Sinfonia Da Requiem, Op

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Program

One Hundred Twenty-Third 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

Saturday, May 31, 2014, at 8:00 Tuesday, June 3, 2014, at 7:30

Jaap van Zweden Conductor Shostakovich Five Fragments, Op. 42 TRUTH TO Moderato Andante POWER Largo Moderato Allegretto First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Britten Sinfonia da requiem, Op. 20 Lacrymosa— Dies irae— Requiem aeternum

Intermission

Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 100 Andante Allegro moderato Adagio Allegro giocoso

The Truth to Power Festival is made possible with a generous leadership gift from The Grainger Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Richard and Mary L. Gray; U.S. Equities Realty, LLC and the Susan and Robert Wislow Charitable Foundation; Mr. & Mrs. Richard J. Franke; and The Wayne Balmer Grantor Trust. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBEZ 91.5FM for its generous support as media sponsor of the Truth to Power Festival. 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 Daniel Jaﬀ é Phillip Huscher

Dmitri Shostakovich Born September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Russia. Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia. Five Fragments, op. 42

It is often said that had will take the place of Th e Rhinegold. Th e driving Shostakovich not been image of the next opera will be the heroine of the publicly censured by the People’s Will movement.” Pravda editorial in 1936, which attacked his he People’s Will movement was a hitherto highly acclaimed nineteenth-century Russian terrorist opera Lady Macbeth of organization most widely remem- Mtsensk, he would have beredT for assassinating Tsar Alexander II on become one of the March 13, 1881. From the surviving opening twentieth century’s page of the opera’s libretto, and the recollec- leading opera composers. Certainly the Pravda tion by Shostakovich’s close colleague Levon editorial all but shut down Shostakovich’s Atovmian of the rest of the opera’s scenario, activity as a composer for the stage, forcing him Digonskaia was able to identify the opening folio to decisively turn to symphonic composition. Yet, of Shostakovich’s fair copy of the score. It is a there is substantial evidence that the process had curious document, since its opening scene starts started earlier, most obviously with his composi- with an orchestrated version of what is known tion of the wild and inventive Fourth Symphony today as the A minor fugue from Shostakovich’s in 1935–36, and—less well-known—the Five 24 Preludes and Fugues, usually said to have Fragments being performed at this concert. been composed in 1950 (on the basis of the Th e picture has been further complicated composer’s annotation in that cycle’s manu- by some crucial recent discoveries by the chief script). In fact, the original manuscript of that archivist of the Shostakovich Archives in fugue—to which Shostakovich referred when Moscow, Olga Digonskaia. Having discovered writing in July 1934 to his latest paramour, Elena and identifi ed the opening folio of Shostakovich’s Konstantinovskaia, as one of three “exceed- proposed sequel to Lady Macbeth, Digonskaia ingly boring fugues”—has been discovered, suggests that the fi nale of the Fourth Symphony dated July 25, 1934, in the composer’s own and the Five Fragments were both off shoots hand. Immediately following that orchestrated of that aborted opera. Th is, as Shostakovich fugue is around forty-fi ve bars of an aria which explained early in 1934, was intended to be reappears, with some amendments including the second part of “an operatic tetralogy about reorchestration, in the fi nale of Shostakovich’s women,” which he himself described as “a Soviet Fourth Symphony—that is, the start of the Ring of the Nibelungs, in which Lady Macbeth “dance suite” midway through that movement.

ComPoSeD InStrUmentatIon aPProXImate 1935 fl ute and piccolo, oboe and english PerFormanCe tIme horn, clarinet, e-fl at clarinet and bass 9 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe clarinet, bassoon and contrabassoon, April 26, 1965, Leningrad two horns, trumpet, trombone, tuba, percussion, harp, strings FIrSt CSo PerFormanCeS These are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s ﬁ rst performances.

