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Home , Alexander Glazunov, Andrzej Panufnik, Polska (dance), Swan Lake, The Voice of Poland

PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOURTH SEASON Chicago 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 2, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, October 3, 2014, at 1:30 Saturday, October 4, 2014, at 8:30

Riccardo Muti Conductor Christopher Martin Panufnik in modo antico (In one movement) CHRISTOPHER MARTIN First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances Performed in honor of the centennial of Panufnik’s birth

Stravinsky Suite from Introduction and of the Firebird Dance of the Princesses Infernal Dance of King Kashchei Berceuse— Finale

INTERMISSION

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 3 in D Major, Op. 29 (Polish) Introduction and Allegro—Moderato assai (Tempo marcia funebre) Alla tedesca: Allegro moderato e semplice Andante elegiaco Scherzo: Allegro vivo Finale: Allegro con fuoco (Tempo di polacca)

The performance of Panufnik’s Concerto in modo antico is generously supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Polska Music program. 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

Andrzej Panufnik Born September 24, 1914, , . Died October 27, 1991, London, England. Concerto in modo antico

This music grew out of opus 1.” After graduation from the conserva- Andrzej Panufnik’s tory in 1936, Panufnik continued his studies in response to the rebirth of —he was eager to hear the works of the Warsaw, his birthplace, Second Viennese School there, but found to his which had been devas- dismay that not one work by Schoenberg, Berg, tated during the uprising or Webern was played during his first year in at the end of the Second the city—and then in Paris and London. He World War. “To see this returned to Warsaw in 1939, just before war almost miraculous overtook his country. regrowth of seemingly During the occupation, Panufnik formed lost architectural treasures so lovingly brought a piano duo with his compatriot, Witold about by my compatriots filled me with enor- Lutosławski. Together, these two musicians, who mous admiration,” he later wrote, recalling how would one day both be known as important com- he marveled at the reconstruction of the beautiful posers, arranged and performed more than two sixteenth- and seventeenth-century houses in the hundred works around Warsaw, often secretly, old part of the city. “I felt a strong desire to to raise funds for Resistance workers and Jewish undertake a similar task with fragments of Polish artists. During the war, Panufnik decided to vocal and instrumental music of the same move with his mother, who was in poor health, centuries which had suffered near-oblivion out of the city and into the suburbs. At that because of Poland’s long and tragic history of point, he left all his compositions behind in the numerous foreign invasions.” apartment of a new friend, Stazka Litewska. But This was also part of Panufnik’s reconstruction when he finally returned to the city in the spring of his own career, which likewise had been lev- of 1945, he learned that Stazka had thrown all eled. His musical life began in storybook fashion. his manuscripts away. Overnight, Panufnik was His father, an engineer who made on the a thirty-year-old composer without a single work side, and his mother, a violinist, encouraged his to his name. interest in music. He began piano lessons with Panufnik started over. In 1945, he recon- his grandmother, started to compose at the age of structed from memory his as well as a nine, and entered the Warsaw Conservatory as a symphony he had written in 1939 (he later with- piano student at eleven. Eventually—and despite drew it from his catalog). Little by little he began a temporary decision to become an aircraft to add new works, including a new symphony, designer—composition became his life. A piano now called his First, inspired by the intricate trio he wrote in 1934—he was nineteen—was paper cutouts made by Polish peasants on long his first significant composition: “If I had winter nights. (He also used fragments of Polish given my works opus numbers,” he wrote in his folk songs in the score.) And, as he watched autobiography, “I would have designated it as Warsaw rebuild, he began to think about the

COMPOSED INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE 1951, revised 1955 solo trumpet, harp, , strings PERFORMANCE TIME 15 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES May 16, 1952; Warsaw, Poland These are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first performances.

