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Home , Ein Heldenleben

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ONe HuNDreD TweNTy-FirST SeASON Chicago Symphony 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 17, 2011, at 8:00 Saturday, November 19, 2011, at 8:00 Semyon Bychkov conductor Katia Labèque piano marielle Labèque piano Poulenc Concerto in D Minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra Allegro ma non troppo Larghetto Finale: Allegro molto KATiA LAbèque MArieLLe LAbèque

IntermISSIon Strauss Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40

Saturday’s concert is sponsored by Tiffany & Co. 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

Francis Poulenc Born January 7, 1899, Paris, France. Died January 30, 1963, Paris, France.

Concerto in D minor for two Pianos and orchestra

innaretta Singer, armed with Poulenc was no stranger to Wmoney from her father’s Parisian high society. He was sewing machine fortune, commis- born into a wealthy family and sioned Francis Poulenc to write grew up in the city center, near this concerto. Better known by her the Élysée Palace. His father ran fancy married name, the princess the huge Rhône-Poulenc phar- Edmond de Polignac hosted one maceutical firm (his family name of Paris’s most celebrated salons, was as well known as Winnaretta where many of the early twentieth Singer’s in business circles), and century’s artistic giants regularly his mother came from a long line gathered. In time, she commis- of native Parisians. He started sioned works from Stravinsky, studying the piano with his Fauré, Ravel, Falla, Debussy (he mother at the age of five, and called her Madame Machine later took lessons from Ricardo à courdre [Madame Sewing Viñes, the great pianist and friend Machine]), and two concertos from of Debussy and Ravel. He soon Poulenc. (The Chicago Symphony began to meet the artistic celebri- performed Poulenc’s other Polignac ties of the day, including Satie, score—the Concerto for Organ, Cocteau, and Stravinsky. He Strings, and —in 2002.) missed the scandalous premiere of

ComPoSeD FIrSt CSo InStrumentatIon 1932 PerFormanCe two solo pianos, flute and March 19, 1942, Orchestra piccolo, two and FIrSt PerFormanCe Hall. ethel bartlett, rae english horn, two clarinets, September 5, 1932, Venice, robertson, pianists; Hans two , two horns, two italy. Francis Poulenc, Lange conducting , two Jacques Février, pianists; and , side drum, military Désiré Defauw conducting moSt reCent drum, , bass CSo PerFormanCe drum, castanets, tambou- October 30, 2001, Orchestra rine, triangle, strings Hall. Guy Livingston, william eddins, pianists; william aPProxImate eddins conducting PerFormanCe tIme 19 minutes

2 The Rite of Spring in 1913 (he was brilliance and bite just fourteen at the time), but he with an orches- caught up with it the following year tra of classical and was intoxicated by Stravinsky’s proportions. (This music. In 1917, he attended the characteristic historic opening of Satie’s Parade, Poulenc trait must with sets and costumes by Picasso. have pleased the It was at the premiere of Falla’s princess. She later Master Peter’s Puppet Show in recalled that she the princess de Polignac’s home “had the impres- that Poulenc met the pioneering sion that, after harpsichordist Wanda Landowska in 1923. The dazzling Concert and Richard champêtre he wrote for Landowska Strauss, the days four years later may have convinced of big the princess to commission Poulenc were over, and to write another concerto, this one that it would Winnaretta Singer for two pianos. be delightful to To prepare for the princess’s return to a small assignment, Poulenc played orchestra of well-chosen players through concertos by Mozart and instruments.”) and Liszt and acquainted himself The first movement, written in with Ravel’s two recently com- a casual approximation of sonata pleted piano concertos (both the form, is mostly witty bravura, Concerto for the Left Hand and colored throughout by the sound the Concerto in G major were of two pianos pouring out a steady premiered in January 1932, just stream of notes. The ethereal, months before Poulenc began com- shimmering music near the end posing the two-piano concerto). of the movement was inspired by He and his friend Jacques Février, the exotic sounds of the Balinese with whom he would premiere his gamelan ensemble Poulenc heard own new concerto in September, at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in even gave an informal performance Paris. The slow movement begins of Ravel’s Concerto in G major at in obvious imitation of a Mozart the home of the princess’s niece andante, but quickly updates itself by marriage, Marie-Blanche to the Paris of the 1930s, with its de Polignac. dance-hall songs and sentimentality of a kind that Mozart never knew. oulenc’s two-piano concerto is The finale, another perpetuum Pa delightful confection, written mobile for the two soloists, is with apparent ease and obvious saucy, playful, lighthearted, and joy over the summer of 1932. It’s always charming. a work of sparkling transparency, Despite his early enthusiasm for filled with crystalline piano writ- the radical, rebellious composers ing, and scored with a keen ear for of Paris, Poulenc was essentially a

