Michael Tilson Thomas Conductor Scott Hostetler English Horn Christopher Martin Trumpet Paul Jacobs Organ Music by Aaron Copland
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Program ONE HuNdrEd TwENTiETH 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 Thursday, November 4, 2010, at 8:00 Friday, November 5, 2010, at 8:00 Saturday, November 6, 2010, at 8:00 michael Tilson Thomas Conductor Scott Hostetler English Horn Christopher martin Trumpet Paul Jacobs Organ music by aaron Copland Quiet City SCOTT HOSTETlEr CHriSTOpHEr MarTiN Symphony for Organ and Orchestra prelude: andante Scherzo: allegro molto—Moderato Finale: lento—allegro moderato paul JaCObS First Chicago Symphony subscription concert performances InTermISSIon Orchestral Variations First Chicago Symphony subscription concert performances Appalachian Spring Friday evening’s concert is generously sponsored by Audrey Love Charitable Foundation. Steinway is the official piano of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 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 aron Copland, the “president of American music” (Virgil AThomson’s phrase) grew up in Brooklyn, lived most of his life in New York, and knew the rest of this country largely by hearsay. His music for Agnes de Mille’s Wild West ballet Rodeo, his first great success, was composed on the rue de Rennes in Paris (he had packed a book of cowboy songs), and the only real live cow he ever encountered was the one that hit his car one summer night on a coun- try road near Tanglewood. Even his “home- town” piano concerto, a jazz-saturated New York cityscape, wasn’t composed at home, but in a villa in the French countryside. But Copland was the first composer to find a musical style that perfectly captured the vast open spaces, the homespun plainness, Aaron Copland, the “presi- dent of American music” and the bracing pioneer spirit of this great country. It was fellow composer Thomson, reflecting on his first impression of Copland’s work, who said it best: “I thought that it was the voice of America in our generation. It spoke in the same way that Kerouac did thirty years later.” In work after work, Copland defined forever a distinctly “open” American sound: the music of our own Arcadia, with its silos and patchwork plains, its covered bridges and furrowed hills. Copland first studied music through a correspondence course and then, like fellow Brooklynite George Gershwin, began formal lessons with Rubin Goldmark (nephew of Viennese composer Karl Goldmark). Copland finally went to Europe, where, in the 1920s, “it was clear that you had to be ‘finished,’ ” as he later recalled, and ended up as one of the first Americans to study with Nadia Boulanger. There, in her Paris salon, 2 she helped him find his own distinctive way of writing—and, ironically, the “voice” of American music. Copland’s long career embraced Carnegie Hall and Hollywood, Broadway and TV, teaching and writing, playing the piano and conducting—he first led the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival in 1956, returned there often in the 1960s, played his Piano Concerto with the CSO in Orchestra Hall in 1964, and conducted the Orchestra in a program of his own music, as well as that of Berlioz, Carter, and Tippett, here in 1970. This week’s program spans several decades of Copland’s career, from the Organ Symphony of 1924 to the Orchestral Variations he made in 1957 of his early Piano Variations— each of them, Composer Aaron Copland leads the musicians of the Civic Orchestra in a reading session in July 1968. in its own individual way, confirming that Copland had an uncanny knack for putting his finger on the musical pulse of this country. 3 aaron Copland Born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn, New York. Died December 2, 1990, Peekskill, New York. Quiet City arly in his career, Copland of the troupe’s biggest hits—and Ewas so eager to write theatri- Irwin Shaw. cal music that he composed a Although Irwin Shaw is remem- score for a nonexistent play: bered today as the bestselling Music for the Theatre, originally author of the 1970 novel Rich Man, called “Incidental Music for an Poor Man, which became a suc- Imaginary Play.” But during the cessful TV miniseries, he began 1930s, Copland became involved his career working in radio and in the Group Theater, a company writing film scripts and plays. In founded by Lee Strasberg and 1939, after the Group had suc- Harold Clurman to present socially cessfully staged Shaw’s The Gentle relevant drama at popular prices. People, Copland agreed to write Copland’s studio at Steinway Hall incidental music for a production was even one of the group’s first of Shaw’s Quiet City later that year. meeting places. Clurman later “The script,” Copland