rome winners High on the Pincian Hill, whose music is still performed are Berlioz overlooking a sea of (in 1830, the year his Symphonie fantastique red-tiled roofs and domes, made him famous); Gounod; Bizet; Debussy; the villa was built by and, in 1863, Massenet, who later became Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici in the 1570s to Charpentier’s teacher. house his collection of classical statuary. Today it Charpentier joined Massenet’s composition sits amid the only remaining Roman Renaissance class at the Paris Conservatory in 1884, the garden with its original ground plan, and so one year Massenet’s most enduring work, the opera can still follow the same garden paths as Manon, premiered at the Opéra-Comique. Velázquez, who painted there in 1630, or one of Charpentier had been encouraged to pursue a the winners of the Prix de Rome, including career in music by both his father and grandfa- Gustave Charpentier, who took up residence ther. He studied violin, first in Lille, and then, there in 1887. beginning in 1879, at the conservatory in Paris, The celebrated Prix de Rome was a scholarship where he eventually decided to become a com- established in 1663 that enabled young French poser. Didon, a cantata (or, as the score indicates, artists—initially painters and sculptors—to lyric scene) he wrote under Massenet’s care, won study at the French Academy in Rome for three him the Prix de Rome in 1887. Although he to five years. The academy, which was closed moved to Rome reluctantly—and, like Debussy during the French Revolution, has been housed before him, returned home to Paris often during in the Villa Medici ever since it reopened in his three-year residency, Charpentier’s Italian 1803. That year, for the first time, the academy sojourn turned out to be the most productive began awarding prizes to composers, and it period of his career. The core of his life’s work continued to do so nearly every year until 1968, was accomplished at the Villa Medici: these when André Malraux, the French minister of Impressions of Italy that Theodore Thomas and

5 the Chicago Symphony would introduce to America in 1893; a “symphonie-drame,” La vie du poète (a sui generis score in the mode of Lélio, the Berlioz work that Riccardo Muti led in Chicago in 2010); and the libretto and the first act of his most famous work, the opera Louise. Following the successful premiere of Louise at the Opéra-Comique in View of the Villa Medici and its garden in Rome, engraving by Giovanni 1900, Charpentier risked Battista Falda. becoming known as a one-work composer, like Chabrier. The opera’s tale of forbidden love and bohemian adventure, mpressions of Italy has shared a similar set to a score of sumptuous lyricism—the soprano fate to Louise. The piece that introduced aria “Depuis le jour” in particular—captured the Charpentier to music lovers nearly a decade imagination of an entire generation. Louise was Ibefore Louise, and the score that is considered performed one hundred times during its first sea- the composer’s most successful instrumental son and more than a thousand times by 1935. A work, it enjoyed great success with audiences up film version of the opera, produced with the com- to World War II. In 1909, music critic Georg P. poser’s supervision and starring Grace Moore, was Upton included it in his book of Standard released in 1938. Louise overshadowed everything Concert Repertory, which it was at that time. else Charpentier wrote, including, most painfully, After giving the U.S. premiere in 1893, the a sequel, Julien, which was an immediate flop Chicago Symphony played Impressions of Italy in 1913. In time, Louise, like many sweepingly often during its first fifty seasons, but it has not popular artworks from bygone eras, faded from performed the score since 1937. In an era that public view. The last staging at the Metropolitan prized pictorial realism, evocations of atmo- Opera was in 1949. No major American company sphere, and depictions of local color, Impressions has produced the work since the San Francisco of Italy was an audience favorite and a work of Opera’s revival in 1999, with Renée Fleming delightful, unassuming charms. Today, it is a singing the title role for the first time. “Depuis souvenir of the age before globalization, when le jour” remains a popular soprano showcase, but travel was still a rare romantic adventure and those five minutes are all that today’s public ever when each destination was distinctive and, in hears of Charpentier’s entire output. fact, unique. Impressions of Italy is an ode to

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1889–90 U.S. premiere three flutes and piccolo, three oboes November 24 & 25, 1893, and english horn, three clarinets FIRST PERFORMANCE Auditorium Theatre. Theodore and bass clarinet, soprano and October 31, 1891; Paris, France Thomas conducting alto saxophones, four bassoons, (finale only) four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, March 31, 1892; Paris, France MOST RECENT two harps, strings (complete) CSO PERFORMANCES November 3, 4 & December 14, 1937, Orchestra Hall. Frederick APPROXIMATE Stock conducting PERFORMANCE TIME 32 minutes 6 the spirit of place—and remembrance of the song and dance (the tarantella, in particular), once-grand tradition of musical travelogues. of both urban bustle and personal reflection, and of the sorrow and sweetness of life. ike Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien, Strauss’s harpentier was so filled with Italian Aus Italien, and Elgar’s In the South impressions that he wrote a second suite L(Alassio), Charpentier’s score is the work of a of orchestral sketches in 1894; the score visitor intoxicated by Italy. Charpentier leaves Capparently was destroyed by fire and never per- us with five “impressions,” each a picture of formed. In 1911, Charpentier composed one final indelible scenes from Italian life as viewed purely orchestral work, a symphonic poem titled by a fascinated bystander. The first is a sere- Munich. (He lived another forty-five years.) It was nade. It opens with an ardent unaccompanied intended to be the first in a series of “souvenirs song in the cellos that, joined by strings and de voyage,” continuing with Prague, Vienna, and harps evoking the sound of strumming guitars Monte Carlo, but Charpentier got no further than and mandolins, grows more passionate until it Munich, apparently not finding in those destina- dies away in the night air. The second is a lovely tions the same inspiration that struck him in Italy. scene by a fountain. A solo oboe sets the mood, tender and reflective. The next impression takes postscript. Charpentier came to the us into the mountainside: the steady procession U.S. for the first time in December on muleback is intercut with village tunes and of 1913, only weeks after Theodore pastoral calm. The fourth picture is wonderfully ThomasA gave the American premiere of the evocative of the great expanses viewed from Impressions of Italy in Chicago. Charpentier the mountaintops—with distant bells and bird told The New York Times that, if he could song—all encompassed by a grand, swelling find a suitable theme, he hoped to write an melody. Finally, in his most fully realized opera set in America. (He did not.) Shortly portrait, Charpentier takes us to Naples, a after his arrival in New York, he introduced a city that is still so simultaneously chaotic and new ballet staging of the Impressions of Italy, intoxicating that Elena Ferrante, the author set on a Neapolitan terrace. In his scenario, of today’s acclaimed Neapolitan novels, calls Daisy, a young American girl, is overcome it “the best and worst of Italy and the world.” by the charms of Italian life and falls in love Clearly, Charpentier was both overwhelmed with Pietro, a mandolin player. Juana, a and enraptured with what he found there. local girl, is already in love with Pietro, and “Naples is a city in which many worlds coex- when he rejects her for Daisy, Juana stabs ist,” Ferrante says, and Charpentier set out to Daisy in the middle of a grand Neapolitan capture as much as he could of its richness and party. As the dancing continues, Daisy dies complexity. This is music of abundance, full of while Pietro kisses her one last time.

