Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director

Home , Anton Bruckner, Das Lied von der Erde

PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH 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, October 8, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, October 9, 2015, at 1:30 Tuesday, October 13, 2015, at 7:30

Semyon Bychkov Conductor Renaud Capuçon Violin Glanert Brahms-Fantasie United States premiere

Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 Allegro non troppo Adagio Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace RENAUD CAPUÇON

INTERMISSION

Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 Un poco sostenuto—Allegro Andante sostenuto Un poco allegretto e grazioso Adagio—Allegro non troppo, ma con brio

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

Detlev Glanert Born September 6, 1960, Hamburg, Germany. Brahms-Fantasie, Heliogravure for Orchestra

For Detlev Glanert, the Glanert has visited the world of Brahms’s great Germanic musical music before, with his 2004 orchestration of the tradition is not a burden Four Serious Songs, where he not only enhanced but an invitation to new Brahms’s songs with full orchestral colors realms of understanding. (without changing a note of Brahms’s scores) but Glanert, who began to added his own preludes between them—a perfect study composition at the demonstration of the balanced concern for both age of twelve in his native tradition and innovation that characterizes the Hamburg, moved to newer Brahms-Fantasie. “We hear Brahms, yet Cologne in the mid-1980s don’t hear him,” Glanert says of the piece. “We to work with Hans Werner Henze, the often hear my music, yet it isn’t entirely my music.” highly political German opera composer, who In that sense, this is one of his most advanced has remained a guiding spirit throughout his efforts yet in his quest to inhabit the musical career. Like Henze’s output, many of Glanert’s worlds of the past and the present at the same works are commentaries on the music of the past. time. Glanert subtitles the piece “Heliogravure His Symphony no. 1—one of his earliest compo- for Orchestra,” referring to the two-part photo- sitions, written in 1985—is an exploration of graphic process in which the original image is Mahler’s vast symphonic landscape and even painted over and transformed by the artist. The quotes from Das Lied von der Erde. “A symphony result is a kind of musical palimpsest, in which of today can only be a discussion of the sympho- strands of Brahms—the powerful opening of the nies of yesterday,” he once said. Mahler/Skizze, First Symphony, snatches of Hungarian waltzes, composed four years later, was inspired by a visit rigorous counterpoint, the composer’s signature to Mahler’s grave. three-against-two rhythmic patterns—weave The Brahms-Fantasie performed this week in and out of Glanert’s score. Glanert calls it “a offers another way of viewing the past in light picture puzzle, music about music, a mind game, of the present day. Although Glanert’s purely and a fantasy along alien, yet familiar paths.” orchestral works often are satellite scores related to his large music theater pieces— his Brahms-Fantasie reflects the compos- Theatrum bestiarum, given its U.S. premiere er’s career-long belief that all music has by the Chicago Symphony in May 2010, is “to be connected to the life of people.” intimately tied to his opera Caligula—his TheT fantasy is meant for listeners who have heard Brahms-Fantasie is an independent score. It is music that Brahms did not—the daring and one of four works commissioned by the BBC adventurous explorations of the twentieth cen- Scottish Symphony to serve as short companion tury that Arnold Schoenberg provocatively said pieces for Brahms’s four symphonies. Glanert’s were already latent in the seemingly traditional offering—the last of the four to be composed— music of Brahms himself. For Glanert, all music, was designed to be performed on the same including the revered classics, “must tell you program as Brahms’s First Symphony, as it is something about your life and something about this week in Chicago. what you are. . . . If it does not, it will die.”

