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Home , Falstaff (Elgar), Frederick Delius, Jelka Rosen, Last Scene, Maurice Morgann, Violin Concerto (Elgar)

Program

One HunDReD TWenTy-FiRST SeaSOn Chicago 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, January 12, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, January 13, 2012, at 1:30 Saturday, January 14, 2012, at 8:00 Sunday, January 15, 2012, at 3:00 Sir mark Elder Conductor Chicago Shakespeare Theater guest artists Barbara gaines artistic director greg Vinkler actor Delius The Walk to the Paradise Garden from A Village Readings from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 GReG VinkleR Elgar , Op. 68

InTErmISSIon rimsky-Korsakov Musical Pictures from The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya introduction: in Praise of the Wilderness— Fevroniya’s Wedding Procession— The Battle of kerzhenets— The Blessed Death of Fevroniya—The Road to the invisible City First Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription performances of the last three Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet

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

Frederick Delius Born January 29, 1862, , . Died June 10, 1934, Grez-sur-Loing, France.

The Walk to the Paradise Garden

elius is an odd figure in English benefit of apparently was Dmusic. Born in England to his contact and eventual friendship German parents, he came into with Edward Grieg, whose letter to his own as a composer in the Delius’s father convinced him that United States (while working as an his son was destined for a career orange grower in , where in music. the pickers’ songs drifting across In the summer of 1888, Delius the Saint John River profoundly moved to , where he came affected him), enjoyed his first to know Fauré and Ravel, artists taste of success in Germany and Gaughin and Munch, and the Norway, and ultimately settled in Scandinavian writer Strindberg; rural France. Although he studied became intoxicated with grand for a year and a half at the esteemed opera; met his future wife, Helene Leipzig Conservatory in the late “Jelka” Rosen, a German painter; 1880s, Delius always said that he and contracted the syphilis that learned everything he needed to would later shut down his career know the previous year from his and eventually take his life. Despite more informal lessons with Thomas his international itinerary, Delius Ward, a transplanted New Yorker has come to be closely identified who lived in Jacksonville. The main with England, a country he rarely

ComPoSED moST rECEnT InSTrumEnTaTIon 1906 CSo PErFormanCES three flutes, two and January 11, 1969 (Popular english horn, two FIrST PErFormanCE concert), Orchestra Hall. and bass , two bas- February 21, 1907, Berlin, as irwin Hoffman conducting soons and , entr’acte in A Village Romeo four horns, three , July 27, 2002, Ravinia and Juliet three and , Festival. andrew , harp, strings FIrST CSo litton conducting PErFormanCE aPProxImaTE January 11, 1934, Orchestra PErFormanCE TImE Hall. Sir Hamilton 8 minutes Harty conducting

2 visited and later said he hated. piece. (Beecham conducted it Part of his reputation both in his here when he appeared with the native land and abroad was due to Orchestra in the advocacy of the great British February 1959.) conductor Sir , Delius composed who called Delius “the last great this interlude long apostle of romance, emotion, and the opera beauty in music.” Delius’s work itself was com- was almost unknown in England pleted and shortly at the time he and Beecham first before the 1907 met, in 1907. (He was then just Berlin premiere, beginning to make a name for when it was clear himself in Germany, where several he needed extra conductors had started playing his music to cover the compositions.) But in the years change Sir Thomas Beecham, Delius’s friend that followed, Beecham regularly from an outdoor and champion programmed Delius’s pieces (he fair to the interior organized major festivals of his of the country inn music in 1929 and in 1946). In known as the Paradise Garden. Beecham, Delius found that he The opera tells the story of a young had both a close friend—they took man and woman from quarreling a month-long walking tour of families who dance together one Norway together in 1908—and the evening at the inn and are found kind of champion most composers dead in a nearby meadow the next can only dream of. day. The Walk to the Paradise Garden, It was Beecham who first even though a late addition, is a extracted The Walk to the Paradise high point in the score, in the way Garden from Delius’s opera A that it gathers together several of Village Romeo and Juliet and began the opera’s musical themes and sets to play it as an independent concert the scene for the final tragedy.

