PROGRAM

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

Thursday, January 15, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, January 16, 2015, at 1:30 Saturday, January 17, 2015, at 8:00

Riccardo Muti Conductor Yefim Bronfman Piano Brahms No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 Allegro non troppo Allegro appassionato Andante John Sharp, Allegretto grazioso YEFIM BRONFMAN

INTERMISSION

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 13 (Winter Daydreams) Daydreams of a Winter Journey: Allegro tranquillo Land of Desolation, Land of Mists: Adagio cantabile ma non tanto Scherzo: Allegro scherzando giocoso Finale: Andante lugubre—Allegro maestoso

These concerts are generously sponsored by the Zell 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

Johannes Brahms Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany. Died April 3, 1897, , Austria. Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83

Like Dürer, Goethe, and of the ideas for the piano concerto, and, at the a number of German same time, gave birth to new ones that he would composers before him, use when he returned to it. Back in several Brahms found inspiration months later, Brahms was filled with feelings he in Italy. His first trip was could hardly name; he returned to Vienna noting in the spring of 1878, that it seemed “wrong” to call it home after days and, as he wrote home to of such unexpected contentment elsewhere. He his publisher Fritz immediately turned to his sketches, and, in one Simrock, it was filled virtually uninterrupted sweep, forged his most with “magical days.” magnificent concerto, one of the largest—both Brahms made eight Italian sojourns over the next grand and long—in the literature. few years (he liked to spend his birthday there if We could read all of Brahms’s letters and learn possible), preparing each time with his character- very little about his music. Like many compos- istic compulsion by reading guidebooks and ers, he said what he had to say in the pages of studying treatises on art. His personal guide on his scores. His few, sporadic comments about the first trip was Theodore Billroth, a prominent composition were often either self-deprecating or Viennese surgeon, a devoted amateur musician teasing. He introduced this concerto to his dear (he played piano duets with the composer), and a friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg as “a tiny walking Baedeker. During their travels, Brahms little piano concerto with a tiny little wisp of a was moved to put pen to paper, not to record the scherzo”—words contradicted by a cursory glance pleasures of the trip—at least not in the form of a at the score. Another letter more accurately conventional diary—but to begin sketching a calls it “the long terror,” which most new piano concerto in B-flat. will readily confirm. But of the actual details of At home, Brahms put this music aside, as if, composition, its unprecedented scale, or wide finding himself stuck in Vienna, he couldn’t emotional range, Brahms said nothing. When continue with music conceived in the warm Billroth asked the most obvious question— Italian sun. Soon his attention was diverted by why he had added a fourth movement to the his , a work that sublimated some customary three, all of extraordinary size and