2 So why did Shostakovich abandon an opera to the A minor fugue from which it ultimately of which, as the surviving folio indicates, he had derived). Digonskaia surmises from this, and composed enough to at least begin making a the apparent chronology of composition, that fair copy? Its scenario, almost certainly, was the Five Fragments was not merely—as has previ- problem. Briefly, it concerns a tsarist general who ously been supposed—an experimental work in marries a young woman (whom Shostakovich preparation for the Fourth Symphony, but almost named after his beloved), Elena, little knowing certainly derives largely or entirely from material that she is connected to the People’s Will. Elena’s originally intended for the People’s Will opera. true beloved, a member of that organization, plots to kill the general by hurling a bomb parsely scored and succinct, each frag- at him. When he has a last-minute failure of ment has a distinct atmosphere. The first nerve, Elena seizes the bomb and throws it fragment, Moderato, scored primarily for herself at the general, getting herself killed with Swoodwinds, is lean and contrapuntal in a manner her husband. reminiscent of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism. The The opera’s scenario became a political hot second, Andante, is possibly a grotesque portrait potato when, on December 1, 1934, Leningrad’s of the general: starting with heavy-footed brass, First Secretary, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated. the music then parodies the fusty manners of a Just four weeks later, Shostakovich denounced bygone age (note the bassoon’s mock-baroque (as he was bound to) the “base and foul murder manners), then seamlessly melds into a march of Sergei Mironovich Kirov” in Leningradskaia with pompously martial rhythms. In total Pravda; in the same article, he described his pro- contrast the third fragment, Largo, is a noc- jected opera merely as “the opera about women turnal soundscape scored for strings—slowly of the past,” with no mention at all about the drifting like an atmospheric Charles Ives tone People’s Will, let alone the opera’s culminating poem (might Bernard Herrmann have heard assassination, which could all too easily have been this before scoring Psycho?)—plus occasional perceived as an apologia for the “Trotskyite” ter- harp, most striking in the bell-like tolling rorists supposedly responsible for Kirov’s death. towards the end. The fourth, Moderato, starts Shostakovich then quietly dropped the project. with a solo horn twice offering a single note as if proffering a starting pitch to his colleagues. ow does Five Fragments fit into this? Bassoon, then clarinet, then oboe then enter in Written in a single day (on June 9, fuguelike succession, then twine indecisively as 1935), its apparently phenomenal speed if in cogitation, eventually leaving the floor to Hof composition would have been facilitated if all the oboe. The nocturnal strings of the previous five movements were based or simply adapted fragment are briefly heard before the “tuning from already composed material. As Digonskaia up” horn rounds off the movement. In the final has discovered, Shostakovich’s fair copy of Five fragment, Allegretto, a snare drum’s parade Fragments (as opposed to his sketches for that ground rasps unexpectedly provide accompa- work) was written in the same black ink and on niment to a solo violin, which plays the waltz the same type of manuscript paper as the open- theme common to the finale of the Fourth ing folio of the opera. Furthermore, Symphony Symphony. Flute, then clarinet and bass clarinet, no. 4 has a theme common to Five Fragments, briefly join the dance before it peters out. which appears to suggest a common source (rather as the symphony contains a theme related —Daniel Jaffé

3 Benjamin Britten Born November 22, 1913, Lowestoft, Sussex, England. Died December 4, 1976, Aldeburgh, England. Sinfonia da requiem, op. 20

Benjamin Britten and his hat winter, Britten toured the Midwest; friend Peter Pears left he came back from Chicago in England for North February with a “vile cold & fl u” that America in May 1939. heT couldn’t shake. He was further troubled After spending several by homesickness, “war or no war,” and by the days in Canada, they growing European confl ict viewed from afar. crossed into this country Around this time, Britten was asked by the in June, stopping fi rst in British Council to compose a new work to Grand Rapids, Michigan, celebrate “the reigning dynasty of a foreign then moving on to New power.” He agreed to this enigmatic commis- York City and the Catskills, where they visited sion as long as “no form of musical jingoism” Aaron Copland. Th ere Britten composed some was required. By the time the details had been music “inspired by such sunshine as I’ve never worked out and Britten learned that the score seen before.” He wrote home to his sister Beth: “I would honor the 2,600th anniversary of the am certain that N. America is the place of the Japanese Imperial dynasty, there was little time future . . . & though certainly one is worried by a left to compose the music. On April 26, 1940, lack of culture, there is terrifi c energy & vitality he wrote to his sister, “I now fi nd myself with in the place.” the proposition of writing a symphony in about Copland later recalled that Britten was deeply three weeks!” Britten described the score as “a worried about the prospect of war at that time, short symphony—or symphonic poem,” and and he couldn’t decide whether to return to he told a reporter for Th e New York Sun that he England or not. After Britten left for New would dedicate it to the memory of his parents York City, Copland wrote to him: “I think you (his father died in 1934, his mother in 1937) as absolutely owe it to England to stay here . . . . an expression of his own antiwar conviction. After all, anyone can shoot a gun—but how many can write music like you?” Britain declared he Sinfonia da requiem was composed war on September 3, and Britten settled in in “a terrible hurry” and was completed New York, struggling with antiwar sentiments in early June. Britten wrote a draft for that would eventually explode into courageous, pianoT duet so that he and Pears could try it out. controversial, and unequivocal pacifi sm. In November, however, the Japanese government

