Program

One Hundred Twenty-Third Season Chicago Symphony 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, April 24, 2014, at 8:00 Saturday, April 26, 2014, at 8:00

Sir Mark Elder Conductor Richard Goode Piano Ives Symphony No. 2 Andante moderato Allegro Adagio cantabile Lento maestoso— Allegro molto vivace

Intermission

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 Allegro Adagio Allegro assai Richard Goode

Strauss Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28

Saturday’s concert is sponsored by Allstate Insurance Company. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. CommEntS by Jan Swaff ord Phillip huscher

Charles Ives Born October 20, 1874, Danbury, Connecticut. Died May 19, 1954, New York City. Symphony no. 2

Often in viewing a given around Danbury town common playing diff erent artist, there is a tendency tunes to hear what it sounded like as they neared to assume that they are and passed. Once a Civil War bandmaster, always the same creator: George taught his son that the music of the war Beethoven always was profoundly connected to the hearts and souls Beethoven, Brahms of the people who heard and sung and played always Brahms. Th e it: soldiers singing the sentimental “Tenting reality is that every artist Tonight on the Old Camp Ground” on the night undergoes an evolution, before battle. and often requires a From his father, Charles learned that any journey of years to fi nd a voice with distinctive music, if done earnestly and authentically, was rhymes and reasons. Mahler and Brahms found a refl ection of the deepest feelings, a symbol of their voices fairly early; for Beethoven, it was a the human soul. At the same time, George Ives much longer journey to arrive at the personality told his teenaged son (surely the fi rst time any that fashioned the Eroica. budding composer had been told this) that any ’s path to maturity was particularly harmony whatever was acceptable if you knew long and diffi cult, because from early on he was what you were doing with it. Th ese ideas, work- dealing with unprecedented musical ideas and ing on the sensibility of a prodigious born talent, had no guidelines anywhere to help him. Th e goes far to explain how Ives’s music turned out as foundation of his musical experience was equally it did. Added to these experiences was the excit- late-romantic concert music by Brahms, Dvořák, ing new popular style called ragtime, which Ives Tchaikovsky, et al., and, at the same time, the absorbed and eventually integrated into his work. kind of church and community music he grew up Meanwhile, during the 1890s, while Ives was at with as the son of a small-town bandmaster. He Yale, Antonin Dvořák was in America calling for was a prodigy organist who played in churches the country to fi nd its own national voice on the from age fourteen. concert stage; he wrote the New World Symphony At the same time, Charles Ives inherited as an example of how to do it. from his father George an experimental attitude toward the materials of music. George Ives, a ves resonated with all these sometimes con- sort of Yankee tinker in sound, built gadgets to fl icting infl uences, but his integration of them play quarter tones, tried to capture the timbre of in his work did not come easily or quickly. a church bell on piano, and marched two bands IFor years, starting in his teens in the 1880s and ComPoSED moSt rECEnt CSo PErFormanCE aPProXImatE 1901–1910, frequently revised July 7, 1984, Ravinia Festival. James PErFormanCE tImE Levine conducting 37 minutes FIrSt PErFormanCE February 22, 1951, New york City InStrUmEntatIon two fl utes and piccolo, two oboes, two FIrSt CSo PErFormanCES clarinets, two bassoons and contrabas- August 8, 1959, Ravinia Festival. walter soon, four horns, two trumpets, three hendl conducting trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, bass drum, strings May 21, 22 & 24, 1981, orchestra hall. Michael Tilson Thomas conducting