COMPOSED These are the United States four horns, two trumpets, three 2012 premiere performances. trombones, timpani, strings

FIRST PERFORMANCE INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE March 22, 2012; Glasgow, Scotland two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, PERFORMANCE TIME two bassoons and contrabassoon, 12 minutes 2 Johannes Brahms Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany. Died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria. Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77

Joseph Joachim and The violin concerto was sketched during a sum- Johannes Brahms became mer holiday at Pörtschach in 1878, just across the instant friends when they lake from the country house where Alban Berg met in May 1853. Both would write his violin concerto nearly sixty years men were in their early later. Brahms picked the key of D major (the twenties, and although tonality of the Second Symphony he had recently Brahms was an unknown, finished) and planned the concerto in four with all his greatest music movements, an unprecedented scheme. While still to come, Joachim was composing, Brahms often turned to Joachim for already a celebrity—the technical advice about the solo part—Joachim most brilliant and promising violinist around. not only knew the instrument’s capabilities better Joachim described Brahms as “pure as a dia- than anyone, but also was a gifted composer mond, soft as snow,” reminding us that the himself. (When they met in 1853, Joachim was composer’s familiar portly figure and bushy beard the more accomplished composer; Brahms used were later acquisitions. With music as their bond, to let him see everything he wrote, seeking both they became close—confiding secrets, enjoying criticism and encouragement.) It was Brahms’s each other’s company, and sharing the things own decision to abandon the four-movement they loved. It was Joachim who insisted that design and to replace the two inner movements Brahms meet the Schumanns, a visit that with a single adagio. (The leftover scherzo may changed the young composer’s life—Robert have been salvaged for the four-movement B-flat wrote his last critic’s column to introduce Brahms piano concerto Brahms put aside in order to work to the public, and Clara became a confidante and on this concerto.) He was still making further a valued colleague, if not more. adjustments after the first performance, in It was simply a matter of time before Brahms Leipzig, on New Year’s Day, 1879. would offer to write a concerto for his best friend. The work was not a success. (At the premiere, (Brahms had overcome his fear of tackling the the applause was lukewarm, though many in the forms in which Beethoven triumphed and had audience were distracted by Brahms’s failure to completed two symphonies and a piano concerto.) hook up his suspenders properly.) When Clara

COMPOSED MOST RECENT CADENZA 1878 CSO PERFORMANCES Joseph Joachim March 7, 8 & 10, 2012, Orchestra Hall. FIRST PERFORMANCE Pinchas Zukerman as soloist, Riccardo APPROXIMATE January 1, 1879; Leipzig, Germany. Muti conducting PERFORMANCE TIME Joseph Joachim as soloist, the 40 minutes March 9, 2012, Hill Auditorium, composer conducting University of Michigan. Pinchas CSO RECORDINGS Zukerman as soloist, Riccardo FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES 1955. Jascha Heifetz as soloist, Fritz Muti conducting January 19 & 20, 1894, Auditorium Reiner conducting. RCA Theatre. Henri Marteau as soloist, August 10, 2014, Ravinia Festival. 1976. Itzhak Perlman as soloist, Carlo Theodore Thomas conducting Miriam Fried as soloist, Bramwell Maria Giulini conducting. Angel Tovey conducting July 30, 1938, Ravinia Festival. 1997. Maxim Vengerov as soloist, Jascha Heifetz as soloist, Eugene INSTRUMENTATION Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec Ormandy conducting solo violin, two flutes, two oboes, two 2002. Rachel Barton as soloist, Carlos clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, Kalmar conducting. Cedille two trumpets, timpani, strings

