Program ONE HuNdrEd TwENTy-FirST 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, November 10, 2011, at 8:00 Friday, November 11, 2011, at 1:30 Saturday, November 12, 2011, at 8:00 Tuesday, November 15, 2011, at 7:30 Stéphane Denève conductor Leonidas Kavakos violin Prokofiev Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33a The Eccentrics The Magician Tchélio and Fata Morgana Play Cards March Scherzo The Prince and the Princess The Flight Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63 Allegro moderato Andante assai Allegro, ben marcato LEONidAS KAVAKOS IntermISSIon roussel The Spider’s Feast, Op. 17 ravel Suite No. 2 from Daphnis and Chloe dawn— Pantomime— General dance CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. 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 Sergei Prokofiev Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine. Died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia. Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, op. 33a n the summer of 1917, of his scores to Chicago Symphony IChicago businessman Cyrus music director Frederick Stock. McCormick, Jr., the farm machine McCormick wrote to Stock at magnate, met the twenty-six-year- once, saying that Prokofiev “would old composer Sergei Prokofiev be glad to come to Chicago and while on a business trip to Russia. bring some of his symphonies if his Prokofiev was unknown to expenses were paid. But not know- McCormick, but the composer ing myself the value of his music, I recognized the distinguished did not feel justified in taking the American’s name immediately, risk of bringing him here.” After because the estate his father had Stock received Prokofiev’s scores, he managed owned several impressive replied to McCormick: “There is no International Harvester machines. question in my mind as to the talent McCormick expressed an inter- of young Serge.” Although Stock est in the composer’s new music, at first doubted that it was feasible and he eventually agreed to pay to bring the Russian composer to for the printing of his unpublished the U.S. right away, Prokofiev (or Scythian Suite. He also encouraged Prokofieff, as the U.S. press spelled Prokofiev to come to the United his name at the time) made his States, and asked him to send some debut with the Chicago Symphony ComPoSeD moSt reCent InStrumentatIon 1919 CSo PerFormanCeS two flutes and piccolo, two October 4, 1975, oboes and english horn, two FIrSt PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. Erich clarinets and bass clarinet, Opera: december 30, 1921, Leinsdorf conducting three bassoons and contra- Auditorium Theatre, Chicago bassoon, four horns, three July 1, 2000, ravinia Festival. trumpets, three trombones Suite: November 1926, william Eddins conducting boston and tuba, timpani, tubular aPProxImate bells, xylophone, cymbals, FIrSt CSo PerFormanCe tIme tam-tam, triangle, bass PerFormanCe oF 15 minutes drum, side drum, tambou- ComPLete SuIte rine, two harps, strings November 18, 1965, Orchestra Hall. Jean Martinon conducting 2 the following season, playing his that he had, but that the score for First Piano Concerto under Stock’s The Gambler was sitting on the baton, and conducting the orchestra shelf of the Mariinsky Theatre back himself in the American premiere in Russia and would be difficult of his Scythian Suite in Orchestra to obtain, Campanini hit on the Hall in December 1918. idea of commissioning him to “The appearance here of the write a new opera for the Chicago young Russian, Sergei Prokofieff, at company. That January, Prokofiev the Chicago Symphony Orchestra signed a contract to produce an concert was the most startling and, operatic version of The Love for in a sense, important musical event Three Oranges, based on the Russian that has happened in this town adaptation of Venetian playwright for a long time,” wrote Henriette Carlo Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte Weber in the Herald and Examiner. fairy tale, to be premiered in “Personally he is middle-sized Chicago. By March, citrus grow- and blond, somewhat gangling ers in Florida and California were about the arms and shoulders, and fighting over promotion rights. entirely business-like in demeanor,” Prokofiev prepared the libretto reported the Journal. “His business himself; he had read the story on the is his music, while he is on the ocean liner on his way to the U.S., stage, and he would seem to resent and even began to sketch a plan even the time that it takes to bow.” while crossing the Pacific. “The play, The music itself caused quite a stir. with its mixture of fairy tale, humor, “Russian Genius Displays Weird and satire, had a strong appeal for Harmonies” was the headline in me,” he later said. Prokofiev wrote the American. “The music was of