ComPoSeD moSt reCent aPProXImate 1940 CSo PerFormanCeS PerFormanCe tIme May 2, 3 & 4, 2002, Orchestra Hall. 18 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe Mstislav Rostropovich conducting March 30, 1941, New york City CSo reCorDIng InStrUmentatIon 1983. Rafael Kubelík conducting. FIrSt CSo PerFormanCe three fl utes, piccolo and alto fl ute, two (From the Archives, vol. 16: A Tribute to February 8, 1949, Orchestra Hall. Fritz oboes and english horn, three clari- Rafael Kubelík II) Busch conducting nets, e-fl at clarinet and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, alto saxophone, six horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, xylophone, snare drum, tambourine, whip, two harps, piano, strings

4 note that made no mention of the circumstances of the composition or its antiwar theme. He described the first movement as “a slow marching lament.” The title Lacrymosa comes from the closing section of the Dies irae, the medieval sequence describing the Day of Judgment:

Full of tears and full of dread Is that day that wakes the dead, Calling all, with solemn blast, To be judged for all their past.

Britten and Pears photographed at the Mayer family The movement begins with fierce timpani home on Long Island, Amityville blows; a solemn funeral march builds, in a long arch, against a steady drumbeat. reviewed the score, with its three movement titles A wavering saxophone rises above the dark, derived from Christian liturgy, and rejected it inexorable music. outright as “purely a religious music of Christian Britten described the Dies irae, the second nature” that didn’t “express felicitations” for movement, as a kind of “Dance of Death, with that country’s anniversary. The government had occasional moments of quiet marching rhythm.” already paid Britten his fee, but at the Tokyo It symbolizes the full outbreak of war, in music concert the only music performed was by Richard of undisguised anger and grim intensity. The Strauss and Jacques Ibert, the two other com- scene dissolves, leaving only a fragile melodic posers who submitted works for that occasion. thread of hope in the harp and bass clarinet. The third movement, Requiem aeternam (Eternal he premiere of the Sinfonia da rest), builds slowly toward consolation and a requiem was given by the New York peace that, in 1940, was far from certain. Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall on March 30,T 1941. Britten provided a program —Phillip Huscher

5 Sergei Prokofi ev Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, the Ukraine. Died March 5, 1953, Nikolina Gora, near Moscow, Russia. Symphony no. 5 in B-ﬂ at major, op. 100

