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, 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, 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- Wozzeck was one of his prized possessions.) ous” composers, from Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and to William efore the premiere, Gershwin told a Walton. He also renewed his friendship with reporter that An American in Paris was , 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- 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 ’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. Their palatial Viennese home of the world’s leading composers, including contained seven grand pianos (including two Maurice Ravel, Paul Hindemith, Benjamin Bösendorfer Imperials), and a grand statue of a Britten, , and Sergei Prokofiev. nude Beethoven towered over their Musiksaal. Wittgenstein wasn’t particularly fond of any of Brahms, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Mahler were the pieces he commissioned—it’s questionable only a few of the famous guests who climbed the why, given his conservative tastes, he approached marble staircase to join the family’s celebrated such modern-minded composers to begin with. gatherings. All the Wittgensteins “pursued music Shortly before he died he admitted that, of all with an enthusiasm that, at times, bordered the composers he asked, he felt closest to the on the pathological,” writes Alexander Waugh Austrian post-romantic Franz Schmidt. in his new book about the family, The House of Wittgenstein eventually came to regard Ravel’s Wittgenstein. Paul studied piano with Theodor concerto as a masterpiece, but only after living Leschetizky and made a successful debut in with it for some time and having words with the 1913. Early the next year, he enlisted in the composer. “It always takes me a while to grow Austrian army. A few months later, while serving into a difficult work,” Wittgenstein said later. “I on the Russian front, he was shot and seriously suppose Ravel was disappointed, and I was sorry,

COMPOSED MOST RECENT two bassoons and contrabassoon, 1929–30 CSO PERFORMANCES four horns, three trumpets, three November 5, 6, 7 & 10, 2009, Orchestra trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist, side drum, cymbals, bass drum, January 17, 1933; Paris, France Bernard Haitink conducting woodblock, tam-tam, harp, strings August 7, 2012, Ravinia Festival. FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES APPROXIMATE Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist, James February 15 & 16, 1945, Orchestra Hall. PERFORMANCE TIME Conlon conducting Robert Casadesus as soloist, Désiré 19 minutes Defauw conducting INSTRUMENTATION August 4, 1960, Ravinia Festival. solo piano, three flutes and piccolo, John Browning as soloist, William two oboes and english horn, two clar- Steinberg conducting inets, E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet,

4 but I had never learned to pretend. Only much later, after I’d studied the concerto for months, did I become fascinated by it and realize what a great work it was.” Ravel was already writing a piano concerto— the well-known one in G—when Wittgenstein’s commission arrived. He was intrigued by the challenge and set aside the other concerto for this one almost at once. He studied what little music he knew for left hand, including Saint-Saëns’s six studies and Leopold Goldovsky’s tran- scription of Chopin’s etudes (difficult music to begin with, now rendered virtually unplayable). Paul Wittgenstein He probably also knew Brahms’s transcription of J.S. Bach’s famous chaconne for violin and perhaps Scriabin’s Two Pieces for left hand, American food.) In a lecture he gave in Houston, op. 9. Ravel’s concerto is a real tour de force filled he said, with sounds that regularly suggest two hands at work. Although Wittgenstein criticized the way May this national American music of yours Ravel played it, it’s not clear that Wittgenstein’s embody a great deal of the rich and diverting interpretation was significantly better (his two rhythm of your jazz, a great deal of the emo- recordings are not completely convincing). tional expression in your blues, and a great Ravel admitted to his publisher that deal of the sentiment and spirit characteristic of your popular melodies and songs, worthily planning the two piano concertos simulta- deriving from, and in turn contributing to, a neously was an interesting experience. The noble heritage in music. one in which I shall appear as the interpreter is a concerto in the truest sense of the he concerto is one long movement, with word: I mean that it is written very much an opening slow section followed by an in the same spirit as those of Mozart and allegro. As Ravel promised, it’s a serious Saint-Saëns. . . . The concerto for the left work,T particularly compared to his other con- hand alone is very different. It contains many certo, but hardly solemn. After much orchestral jazz effects, and the writing is not so light. fanfare, the piano enters with a virtuosic cadenza; In a work of this kind, it is essential to give Ravel described it as an improvisation, although the impression of a texture no thinner than as with all things in Ravel, it’s meticulously that of a part written for both hands. For worked out. This is followed by music recalling the same reason, I resorted to a style that is the nights he spent in American jazz clubs. much nearer to that of the more solemn kind “Only gradually,” Ravel wrote, “is one aware of traditional concerto. that the jazz episode is actually built up from the themes of the first section.” It’s clear from Ravel’s Ravel picked up his jazz effects on his 1928 trip melodies that he has learned all about blue notes, to the United States, where he met bandleader just as, in La valse and the Valses nobles et senti- Paul Whiteman and spent several nights visiting mentales, the quintessential Frenchman wrote jazz clubs in Harlem with George Gershwin. perfect Viennese waltzes. The final cadenza (He also conducted the Chicago Symphony provides spectacular ripples of arpeggios and in January and continually complained about a singing melody, all with just five fingers.