2 during his musical studies at Yale, he wrote pieces For Ives, the Second was another brilliant in two streams: smaller works experimenting one-off, a way station after which he moved with radical techniques including polytonality, on. It has a full measure of distinctively Ivesian , dissonant counterpoint, effects of elements, but its tonal and formal world is close space, and the like; and large pieces including the to the conventions of its day. It begins with a First Symphony and First String Quartet—both brooding fugue recalling Bach, and, in its tone, begun at Yale—that were far more conservative perhaps Brahms. An animated middle section and clearly related to the music of their time: again suggests Bachian counterpoint. Before Dvořák , Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and so on. Yet, the final return of the fugue, we get a bit of if the more conservative pieces were eclectic in “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” which will style and not particularly prophetic, they were make a memorable appearance in the finale. still marked with Ives’s personality, and all of Already this short movement shows Ives’s them are striking, often delightful, sometimes game in the symphony: the fugue theme is subtly moving works, each with a distinctive voice. based on a bit Ives finally united his experimental and nation- of Stephen alistic side with large pieces that in spirit rose Foster’s song from the great European tradition. They include “Down in de the Fourth Symphony and Concord Sonata. These Cornfield”; and the other works of his maturity starting the animated around 1908 were largely made of portraits of section on the events in home and community: church services, old fiddle tune holidays, parades, parlor music, train journeys, “Pigtown modern urban life, the exaltation of the individ- Fling.” In this ual heart and soul in nature. To that end, much symphony, of their material is American tunes, from gospel Ives is going hymns to marches to Victorian parlor songs to to be con- Civil War melodies. cerned with unifying the he Second Symphony, more or less voice of the Stephen Foster, whose songs were finished in 1902, was an important way American an inspiration for Ives station on Ives’s journey in a direction he people with didT not yet fully understand. At the same time, the European it is one of the most significant landmarks in the tradition, and the prime inspiration of the whole history of American music—a landmark with symphony is the songs of Stephen Foster. a sort of sad asterisk. It is the first symphonic The second movement begins with a jaunty work in history with a manifestly American lilt, the theme recalling the Civil War song voice, prophetic of the “Americana” music Aaron “Wake Nicodemus.” Here, as in most of his Copland and others would be writing twenty-five music, Ives often builds his own “new” themes years later. At the same time, the Second had no on a foundation of old ones, the connections influence at all on the country’s music, because it ranging from clear to subtle. For a whimsical was not heard until Leonard Bernstein pre- touch, the wistfully pretty second theme in this miered it in 1951. When he wrote the Second sonata-form movement is the Dartmouth student Symphony, Ives was an obscure young insurance song “Where, Oh Where, are the Pea-Green clerk and church organist in Manhattan writing Freshmen?” The development section features a a great deal of music that remained unheard warmly beautiful incursion of the hymn “When until the 1920s; the large works emerged only I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and a quite sporadically in the decades after that. The literal eruption of Brahms’s First, like a window climax of the discovery period came in 1965, opened onto the past and quickly shut. Here over a decade after Ives died, with Leopold is another aspect of the Second’s integration Stokowski’s premiere of the Fourth Symphony. of Europe and America: an occasional burst of

3 Brahms, Tchaikovsky, et al., breaking into the The coda, announced by “Reveille” in the American stream. Ives himself later groaned trumpets, is a grand summation of themes over this aspect of the symphony (“it was sort of from the symphony, most of it carried by the a joke, and not a very good one”), but it is still brass. The leading voice is “Columbia, the part of the symphony’s distinctive personality, its Gem of the Ocean” played by trombones as singular integration of old and new. loud as possible. The professionally copied The ABA third movement was written at Yale, final manuscript of the symphony is lost. The originally intended for the First Symphony. Its sketches reveal that Ives was searching for an tone is surging and passionate, high-romantic, ending more appropriate than the traditional and there are some ingenuously earnest perora- final home-key chord or unison. In the 1940s, tions on “America the Beautiful.” The Lento he sketched in the now-famous final chord, maestoso fifth movement is an extended intro- a brassy dissonant yawp. duction to the finale, beginning with the horns Many assume that the final chord is the older recalling the fugue theme of the first movement, Ives giving a raspberry to convention, but he which is contrapuntally spun out before the pointed out that at the end of an evening of return of the “Pigtown Fling” theme. square dancing in New England, the fiddlers Then, Ives applies the spurs. The finale erupts (usually sitting by the cider keg and showing with a racing and ebullient fiddle tune, again the effects) would play a dissonant chord across built on Foster songs including unmistakable the strings to indicate the music was over. So bits of “Camptown Races.” In the movement, the the ending of the Second Symphony is another structure has a quality of constantly turning on a bit of Ivesian realism, another demonstration dime, with quick cuts almost like film scenes. An of his concern with the life of communities and example is the fife-and-drum corps that breaks their music, and their connections to the heart into the end of the first theme section (we’re back and soul. in old-fashioned sonata form). The gentle second theme recalls Foster’s “Old Black Joe.” —Jan Swafford