recalled, recalled that Copland’s own efforts “was about a young trumpet player to create a distinctly American who imagined the night thoughts body of music had inspired the of many different people in a great Group in the beginning. Copland city and played trumpet to express often attended rehearsals, and he his emotions and to arouse the became friendly with several of the consciences of the other characters Group’s members, including Elia and of the audience.” But the story Kazan, Clifford Odets—whose of Gabe Mellon, who had changed 1937 play, The Golden Boy, was one his name in rejection of his Jewish ComPoSed October 21, 1943, Orchestra InSTrumenTaTIon 1940, based on incidental Hall, désiré defauw english horn and trumpet music written in 1939 conducting with strings FIrST PerFormanCe moST reCenT aPProxImaTe January 28, 1941, CSo PerFormanCeS PerFormanCe TIme New york City July 23, 1964, ravinia 10 minutes Festival, the composer FIrST CSo conducting PerFormanCeS October 5, 1986, Orchestra July 26, 1941, ravinia Hall, Sir Georg Solti Festival, Carlos Chávez conducting conducting 4 background and became a wealthy (Copland recycled other music businessman, and his struggling from the complete score for parts of brother, trumpet player David Appalachian Spring.) From the soft, Mellnikoff, obviously resonated gauzy opening to the haunted, nos- strongly with Copland at the time, talgic trumpet melodies, the piece and he wrote music of unexpected is a pitch-perfect city scene from depth and beauty. the 1930s. Copland was amused When the Group Theater produc- when reviewers noted its affinity to tion of Quiet City never made it Whitman’s “mystic trumpeter” and beyond a couple of tryout perfor- Ives’s The Unanswered Question, with mances, Copland decided to salvage its yearning trumpet solos. To him, parts of his score. During the sum- it was simply a portrait of Shaw’s mer of 1940, while he was teaching restless and troubled trumpet at the first season of the Berkshire player (Copland marks the opening Music Center at Tanglewood, he trumpet solo “nervous, mysteri- fashioned a short “suite” for trumpet ous”). Copland’s short, atmospheric and string orchestra from the inci- piece has become one of his most dental music, adding a solo english performed works, and as Copland horn “for contrast and to give pointed out, “David Mellnikoff has the trumpeter breathing spaces.” long since been forgotten!” Symphony Center Information The use of still or video cameras please turn off or silence all and recording devices is prohibited personal electronic devices in Orchestra Hall. (pagers, watches, telephones, digital assistants). latecomers will be seated during designated program pauses. please note that Symphony Center is a smoke-free environment. please use perfume, cologne, and all other scented products Your cooperation is greatly sparingly, as many patrons are appreciated. sensitive to fragrance. note: Fire exits are located on all levels and are for emergency use only. The lighted Exit sign nearest your seat is the shortest route outdoors. please walk—do not run—to your exit and do not use elevators for emergency exit. Volunteer ushers provided by The Saints—Volunteers for the Performing Arts (www.saintschicago.org) 5 Symphony for organ and orchestra mmediately after Walter and direction of his career was IDamrosch led the premiere of quite unpredictable at the time. Copland’s Organ Symphony at He had just emerged from three Aeolian Hall in New York, he years in Nadia Boulanger’s creative turned to the hothouse in Paris, the “shop” that audience and would eventually turn out Virgil said, “Ladies Thomson, Elliott Carter, and Philip and gentle- Glass, among many others. Also, men, I am instead of the genial, homespun sure you will Americana we tend, unfairly, to agree that if a associate single-handedly with gifted young Copland today, this concerto was man can write unmistakably Modern Music. “It a symphony was a joke, of course,” Copland like this at later said of Damrosch’s remark, twenty-three, “and I laughed along with the rest within five of the audience, but it was also years he will Damrosch’s way of smoothing the German-born American be ready ruffled feathers of his conserva- conductor and composer Walter Damrosch to commit tive Sunday afternoon ladies faced murder.” with modern American music.” This is one Copland entered the larger musical of the most world that day as one of its daring beloved stories in American music, young men, his notoriety sealed and it touches on a number of issues with the unfortunate newspaper in what would eventually become headline: “Young Composer to the great Copland saga. For one Commit Murder!” thing, Copland was very young It was Boulanger who got and almost completely unknown