5 Igor Stravinsky Born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum, . Died April 6, 1971, New York City. Jeu de cartes, Ballet in Three Deals

Igor Stravinsky stood on German casino, at any rate—the long rows the Orchestra Hall stage of tables at which people played baccarat or in January 1935 to conduct bezique, roulca or faro, as now in the bowels the Chicago premieres of of ocean liners they play bingo—is still a and The Fairy’s vivid memory. I remember now, too, and Kiss, as well as his popular remembered when I composed the music, ballet scores for Petrushka the “trombone” voice with which the master and . While he of ceremonies at one of these spas would was in America that announce a new game. “Ein neues Spiel, ein winter, Stravinsky talked neues Glück” [A new game, a new chance], with Lincoln Kirstein and Edward Warburg he would say, and the rhythm and instru- about writing a new work for the recently formed mentation of the theme with which each of American Ballet and its choreographer, George the three “deals” of my ballet begins are an Balanchine. The subject, they all agreed, was echo or imitation of the tempo, timbre, and Stravinsky’s choice. The composer recalls: indeed the whole character of that invitation.

More than a decade prior to the composition Stravinsky wrote The Card Game after he of Jeu de cartes [The card game], I became returned to Paris. The score was finished in aware of an idea for a ballet in which danc- November 1936 and sent off to Balanchine. By ers, dressed as playing cards, would perform the time Stravinsky came back to America early against a gaming-table backdrop of green in 1937, Balanchine had completed the first baize. I have always been interested in card two deals. Lincoln Kirstein remembered how games (and in cartomancy, too), and I have Stravinsky would “appear punctually at rehears- been a cardplayer all my life, since I first als and stay on for six hours. In the evenings, played durachki as a child. While composing he would take the pianist home with him and Jeu de cartes, poker was a favorite pastime work further on the tempos.” He sometimes in the rest periods between composition, suggested a few well-considered changes in but the origins of the ballet, in the sense of the choreography, and once even wrote a bit of the attraction of the subject, antedate my additional music to accommodate Balanchine’s knowledge of card games. They are probably ideas. But he didn’t like the costumes inspired to be traced back to childhood holidays by elaborate tarot card designs: “I insisted that at German spas; my first impression of a the artist copy some contemporary and very

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1936 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME June 29, 1971, Ravinia Festival. Bruno 22 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Maderna conducting April 27, 1937; New York City. The CSO RECORDING January 31, February 1 & 2, composer conducting 1993. Sir Georg Solti. London 2002, Orchestra Hall. Daniele Gatti conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES February 22, 23 & 27, 1940, Orchestra INSTRUMENTATION Hall. The composer conducting two flutes and piccolo, two oboes July 22, 1956, Ravinia Festival. Georg and english horn, two clarinets, two Solti conducting bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, strings 6 ordinary playing cards from the JEU DE CARTES: THE BALLET SCENARIO corner drugstore.” Stravinsky conducted the first Although the music to Stravinsky’s ballet is continuous, the following break- down of the action may help those who wish to follow the game play by play. performance, which was given at the old DEAL 1 DEAL 2 DEAL 3 House. The Card Game was a Introduction Introduction Introduction success, both for Stravinsky Pas d’action March (Hearts Waltz-Minuet and Balanchine. Stravinsky Dance of the Joker and Spades) Presto (Combat claimed to remember little of Waltz-Coda Four Solo for between Spades the evening, “probably because the Four Queens (in the and Hearts) order Hearts, Diamonds, Final Dance (Triumph I was conducting and my nose Clubs, Spades) was in the score.” His music of the Hearts) Variation of the Four didn’t fail to make a favorable Queens (pas de quatre) impression, with its witty and Coda allusions to Ravel, Tchaikovsky, March and Ensemble Beethoven, and a particularly cheeky reference to the overture to The Barber of Seville near the end of the third the perfidious Joker, who believes himself deal. Shortly after the premiere, the composer invincible because of his ability to become any went to California, where he was, by all accounts, desired card. thrilled to meet Charlie Chaplin. The next time During the first deal, one of the players Stravinsky came to Chicago, in February 1940, is beaten, but the other two remain with he led the Chicago Symphony in its first perfor- even “straights,” although one of them holds mances of The Card Game. the Joker. The official synopsis according to In the second deal, the hand that holds the Stravinsky follows. Joker is victorious, thanks to four Aces who easily beat four Queens. Igor Stravinsky on The Card Game Now comes the third deal. The action becomes more and more acute. This time it is a struggle he characters in this ballet are the chief between three “flushes.” Although at first victo- cards in a game of poker, disputed rious over one adversary, the Joker, strutting at between several players on the green the head of a sequence of Spades, is beaten by a cloth of a card room. At each deal the situation is “Royal Flush” in Hearts. This puts an end to his T complicated by the endless guiles of malice and knavery.