2 vast repertoire of early Polish music that was completely unknown, and decided to compose new scores based on old traditions. “I endeavored to recreate as near as possible the true period style—rather developing the themes than ‘modernizing’ them,” he wrote. “My main intention was to bring alive the spirit of Poland at that time, and to make use of these precious fragments which otherwise would have remained In February 1990, Panufnik led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in lifeless on the bookshelves of the world premiere of his Tenth Symphony, commissioned for the libraries.” Within a few years, Orchestra’s centennial. Panufnik would be recognized by his own composer’s voice, in reconstructing, revitalizing, and reimagining influenced but not dictated by tradition, and these traditional pieces. It is designed as one he would be one of twelve composers commis- continuous movement “symmetrically built,” as sioned by the Chicago Symphony to write music the composer put it, of seven contrasting sec- honoring its centennial. (Panufnik came to tions, alternately slower and faster. The orchestra Chicago to conduct the CSO in the premiere of is just strings, with timpani and harp. Riding his Symphony no. 10 in February of 1990.) above it, from the first page of the score to the last, is a great solo role for trumpet—ranging he Concerto in modo antico is one of from hauntingly lyrical to exuberant and a handful of works written after 1950 songful—that is of Poland itself. that Panufnik later cataloged simply as These performances of the Concerto in modo OldT Polish Music, downplaying his expertise antico honor the centennial of Panufnik’s birth. Born June 18, 1882, Oranienbaum, . Died April 6, 1971, New York City. Suite from The Firebird

The Firebird opened on proud, for he had discovered Igor Stravinsky—or, June 25, 1910; on June 26 to be more accurate, he was the one who put Stravinsky was a famous Stravinsky in the right place at the right time. man. The great impresario The rest was all Stravinsky’s doing. had The right place was Paris in 1910. By chance, predicted as much—at Diaghilev had heard Stravinsky’s music for the one of the final dress first time just two years before, at a concert rehearsals he pointed to in . He immediately invited Stravinsky and said, the twenty-six-year-old composer to assist in “Mark him well; he is a orchestrating music for the 1909 season in man on the eve of celebrity.” Diaghilev was a Paris. Stravinsky wasn’t Diaghilev’s first choice good judge of such things, for in 1910 his circle to compose his new ballet based on the Russian included many of the most famous creative artists of the Firebird. He initially gave the of the time. He was also, perhaps, excessively job to Nikolai Tcherepnin, who promptly had

3 a falling out with the choreographer Mikhail like a catherine wheel. I was delighted to have Fokine; then to Anatole Liadov, a prominent, discovered this, and I remember my excitement in though modestly talented Russian composer who demonstrating it to Rimsky’s violinist and cellist declined, as did Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai sons. I remember, too, Richard Strauss’s astonish- Sokolov. Finally Diaghilev turned to the young, ment when he heard it two years later in Berlin.” untested Stravinsky. The score is filled with delicious details, though The Firebird was a spectacular success. (See none as novel as the one Stravinsky rightfully Stravinsky’s account which follows.) According claimed as his own, and, in the closing pages, a to Ravel, the Parisian audience wanted a taste of magnificent sweep unmatched by much music the avant-garde, and this dazzling music by the written in the previous century and little since. daring young Russian fit the bill. The Firebird was With The Firebird, Stravinsky found instant Stravinsky’s first large-scale commission, and, and enduring fame. “And, oh yes, to complete the being an overnight hit, it was quickly followed picture,” he later wrote, “I was once addressed by by two more. The first, Petrushka, enhanced his a man in an American railway dining car, and reputation; the second, The Rite of Spring, made quite seriously, as ‘Mr. Fireberg.’ ” him the most notorious composer alive. Both of those works were more revolutionary IGOR STRAVINSKY ON THE FIREBIRD than The Firebird—less indebted to folk melody and the gestures of other masters—and spoke in had already begun to think about The a voice of greater individuality. But The Firebird Firebird when I returned to Saint Petersburg is one of the most impressive calling cards in the from Ustilug, in the autumn of 1909, though history of music—a work of such brilliance that, I was not yet certain of the commission (which, if he had written nothing else, Stravinsky’s name in fact, did not come until December, more than would still be known to us today. a month after I had begun to compose; I remem- Stravinsky later called the Firebird orchestra ber the day Diaghilev telephoned me to say go “wastefully large” (even though he used it with ahead, and my telling him I already had). Early formidable clarity and imagination), and in 1919, in November, I moved from Saint Petersburg when he made his second concert suite from to a dacha belonging to the Rimsky-Korsakov the complete ballet, he cut down the number family about seventy miles southeast of the of performers without lessening the music’s city. I went there for a vacation, a rest in birch impact or daring. “For me,” Stravinsky wrote, forests and snow-fresh air, but instead began to “the most striking effect in The Firebird was work on The Firebird. Andrei Rimsky-Korsakov the natural-harmonic string glissando near the (son of the composer) was with me at the time, beginning, which the bass chord touches off and he often was during the following months;

