Riccardo Muti Conductor Pinchas Zukerman Violin Music by Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op

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 Wednesday, March 7, 2012, at 6:30 (Afterwork Masterworks, performed with no intermission) riccardo muti Conductor Pinchas Zukerman Violin music by Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBBM Newsradio 780 and 105.9 FM for its generous support as the media sponsor for the Afterwork Masterwork series. Thursday, March 8, 2012, at 8:00 Saturday, March 10, 2012, at 8:00 riccardo muti Conductor Pinchas Zukerman Violin music by Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 Allegro non troppo Adagio Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace PiNChAS ZukerMAN IntermIssIon Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 Allegro non troppo Adagio non troppo Allegretto grazioso (Quasi andantino) Allegro con spirito The CSO gratefully acknowledges Margot and Josef Lakonishok for their generous sponsorship of these concerts. 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 hu SCher Johannes Brahms Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany. Died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria. Violin Concerto in D major, op. 77 oseph Joachim and Johannes It was Joachim who insisted that JBrahms became instant friends Brahms meet the Schumanns, a when they met in May 1853. Both visit that changed the young com- men were in their early twen- poser’s life—Robert wrote his last ties, and although Brahms was critic’s column to introduce Brahms an unknown, with all his greatest to the public, and Clara became a music still to come, Joachim was confidante and a valued colleague, already a celebrity—the most if not more. brilliant and promising violinist It was simply a matter of time around. Joachim described Brahms before Brahms would offer to as “pure as a diamond, soft as write a concerto for his best friend. snow,” reminding us that the com- (Brahms had overcome his fear poser’s familiar portly figure and of tackling the forms in which bushy beard were later acquisitions. Beethoven triumphed and had With music as their bond, they completed two symphonies and a became close—confiding secrets, piano concerto.) The violin concerto enjoying each other’s company, was sketched during a summer and sharing the things they loved. holiday at Pörtschach in 1878, just ComPoseD most reCent aPProxImate 1878 Cso PerFormanCes PerFormanCe tIme April 27, 2010, Orchestra 40 minutes FIrst PerFormanCe hall. Christian Tetzlaff, January 1, 1879, leipzig, violin; Jaap van Cso reCorDIngs Germany. Joseph Zweden conducting 1955. Jascha heifetz, violin; Joachim, violin; the fritz reiner conducting. rCA July 24, 2011, ravinia composer conducting festival. robert Chen, violin; 1976. itzhak Perlman, violin; Carlo Maria Giulini conduct- FIrst Cso James Conlon conducting ing. Angel PerFormanCe InstrumentatIon January 19, 1894, 1997. Maxim Vengerov, solo violin, two flutes, two Auditorium Theatre. henri violin; Daniel barenboim oboes, two clarinets, two Marteau, violin; Theodore conducting. Teldec bassoons, four horns, two Thomas conducting trumpets, timpani, strings 2002. rachel barton, violin; Carlos kalmar conducting. CaDenZa Cedille Joseph Joachim 2 across the lake from the country the violin; the violinist Bronislaw house where Alban Berg would Huberman elaborated: “It is a write his violin concerto nearly concerto for violin against the sixty years later. Brahms picked the orchestra—and the violin wins.” key of D major (the tonality of the Eventually, Brahms’s work was Second Symphony he had recently widely performed and greatly finished) and planned the concerto admired; in four movements, an unprec- it was even edented scheme. While composing, deemed Brahms often turned to Joachim worthy for technical advice about the solo of stand- part—Joachim not only knew the ing beside instrument’s capabilities better Beethoven’s than anyone, but also was a gifted single violin composer himself. (When they concerto. met in 1853, Joachim was the more Brahms had accomplished composer; Brahms invited the used to let him see everything he comparison wrote, seeking both criticism and himself by encouragement.) It was Brahms’s picking own decision to abandon the four- the same movement design and to replace the key and by two inner movements with a single writing for Violinist Joseph Joachim adagio. (The leftover scherzo may the violinist have been salvaged for the four- who had recently put Beethoven’s movement B-flat piano concerto concerto back in circulation. Brahms put aside in order to work on this concerto.) He was still mak- rahms honors the classical ing further adjustments after the Bmodel; in the first movement, first performance, in Leipzig, on he writes a double exposition—one New Year’s Day, 1879. for the orchestra alone, the