the opera in nine months—he often such savagery, so brutally barbaric,” worked quickly when inspired—and Henriette Weber wrote, “that it turned in the completed orchestral seemed almost grotesque to see score by October 1, as his Chicago civilized men, in modern dress with contract demanded. That December, modern instruments performing Campanini died suddenly and the it. By the same token it was big, company postponed the premiere sincere, true.” The public loved till the following season. Prokofiev it. “Every man and woman there fought back, demanding compensa- reacted to it,” Weber continued, tion for the year-long delay, and, “and Prokofieff was given a thun- as a result, the new opera was dering ovation that at least in a postponed again. Finally, a new slight degree expressed the tumul- executive director, the famous tuous emotions he inspired.” soprano Mary Garden (she was In Chicago, McCormick intro- Debussy’s original Melisande) gave duced Prokofiev to Cleofonte Prokofiev everything he wanted—a Campanini, the director of the lavish production (it reportedly cost Chicago Opera, who asked the $100,000), as many rehearsals as he composer if he had written an needed, and a firm premiere date: opera. When Prokofiev explained January 30, 1921. 3 The Auditorium was full that 1930s—and many others, around night and Prokofiev later called it a the world, since (Lyric Opera of big success. “The Chicagoans were Chicago staged the opera in 1976 both proud and embarrassed to be and 1979). presenting a ‘modernist premiere,’ ” A few years after the Chicago he later wrote. “The music, I fear,” premiere, Prokofiev made a Edward Moore reported in the six-movement symphonic suite Tribune, “is too much for this of excerpts from the opera that generation.” The sets, designed by has greatly extended the work’s Boris Anisfeld, who had worked popularity. The story of The Love for with Diaghilev in Paris (and then Three Oranges is an absurd, highly settled in Chicago, teaching at the convoluted fantasy: the central tale School of the Art Institute), fared involves a prince, who is put under better: “Never was paint applied a curse by the witch Fata Morgana to scene cloth any more lavishly or that makes him fall in love with gorgeously,” Moore wrote. In the three giant oranges, each of which end, Garden did not stand by her contains a princess, one of whom high- is destined to be his love. The suite profile opens with The Eccentrics, drawn com- from the opera’s prologue. The mission; next excerpt accompanies a card several game between the sorcerer Tchélio years (he loses) and Fata Morgana, who later, plays a critical role in the rest of when she the action. The popular, grotesque was told March is essentially the entr’acte that the connecting the first scenes of act 2. scenery (It was once famous as the theme A publicity shot of Prokofiev taken was of the radio program The FBI in in a Chicago hotel room, 1918 falling Peace and War.) The scherzo is the apart, original entr’acte between the first she said scenes of act 3. The Prince and the it should be destroyed because no Princess uses music drawn from one would want to see the opera the desert scene in act 3, where again anyway. That, of course, the princesses emerge from the has not been the case. There were oranges; only one survives, and she highly successful Soviet produc- then begins a love duet with the tions in Leningrad in 1926 and in prince. The Flight is taken from Moscow the following year—they the opera’s last scene, when Fata helped convince Prokofiev to Morgana’s trap door vividly swal- return to his homeland in the lows a number of victims. 4 Sergei Prokofiev Violin Concerto no. 2 in g minor, op. 63 rokofiev wrote his first violin written in his homeland. And in Pconcerto shortly before he left 1933 he couldn’t foresee the harm Russia in 1918; the second concerto that would ultimately come to was composed seventeen years later, him under Joseph Stalin, who, in as he was preparing to return home. a stroke of fate no work of fiction Why Prokofiev decided to go back would dare, died on the same day as has been variously attributed to Prokofiev in 1953. patriotism, opportunism, nostalgia, Most of Prokofiev’s celebrated and political naïveté. In the United Soviet contemporaries had States, he had found limited popu- either emigrated permanently, larity and financial difficulty as a like Stravinsky and Nabokov, or wandering pianist and composer; stayed put, like Shostakovich and in Paris he was more successful and Pasternak. Prokofiev tried for more comfortable, but he increas- the best of both worlds, although ingly longed “to see real winters when he left Russia in May 1918, again, and spring that bursts into he expected to be back in a few being from one moment to the months.