COMPOSED July 10, 2014, Ravinia Festival. Krzysztof APPROXIMATE November 1909–May 1910 Urbanski conducting (1945 suite) PERFORMANCE TIME 19 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE CSO PERFORMANCES, Complete ballet: June 25, 1910; Paris, THE COMPOSER CONDUCTING CSO RECORDINGS France Between 1925 and 1962, Stravinsky 1969. Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. conducted the CSO in his suite on Angel (1919 suite) FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES fourteen occasions at Orchestra Hall, 1992. Pierre Boulez conducting. February 11 & 12, 1921, Orchestra the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee, and at Deutsche Grammophon (com- Hall. Frederick Stock conducting the Ravinia Festival. plete ballet) (1919 suite) INSTRUMENTATION 1996. James Levine conducting. Disney July 3, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Ernest Suite (1919): two flutes and piccolo, (excerpts from 1919 suite) Ansermet conducting (1919 suite) two and english horn, two 2000. Pierre Boulez conducting. , two , four horns, MOST RECENT EuroArts (complete ballet) (video) two , three , , CSO PERFORMANCES percussion, piano, celesta, harp, strings November 23, 24 & 25, 2012, Orchestra Hall. Ludwig Wicki conducting (Disney Fantasia: Live in Concert, excerpts from 1919 suite) 4 because of this, The Firebird is dedicated to him. as an accompaniment to dance, he taught me The introduction up to the and much, and I have worked with choreographers figure at bar six was composed in the country, somewhat in the same way ever since. I like as well as notations for later parts. I returned exact requirements. to Saint Petersburg in December and remained I was flattered, of course, at the promise of there until, in March, I had finished the com- a performance of my music in Paris, and my position. The orchestra score was ready a month excitement on arriving in that city, from Ustilug, later, and the complete music mailed to Paris towards the end of May, could hardly have been by mid-April. (The score is dated May 18, but greater. These ardors were somewhat cooled, how- by that time I was merely retouching details.) ever, at the first rehearsal. The words “for Russian The Firebird did not attract me as a subject. Like export” seemed to be stamped everywhere, both all story it demanded descriptive music on the stage and in the music. The mimic scenes of a kind I did not want to write. I had not yet were especially obvious in this sense, but I could proved myself as a composer, and I had not earned say nothing about them as they were what Fokine the right to criticize the aesthetics of my collab- liked best. I was also deflated to discover that not orators, but I did criticize them, and arrogantly, all of my musical remarks were held to be oracu- though perhaps my age (twenty-seven) was more lar, and Pierné, the conductor, disagreed with me arrogant than I was. Above all, I could not abide once in front of the whole orchestra. I had written the assumption that my music would be imitation “non crescendo,” a precaution common enough in Rimsky-Korsakov, especially as by that time I was the music of the last fifty years, but Pierné said, in such revolt against poor Rimsky. However, if I “Young man, if you do not want a crescendo, then say I was less than eager to fulfill the commission, do not write anything.” I know that, in truth, my reservations about the The first-night audience glittered indeed, but subject were also an advance defense for my not the fact that it was heavily perfumed is more being sure I could. But Diaghilev, the diplomat, vivid in my memory; the gaily elegant London arranged everything. He came to call on me one audience, when I came to know it later, seemed day, with Fokine, Nijinsky, Bakst, and Benois. almost deodorized by comparison. I sat in When of them had proclaimed their belief Diaghilev’s box, where, at intermission, artists, in my talent, I began to believe, too, and accepted. dowagers, aged Egerias of the Ballet, “intellec- Fokine is credited as the librettist of The tuals,” balletomanes, appeared. I met for the first Firebird, but I remember that all of us, and time Proust, Giraudoux, Paul Morand, St. John especially Bakst, who was Diaghilev’s prin- Perse, Claudel (with whom, years later, I nearly cipal adviser, contributed ideas to the plan collaborated on a musical treatment of the Book of the scenario; I should also add that Bakst of Tobit) at The Firebird, though I cannot remem- was as much responsible for the costumes as ber whether at the premiere or at subsequent Golovine. My own “collaboration” with Fokine performances. At one of the latter I also met means nothing more than that we studied the Sarah Bernhardt. She was thickly veiled, sitting libretto together, episode by episode, until I in a wheelchair in her private box, and seemed knew the exact measurements required of the terribly apprehensive lest anyone should recog- music. In spite of Fokine’s wearying homiletics, nize her. After a month of such society, I was delivered at each meeting, on the role of music happy to retire to a sleepy village in Brittany.

