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Program ONe huNdred TweNTIeTh 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, February 3, 2011, at 8:00 Friday, February 4, 2011, at 1:30 Saturday, February 5, 2011, at 8:00 Tuesday, February 8, 2011, at 7:30 riccardo muti Conductor mitsuko Uchida Piano Cherubini Overture in G Major First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances Schumann Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54 Allegro affettuoso Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso— Allegro vivace MITSukO uChIdA IntermISSIon Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in d Minor, Op. 47 Moderato—Allegro non troppo—Largamente Allegretto Largo Allegro non troppo—Allegro Saturday evening’s concert is generously sponsored by an anonymous donor. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. Steinway is the official piano of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 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 Luigi Cherubini Born September 14, 1760, Florence, Italy. Died March 15, 1842, Paris, France. overture in g major n 1841, shortly before Luigi Beethoven and Haydn were in the ICherubini died, he had his audience and spoke glowingly of portrait painted by his close friend, the work. Mendelssohn admired the popular neoclassical artist Jean- Cherubini the opera composer for Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The “his sparkling fire, his clever and painting now hangs in the Louvre, unexpected transitions, and the where it is admired by millions of neatness and grace with which he visitors each year; it has become the writes.” Bruckner learned how to lasting image of a major composer write his own sacred music by copy- who is regularly overlooked, if not ing out movements of Cherubini’s nearly forgotten today. masses to study. Brahms, the most Born four years after Mozart, historically aware composer of and outliving Beethoven by fifteen the nineteenth century, revered years, Cherubini was a name to Cherubini, and he put a copy of be reckoned with for a good half the Ingres painting on the wall of century. Beethoven, remarkably, his apartment (a large white bust of said that Cherubini was the greatest Beethoven, the only other composer composer among his contempo- so honored, sat over the piano). raries (which, just for the record, And Schumann, whose music boasted a fair number of luminar- follows that of Cherubini on this ies, including Rossini). Beethoven week’s program, said that “the more had written him an outright fan we come to understand him the letter about the opera Médée a more we come to respect him”— decade before they finally met. perhaps anticipating that one day When Cherubini’s opera Faniska people would make snap judgments was staged in Vienna in 1806, both on Cherubini’s importance based ComPoSed InStrUmentatIon aPProxImate 1815 one flute, two oboes, two PerFormanCe tIme clarinets, two bassoons, 12 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe four horns, two trumpets, 1815, London three trombones, timpani, These are the first and strings CSO performances 2 on knowing a mere fraction of his 1802 that served as the immediate large output. In one of Schumann’s inspiration for Beethoven’s Fidelio, most important essays as a critic, the only rescue opera that is still written around the time he com- performed today. posed his piano concerto, he ranked By the early years of the nine- Cherubini as “superior as a har- teenth century, Cherubini had monist to all his contemporaries,” already become that rarest of calling him the “refined, scholarly, musical figures at the time, an interesting Italian whose severe international celebrity. So it is reserve of strength and character hardly surprising that the new sometimes leads me to compare Royal Philharmonic Society in him with Dante.” London asked him to write three Cherubini was born in Florence, works—an overture, a symphony, and he enjoyed success with both and an Italian vocal piece—for serious and comic operas in Italy its second season in 1815 and to and in London before moving come to London to oversee their to Paris in 1788. There he had a performance. The society had string of hits, including Lodoïska in 1791 and Médée in 1797 (decades later Brahms still singled it out as “the work we musicians recognize among ourselves as the highest peak of dra- matic music”). His fame continued to spread. Les deux journées was so popular in Vienna that it was staged by two rival theaters on succes- sive nights. His most celebrated works were his so-called rescue operas, which were particularly apt during revolutionary times, when hairbreadth escapes were everyday Luigi Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1842 occurrences. In the first years of the nineteenth century, when Beethoven decided been founded “to promote the to write an