4 Wolfgang mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Piano Concerto no. 23 in a major, K. 488

From 1782, the year after Mozart in the least. Th roughout the winter, he moved to Vienna, until he kept to his regular routine of teaching and 1786, Mozart wrote performing, while also maintaining a full social fi fteen piano concertos. calendar. Th e only activity that seems to have Th at’s an incredible suff ered was his correspondence, so we have only outpouring of important a sketchy account of his daily life at the time. music and it corresponds precisely to Mozart’s ozart entered the A major piano heyday as a performer. concerto (K. 488) in his catalog Th ese concertos were his on March 2, 1786, only a month main performing vehicles—as well as his primary Mafter the one-act comic opera, Th e I m p r e s a r o; i source of income—and time has placed them just three weeks before the famous C minor among the crowning glories of all music. Th ere’s concerto (K. 491); and less than two months little else in all Mozart’s output, aside from the before Th e Marriage of Figaro.Although it’s great operas, to compare with the magnifi cence, not documented, Mozart probably performed subtlety, and consistent brilliance of these scores, the A major concerto at one of the Vienna and in no other works did Mozart so ingeniously Lenten concerts a few days after fi nishing it. merge the symphonic, operatic, and chamber Th is and the other two concertos of the Figaro music styles into a uniquely personal language winter are the fi rst in Mozart’s output to call for of expression. clarinets. (Sketches show that Mozart started In the winter of 1785–86, Mozart wrote three writing this A major concerto as early as 1784 piano concertos while he also worked on Th e with oboes instead.) Mozart begins as if he were Marriage of Figaro. Th is was the most productive following the conventional recipe for a classical period of his life, and the only reasonable way to concerto (which is totally unlike him), but then, explain the enormous and varied output of these after a few pages, he proceeds to ignore nearly six months is to assume that the intense work on every subsequent instruction. Th e result is the the complicated musical and dramatic structures kind of risky—though not reckless—creation of Figaro set his mind racing with more ideas known only to the very greatest chefs and than a single four-act opera could contain. It has composers. Th e tone of the entire movement been suggested that the purely mechanical task is generous and warmly lyrical, although, as of writing it all down would produce only six in the duet in the same key between the count full pages per day. Neither that challenge, nor and Susanna in act 3 of Figaro, there’s still the infi nitely greater one of conceiving so much room for mischief, doubt, and the thrill of glorious music, appears to have inconvenienced imminent danger.

ComPoSED moSt rECEnt CaDEnZaS entered in catalog March 2, 1786 CSo PErFormanCES Mozart March 31 & April 2, 2011, orchestra FIrSt PErFormanCE hall. Louis Lortie as soloist, Kurt aPProXImatE probably spring of 1786; Vienna, Masur conducting PErFormanCE tImE Austria. The composer as soloist 26 minutes InStrUmEntatIon FIrSt CSo PErFormanCES solo piano, one fl ute, two clarinets, two december 10 & 11, 1920, orchestra bassoons, two horns, strings hall. harold Bauer as soloist, Frederick Stock conducting

5 Mozart marks the slow movement adagio because of its tempo or key (it’s his only work instead of the more common andante—what in F-sharp minor), but also because it unlocks a he has to tragic power that won’t surface in music again say can’t be until Beethoven. The wind writing is particu- rushed. This larly expressive, and the piano solo is as simple magnificent and haunting as any slow aria. Even in Figaro, and justly with its celebrated mixture of laughter and famous tears, there’s scarcely a moment that plunges so music stands deeply into the heart. The finale, a buoyant and alone among delightful rondo, brings us back to A major, and, all Mozart after the Adagio’s revelations, it sounds like the concerto happiest key on earth. movements, not only —Phillip Huscher

Mozart’s Walter clavier, which now stands in the Geburtshaus, Salzburg. The instrument, built by the Viennese maker Anton Walter in 1780, was purchased by Mozart in 1784.