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1878–July 7, 1881 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME February 17, 18 & 19, 2011, Orchestra 48 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. as soloist, November 9, 1881, . The Gianandrea Noseda CSO RECORDINGS composer as soloist 1958. as soloist, August 8, 2012, Ravinia Festival. conducting. RCA Yefim Bronfman as soloist, James FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Conlon conducting 1960. as soloist, Erich March 1 & 2, 1895, Auditorium Theatre. Leinsdorf conducting. RCA Rafael Joseffy as soloist, Theodore INSTRUMENTATION Thomas conducting 1961. as soloist, Fritz solo piano, two flutes and piccolo, two Reiner conducting. RCA July 16, 1942, Ravinia Festival. oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, as soloist, George four horns, two trumpets, timpani, 1977. as soloist, Szell conducting strings conducting. CSO (Chicago Symphony Orchestra: The First 100 Years) 2 scope—Brahms only early on, with a cadenza-like flourish. The said that the first beginning of this concerto is pure, characteristic movement was so Brahms, however: the lone call of the horn (a harmless (simpel) that sound Brahms grew to love from his earliest another movement days, when he often heard his father practicing seemed in order the instrument) answered by slowly blossoming before the Andante. phrases from the piano. Billroth was With this magical introduction, the impas- with the composer sioned “cadenza” that follows, and another when he drafted fifteen minutes of strong and demanding music, the concerto, and Brahms’s first movement is far from “harmless.” he was present the Donald Tovey was perhaps the first to point out Theodore Billroth evening Brahms first that, although it’s conventional in a concerto for played through the the orchestra to deliver “with massive force what finished work for a the solo player can make subtle and delicate with group of friends. Like the composer’s first piano eloquence and ornamentation,” Brahms switches concerto, it was designed for his own hands, roles, allowing the piano some grand and power- and most pianists since have found it somewhat ful statements where we least expect them. Tovey unwieldy. Brahms played the solo at the pre- also notes that Brahms lets the orchestra borrow miere on November 9, 1881, in Budapest, and in material from the soloist, rather than the reverse. many additional performances that season—in Brahms has decisively placed his soloist on equal Stuttgart, Zurich, Breslau, , Hamburg, footing with the orchestra. , Frankfurt, and Utrecht, among oth- Brahms contemplated inserting a scherzo in ers. Soon ’s curiosity was aroused, his violin concerto—written while the B-flat particularly because the distinguished conductor piano concerto sat on the shelf—but thought bet- Hans von Bülow (who had been married to ter of it. Here, however, he very shrewdly placed Liszt’s daughter Cosima before Wagner took her) something energetic and tempestuous between was a strong supporter of Brahms’s music, and the broad, magnificent expanses of the first he asked to have a copy of the new work sent to movement and the serene and spacious Andante. him. Probably only a composer whose own wildly The slow movement surely benefits from the virtuosic piano concertos had turned heads a delay. Coming some twenty-five minutes into quarter century before could find this concerto “a the concerto, and following so much brilliant little gray in tone,” but Liszt cautiously admitted and dramatic music, the breathtakingly beautiful his admiration for this music, “in which thought cello solo with which the Andante opens is music and feeling move in noble harmony.” Brahms had from another world—and temporary consolation long known that he and Liszt were of radically for the fact that Brahms never wrote a cello con- different musical temperaments—probably since certo. (After hearing Dvořák’s, Brahms admitted the day they met during the summer of 1853, he was sorry he had never tried, and then made when Brahms was twenty, and Liszt, forty-one, partial amends with the Double Concerto.) whipped through the young composer’s piano The finale is a lilting dance of uncertain music at sight. Hungarian heritage, transparently scored and Liszt surely didn’t think that it was novel to filled with sparkling effects from the piano. In bring the soloist in at the start of a concerto, as lesser hands, such childlike happiness might have Brahms does here, but Liszt also knew enough seemed inappropriate or simply too lightweight about Brahms to know that novelty is seldom after so much serious and even tragic music, but at the heart of his achievements. In its general Brahms’s touch is very sure—he easily convinces plan, the opening of the B-flat concerto suggests us that the only thing that can follow some of no one more than Beethoven, who in his fifth the most sublime slow music ever written is a and unfinished sixth concertos introduces the gypsy dance.

3 Piotr Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, . Died November 6, 1893, , Russia. Symphony No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 13 (Winter Daydreams)

In 1866, the year 1865. Straight out of school, with a silver medal Tchaikovsky wrote his and fine recommendations, Tchaikovsky set First Symphony, a off for in January 1866, where he had middle-aged Anton accepted a teaching post at ’s Bruckner finally finished (later the Moscow his own first symphony, Conservatory). The move at first proved difficult, after fifteen months of but Tchaikovsky soon fell into the pattern of tough going and with two teaching; reported “an unusually sympathetic earlier efforts left aban- relationship with the Moscow ladies whom I doned and unfinished. teach”; made many new friends, including his had already been working future publisher, Piotr Jurgenson; discovered quietly on his first symphony for a decade—and Dickens (The Pickwick Papers made him laugh it would take another ten years before he was aloud); and benefitted from the domineering satisfied with it. But Tchaikovsky, in his presence of Rubinstein, who not only oversaw mid-twenties and fresh from the conservatory, Tchaikovsky’s musical affairs and dictated his launched his symphonic career with little anxiety musical tastes, but also bought him an entire or experience, turning out this Symphony no. 1 new wardrobe. in a matter of months. Tchaikovsky arrived in Moscow with no For most nineteenth-century composers, experience writing for orchestra beyond his writing was serious business, student efforts—an , , and particularly after Beethoven’s watershed cycle the “An die Freude” cantata. Once settled, he of nine works, and, in the second half of the finished the orchestration of a concert overture century, starting a first symphony was a genuine in C, which Rubinstein greatly disliked, and act of courage. Unlike Brahms, Tchaikovsky revised an overture in F, which was successfully clearly did not suffer from the fear of following performed on March 16. By then, he had begun Beethoven’s example—without apparent diffi- his first symphony, apparently at Rubinstein’s culty he composed a setting of Schiller’s “An die urging. Work went smoothly at first, at least Freude” (which Beethoven set as the finale of his until Tchaikovsky’s progress was derailed by the Ninth Symphony) to mark his graduation from first artistic setback of his career. César Cui, still the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in the fall of known to music students today as the spokesman

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1866, revised 1874 January 5, 1957, Orchestra Hall. John two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two Weicher conducting clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, FIRST PERFORMANCES two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, July 5, 1969, Ravinia Festival. Seiji Scherzo: December 22, 1866; Moscow, cymbals, bass drum, timpani, strings Ozawa conducting Russia APPROXIMATE Adagio : February 23, 1867; Saint MOST RECENT PERFORMANCE TIME Petersburg, Russia CSO PERFORMANCES 43 minutes July 12, 1991, Ravinia Festival. Gennady entire symphony: February 15, 1868; Rozhdestvensky conducting Moscow, Russia CSO RECORDING December 11, 12, 13 & 16, 1991. conducting. 2008, Orchestra Hall. David Sony Zinman conducting

