Riccardo Muti Conductor Honegger Pacific 231 Bates Alternative
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Program One HunDReD TwenTy-FiRST 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, February 2, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, February 3, 2012, at 8:00 Saturday, February 4, 2012, at 8:00 Tuesday, February 7, 2012, at 7:30 riccardo muti Conductor Honegger Pacific 231 Bates Alternative Energy Ford’s Farm, 1896— Chicago, 2012 Xinjiang Province, 2112— Reykjavik, 2222 Commissioned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by the Louise Durham Mead Fund for New Music World premiere IntermIssIon Franck Symphony in D Minor Lento—Allegro non troppo Allegretto Allegro non troppo 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 PHi LLiP HuSCHeR arthur Honegger Born March 10, 1892, Le Havre, France. Died November 27, 1955, Paris, France. Pacific 231, mouvement symphonique no. 1 have always had a passion for and served as its spiritual mentor. Ilocomotives,” Arthur Honegger In I Am a Composer, he writes, “I wrote after Pacific 231, his high- am what the language of passports speed tone poem named after a calls of ‘dual nationality,’ that is to locomotive, became a runaway hit. say, a combination of French and “To me they are living beings, and Swiss.” Born in Le Havre, he had I love them as others love women studied composition first in Zurich, or horses.” his parents’ hometown, and then Honegger first attracted attention commuted to Paris for two years in the early twenties as a member to work at the conservatory. In of the group of French compos- 1913—Honegger was nineteen—he ers known as Les six, although settled in Paris, a city bursting with history has cut that number in avant-garde surprises, later claim- half, remembering just Honegger, ing that, despite his Swiss upbring- along with Darius Milhaud and ing, “all the rest—my intellectual Francis Poulenc. Honegger was blossoming, the sharpening of my something of an outsider in Les moral and spiritual values—I owe six—he got involved almost by to France.” Among the qualities accident, and he never could he owed to Switzerland, Honegger stomach the pranksterish music of listed “a naïve sense of honesty” and Eric Satie, who inspired the group his knowledge of the Bible, though ComPosed most reCent InstrumentatIon 1923 Cso PerFormanCes two flutes and piccolo, two December 9, 1930, oboes and english horn, FIrst PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. Frederick two clarinets and bass May 8, 1924, Paris, France Stock conducting clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, July 26, 1964, FIrst Cso three trumpets, three Ravinia Festival. Seiji PerFormanCe trombones and tuba, cymbal, Ozawa conducting October 17, 1924, snare drum, bass drum, Orchestra Hall. Frederick Cso PerFormanCes tam-tam, strings Stock conducting ConduCted BY aPProxImate Honegger PerFormanCe tIme March 15 & 16, 1929, 6 minutes Orchestra Hall 2 he might also have mentioned the noise of the pistons, the his lifelong love of Bach, whose screeching of the brakes, the hiss- cantatas he regularly heard in the ing of steam, the commotion of the Protestant church of his youth. front wheels, etc., etc.,” Honegger Honegger achieved almost over- later wrote. This was the height of night fame in 1921 for his oratorio Europe’s fascination with the age Le roi David (King David), but he of the machine, and Pacific 231 caused a real stir two years later was hailed as one of its landmarks. with Pacific 231. This short orches- (Actually, one critic, misunder- tral work began life as one of three standing the title, discerned in so-called symphonic movements, Honegger’s high-powered writ- but Honegger quickly realized ing the smells of the open sea.) that, in a city still reeling from the Honegger quickly became known shock of The Rite of Spring, his title as the man who wrote the piece was, as he put it, a bit colorless. about the train, even though, in “Suddenly a romantic idea crossed fact, he hadn’t. my mind, and when the work was When Honegger conducted finished I wrote the title, Pacific Pacific 231 in Chicago, at the 231, which indicates a locomotive conclusion of a program entirely of for heavy loads and high speed,” he his own works performed by the later recalled. Chicago Symphony in 1929, he was once again praised as a master tone To tell the truth, in PacificI was painter—“the snorting, throbbing, pursuing a very abstract and tumultuous progress of a railroad quite unalloyed idea, by giving engine is depicted with extraordi- the feeling of a mathematical nary skill,” one local critic wrote. acceleration of rhythm, while By then, Honegger had decided to the actual motion of the piece play along with Pacific 231’s many slowed down. In