Sergei Prokofi ev spent the is perhaps the best known and most regularly summer of 1944 at a large performed of all his works. It had been fi fteen country estate provided by years since Prokofi ev’s last symphony, and both the Union of Soviet that symphony and the one preceding it had Composers as a refuge been by-products of theater pieces: the Th ird from the war and as a Symphony is musically related to the opera Th e kind of think tank. Flaming Angel, and the Fourth to the ballet Th e Prokofi ev arrived early in Prodigal Son. Not since his Second Symphony, the summer and found completed in 1925, had Prokofi ev composed a that his colleagues purely abstract symphony, or one that he began included Glière, Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, from scratch. Khachaturian, and Myaskovsky—summer camp for the most distinguished Soviet composers of lthough it was written at the height of the time. the war, Prokofi ev’s Fifth Symphony Although Ivanovo, as the retreat was called, isn’t a wartime symphony in the tradi- often was referred to as a rest home, there tionalA sense—not in the vivid and descriptive was little leisure once Prokofi ev moved in. He manner of Shostakovich’s Seventh, composed maintained a rigorous daily schedule—as he had during the siege of Leningrad and written, all his life—and began to impose it on the others in Carl Sandburg’s words, “with the heart’s as well. “Th e regularity with which he worked blood”—or his Eighth, which coolly con- amazed us all,” Khachaturian later recalled. templates the horrors of war. Prokofi ev’s Prokofi ev ate breakfast, marched to his studio Symphony no. 5 is intended to glorify the human to compose, and scheduled his walks and tennis spirit—“praising the free and happy man—his games by the clock. In the evening he insisted strength, his generosity, and the purity of his the composers all get together to compare notes, soul.” In its own way, this outlook makes it an literally. Prokofi ev was delighted, and clearly not even greater product of the war, because it was surprised, that he usually had the most to show designed to uplift and console the Soviet people. for his day’s work. “I cannot say I chose this theme,” Prokofi ev It was a particularly productive summer wrote. “It was born in me and had to express for Prokofi ev—he composed both his Eighth itself.” Nonetheless, such optimistic and vic- Piano Sonata and the Fifth Symphony before torious music cheered the Russian authorities; he returned to Moscow. Th e sonata is prime it might well have been made to order. In his Prokofi ev and often played, but the symphony 1946 autobiography, Prokofi ev writes: “It is

ComPoSeD January 7 & 9, 2011, Orchestra Hall. aPProXImate 1944 Sir Mark elder conducting (Beyond PerFormanCe tIme the Score) 46 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe January 13, 1945; Moscow, Russia InStrUmentatIon CSo reCorDIngS two fl utes and piccolo, two oboes and 1958. Fritz Reiner conducting. CSO FIrSt CSo PerFormanCeS english horn, two clarinets, e-fl at clar- (Chicago Symphony Orchestra: The First November 21, 22 & 26, 1946, Orchestra inet and bass clarinet, two bassoons 100 Years) Hall. George Szell conducting and contrabassoon, four horns, three 1992. James Levine conducting. trumpets, three trombones, tuba, Deutsche Grammophon moSt reCent timpani, triangle, cymbals, tambourine, CSo PerFormanCeS snare drum, woodblock, bass drum, January 6 & 8, 2011, Orchestra Hall. tam-tam, piano, harp, strings Sir Mark elder conducting 6 the duty of the composer, like the poet, the sculptor, or the painter, to serve the rest of humanity, to beautify human life, and to point the way to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of art as I see it.” It also was the code of art Soviet composers were expected to embrace during the war, but Prokofiev couldn’t have written a work as powerful and convincing as his Fifth Symphony if he didn’t truly believe those words.

he Fifth Symphony would inevitably be known as a victory celebration. Just beforeT the first performance, which Prokofiev conducted, word reached Moscow that the Russian army had scored a decisive victory on the Vistula River. As Prokofiev raised his baton, the sound of cannons was heard from the distance. Buoyed by both the news and the triumphant tone of the music, the premiere was a great success. It was the last time Prokofiev conducted in public. Three Prokofiev’s sketch for the ending of the Fifth Symphony weeks later he had a mild heart attack, fell down the stairs in his apartment, and suffered a slight concussion. Although movement is lyrical and brooding, like much of he recovered his spirits—and eventually his Prokofiev’s finest slow music. After a brief and strength and creative powers as well—Prokofiev sober introduction, the finale points decisively continued to feel the effects of the accident toward a radiant future. for the remaining eight years of his life. The first movement of the Fifth Symphony —Phillip Huscher is intense and dramatic, but neither aggressive nor violent, like much of the music written Daniel Jaffé, author of a biography of Sergei Prokofiev at the time. It’s moderately paced (Prokofiev (Phaidon) and the Historical Dictionary of Russian Music writes andante) and broadly lyrical throughout. (Scarecrow Press), currently is researching a biography The scherzo, in contrast, is quick and insis- of Gustav Holst. tent, touched by a sense of humor that some- Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago times reveals a sharp, cutting edge. The third Symphony Orchestra.