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Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOURTH 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 2, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, October 3, 2014, at 1:30 Saturday, October 4, 2014, at 8:30 Riccardo Muti Conductor Christopher Martin Trumpet Panufnik Concerto 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 The Firebird Introduction and Dance 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, Warsaw, Poland. 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 Vienna—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 violins 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 piano trio 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, timpani, 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 the voice 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. Igor Stravinsky Born June 18, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia. 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. Sergei Diaghilev 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 Saint Petersburg. 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 ballet 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 legend 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.
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