THE FIREBIRD: A SYNOPSIS OF THE COMPLETE BALLET

Fokine’s adaptation of the fairy tale pits feathers, whose magic will protect him prince waves the feather; the Firebird the Firebird, a good fairy, against the from harm. He then meets thirteen appears. Her lullaby puts Kashchei to ogre Kashchei, whose soul is preserved princesses, all under Kashchei’s spell, sleep, and she then reveals the secret as an egg in a casket. A young prince, and falls in love with one of them. of his immortality. Ivan opens the Ivan Tsarevich, wanders into Kashchei’s When he tries to follow them into the casket and smashes the egg, killing magic garden in pursuit of the Firebird. magic garden, a great carillon sounds Kashchei. The captive princesses When he captures her, she pleads for an alarm and he is captured. Kashchei are freed, and Ivan and his beloved her release and gives him one of her is about to turn Ivan to stone when the princess are betrothed.

5 Pyotr Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Viatka, Russia. Died November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg. Symphony No. 3 in D Major, Op. 29 (Polish)

It was a conductor— Once he settled in with his sister Alexandra August Manns, who led Danilova, whom he called Sasha, and her family the British premiere of at their summer estate near Kamenka, he began Tchaikovsky’s Third his Third Symphony, either to avoid or to steel Symphony at the Crystal himself for the tough work on the ballet that Palace concerts in lay ahead. Despite Tchaikovsky’s anxiety, this 1899—who gave this was a relatively calm and stable time in his music its Polish nickname. life. He had not yet entered into the historic (And it was the 1899 correspondence-only relationship with Nadezhda program annotator who von Meck, who would become his patron, and found in the music a rich subtext about “Poland perhaps more importantly, confidante. And he mourning in her oppression and rejoicing in her had not even met the woman he would unwisely regeneration.”) The nickname stuck. At the time marry within two years, prompting an attempted the symphony was composed, Tchaikovsky had suicide and the greatest creative crisis of his not yet been to Poland—he would later conduct career. Unlike his first two , the his own music in Warsaw—and he only knew third one came easily and often left him free to enough of Polish music to attach the Tempo di enjoy his summer in the country: “I don’t sit for polacca (tempo of the polonaise) instruction to hours at a time, but walk a good deal,” he told his finale, sharing with composers as disparate as friends. Tchaikovsky began sketching the music Bach and Liszt a fondness for this festive dance. on June 17 and had finished a rough outline of Unlike Tchaikovsky’s other symphonies—five the entire symphony—conceived from the start with numbers and the un-numbered Manfred— in five rather than the usual four movements—by his third was quickly written, in a single creative early July. The piece was finished, down to the spurt and without apparent strain. (It also is the last details of orchestration, by August 13, at only one in a major key.) It took him less than which point he plunged forward with the music two months during the summer of 1875. The for , which would not be ready for the year had not begun well for Tchaikovsky. Nicolai stage for another two years. Rubinstein, an important musician whose opin- Today’s view is that the ballet score is the ions Tchaikovsky often solicited and trusted, read more important and substantial work, but that through the score of the composer’s new First was not the way it was perceived at the time. Piano Concerto and said he found it worthless Tchaikovsky was not present for the first perfor- and unplayable. When Tchaikovsky left mance of his Third Symphony in Moscow—he for the peace of the countryside early that sum- had stayed on in Saint Petersburg following the mer, he did not travel lightly, for he was bur- successful Russian premiere of the troublesome dened with the fear that his new concerto, still Piano Concerto no. 1—but he was relieved unperformed, would never find success, and with by the news that it was warmly received. The the intimidating task of writing his first ballet, premiere of Swan Lake, on the other hand, was just commissioned by the Imperial Theatre. Later a disaster, badly danced and poorly played. It that year, the First Piano Concerto would be would be another two decades before the ballet successfully launched—in Boston, under the cel- began its steady gain in popularity, while, at the ebrated conductor Hans von Bülow—becoming same time, the symphony quietly lost its place on perhaps Tchaikovsky’s best-known work, and concert programs. the ballet, Swan Lake, would ultimately find Tchaikovsky did attend the first performance great popularity as well. But Tchaikovsky was of the symphony in Saint Petersburg in January not hopeful. 1876, and reported back to his brother Modest