3 Born June 2, 1857, Broadheath, near Worcester, England. Died February 23, 1934, Worcester, England.

Falstaff, Symphonic Study in C minor with Two Interludes in a minor, op. 68

dward Elgar learned to love graduating high school, he turned EShakespeare from a carpen- to Shakespeare for his title— ter, Ned Spiers, who worked Othello, act 3, scene 3: “Pride, pomp as a handyman for Elgar Bros., and circumstance of glorious war!”) his father’s piano-tuning shop. Elgar had considered a work about Spiers had done carpentry in Shakespeare’s Falstaff for years many theaters, and he had seen and wrote the knight’s name atop all the great actors of the day some sketches as early as 1901. But perform Shakespeare; he would Elgar’s Falstaffmight have become quote from the plays around the another idle dream, like Verdi’s Lear shop, and eventually got young or Tchaikovsky’s Othello, had he Edward to join him in reciting the not received a commission from the famous speeches. Festival in May 1912 for a Falstaffis the only one of Elgar’s new orchestral work. Elgar recently major works that was inspired by his had completed two and lifelong admiration for Shakespeare. a violin ; he felt it was time (It is not his only composition to for something programmatic. The show the bard’s influence: when work was to have its premiere on Elgar wrote the march that is October 2, 1913, and by May 25 of known by its tune, if not by name, that year, a day when the novelist to generations of Americans Henry James came to tea, Elgar

ComPoSED moST rECEnT aPProxImaTE 1913 CSo PErFormanCE PErFormanCE TImE October 24, 1995, 35 minutes FIrST PErFormanCE Orchestra Hall. Daniel October 2, 1913, leeds Barenboim conducting Festival, england. The composer conducting InSTrumEnTaTIon two flutes and piccolo, two FIrST CSo oboes and english horn, two PErFormanCE clarinets and bass clarinet, October 26, 1972, two and contra- Orchestra Hall. Daniel , four horns, three Barenboim conducting trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tambourine, triangle, two harps, strings

4 was “beginning to turn to Falstaff.” as a masterwork. When Elgar (Seeing James reminded him of a conducted it in London several passage in Curiosities of Law and years after the premiere, Bernard Lawyers, which he underlined: “His Shaw thought it magnificent and stop for a word, by the produce, “perfectly graphic to anyone who always paid for the delay.”) knows his Shakespeare.” He found Work on Falstaff progressed the musical storytelling superior to smoothly; on July 17, Elgar told a Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel and Don reporter, “I have, I think, enjoyed Quixote—“This ought to be played writing it more than any other three times to their once”—and music I have ever composed, and perhaps, for that reason, it may prove to be among my best efforts. . . . I shall say ‘good-bye’ to it with regret, for the hours I have spent on it have brought me a great deal of happiness.” As it turned out, he bid farewell with haste as well; the Elgars planned to leave for a vacation in Wales on August 5, and Elgar got up at four in the morning to finish the score. The Leeds Festival premiere, under the composer’s baton, was a disappointment. Lady Elgar thought that her husband “rather hurried it & some of the lovely melodies were a little smothered, but it made its mark and place.” Elgar himself was depressed at the Falstaff unenthusiastic applause, and per- haps at the suggestion in the Daily felt that Elgar had created an ideal Telegraph that he was responsible: work of explicit, programmatic “I do not think even Elgar has ever music. “Composing operas is mere written more complicated music, piffle to a man who can do that,” he and it is for this very reason that I said. “It is the true way to set drama wish a greater conductor than he to music.” had explained his complications last During the month before the night.” But when it was performed premiere, Elgar wrote a lengthy in London under , analysis of Falstaff which was its dedicatee, there were many published in The Musical Times as empty seats, and the response was a guide for the concertgoer. The no better. composer emphasized that his Falstaff won acceptance slowly, Falstaff was based on the historical but eventually it was recognized plays, the two parts of Henry IV

