Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director
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PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOURTH 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 Thursday, June 4, 2015, at 8:00 Saturday, June 6, 2015, at 8:00 Ludovic Morlot Conductor Denis Kozhukhin Piano Gershwin An American in Paris Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major (In one movement) DENIS KOZHUKHIN INTERMISSION Stravinsky Jeu de cartes, Ballet in Three Deals Deal 1— Deal 2— Deal 3 Ravel La valse The concert on June 4 is made possible by a generous gift from the Zell Family Foundation. These performances are made possible in part by a generous gift from the estates of Maurice and Hynda Gamze. 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 George Gershwin Born September 26, 1898, Brooklyn, New York. Died July 11, 1937, Hollywood, California. An American in Paris George Gershwin’s first New York’s Aeolian Theater in 1924, announced musical memory was of to the music world that Gershwin was a far more an automatic piano in a complex and ambitious musician than a mere penny arcade on 125th songwriter. (And just to confuse matters, that Street playing Anton same year Gershwin produced some of his finest Rubinstein’s Melody in F. songs, including “Fascinating rhythm.”) During One of those rare pieces the mid-1920s, while he enjoyed the life of a that had become a rich celebrity, collecting modern art and moving popular classic, it gave his family out of their dreary apartment into a Gershwin the idea at an five-story townhouse on the upper West Side, early age that serious and commercial music Gershwin began to compose a piano concerto, could be one and the same. Gershwin’s own three piano preludes, and this tone poem—a love music is so popular today that it’s hard to song to Paris—while still maintaining his roles as remember his classical roots. As a teenager, he pianist, tunesmith, and conductor. attended recitals by celebrity soloists such as Josef In January 1928, Gershwin accepted an invita- Lhevinne and Efrem Zimbalist, and he kept a tion to visit friends in Paris. Recognizing the need scrapbook of photos of big-name composers, for a change from the frenetic New York scene— from Liszt and Wagner to Busoni. He played he currently had two hit shows, Funny Face and piano in the Beethoven Society Orchestra at Rosalie, running simultaneously—Gershwin Public School 63, and he studied music theory as immediately started thinking about a “rhapsodic well as piano. Even after George quit school at ballet,” which he quickly titled An American in fifteen to become “probably the youngest piano Paris. By the time he and his brother Ira boarded pounder ever employed in Tin Pan Alley,” he a steamer for Europe on March 9, George had didn’t forget his greater aspirations. already sketched the work in versions for one and In the early twenties, while Gershwin was two pianos. Once in Paris, he continued to work turning out a steady stream of hits (and making on the score, and he spent one entire afternoon the kind of money that is unheard of in the classi- shopping the auto supply stores on the Grande cal music business), he was more determined than Armée in search of the ideal car horns for the ever to write serious music that was equally pop- traffic scene he had in mind. (He took four horns ular. The historic premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, at home with him for the New York premiere.) COMPOSED February 13, 1945, Orchestra Hall. bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, 1928 Désiré Defauw conducting three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, bells, cymbals, snare drum, FIRST PERFORMANCE MOST RECENT taxi horns, tom-toms, triangle, wire December 13, 1928, New York City CSO PERFORMANCES brushes, woodblock, xylophone, April 17, 18, 19 & 22, 2014, Orchestra celesta, strings FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Hall. Leonard Slatkin conducting June 14, 1933, Auditorium Theatre. APPROXIMATE July 11, 2014, Ravinia Festival. Robert William Daly conducting (Chicago PERFORMANCE TIME Moody conducting World’s Fair: A Century of Progress 19 minutes International Exposition) INSTRUMENTATION CSO RECORDING July 25, 1936, Ravinia Festival. William three flutes and piccolo, two oboes 1990. James Levine conducting. Daly conducting and english horn, two clarinets and Deutsche Grammophon bass clarinet, three saxophones, two 2 When Gershwin arrived in Paris, he was a few measures of Rhapsody in Blue, to which as famous as any living musician. Even in Berg reportedly responded, equivocally, “Music Europe his best songs, such as “The man I love,” is music, Mr. Gershwin.” Gershwin became a “Someone to watch over