3 Schumann heard it earlier, in a private perfor- Brahms opens the slow movement with one of mance, she commented that the orchestra and his finest melodies, given to the oboe against a soloist were “thoroughly blended,” but others saw woodwind accompaniment. The Spanish virtuoso that distinction differently. Hans von Bülow, a Pablo de Sarasate allegedly refused to play this man seldom without opinions, said that Brahms concerto because he didn’t care “to stand on the had written a concerto against the violin; the platform, violin in hand, to listen to the oboe violinist Bronislaw Huberman elaborated: “It is a playing the only real tune in the whole work.” concerto for violin against the orchestra—and the Sarasate would more easily earn our sympathy violin wins.” if Brahms didn’t Eventually, Brahms’s work was widely per- quickly turn formed and greatly admired; it was even deemed from the oboe worthy of standing beside Beethoven’s single vio- to the violin, lin concerto. Brahms had invited the comparison having saved for himself by picking the same key and by writing it an unbroken for the violinist who had recently put Beethoven’s outpouring of concerto back in circulation. song that car- ries us through rahms honors the classical model; in to the end of the first movement, he writes a double the movement. exposition—one for the orchestra alone, We don’t Bthe second led by the violin. This would be immediately unremarkable, except that most concertos written associate Brahms in the seventy-odd years since Beethoven’s with merriment, had struggled to find novel ways to proceed. but the finale of Joseph Joachim Brahms has new things to say, but he says the concerto is them in a form that Beethoven would have unmistakably recognized immediately. The first movement jolly, filled with good-natured themes and flashes is on a grand scale, with a wealth of melodic of outright wit. The spirit is that of the gypsy material. (Brahms once said that melodies were violinist, an intentional allusion to Joachim’s so abundant in Pörtschach that one had to be Hungarian heritage. The final march, with careful not to step on them.) Brahms presents a trumpets and drums, rises to a climax and then full harmonic itinerary that allows a side trip to abruptly unwinds like a mechanical toy before it the distant reaches of C major at the beginning ends with a bang. of the development section (Beethoven went there, too) and includes, in the recapitulation, footnote about friendship. Only two further adventures in F-sharp and B-flat, both years after the premiere of the Violin a major third in opposite directions from D. Concerto, the fellowship between As a final bow to tradition, Brahms reins in BrahmsA and Joachim began to falter. Brahms the orchestra near the end of the movement and couldn’t stand to watch Joachim become gives the soloist the opportunity to improvise a increasingly jealous of his wife, and by the time cadenza. This is the last major concerto to grant the couple divorced in 1884, the composer that license (even Beethoven had started writing and the violinist were no longer speaking. his cadenzas down), although with a musician of Joachim continued to play Brahms’s music Joachim’s taste and talent, Brahms had nothing everywhere, but refused to answer his letters. to fear. He would surely be relieved to know Finally, Brahms wrote the Double Concerto that the cadenza Joachim eventually committed as a peace offering, and Joachim—like so to paper quickly caught on and is sometimes many others since—couldn’t resist this warm performed today. (At these concerts, Renaud and heartfelt music. The friendship was Capuçon plays the cadenza by Joseph Joachim.) restored, but the old spark was missing.

4 Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68

Beethoven died six years That earliest effort, in the key of D minor (the before Brahms was born, key of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, inciden- but his presence was felt tally) neatly sidestepped the issue to become by almost every composer Brahms’s first piano concerto, even though who came after him. Even the idea of “symphony” is written all over it. Brahms, a master of piano Brahms also avoided the challenge with the two music and songs from an serenades that gave him needed and valuable early age, put off writing experience writing for the orchestra without symphonies and string directly taking on Beethoven. There was further quartets—two Beethoven testing of the waters in the substantial orches- forms par excellence—offering only the pathetic, tral accompaniment to A German Requiem and but honest excuse: “You can’t have any idea what other important choral works. And finally, a it’s like always to hear such a giant marching dress rehearsal of sorts—the grand Variations behind you.” Eventually Brahms turned and on a Theme of Haydn from 1873—though this faced the giant, but it took him nearly twenty too, for all its mastery of instrumentation and years to do so, and only the magnificence of his intellectual rigor, was not a symphony. own First Symphony gave him the courage to But Brahms did have a symphony in the leave the ghost of Beethoven behind him works. As early as 1862, he sent a completed for good. first movement to Clara Schumann. “Imagine Few great works of music have taken so my surprise!” she wrote to Joseph Joachim, who long to get from sketch to finished product. would one day play the violin concerto Brahms Obviously, Brahms had his reasons for sitting wrote for him in a single summer. Clara’s sur- on his first symphony, but eventually his friends prise eventually turned to dismay when Brahms and colleagues began to wonder if he, like continued to drag things out, sending her the Schubert before him, might leave an unfinished horn call from the finale as a birthday card some symphony in the attic. (In fact, in 1870, Brahms six years later, and finally sitting her down to lis- said he would never complete the piece.) His ten as he played the whole symphony at the piano publisher, Fritz Simrock, finally wrote: “Aren’t another eight years after that. Although Brahms you doing anything more? Am I not to have a certainly took his time, he proved to an impatient symphony from you in ’73 either?” But there was musical public that there was still music being no symphony in 1873, just as there had been no written that was worth the wait. Unlike his con- symphony any year since 1854, when Brahms temporary Anton Bruckner, who made a career first set out to write one. out of having second thoughts, Brahms was the