7 Maurice Ravel Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France Boléro

One of the most famous I am particularly anxious that there should pieces ever written, Boléro be no misunderstanding as to my Boléro. It is began as an experiment in an experiment in a very special and limited orchestration, dynamics, direction, and it should not be suspected and pacing. Ravel was of aiming at achieving anything different quick to tire of his from, or anything more than, it actually exercise—he once said does achieve. Before the first performance, that, although people I issued a warning to the effect that what thought it his only I had written was a piece lasting seventeen masterpiece, “Alas, it minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral contains no music.” But he didn’t object to texture without music—of one long, very being famous. gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, Late in 1927, Ravel accepted a commission and there is practically no invention except from Ida Rubinstein and her ballet company in the plan and the manner of the execution. to orchestrate six piano pieces from Albéniz’s Ibéria as a sequel to his brilliant scoring of One can imagine Ravel’s dismay when he Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. But when realized that this was the music that would Ravel returned from his whirlwind concert tour carry his name around the world. Shortly before of America and encountered problems with the he died in 1937, he summoned the strength to exclusive rights to Ibéria, he dropped the project travel to Morocco, where, among the sounds of and instead chanced upon a tune with “a certain Moorish and Arabic street music, he was shocked insistent quality” that became Boléro. “I’m going to hear a young man whistling Boléro. But, while to try and repeat it a number of times without Boléro is by no means his most accomplished or any development, gradually increasing the sophisticated work, it is, like every single piece orchestra as best I can,” he remarked at the time, in the Ravel canon, impeccably detailed and and that’s precisely what he did. polished music. (In forty years, Ravel only wrote Boléro was an immediate success as a ballet, but about sixty works, nearly all of which belong in its real heyday started after Rubinstein’s exclusive the standard repertoire—an almost unparalleled rights ran out and the first concert performances achievement.) The first tune, stated by the flute, began. Ravel was embarrassed by its popularity: is as familiar as any melody in music, yet how

COMPOSED MOST RECENT drums, cymbals, tam-tam, celesta, July–October 1928 CSO PERFORMANCES harp, strings September 14, 15 & 16, 2007, Orchestra FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. Riccardo Muti conducting APPROXIMATE November 22, 1928; Paris, France PERFORMANCE TIME August 7, 2013, Ravinia Festival. Carlos (as a ballet) 17 minutes Miguel Prieto conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES CSO RECORDINGS INSTRUMENTATION March 21, 22 & 25, 1930, Orchestra 1966. Jean Martinon conducting. RCA two flutes and two piccolos, two Hall. Frederick Stock conducting oboes, oboe d’amore and english 1976. Sir Georg Solti conducting. July 24, 1938, Ravinia Festival. Eugene horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet London Goossens conducting and bass clarinet, two bassoons 1991. Daniel Barenboim conducting. and contrabassoon, soprano and Erato tenor saxophones, four horns, three trumpet and piccolo trumpet, three trombones, tuba, timpani, two snare 8 many of us could accurately sing it from memory, instruments not just to effect a gradual crescendo, precisely following its unpredictable, sinuous but to create an astonishing range of orchestral curves and recalling the ever-fresh sequence colors. Just before the end, Ravel’s patience sud- of long and short notes. Certainly the second denly wears out, and he makes a sudden swerve tune, a free and supple melody introduced from a steady diet of C major into E major, by the high bassoon, has an elusive, almost upsetting the entire structure and toppling his improvisatory quality. cards with the sweep of a hand. Ravel proceeds with his exercise, stating the first tune twice, then the second one twice, and Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the so on back and forth, each time adding new Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.

Composers in Chicago

Maurice Ravel’s only appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra were on January 20 and 21, 1928, at Orchestra Hall. He conducted a program of his works, including Sheherazade (with mezzo-soprano Lisa Roma), Daphnis and Chloe Suite no. 2, Le tombeau de Couperin, La valse, and his orchestration of Debussy’s Sarabande and Dance. According to the review in the Chicago Tribune, “the audience cheered M. Ravel again and again, and at the end of the program the Orchestra, incited thereto by the audience and by the music it had been playing, gave him a prolonged and enthusiastic fanfare.”