3 traditionalist, although one with The concerto was premiered wit and a healthy streak of irrever- in Venice, where the princess ence. “I am not the kind of musi- maintained a magnificent house cian who makes harmonic innova- on the Grand Canal, its great tions, like Igor, Ravel, or Debussy,” halls filled with pianos. Like her he later said, insisting that “there Parisian salon, it regularly drew is a place for new music that is celebrities and artists and, in content with using other people’s September 1932, Poulenc shared chords.” Even a strict modernist the Palazzo Polignac with Falla such as the young Elliott Carter, and Artur Rubinstein. The first writing in Modern Music in 1938, performance of the two-piano found the concerto convincing concerto was an unforgettable despite what he called its pastiche success, but Poulenc would always of styles, “because of its great verve, remember the morning, when, on which with Poulenc’s remarkable the spur of the moment, he and sensitivity to harmonic and orches- Rubinstein decided to play Nights in tral sonorities, ends by captivating the Gardens of Spain together for a the most stubborn listener.” stunned and ecstatic Falla.

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4 Born June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany. Died September 8, 1949, Garmisch, Germany.

Ein Heldenleben, op. 40

n 1898, after lending music of The mention of Napoleon was no Ilasting brilliance to heroes taken coincidence, for Ein Heldenleben from the pages of Shakespeare, was Strauss’s response to the Eroica, Nietzsche, and Cervantes, and to Beethoven’s Napoleon-inspired two great legendary characters— symphony—“admittedly without and Till Eulenspiegel— a funeral march, but yet in E-flat, Richard Strauss could think of no with lots of horns, which are always other subject more suitable than a yardstick of heroism.” himself. At the top of his last Those who knew Strauss thought great tone poem he wrote “Ein him an unlikely hero. There was Heldenleben” (a hero’s life, or a nothing about him—apart from his heroic life), leaving little doubt own dazzling music—to compare of the title character’s identity. with the bold and fearless character As Strauss told , who throws open the first page “I do not see why I should not of this score and then holds our compose a symphony about myself; attention for one enormous para- I find myself quite as interest- graph of music—the 116 measures ing as Napoleon or Alexander.” of nonstop orchestral exhibitionism

ComPoSeD moSt reCent aPProxImate 1897–December 1898 CSo PerFormanCe PerFormanCe tIme December 6, 2008, 46 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. bernard March 3, 1899, Frankfurt, Haitink conducting CSo reCorDIngS Germany. The com- 1954. poser conducting InStrumentatIon conducting. rCA three flutes and piccolo, four 1990. FIrSt CSo oboes and english horn, conducting. erato PerFormanCe two clarinets, e-flat clarinet March 9, 1900, and , three 2008. Auditorium Theatre (u.S. bassoons and contrabas- conducting. CSO resound premiere). Theodore soon, eight horns, two Thomas conducting piccolo trumpets and three trumpets, three trombones and two , timpani, tam- tam, triangle, , snare drum, tenor drum, , two harps, strings (including a prominent violin solo)