6 that it was “a considerable success. The public that follows the central slow movement. (By called my name and roundly applauded.” But 1875, a symphony with five movements was Cesar Cui, the conservative Russian composer hardly original. Tchaikovsky surely knew its most and critic, wrote that “we would be well jus- celebrated predecessors—Beethoven’s Pastoral, tified in demanding more from Tchaikovsky.” Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, and Schumann’s Tchaikovsky was irked, and clearly hurt, by the Rhenish.) This charming , lightly scored, criticism: “Everyone thinks that I have nothing finds Tchaikovsky completely at home, testing more to say,” he commented, “and that I have the waters, so to speak, for the Swan Lake dance started repeating myself.” He later admitted to music ahead. Rimsky-Korsakov that he himself was dissat- The central Andante, which picks up the isfied with the content of the music, but he solemn mood of the symphony’s opening, is free stressed that the symphony represented a step and inspired, rising to a great flood of string forward technically. He was particularly proud, melody near the end. Here, Tchaikovsky uses he said, of the expansive first movement and the orchestral color to create drama and calls on the two scherzos. winds and the horn for important cameo roles. The scherzo that follows is regularly compared to he first movement is one of his earliest the celebrated ones by Mendelssohn because of successes writing in regulation sonata its gossamer spirit, whirling motion, and orches- form, a challenge that would continue tral virtuosity, but what is more remarkable is toT haunt him throughout his career. (“All my how much of it bears the stamp of Tchaikovsky’s life I have been much troubled by my inabil- emerging musical personality. A central trio, over ity to grasp and manipulate form in music,” a single unbroken note shared by the horns, is he said years later, after writing some of the adapted from music Tchaikovsky wrote to honor most beloved sonata form movements in the Peter the Great. repertoire.) The opening funeral march—all The finale, which gave the symphony its nick- but one of his symphonies start with a slow name, begins as a grand and imposing polonaise; introduction—is imaginatively scored, with continues to move forward in unexpected ways, haunting horn passages and a sweeping acce- including the introduction of a pointedly learned lerando into the big theme of the Allegro. fugue; and concludes with one of Tchaikovsky’s The second movement, an added waltz, most boisterous codas. is marked alla tedesca—in the German style Tchaikovsky most wanted to emulate—and may Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago have been inserted to balance the airy scherzo Symphony Orchestra.

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1875 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME March 14, 15 & 16, 2002, Orchestra 44 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. Leonard Slatkin conducting November 7, 1875; Moscow, Russia CSO RECORDING INSTRUMENTATION 1990. Claudio Abbado conducting. CBS FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two February 27, 1940, Orchestra Hall. Igor clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, Stravinsky conducting two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, strings

© 2014 Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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