musical terms, new fans. In the published score, I composed a huge, formal cho- he described the overall shape of rale, strewn with counterpoint the piece: “the quiet breathing of in the manner of J. S. Bach. the machine at rest, its effort in starting, then the gathering speed, But audiences and critics could the progress from mood to mood, only hear the locomotive. “People as a 300-ton train hurtles through of great talent wrote wonderful the dark night, racing 120 miles articles describing the driving rods, an hour.” 3 mason Bates Born January 23, 1977, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Alternative Energy t a junkyard looking for electronic elements. When Bates A‘car-part instruments’ for started going to hear the Richmond Alternative Energy (a new Chicago Symphony in Virginia, where he Symphony piece coming in grew up, he suddenly made contact February),” Mason Bates wrote on with the great composers, and he Twitter last October 27. Historians began to develop an understanding who used to transcribe sketches and of the orchestra’s place in history. search composer’s diaries for clues After a traditional musical about how pieces of music came upbringing in Richmond, which into being now scan tweets and included piano lessons and singing YouTube videos—there is, in fact, in the choir, Bates studied composi- a YouTube clip of Bates on a junket tion and English literature in the to Fermilab last May, where he Columbia–Juilliard joint program. went to collect sound samples from He worked with David Del Tredici a particle accelerator for Alternative and John Corigliano, and then Energy—to understand the compo- moved to the Bay Area in 2001 sition process. to enroll in the Ph.D. program at Bates first made a name for Berkeley’s Center for New Music himself as a composer who liked and Audio Technologies. His to incorporate electronics within career, like his music, is a singular orchestral music. That was not mix of old-world establishment and really unexpected from someone New Age culture: he has been lav- who first heard an orchestra ished with big-league honors, from listening to Pink Floyd and Moody institutions such as the American Blues albums and was taken by the Academy in Rome and the seamless fusion of orchestral and American Academy for Arts and ComPosed InstrumentatIon aPProxImate 2011 three flutes, three piccolos PerFormanCe tIme and alto flute, three oboes 25 minutes These are the world and english horn, three bas- premiere performances. soons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, laptop, an extensive percussion battery, harp, piano, celesta, strings 4 Letters (an award that “acknowl- fantastique or the Stravinsky edges the composer who has arrived ballets).” Bates had been tossing at his or her own voice”), and he around the ideas behind Alternative also has spent many nights as a DJ, Energy for a long time, but hear- spinning and mixing at dance clubs ing Riccardo Muti’s performance in San Francisco, New York City, of the Symphonie fantastique here Berlin, and Rome. last season and getting to know his Alternative Energy, which occu- “unique understanding of dramatic pied Bates for much of 2011, marks music” brought his “energy sym- a new stage in his evolving—“and, phony” to life at last. perhaps, maturing,” as he says— Since Bates became one of approach to integrating electronics the Chicago Symphony’s Mead into the orchestra. “The sounds Composers-in-Residence last sea- coming from the speakers are as son (along with Anna Clyne, whose carefully crafted as the sonorities Night Ferry will be premiered in the orchestra,” he says, “and the next week), the Orchestra has influences reach far beyond techno.” played his Music for Underground And the use of scrap metal in his Spaces and The B-Sides. Alternative large percussion battery, as well as Energy, however, is the first work the Fermilab recording, is merely written expressly for the Chicago part of Bates’s ongoing quest to Symphony and Riccardo Muti as expand—and refine—his vocabu- part of this residency. lary of sound. Offsetting high-tech electronic sounds with old car parts fits perfectly with the sense of mason Bates on passing time and changing worlds Alternative Energy that lies behind Alternative Energy. “The idea was that each movement would be separated by a hundred lternative Energy is an “energy years,” Bates says, “starting with Asymphony” spanning four old energy (the first movement movements and hundreds of years. uses scrap metal to evoke a junk- Beginning in a rustic Midwestern yard) and moving to new energy junkyard in the late nineteenth cen- (the second movement uses actual tury, the piece travels through ever recordings from Fermilab to evoke greater and more powerful forces of a particle accelerator).