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1850s–1876 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME August 7, 2008, Ravinia Festival. James 45 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Conlon conducting November 4, 1876; Karlsruhe, Germany CSO RECORDINGS October 18, 19 & 20, 2012, Orchestra 1952. Rafael Kubelík conducting. Hall. Osmo Vänskä conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Mercury February 9 & 10, 1894, INSTRUMENTATION 1975. James Levine conducting. RCA Auditorium Theatre. Theodore two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, Thomas conducting 1979. Sir Georg Solti conducting. two bassoons and contrabassoon, London July 9, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Hans four horns, two trumpets, three Lange conducting trombones, timpani, strings 1989. Günter Wand conducting. RCA 1993. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Erato

5 best judge of his own work. When a piece didn’t or a suite. But brevity and conciseness aren’t at please him, he put it aside or reworked it, or—in odds with the symphonic scale—although the the case of his Fifth Symphony—he destroyed it. grandeur of Brahms’s first movement might But he wouldn’t release it. lead one to expect something equally imposing When Brahms sent his completed first move- to follow. Instead, Brahms’s slow movement, ment to Clara Schumann in 1862, it didn’t begin in the surprising key of E major, is intimate with the fierce and and modest, with lovely woodwind solos and a arresting introduc- magnificent one for violin at the end. The third tion we know, but movement is no scherzo, but an intermezzo, as took off like a rocket warm and ingratiating as Brahms’s piano pieces from the headlong which actually bear the name. Allegro. Clara With the finale we come again to Beethoven, confessed to Joachim partly because any symphony that begins in that the beginning C minor and then forges triumphantly into seemed bold and C major at the end must face comparison with “rather harsh, but I Beethoven’s Fifth, and partly because Brahms’s have become used big allegro melody suggests nothing more than to it.” Brahms, the great song of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” however, evidently When the likeness was pointed out, Brahms Clara Schumann didn’t, because when simply said, “Any ass can see that.” More to the he played the entire point, Donald Tovey noted that Brahms’s theme symphony for Clara is regularly compared with Beethoven’s “only more than a dozen years later, it began with the because it is the solitary one among hundreds powerful, measured drum beat and chromatic of the same type that is great enough to suggest unfolding that now lead straight into the Allegro. the resemblance.” There are other echoes of Even though it was written after the fact—or, Beethoven, too. Certainly the finale’s extensive perhaps because of that—Brahms’s introduction introduction, clouded with mystery and flaring serves as a preview of what follows: the opening up with occasional turbulence, takes a cue from violin line rising by half steps, for example, Beethoven’s Ninth. But then so do countless and the falling thirds in the winds will both be works written in the nineteenth century that whipped into meaningful shape elsewhere. don’t profit from the comparison. There’s also The Allegro is conceived on the largest scale. much that is pure Brahms, like the unforgettable The final turn into the recapitulation, in particu- horn call that parts the clouds and admits the lar, is stretched to incredible lengths—and then, bright sunlight of the C major allegro theme, with the destination clearly in sight, resolution is or the brilliant and hair-raising coda, which further delayed by a daring descent into a remote nearly beats Beethoven at his own game. The key. For a moment it appears that Brahms has ending, in fact, is as exalted and triumphant as thrown caution to the wind, but this sudden any in music, and it’s clear that the triumph is whim, too, is part of his plan, all calculated with Brahms’s alone. the skill of a master craftsman. From the beginning, Hermann Levi—a perceptive German conductor—thought the Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the two inner movements more suited to a serenade Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.