7 Maurice Ravel La valse (Choreographic poem for orchestra)

In 1911, Ravel’s Valses Ravel finished La valse in 1920. It wasn’t nobles et sentimentales were what Diaghilev expected and he refused to stage intended as a loving it: “. . . this is not a ballet; it is a portrait of a tribute to the “useless ballet, it is a painting of a ballet.” The two men occupation” of social never worked together again. Nonetheless, Ravel dancing. By 1919, when published the piece as a “choreographic poem for he wrote La valse, the orchestra,” and it was finally danced in Antwerp world was a changed in 1926 and in Paris in 1928 by Ida Rubinstein’s place, and after the war troupe, which also gave the premiere of Boléro the public had lost just two days later. patience with mere frivolity. The first page of the score is marked “mou- La valse is not the piece Ravel planned vement de Valse viennoise.” The music is a to write. In 1906, he began to sketch Wien masterful evocation of the evasions and collisions (Vienna), a tribute to Johann Strauss, Jr. between a brilliant surface and dangerous under- and “. . . a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese currents. Ravel provided a brief scenario: waltz, with which is mingled in my mind the idea of the fantastic whirl of destiny.” This is still Swirling clouds afford glimpses, through true of the music Ravel finally composed in 1919, rifts, of waltzing couples. The clouds at the request of the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. scatter little by little; one can distinguish an But fate now made the waltz a bitter reminder immense hall with a whirling crowd. The of a vanished era and newsreels showed that scene grows progressively brighter. The light Vienna was no longer a city in its glory. Due to of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortis- widespread famine, in 1918 the official daily food simo. An imperial court, about 1855. rations there were 5.8 ounces of bread, 1.2 ounces of flour, 1.6 ounces of meat, 0.175 ounces of fat, 0.9 ounces of sugar, and 2.45 ounces of potatoes per person. That year, a flu epidemic broke out, killing the painter Gustav Klimt, the architect Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Otto Wagner, and Freud’s daughter Sophie. Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

COMPOSED May 23, 2012, Orchestra Hall. David APPROXIMATE 1919–20 Robertson conducting PERFORMANCE TIME 13 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE CSO PERFORMANCES, THE December 12, 1920; Paris, France COMPOSER CONDUCTING CSO RECORDINGS January 20 & 21, 1928, Orchestra Hall 1960. Fritz Reiner. CSO (Chicago FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Symphony Orchestra: The First March 9 & 10, 1923. Frederick INSTRUMENTATION 100 Years) Stock conducting three flutes and piccolo, three oboes 1967. Jean Martinon. RCA and english horn, two clarinets and July 5, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Ernest bass clarinet, two bassoons and 1976. Sir Georg Solti. CSO (From the Ansermet conducting contrabassoon, four horns, three Archives, vol. 4: A Tribute to Solti) trumpets, three trombones, tuba, MOST RECENT timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, CSO PERFORMANCES snare drum, castanets, tam-tam, July 25, 2010, Ravinia Festival. antique cymbals, two harps, strings Christoph Eschenbach conducting

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