5 and , and not the later and music that aptly fits Morgann’s better-known “caricature” of Sir description: “in a green old age, John that appears in The Merry mellow, frank, gay, easy, corpulent, Wives of Windsor. Elgar’s Falstaff is loose, unprincipled, and luxurious.” the one described in a 1777 essay The main Falstaff theme, quixotic by : “at once and swaggering, opens the score young and old, enterprising and and reappears throughout the fat, a dupe and a wit, harmless work, knitting together the musical and wicked, weak in principle and fabric. The prince is accompanied resolute by constitution, cowardly by a self-important, striding theme, in appearance and brave in real- courtly and genial in Elgar’s words. ity; a knave without malice, a lyar “As the scene is mainly a conversa- without deceit; and a knight, a tion,” he writes, “the music consists gentleman, and a soldier, without of a presentation and variation of either dignity, decency, or honour.” these themes.” At the conversation’s When Elgar learned that Ernest end, “Sir John is in the ascendant.” Newman was to write program The extended second part begins notes for the premiere, he told him, at the Boar’s Head Tavern in “Falstaff (as the programme says) Eastcheap. The music was sug- is the name but Shakespeare— gested by a sentence in Edward the whole of human life—is the Dowden’s guide to Shakespeare: theme . . . & over it all runs—even “From the coldness, the caution, in the tavern—the undercurrent of the convention of his father’s court, our failings & sorrows.” Prince Henry escapes to the teem- Elgar describes the work as ing vitality of the London streets falling into “four principal divisions and the tavern where Falstaff is which run on without break.” The monarch.” We also briefly meet first introduces Sir , the hostess, and and , the former in several of her honest gentlewomen,

FalsTaFF, SYmPhonIC STuDY In C mInor wITh Two InTErluDES In a mInor, oP. 68 elgar’s Falstaff is composed Dream interlude: Jack interlude: Gloucestershire. as one continuous move- Falstaff, now Sir John, a Shallow’s orchard ment, but the following boy, and page to Thomas (allegretto)—The new king— divisions, based on the Mowbray, duke of norfolk i The hurried ride to london composer’s own analytical (Poco allegretto) iV. king Henry V’s progress— essay, provide an outline of iii. Falstaff’s march— The repudiation of the music’s course. The return through Falstaff, and his death i. Falstaff and Prince Henry Gloucestershire ii. eastcheap—Gadshill— The Boar’s Head, revelry and sleep

6 in music of lighthearted cheer. Pistol breaks the news to Falstaff: Elgar then leaves the tavern for “Sir John, thy tender lambkin, now the midnight exploit at Gadshill, is King. / Harry the Fifth’s the initiated by a “cheerful, out-of- man, I speak the truth.” After a door, ambling” theme and filled pause, Falstaff rejoices, believing with furtive, suspenseful sounds that his fortune is truly made, and until Falstaff and his gang are sets off for London: “I know the attacked and robbed, in eight young King is sick for me. Let us noisy measures, of their booty. We take any man’s horses: the Laws of now repair to the tavern, where England are at my commandment.” Falstaff, his cohorts, and the hon- The final section begins near est gentlewomen all partake in a Westminster Abbey on the new jolly scherzo. After considerable king’s coronation day. Henry V mayhem, Falstaff grows sleepy; the enters to triumphal music. He music slumps, and Falstaff snores. appears in his original theme, now The following Dream Interlude richly turned out: “Glittering in apparently was a late addition, for golden coat . . . and gorgeous as the Elgar does not mention it in his sun at midsummer.” But Falstaff is first outlines, and even while he inexorably swept aside by the king’s was scoring the work, he told the brazen music, and is cut down by Austrian conductor Ferdinand his words “I know thee not, old Löwe that the entire piece should man: fall to thy prayers: / How last about twenty minutes, a timing ill white hairs become a fool and that cannot have included the two jester!” Elgar now shows us a pitiful interludes. The first is primarily Falstaff, broken and abandoned. quiet, “simple in form and some- His death is relatively swift but what antiquated in mood,” and deli- painful, comforted only by fleeting cately scored with a prominent role memories of the orchard and the for a solo violin. It is a dream “of tavern. The music exposes, some- what might have been” for Falstaff. times with a single note, his sorrow In the third section, Elgar and decline. “Softly, as intelligence conflates Henry IV’s battles of fades,” Elgar writes, “we hear the 1403 and 1405 into a single attack, complete theme of the gracious launched by fanfares, bustling Prince Hal, and then the nerveless activity, and Sir John’s jaunty final struggle and collapse.” To a march. The battle itself is noisy, sustained pianissimo brass chord, graphic, and blessedly swift. The Falstaff dies. In the distance, we skirmish over, Falstaff rides on hear the veiled sound of a military through fields and past apple trees drum. “The king’s stern theme is to Gloucestershire. curtly thrown across the picture,” The second interlude, gentle and writes Elgar, “the shrill drum roll outdoorsy—“some sadly-merry pipe again asserts itself momentarily, and tabor music,” in the composer’s and with one chord the words—is interrupted by the work ends; the man of stern reality shocking word of Henry IV’s death. has triumphed.”