second The work was not a success. led by the violin. This would be (At the premiere, the applause unremarkable, except that most was lukewarm, though many in concertos written in the seventy- the audience were distracted by odd years since Beethoven’s had Brahms’s failure to hook up his struggled to find novel ways to suspenders properly.) When Clara proceed. Brahms has new things to Schumann heard it earlier, in a pri- say, but he says them in a form that vate performance, she commented Beethoven would have recognized that the orchestra and soloist were immediately. The first movement “thoroughly blended,” but others is on a grand scale, with a wealth saw that distinction differently. of melodic material. (Brahms once Hans von Bülow, a man seldom said that melodies were so abun- without opinions, said that Brahms dant in Pörtschach that one had had written a concerto against to be careful not to step on them.) 3 Brahms presents a full harmonic Brahms didn’t quickly turn from itinerary that allows a side trip to the oboe to the violin, having saved the distant reaches of C major at for it an unbroken outpouring of the beginning of the development song that carries us through to the section (Beethoven went there, too) end of the movement. and includes, in the recapitula- We don’t immediately associate tion, further adventures in F-sharp Brahms with merriment, but the and B-flat, both a major third in finale of the concerto is unmistak- opposite directions from D. ably jolly, filled with good-natured As a final bow to tradition, themes and flashes of outright Brahms reins in the orchestra wit. The spirit is that of the gypsy near the end of the movement and violinist, an intentional allusion to gives the soloist the opportunity to Joachim’s Hungarian heritage. The improvise a cadenza. This is the last final march, with trumpets and major concerto to grant that license drums, rises to a climax and then (even Beethoven had started writ- abruptly unwinds like a mechanical ing his cadenzas down), although toy before it ends with a bang. with a musician of Joachim’s taste and talent, Brahms had nothing to footnote about friendship. Only fear. He would surely be relieved Atwo years after the premiere of to know that the cadenza Joachim the Violin Concerto, the fellow- eventually committed to paper ship between Brahms and Joachim quickly caught on and is sometimes began to falter. Brahms couldn’t performed today. (At these con- stand to watch Joachim become certs, Pinchas Zukerman plays the increasingly jealous of his wife, and cadenza by Joseph Joachim.) by the time the couple divorced Brahms opens the slow movement in 1884, the composer and the with one of his finest melodies, violinist were no longer speaking. given to the oboe against a wood- Joachim continued to play Brahms’s wind accompaniment. The Spanish music everywhere, but refused to virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate allegedly answer his letters. Finally, Brahms refused to play this concerto because wrote the Double Concerto as a he didn’t care “to stand on the peace offering, and Joachim—like platform, violin in hand, to listen to so many others since—couldn’t the oboe playing the only real tune resist this warm and heartfelt in the whole work.” Sarasate would music. The friendship was restored, more easily earn our sympathy if but the old spark was missing. 4 Johannes Brahms symphony no. 2 in D major, op. 73 ithin months after the violin concerto the next summer). Wlong-awaited premiere of his The rooms apparently were ideal First Symphony, Brahms produced for composition, even though another one. The two were as dif- the hallway was so narrow that ferent as night and day—logically Brahms’s piano couldn’t be moved enough, since the first had taken up the stairs. “It is delightful here,” two decades of struggle and Brahms wrote to Fritz Simrock, his soul-searching and the second was publisher, soon after arriving, and written over a summer holiday. If the new symphony bears witness it truly was Beethoven’s symphonic to his apparent delight. Later that achievement that stood in Brahms’s summer, when Brahms’s friend way for all those years, nothing Theodore Billroth, an amateur seems to have stopped the flow of musician, played through the score this new symphony in D major. for the first time, he wrote to the Brahms had put his fears and wor- composer at once: “It is all rip- ries behind him. pling streams, blue sky, sunshine, This music was composed at and cool green shadows. How the picture-postcard village of beautiful it must be at Pörtschach.” Pörtschach, on the Worthersee, Eventually listeners began to call where Brahms had rented two this Brahms’s Pastoral Symphony, tiny rooms for his summer holiday again raising the comparison with (and where he would write his Beethoven.

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