me,” and “Fascinating great admirer of Berg’s work. An autographed rhythm,” were whistled on the street, and photo of the composer later hung on the wall of Rhapsody in Blue was the most talked about Gershwin’s Hollywood home, alongside those piece of music in a city that had, in the last of Irving Berlin and Jack Dempsey. (After fifteen years, seen the premieres of The Rite of Gershwin’s death, Oscar Levant recalled that Spring and Daphnis and Chloe. Gershwin was the composer often played his recording of the the toast of the town, and during his visit he met Lyric Suite, and that a piano-vocal score of Berg’s and played the piano for all the resident “seri- opera Wozzeck was one of his prized possessions.) ous” composers, from Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and Sergei Prokofiev to William efore the premiere, Gershwin told a Walton. He also renewed his friendship with reporter that An American in Paris was Maurice Ravel, whom he had just met at a birth- “written very freely and is the most day party for the French composer the previous Bmodern music I’ve yet attempted.” It was cer- month in New York City. (That night, Ravel tainly Gershwin’s most accomplished orchestral listened while Gershwin played the piano until work to date. For the first time, Gershwin’s 4 a.m.; another evening the two went off to hear trademark jazzy rhythms, bluesy harmonies, and jazz in Harlem.) unforgettable melodies are all woven into a big, sophisticated work of symphonic dimensions. By 1928, Gershwin had developed a fine ear for orchestral color and a sense of cinematic panorama. (The title page of the score specifies that the work was “composed and orches- trated” by Gershwin, to counter complaints that Gershwin had left the scoring of Rhapsody in Blue to others.) It is also Gershwin’s first concert work that doesn’t call for a solo piano (the manuscript shows that several passages featuring the instrument were later crossed out). Despite Gershwin’s claim that he hadn’t written program music (the play-by-play sce- nario printed in the score and often quoted is Birthday party honoring Maurice Ravel, New York by Deems Taylor, not Gershwin), the work is City, March 7, 1928. From left: conductor Oskar Fried, unforgettably descriptive, from its opening walk- mezzo-soprano Éva Gauthier, Ravel at the piano, ing music (think Gene Kelly, Hollywood, 1951) composer-conductor Manoah Leide-Tedesco, and to the car-honking traffic jam. Gershwin did composer George Gershwin identify the American’s “spasm of homesickness” after too many drinks in a street café, although On his way home from Paris, Gershwin neither he nor Taylor managed to explain the hot stopped in Berlin, where he met Kurt Weill (just Caribbean rhythm midway through. An American weeks before the premiere of The Three Penny in Paris was a hit at its New York premiere, just Opera), and in Vienna, where he attended the months after Gershwin came home. The audi- premiere of Ernst Krenek’s jazz-tinged opera, ence loved it, but the critics roared their disap- Jonny spielt auf, and met twelve-tone master proval, betraying their disbelief that a work of Alban Berg. At Berg’s invitation, Gershwin concert music could be both popular and ambi- attended a performance of Berg’s new Lyric Suite. tious, tuneful and complex, fashion-conscious Afterwards, when the performers insisted, he sat yet unforgettable. down at the piano and played show tunes and 3 Maurice Ravel Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France. Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major Had Paul Wittgenstein’s wounded; his right arm was amputated and he career as a concert pianist was taken prisoner by the Russians. gone according to plan, Being a member of a distinguished family of this and several other overachievers and survivors, and raised by a father works for piano and of forceful determination, Wittgenstein didn’t orchestra wouldn’t exist. intend to give up his career as a pianist. (That He was born into one of same oppressive upbringing led his two eldest Vienna’s most remarkable brothers to commit suicide.) While confined families; his father Karl, a to the invalid ward of a Siberian P.O.W. camp, steel, banking, and arms he began to “play” a Chopin piece on a wooden magnate, and his mother Leopoldine, brought box with his single hand, inventing ways for five nine children into the world. Paul was the fingers to encompass both melody and harmony. seventh child; the eighth was Ludwig, who After the war was over, Wittgenstein took became one of the leading philosophers of the what many would consider his greatest asset, twentieth century. family money, and commissioned more than The Wittgensteins were an obsessively a dozen pieces for piano left-hand from some musical family.