7 nikolai rimsky-Korsakov Born March 18, 1844, Tikhvin, Russia. Died June 21, 1908, Liubensk, near Saint Petersburg, Russia. musical Pictures from The legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya

gor Stravinsky began to study The story of The Invisible City of Icomposition with Rimsky- Kitezh is taken from Russian folk- Korsakov just as the older master lore. The two lovers, Fevroniya, who was beginning to compose his four- is abducted during an invasion of teenth—and next-to-last—opera, Tartars, and Prince Vsevolod, who The Legend of the Invisible City of is killed in battle, are reunited in Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya. the mystical city of Kitezh, which is He saw the work at every stage in hidden behind the clouds and visible its development, marveled that an only as a reflection in the Shining opera with a religious subject could Lake. (The mysterious allure of be written by a serious atheist, and Kitezh continues into our own time: led the applause at the premiere in 1992, the acclaimed director at the Mariinsky Theater in Saint Werner Herzog himself went in Petersburg. (Stravinsky attended search of the legendary Kitezh on the arm of his mother—the as part of the filming of his 1992 widow of the theater’s most famous documentary, Bells from the Deep: bass, just three months before the Faith and Superstition in Russia.) premiere of his own first sig- The Legend of the Invisible City nificant work, the Symphony in of Kitezh is sometimes called the E-flat, op. 1.) Russian , and Wagner was

ComPoSED moST rECEnT InSTrumEnTaTIon 1903–1904 CSo PErFormanCE three flutes and piccolo, april 13, 1999, Orchestra two oboes and english FIrST PErFormanCE Hall (introduction only). yuri horn, three clarinets and February, 20, 1907 (complete Temirkanov conducting bass clarinet, two bassoons opera), Saint Petersburg and contrabassoon, four These are the first Chicago horns, three trumpets, Symphony Orchestra FIrST CSo three trombones and tuba, subscription concert PErFormanCES timpani, triangle, snare performances of the last May 21, 1932, ann arbor, drum, cymbals, bass drum, three “musical pictures” Michigan (complete opera). tam-tam, bells, glocken- earl V. Moore conducting spiel, balalaikas, two harps, July 12, 1991, Ravinia celesta, strings Festival (introduction only). Gennady Rozhdestvensky aPProxImaTE conducting PErFormanCE TImE 23 minutes

8 clearly among Rimsky-Korsakov’s act of the opera, as the Princess chief models. (The ostinato from Fevroniya’s wedding procession the Good Friday Spell in Parsifal passes through the village of Lesser is prominently used.) But there (that is to say, Lower) Kitezh. are also echoes of earlier Russian The depiction of the fierce battle music and Mussorgsky’s shadow at Kerzhenets, with music repre- looms large at times. Maximilian senting the warring soldiers and Steinberg, the Russian composer Tartars set over racing hoofbeats, who married Rimsky-Korsakov’s is the entr’acte between the two daughter and edited several of his scenes of the opera’s third act. The works for posthumous publication, final musical picture, the entr’acte made the orchestral suite of “musi- before the last scene of the opera, cal pictures” drawn from the opera reveals the transfiguration of that is performed at these concerts. Fevroniya’s soul on the journey to (The music of the suite, like that of the Invisible City. the opera itself, is continuous.) The A footnote. Stravinsky quickly opening Introduction is often jus- recognized the brilliance of tifiably compared to the celebrated Rimsky-Korsakov’s achievement Forest Murmurs from the second in this score and—especially since act of Wagner’s Siegfried. Subtitled he had assisted the composer in “In Praise of the Wilderness,” copying out long passages of the Rimsky-Korsakov’s tiny tone poem piano vocal score of the complete is a magical depiction of a forest set- opera—he later realized how ting, with bird calls and the sound deeply the entire work had influ- of rustling leaves. But its harmonic enced him. (Rimsky-Korsakov compass and the shape of its big lived just long enough to see his melody, as well as its rich and som- student blossom under his influ- ber colors, is thoroughly Russian. ence, but he barely glimpsed the (Rimsky-Korsakov was a man extraordinary direction Stravinsky’s given to dark moods; once, when he career would soon take.) The night apologized to Tolstoy after they had of the premiere, Stravinsky had spent an awkward evening together, an enormous wreath delivered to the great novelist commented, “For the theater; it was handed up to me it has been very interesting to Rimsky-Korsakov from the pit at come face to face with gloom.”) the end of the opera, amidst cheers The second musical picture comes from the audience and members of from the opening of the second the orchestra.

