Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Music Director
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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 Tuesday, May 15, 2012, at 1:30 Thursday, May 17, 2012, at 8:00 Jaap van Zweden Conductor gene Pokorny Tuba Shostakovich Chamber Symphony for Strings in C Minor, Op. 110a Largo— Allegro molto— Allegretto— Largo— Largo Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto Prelude: Allegro moderato Romanza: Andante sostenuto Finale (Rondo all tedesca): Allegro Gene POkORny IntermISSIon Beethoven Symphony no. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 Poco sostenuto—Vivace Allegretto Presto Allegro con brio This evening’s concert is generously sponsored in part by the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation. Wednesday, May 16, 2012, at 6:30 (Afterwork Masterworks, performed with no intermission) Jaap van Zweden Conductor gene Pokorny Tuba Shostakovich Chamber Symphony for Strings in C Minor, Op. 110a Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto in F Minor Beethoven Symphony no. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBBM Newsradio 780 and 105.9 FM for its generous support as the media sponsor for the Afterwork Masterworks series. 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 Dmitri Shostakovich Born September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia. Chamber Symphony for Strings in C minor, op. 110a n the summer of 1960, in just three days, is his Eighth, IShostakovich went to Dresden to and it is one of the most powerful write the score for a new film by the and personal works of twentieth- director Lev Arnshtam. Five Days, century art—a score that, behind Five Nights tells the story of eight its dark and troubled façade, is Soviet soldiers who are charged unmistakably autobiographical—a with tracking down the priceless true measure of life. Dresden art treasures stolen by the Publicly, Shostakovich said the Nazis under orders from Goebbels. quartet was inspired by the sight of The film, Arnshtam later told Dresden—“He walked among the The New York Times, focuses on a ruins of Dresden, shaken by the German painter, wounded during scenes of devastation,” Arnshtam combat, “who feels that art should remembered—and that he decided depict suffering and therefore a to dedicate the score to “the memory measure of life.” of the victims of fascism and war,” “Everything there was very a line that ran atop the published well set up for me to work,” score. But his letter to Glikman tells Shostakovich wrote to his lifelong another side of the story: friend, the Leningrad literary critic Isaak Glikman, as soon I’ve been thinking that when as he returned from Dresden. I die, it’s hardly likely that “Conditions for composing were anybody will ever write a work ideal . However, try as I might dedicated to my memory. I was unable to compose the film So I have decided to write music, even in rough. And instead one myself. The dedication I wrote a quartet that’s of no use could be printed on the cover: to anybody and full of ideologi- “Dedicated to the memory of cal flaws.” The quartet, composed the composer of this quartet.” ComPoSeD onlY PreVIouS CSo InStrumentatIon 1960, as String Quartet PerformanCeS strings no. 8. Arrangement for March 6-8, 2008, Orchestra string orchestra by Rudolf Hall. Sir John eliot aPProxImate barshai and approved Gardiner conducting PerformanCe tIme by Shostakovich 22 minutes 2 The autobiographical nature of The first movement, a mea- the music was hardly secret, for, as sured elegy, is a fugato based Shostakovich told Glikman, the entirely on the four-note motif of main theme of the quartet, boldly Shostakovich’s musical monogram, stated in the opening measures interrupted by fragments of his and woven into nearly every page First Symphony. The brutal force of of the score, consists of his initials, the second movement—it inter- D, S, C, H [see sidebar, below]. rupts the opening Largo without Anyone who knew Shostakovich’s warning—recalls the composer’s catalog would also recognize, famous war music, particularly that scattered throughout the quartet, of the Eighth Symphony, and con- quotations from his other works, cludes with the great surging theme including his First Symphony, his from one of his most celebrated breakaway composition written works, the Second Piano Trio. The thirty-five years earlier; the opera middle movement is a sour waltz, a Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which kind of dance of death. The fourth had famously invoked Stalin’s is an amazing collage—the opening fury in 1936; and the First Cello chords, like gunshots, recalling the Concerto, composed for Mstislav grand, slashing chords of