4 of —the group of Russian composers as a symphonist, with four already under his belt. including Borodin, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, and Before the First Symphony was published in Rimsky-Korsakov who banded together in 1875 1874, Tchaikovsky to foster a national school of music—published made a few minor a belated review of Tchaikovsky’s “An die adjustments. Freude” which he dismissed as “utterly feeble.” (Bruckner, on the Tchaikovsky was devastated: other hand, revised his First Symphony When I read that frightful judgment, I don’t in 1868, 1877, and know what I did with myself. My vision 1884, and made grew dark, my head spun, and I ran out of even more extensive the cafe like a madman. I didn’t realize what changes in 1890 I was doing, nor where I was. All day I wan- and 1891.) At the dered aimlessly through the city, repeating time Tchaikovsky’s “I’m sterile, insignificant, nothing will come Symphony no. 1 out of me, I’m ungifted.” Nikolai Rubinstein was performed in this final version, in But Tchaikovsky went back to work on the Moscow in 1883, symphony, which occupied several hours of Tchaikovsky told each day and night. By May, he reported that it a friend, “I have was going “sluggishly”; he was having trouble a soft spot for it, sleeping and began to fear death. For the rest of for it is a sin of my his life, he avoided composing at night because it sweet youth.” reminded him of this painful time. That summer, All his life, when he went to visit his sister, he suffered from Tchaikovsky was nervous attacks, numbness in his hands and painfully aware feet, and hallucinations. Not for the last time of his deficiencies in his life, a doctor pronounced him “one step as a composer— from insanity.” weaknesses that have When Tchaikovsky went back to Saint never stood in the Petersburg in August, he showed the score to his way of enormous former teachers, and Anton public favor. By Rubinstein (Nikolai’s brother), who both criti- 1883, he had enough cized the music harshly. Tchaikovsky returned to experience with the problems of symphonic Moscow and to work on the symphony, no doubt form to recognize how naive he was to tackle a incorporating some of their suggestions. The symphony in his sweet youth, but the work is piece was introduced to the public in stages. In hardly a sin. Even in 1866, Tchaikovsky had a December, the scherzo alone was played pub- sense of drama and orchestral color, and a way licly in Moscow, without apparent success. Two with melody that was far in advance of most months later, both the Adagio and the scherzo other composers of the day. And he had already were performed to enthusiastic applause, and at found his own voice. Listen to the opening of the least one decent review: “It is melodious to the symphony: an oddly distinctive melody in the highest degree, and excellently scored.” The entire flutes and bassoons over a mysterious rustle from symphony was given, under Nikolai Rubinstein’s the violins. The whole first movement, despite baton, a year later, though it was not heard again some spotty seam work, is remarkably fresh in its for fifteen years. By then, Tchaikovsky had melodic outline and scoring—there is a moment written many of the works for which he would at the start of the development section, when long be remembered—Romeo and Juliet, the distant chords from the horns dance quietly B-flat piano concerto, his only violin concerto, over low strings, that previews the Waltz of , the great , the the Flowers from , written two —and he had made great strides decades later.

5 Not only is the oboe melody in the Adagio that had troubled nearly every composer since one of the earliest characteristic Tchaikovsky Beethoven. A rather labored fugue sits where tunes, but the way it is echoed by the bassoon heavy-duty development ought to take place, and encouraged by glistening scales from the and there is a bit more bombast at the end flute would quickly become one of his signature than even Tchaikovsky could sustain, but there effects. The first eight measures, serenely setting are many splendid moments, and the lasting the stage for the main melody, were borrowed impression is of a composer who was born to from his student overture The Storm. write symphonies. Tchaikovsky wrote the scherzo first, reusing A final word about the nickname, Winter material originally intended for a piano in Daydreams, which Tchaikovsky himself C-sharp minor and demonstrating how much he invented, with no apparent programmatic idea in had learned from the scores by Mendelssohn that mind. He intended to give titles to all four move- he admired (the Italian Symphony was a particu- ments, but got no farther than the Adagio before lar favorite). The music for the trio midsection is he decided to let the music stand on its own. new—Tchaikovsky’s first great orchestral waltz. There is wonderfully evocative and fiery, dramatic music in the finale—enough to disguise Tchaikovsky’s uncertainty in bringing a sym- Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago phony to a satisfying conclusion, the challenge Symphony Orchestra.

© 2015 Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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