9 Piotr Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Viatka, Russia. Died November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy-overture after Shakespeare

o other play by Shakespeare has including Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Ninspired as many composers Montecchi, with a mezzo-soprano as Romeo and Juliet. Throughout as Romeo (in the tradition of the romantic era in particular, the trouser roles), and Gounod’s drama held an enormous—and enduring treatment, with the sometimes nearly fatal—attraction. ending rewritten so that the lovers After Berlioz saw Romeo and Juliet die at the same moment, sing- in a Paris theater and fell desper- ing in unison. Bernstein’s urban ately in love with Harriet Smithson, West Side Story suggests that who played Juliet, he announced his the fascination with this subject intention to marry the actress and hasn’t waned in our own time. to write a dramatic symphony (now And Prokofiev’s 1940 ballet is now known as the Symphonie fantastique) recognized as a twentieth-century based on the play—and did both classic, although the composer within a decade. The marriage was originally wrote a happy ending a mistake, however, and they later because he couldn’t imagine how separated, but the symphony is one dying lovers could dance. But of his greatest works. none of these works has surpassed More than twenty operas have the popularity of Tchaikovsky’s been written on Romeo and Juliet, fantasy-overture.

ComPoSED InSTrumEnTaTIon CSo rECorDIngS October 7–november 27, two flutes and piccolo, two 1954. antal Doráti 1869; revised 1870, 1880 oboes and english horn, two conducting. Mercury clarinets, two bassoons, 1981. Daniel FIrST PErFormanCE four horns, two trumpets, Barenboim conducting. March 16, 1879, Moscow three trombones and Deutsche Grammophon tuba, timpani, bass drum, FIrST CSo cymbals, harp, strings 1986. Sir Georg Solti PErFormanCE conducting. london February 3, 1893, auditorium aPProxImaTE 1988. Claudio abbado Theatre. Theodore PErFormanCE TImE conducting. CBS Thomas conducting 21 minutes 1995. Daniel Barenboim moST rECEnT conducting. Teldec CSo PErFormanCE September 19, 2010, Millennium Park. Riccardo Muti conducting

10 The Russian composer Mily Verdi and Boito first conceived Balakirev apparently first sug- their Otello. (Hamlet was the last gested the play to Tchaikovsky Shakespearean subject to inter- as early as the summer of 1869. est Tchaikovsky: he composed He continued to push the subject a fantasy-overture on it in 1888 and, when Tchaikovsky wavered, and three years later contributed he prodded him. In a letter dated to a staging of the October 6, 1869, he offered literary play in Saint Petersburg.) observations, suggested general In 1878, while he was recuper- guidelines for treating the subject, ating from his failed marriage and even dictated four measures at his brother Modest’s house, of music to open the work. Before Tchaikovsky turned to Romeo and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Juliet and was struck by its potential was finished (and it was another as a great operatic subject. (One ten years before it reached its final night that May, when Modest form), Balakirev had approved and Sasha went to the theater to and rejected a number of themes, see Romeo and Juliet, Tchaikovsky recommended a new introduction stayed home, put his nieces and in the style of a Lisztian chorale, nephews to bed, and then read and presented his preferred tonal the Shakespeare play for himself.) scheme, based on a fondness for “Of course I’ll compose Romeo and keys with five flats or two sharps. Juliet,” he Surprisingly, Tchaikovsky found wrote to his own voice with this work; Modest Romeo and Juliet, a “Fantasy- from Overture after Shakespeare,” is Brailov his first masterpiece. The original in June, version, composed in just six weeks, excited was performed in March 1870, with by the Nicolai Rubinstein conducting. A prospect of new version, completed that sum- writing a mer, incorporated Balakirev’s idea new opera. of a slow chorale at the beginning. “It will be It was played in Saint Petersburg in my most early 1872. Although Tchaikovsky monumen- and Balakirev had a falling out that tal work. It year, Tchaikovsky continued to turn now seems Mily Balakirev, who first sug- gested that Tchaikovsky write to Shakespeare for inspiration: in to me music for Romeo and Juliet 1873, he fashioned a symphonic absurd that fantasy from The Tempest, and late I couldn’t in 1876 he complained of losing see earlier that I was predestined, as sleep over Othello, which he was it were, to set this drama to music.” determined to turn into an opera. But instead of writing an opera, He dropped the project early in Tchaikovsky put the finishing the new year—two years before touches on the fantasy-overture two