Siegfried’s Rostropovich just one year before funeral march; a haunting melody the quartet. sung by Katerina in Lady Macbeth of “The pseudo-tragic side of this Mtsensk; hints of the Dies irae chant quartet,” Shostakovich wrote to for the dead; a popular Russian folk Glikman, “is so powerful that when dirge, “Tormented by Grievous I was writing it, tears flowed as Bondage,” which ends, pointedly, freely as water passed after a few with Shostakovich’s own initials beers. Since coming home, I’ve lightly etched in the music. The last tried to play it through twice, but movement, slow and desolate yet again the tears started flowing.” filled with intimate asides, is too Written as five connected move- numb even for recollection—there ments, the quartet as a whole is a are no quotations here, just the hol- kind of lament. low sound of inconsolable sorrow. ShoStakoVICh’S muSICal monogram in several compositions, Violin Concerto of 1948, transliteration of the beginning with the First Shostakovich spells out composer’s own name, his initials d. SCHostakowitsch. in in musical German notation, e-flat is notation. called “es” and b-natural is This four- H. Thus, dSCH is d, e-flat, C, note motif b. The tradition for this kind is derived of musical signature dates from the back at least to the time German of bach. 3 The entire quartet has the years after that summer, the Eighth sense of a confession, or, perhaps, String Quartet was performed to more appropriately, a requiem. honor the memory of the com- According to Shostakovich’s friend poser, as Shostakovich himself had Lev Lebedinsky, the composer prophesied. “It was his farewell to was so distraught after he returned life,” Lebedinsky said later. from Dresden with the finished In the Suite on Verses of quartet in his luggage that he Michelangelo Buonarroti, com- bought a bottle of sleeping pills, pleted shortly before his death, talked about suicide, and spoke Shostakovich set these words by the of the score as his last work. sixteenth-century artist: (Lebedinsky removed the pills and gave them to the composer’s I am as though dead son Maxim.) After a few days, his But as a comfort to the world spirits lifted; he eventually returned With thousands of souls, to the routines of his daily life— I live on and to writing music, including In the hearts of all the incidental music for Five Days, loving people. Five Nights. That means I am not dust, The day of Shostakovich’s Mortal decay does not funeral, in August 1975, fifteen touch me. 4 ralph Vaughan Williams Born October 12, 1872, Gloucestershire, England. Died August 26, 1958, London, England. tuba Concerto rom the beginning of his enhanced his understanding of Fcareer, in the first years of the color and sonority, only served to twentieth century, Ralph Vaughan sharpen his own individual style Williams was seen as a composer and to ground him more firmly in rooted in the past. His first signifi- the sensibilities of his musical heri- cant large-scale work, the Fantasia tage. (Years later, Ravel would call on a Theme of Thomas Tallis com- him “the only one of my pupils who posed in 1910, is indebted to the does not write my music.”) In fact, music of his sixteenth-century pre- Vaughan Williams was one of the decessor and to the great English first composers of the new century tradition. His entire upbringing who managed to forge a strong was steeped in tradition—he personal style almost exclusively was related both to the pottery from the materials of the past. “My Wedgwoods and Charles Darwin. advice to young composers,” he (“The Bible says that God made the wrote, “is learn your own language world in six days,” his mother told first, find out your own traditions, him. “Great Uncle Charles thinks it discover what you want to do.” took longer: but we need not worry Despite his reputation as a about it, for it is equally wonderful traditionalist, in the last decade of either way.”) He became a serious his life Vaughan William showed student of English folk song and a great interest in unusual instru- edited the English Hymnal. ments and sonorities, and in shin- Even the experience of studying ing the spotlight on instruments with Ravel in 1908, which clearly not known for their solo roles. In ComPoSeD moSt reCent aPProxImate 1953–54 CSo PerformanCe PerformanCe tIme december 11, 1978 (Special 12 minutes fIrSt PerformanCe concert) Orchestra Hall. June 13, 1954, London, Arnold Jacobs, tuba; Henry CSo reCorDIngS england Mazer conducting 1977. Arnold Jacobs, tuba; daniel barenboim conduct- fIrSt CSo InStrumentatIon ing. deutsche Grammophon PerformanCe solo tuba, two flutes and A 1978 performance with January 27, 1968 (Popular piccolo, oboe, two clarinets, Arnold Jacobs, tuba, and concert), Orchestra Hall.