6 richard Strauss Born June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany. Died September 8, 1949, Garmisch, Germany. Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, op. 28

Had Strauss’s fi rst opera, Ferruccio Busoni once said that in Till Guntram, succeeded as he Eulenspiegel Strauss reached a mastery of light- hoped, he surely would ness and humor unrivaled in German music have gone ahead with his since Haydn. Th e humor wasn’t so surprising— plan to make Till although some listeners had found the deep Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks seriousness of Death and Transfi guration, Strauss’s his second. But Guntram previous tone poem, worrisome—but to achieve was a major disappoint- such transparency with an orchestra of unparal- ment and Strauss recon- leled size seemed miraculous. sidered. We’ll never know At the time of the premiere of Till Eulenspiegel, what sort of opera Till Eulenspiegel might have Strauss resisted fi tting a narrative to his music, been—the unfi nished libretto isn’t promising— but he later admitted a few points of reference. but as a tone poem it’s close to perfection. He begins by beckoning us to gather round, Th e failure of Guntram hurt—Strauss wasn’t setting a warm “once-upon-a-time” mood used to bad reviews or public indiff erence. Now, into which the horn jumps with one of the more than ever, he refused to give up on his most famous themes in all music—the teas- hero, Till Eulenspiegel, an incorrigible prank- ing cart-wheeling tune that characterizes this ster with a contempt for humanity, who sets roguish hero better than any well-chosen words out to get even with society. (Th ere was a real ever could. Th e portrait is rounded off by the Till Eulenspiegel who lived in the fourteenth nose-thumbing pranks of the clarinet. century.) But Strauss was no longer certain that From there the music simply explodes, as the opera stage was the best place to tell this the orchestra responds to Till’s every move. story—“the fi gure of Master Till Eulenspiegel When he dons the frock of a priest, the music does not quite appear before my eyes,” he fi nally turns mock-serious; when he escapes, down a confessed—and he returned to the vehicle of his handy violin glissando, in search of love, Strauss greatest past successes, the orchestral tone poem. supplies sumptuous string harmonies Don Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks is arguably his Juan would envy. Rejected in love, Till takes greatest achievement in the form. on academia, but his cavalier remarks and the

ComPoSED InStrUmEntatIon CSo rECorDIngS 1894–95 three fl utes and piccolo, three oboes 1940. Frederick Stock conducting. CSo and english horn, two clarinets, (Chicago Symphony Orchestra: The First FIrSt PErFormanCE clarinet in d and bass clarinet, 100 Years) November 5, 1895; Cologne, Germany three bassoons and contrabassoon, 1957. Fritz Reiner conducting. CSo four horns, three trumpets, three (From the Archives, vol. 11: The Reiner FIrSt CSo PErFormanCES trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, Era II) November 15 & 16, 1895, Auditorium bass drum, cymbals, triangle, large Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting rattle, strings 1975. Sir Georg Solti conducting. (u.S. premiere) London aPProXImatE 1977. Sir Georg Solti conducting. moSt rECEnt PErFormanCE tImE London (video) CSo PErFormanCES 16 minutes october 3, 2009, orchestra hall. Paavo 1990. daniel Barenboim conducting. Järvi conducting erato September 16, 2010, Benito Juárez 1995. Pierre Boulez conducting. CSo Community Academy. Carlos Miguel (From the Archives, vol. 19: A Tribute to Prieto conducting Pierre Boulez)

7 After a quick review of recent escapades—a recapitulation of sorts—Till is brought before a jury (the pounding of the gavel is provided by the fff roll of the side drum). The judge’s repeated pronouncements do not quiet Till’s insolent remarks. But the death sentence—announced by the brass, falling the interval of a major seventh, the widest possible drop short of an octave—silences him for good. It’s over in a flash. Then Strauss turns the page, draws us round him once again, and reminds us that this is only a tone poem. And with a smile, he closes the book.

—Phillip Huscher

Till Eulenspiegel’s “street ditty” in a 1944 autograph copy of the score made for “Till’s fiftieth birthday” professors’ ponderous deliberations (intoned by the bassoons and bass clarinet) find no common ground. Till departs with a Grosse Grimasse Jan Swafford is a composer and writer and author of (Strauss’s term) that rattles the entire orchestra, Charles Ives: A Life with Music. and then slips out the back way, whistling as Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago he goes. Symphony Orchestra.

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