11 ShaKESPEarE anD muSIC

There was music in none of these are regularly writers, was able to make Shakespeare’s plays right performed in the theater the translation from play to from the start. The texts and only Mendelssohn’s opera successfully (with the include some one hundred has become a concert- inspired help of his librettist, songs and many cues for hall staple. arrigo Boito), and his Otello instruments—a march, it is remarkable how few and Falstaff are among the a dance, and sometimes good operas have been made great treasures of opera. simply the direction: music. from Shakespearean drama. The increasing interest Since the poet’s death But as anthony Burgess in Shakespeare in the early nearly four hundred years has pointed out, “take the nineteenth century coincided ago, his works have enticed poetry and the incredible with the rise of program- composers time and time psychological insight away, matic music, a movement again into the tough and and you have artificial plots that inspired some of the often treacherous that were not finest Shakespearean challenge of Shakespeare’s treatments, beginning with writing music own to start Mendelssohn’s Overture to A to accompany, with, full of Midsummer Night’s Dream in illustrate, or improbable 1826 and Berlioz’s dramatic replace his words. coincidences symphony, Romeo and A Shakespeare and carelessly Juliet, in 1839. The twentieth Music Catalogue, hurried fifth- century continued to add published in 1991, act denoue- to the list, with works as lists 21,362 pieces ments.” Many different as Prokofiev’s ballet of music written composers, Romeo and Juliet, William to Shakespearean William however, have Walton’s film scores (for works—operas, Shakespeare been unable Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard songs, overtures, to resist the III, all with lawrence Olivier), symphonies, challenge and Vaughan Williams’s tone poems, and, of course, (at least twenty operatic lovely Serenade to Music, incidental music designed to versions of Hamlet have a setting of the homage to fulfill the numerous cues for been staged), and a few have music from the last act of music in the plays. written works that achieved The Merchant of Venice. Many composers modest, though usually This week’s concert have tried their hand not enduring popularity, concludes with what is at writing incidental such as Thomas’s Hamlet, perhaps the most familiar music for Shakespeare’s nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Shakespearean music work—Tchaikovsky and Windsor, Gounod’s Romeo of all, Tchaikovsky’s Shostakovich for Hamlet, and Juliet, or Rossini’s Otello. fantasy-overture Romeo and Sibelius and Sir arthur (Some of the lesser-known Juliet, and includes elgar’s Sullivan for The Tempest, operas—Berlioz’s Beatrice too-little-known symphonic Mendelssohn for A and Benedict and Britten’s study of Falstaff, which Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Midsummer Night’s is arguably the greatest Humperdinck for Twelfth Dream—are, in fact, better orchestral treatment of a Night, Flotow for A Winter’s works of music theater.) Shakespearean subject. Tale, and korngold for Much Only , who —P.H. Ado About Nothing. But loved Shakespeare above all

12 years later. (It’s this last version that Tchaikovsky begins as Balakirev is now regularly played.) The idea recommended, with solemn and of composing the opera cropped up fateful chords that suggest the in 1881 and again in 1893, and on calm, knowing voice of Friar one of those occasions he sketched Lawrence. The street music is noisy a duet for the lovers based on and action-packed. The famous material from the fantasy-overture. love theme begins innocently in But he never orchestrated it and the english horn and violas; it was ultimately gave up on the project, one of Tchaikovsky’s boldest moves perhaps realizing how difficult it to save the big statement of this would be to surpass his orchestral great melody, fully orchestrated and work on the same subject. greatly extended—the way most lis- Seldom in Tchaikovsky’s music teners remember it—for much later, are form and content as well at the climax of the recapitulation. matched as in Romeo and Juliet. The lovers’ music returns once The contrast between family strife again in the coda, signaled by the and the lovers’ passion ideally lends timpani’s dying heartbeat, but there itself to form, with two it sounds cold and lifeless. dramatically contrasted themes; the conflict assures a fierce and Phillip Huscher is the program annota- combative development section. tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2012 Chicago

Cut?

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