5 that Strauss labels The Hero. The husband painted himself in a warm, moment of silence that follows is flattering light, while “her” violin broken by the squabbling of the solo is marked, at various points: woodwinds, introducing The Hero’s “flippant,” “angry,” and “nagging.” Adversaries. This is Strauss’s depic- But no one who knew Pauline ever tion of his critics, and it is rendered took issue with Richard’s appraisal, with such hatred (Strauss requests though many wondered why she “snarling” oboes and “hissing” put up with such treatment. (Years cymbals) that we would think he later, when she was portrayed in had never received a good review in an even less complimentary way in his life. (In fact, aside from his first the opera , she told the opera , Strauss probably soprano Lotte Lehmann, who sang had read more glowing reviews of her role, “I don’t give a damn.”) his music than any major composer Nevertheless, theirs was a great love of the day.) match, and sumptuous love music Next we meet Strauss’s wife, soon overpowers her voice and Pauline Strauss de Ahna, an encompasses the entire orchestra. accomplished soprano who sings The hero’s adversaries again raise here with the voice of a solo violin. their sharp voices, and he prepares Richard had met to attack. The Battle Scene is noisy in the summer of 1887, when his and thrillingly chaotic for a very uncle suggested he give lessons to long stretch, and for many years, the neighbors’ daughter, a young this was one of the most notoriously woman with a generous voice and difficult passages in all music; the a boisterous temperament. She technical advances of the ensuing needed coaching and discipline; decades have scarcely softened she found romance instead. Pauline its impact. Gradually the hero is was a complex woman—wildly strengthened by thoughts of love impetuous and often fractious and and he rises above his adversaries. stubborn—but Richard quickly A broad ascent to victory is marked realized he couldn’t live without by the return of the opening theme, her. She gave him advice and now at full cry, and the Eroica encouragement, and she was the horns Strauss promised. (The way only critic who mattered to him. they dart around the big tune is “She is the spice that keeps me particularly bold.) At the climax, going,” the composer later told the horns let loose with the great, their children. As Strauss admitted, vaulting signature tune from Don Pauline was a “very complicated” Juan, prompting the appearance of subject to portray, “different each other themes from Don Juan and minute from what she was a minute before the earlier.” The Hero’s Companion, as music gradually fades. Strauss calls this mercurial sec- In a quiet daydream (a gently tion, is a full-length portrait, and swaying barcarole), Strauss recalls it is not always complimentary. music from all his previous tone Certainly Pauline noticed that her poems as well as many of his songs,

6 and even (or perhaps most point- blurring the line between public edly) the failed Guntram. These and private in ways that made audi- are The Hero’s Works of Peace. ences uncomfortable and angered (“Of course I haven’t taken part in his own family. any battles,” Strauss wrote to his Today, of course, it’s easier to publisher years later, “but the only view Ein Heldenleben as an innocent way I could express works of peace orchestral fantasy—simply to enjoy was through themes of my own.”) its abundant musical pleasures. The critics reappear briefly; Strauss Strauss’s hero and his companion rises up against them in one last are still vividly real, but they aren’t tirade. The final section is labeled real-life people to us. As the art The Hero’s Escape from the World historian Ernst Gombrich wrote, and Fulfillment. The music now “The consummate artist conjures slips into a simple pastorale, with up the image of a human being that an english horn calling out over a will live on in the richness of its quiet drum tap. The violins repeat- emotional texture when the sitter edly hint at a new theme, which and his vanities have long been for- finally rises from total silence—a gotten.” Both Richard and Pauline melody so noble and disarming Strauss have now been dead for that we do not recognize it as the more than half a century. Among same sequence of notes first uttered the dozens of Strausses in the rather ineloquently by Pauline. It’s Munich phone book, there is still one of Strauss’s greatest themes, a Richard—the composer’s grand- all the more moving for coming so son, born twenty-eight years after near the end, like a grand benedic- Heldenleben premiered. Another tion. There is one last, disruptive grandson, Christian, lives down assault from the critics, and then the road from the Strauss family the loving voice of Pauline, obvi- house in Garmisch. They are the ously quite undone by some of her only people who could conceivably husband’s most sublime music. care how their family is portrayed Ein Heldenleben wasn’t the last of in Heldenleben. For the rest of us, Strauss’s family portraits. Five years this music holds the same fascina- later, with the Domestic Symphony, tion as any great portrait—for a few he became the twentieth century’s moments we feel we actually know first great realist painter, depicting these people, we enjoy the thrill life at home with Pauline—bath- of peering into another time and ing the baby, making love, quar- place, and then we return to our relling—with surgical precision own lives. and in painstaking detail. (Strauss boasted that he had reached the point where he could differenti- ate musically between a knife and a fork.) And with the operatic comedy Intermezzo, even Strauss Phillip Huscher is the program annota- wondered if he had gone too far, tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2011 Chicago

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