opera, Cherubini’s performance, in the most perfect works were the obvious models. In manner possible of the best and fact, it was Emanuel Schikaneder’s most approved instrumental music,” staging of Lodoïska in Vienna in and its members wanted to prove 3 their seriousness by commission- the signpost classical form, was not ing the most important composers a great success in London and was of the day. (Their track record later reworked as a string quartet; is remarkable: both Beethoven’s it remains a rare visitor on concert Ninth and Mendelssohn’s Italian programs in either version. The symphonies were written at their concert overture in G major that is request.) Cherubini was appar- played this week—for the first time ently the first composer the society by the Chicago Symphony—is one approached—at the instigation of of Cherubini’s finest works, a distil- Muzio Clementi, the Roman-born lation of all he had learned writing piano sensation who then lived in overtures for the opera house. It is England, and Giovanni Viotti, the dramatic—as “theatrical” as any famed violin virtuoso, who had opera overture—passionate, impec- first met the composer in Paris in cably crafted (this was a Cherubini the 1780s. hallmark), and highly inventive—a When Cherubini arrived in reminder of how creativity flour- London on February 25, 1815, ished endlessly within the suppos- he had the overture and the vocal edly limited framework of classical work with him. (The symphony style. It is a perfect curtain-raiser was written in March and April.) for a concert, which is what The vocal piece, a cantata, Inno Cherubini had in mind, but it also alla primavera, is almost never opens a window for concertgoers performed today; the Symphony in today on a distinguished career that D major, Cherubini’s only work in has largely slipped from view. 4 robert Schumann Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Saxony, Germany. Died July 29, 1856, Endenich, near Bonn, Germany. Piano Concerto in a minor, op. 54 hen, in 1828, at the age of to write a concerto for nearly Weighteen, Robert Schumann twenty years. began his piano studies with As early as 1827, Schumann’s Friedrich Wieck, Wieck’s diary mentions the “beginnings daughter Clara was just nine and of a piano concerto in F minor.” already a prodigy. Perhaps she That piece was completed in 1830 peeked in on her father’s lessons in a version for piano alone and as Robert played Hummel’s A published as his op. 1, the Abegg minor concerto, his first assign- Variations (named for the young ment. Eighteen years later, woman who held Robert’s affec- Robert Schumann would unveil tions before Clara). There’s evidence his own A minor piano concerto, of work on another piano concerto, played by his young bride, the in D minor, the year before his same Clara, now grown up and a marriage to Clara. Then, secure in major talent. We wouldn’t know the strength of his love, following from this effortless and exuber- the extraordinary outpouring of ant music that their wedding in song in the months surrounding September 1840 met with her his wedding, Schumann dashed off father’s fierce disapproval, or that a fantasy in A minor for piano and Schumann had been struggling orchestra—a one-movement work ComPoSed moSt reCent aPProxImate 1841 (first movement), CSo PerFormanCeS PerFormanCe tIme 1845 (second and April 21, 2007; Orchestra 31 minutes third movements hall; hélène Grimaud, piano, with Andrey CSo reCordIngS FIrSt PerFormanCe boreyko conducting 1959; bryon Janis, January 1, 1846; piano, with Fritz reiner July 15, 2009; ravinia Leipzig, Germany; Clara conducting; rCA Festival; Garrick Ohlsson, Schumann, piano piano, with James 1960; Van Cliburn, piano, with Fritz reiner FIrSt CSo Conlon conducting conducting; rCA PerFormanCe InStrUmentatIon April 22, 1898; Auditorium 1967; Artur rubinstein, solo piano, two flutes, two Theatre; Laura Sanford, piano, with Carlo Maria oboes, two clarinets, two piano, with Theodore Giulini conducting; rCA bassoons, two horns, two Thomas conducting trumpets, timpani, strings 5 written in little more than a week. symphony, concerto, and grand Clara played through the piece at sonata.” It’s not any of those, but an a reading rehearsal in the Leipzig extensive work for piano solo with Gewandhaus in August 1841. an indispensable orchestral com- (She gave birth to their first child, mentary. Schumann ignores the Marie, barely two weeks later, powerful drama and delicate bal- establishing the balance of career ance of orchestra and piano favored and family she would maintain for by Mozart and Beethoven—his many years.) orchestration is conveniently The first year of his marriage was transparent, allowing the spotlight a remarkably productive period to fall on the piano in the opening for Schumann—within a matter measures and never shift thereafter.

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