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Home , Anne Akiko Meyers, Howard Hanson, Liquid Interface, Mason Bates, Medea (ballet), Thomas Schippers

Program

One Hundred Twenty-Third Season Chicago Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, April 17, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, April 18, 2014, at 1:30 Saturday, April 19, 2014, at 8:00 Tuesday, April 22, 2014, at 7:30

Leonard Slatkin Conductor Violin Barber Overture to The School for Scandal Schuman Symphony No. 6 (In one movement) First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Intermission

Bates Violin Archaeopteryx— Lakebed memories— The rise of birds Anne Akiko Meyers First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Gershwin An American in

Saturday’s concert is sponsored by S&C Electric Company. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to 93XRT, RedEye, and Metromix for their generous support as media sponsors of the Classic Encounter series.

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

Samuel Barber Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania. Died January 23, 1981, City. overture to The School for Scandal

Samuel Barber was one of Symphony), who said he had no talent on the the lucky ones. His talent podium. Several of his student compositions, was discovered early and however, were the work of an advanced com- nourished by an unusually poser, and a few, including Dover Beach and the musical family. (His aunt , have earned permanent places in was the distinguished the repertoire. His very fi rst orchestral score, Metropolitan the Overture to Th e School for Scandal performed contralto Louise Homer.) to open this concert, was an immediate hit— He began playing and when the Orchestra gave at the age of six and the world premiere in 1933, Barber was just composing at seven. When, at nine, he informed twenty-three. his parents he intended to be a — Success followed success. In 1937, his words parents seldom greet with joy or sympathy— Symphony no. 1 was the fi rst music by an he was encouraged. “Dear Mother,” his American to be performed at the Salzburg confession begins, Festival. (Later, his was the fi rst American opera to be staged there.) Barber’s I have written to tell you my worrying music was performed and championed by some secret. . . . To begin with I was not meant of the most celebrated fi gures of his day— to be an athlet [sic]. I was meant to be a introduced the ; composer and will be I am sure. I’ll ask you the First one more thing—Don’t ask me to try and and the famous ; Leontyne forget this unpleasant thing and go and Price regularly sang many of the songs; Barber play football. wrote Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for Eleanor Steber and his ballet for . At the age of fourteen, Samuel became a Bruno Walter, the great Austrian conductor, charter student at the new Curtis Institute of fi rst heard Barber’s music courtesy of Toscanini, Music, with a triple major: piano, voice, and and he was so impressed that he commissioned composition. He studied briefl y with Barber to write a Second Essay for Orchestra, as (later music director of the Chicago a companion to the one Toscanini had premiered.

ComPoSeD moSt reCent aPProXImate 1931 CSo PerFormanCeS PerFormanCe tIme November 12, 13, 14 & 17, 8 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe 1987, Orchestra Hall. Leonard August 30, 1933; Philadelphia, Slatkin conducting CSo reCorDIng Pennsylvania 1966. Thomas Schippers conducting. July 15, 2012, ravinia Festival. James CSO (Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Conlon conducting FIrSt CSo PerFormanCeS The First 100 Years) March 7 & 8, 1940, Orchestra Hall. InStrUmentatIon conducting two fl utes and piccolo, two and english horn, two and bass , two , four horns, three , three , , , percussion, harp, celesta, strings 2 hile Barber was still a student, he intended decided to write this concert over- as part of a ture based on Sheridan’s comedy of staging of the manners,W The School for Scandal, while he was play—and vacationing on the shores of Lake Lugano in follows with northern . The Curtis Institute accepted it the earliest as his graduation thesis, but made no effort to of his grand help Barber get it performed. After the overture lyrical orches- won ’s Bearns Prize, the tral themes. surprised both Barber The overture and the music world by deciding to play it at a is cannily Robin Hood Dell concert—the first orchestral paced and score by an unknown composer premiered masterfully by one of the country’s leading . structured— The overture is so brilliant and assured that there is it is hard to remember that it is the work of a a quick, Fritz Reiner, Barber’s conducting twenty-one-year-old student. It was Barber’s dazzling teacher and later music director of idea to capture the wit and spirit of the coda to wrap the Chicago Symphony Orchestra eighteenth-century play rather than suggest the things up. It (1953–1963) narrative thrust of Sheridan’s comedy. After is a work of an introductory flourish, Barber begins with considerable promise, but more surprisingly, one delightfully animated music—it breathes the air that stands firmly on its own, even in the light of of the theater, even though this music was never all the music that was soon to follow.

3 Born August 4, 1910, . Died February 15, 1992, New York City. Symphony no. 6

William Schuman was chuman didn’t know anything about the fi rst composer to win until he was dragged to one the Pulitzer Prize for of Toscanini’s Music. Th e award was Sconcerts, which included the Rhenish Symphony given to him in 1943—he by the “other” Schumann, Robert. He was was thirty-two at the nearly twenty years old at the time. Th e dance time—for a work that has band he had started in his New York City since largely been high school—Billy Schuman and his Alamo forgotten, A Free Song, Society Orchestra—hadn’t prepared him for and in the following years the experience of hearing a symphony orches- it honored many of the who, along tra. (He was particularly impressed that the with Schuman, defi ned American music in the strings all bowed in unison.) He had written early twentieth century—, music at summer camp, and had even pub- , Virgil Th omson, , lished a popular song, “In Love with You,” Chicago’s own . Schuman’s place as with lyrics by his friend , who one of our country’s great musical fi gures would would become famous for Guys and Dolls, only strengthen in the years to come. but Schuman now realized he needed serious By the time of his death in 1992, his career training. He began to study harmony at the had lasted more than sixty years. He had taught Malkin School of Music ($1 per class and $3 at and served as editor for a private lesson), later earned degrees from in chief at G. Schirmer, the music publisher. He Columbia University Teachers College, and was president of the for nearly ended up working at Juilliard with — two decades, beginning in 1945—while there, among the fi rst of American music’s signature he helped found the Juilliard — composers—who was a major infl uence on his and, in 1962, he became the fi rst president of early career. (He had sought Harris out after for the Performing Arts. He was hearing a performance of his Symphony 1933.) awarded a second Pulitzer in 1985, both for his “I was so naïve when I started out as a com- work as a composer and as an educator. “I always poser,” he told Th e New York Times in 1990. “I had loved education and administration,” he once the idea that a composer wrote . So said. “Th e trick was to compose before I went to you started your career by writing symphonies, work.” Over the years, he received so many hon- no matter whether you had the equipment to orary doctorates that he had the hoods stitched do it. I eventually wrote ten of them.” Schuman together into a full-size quilt, permitting him, as had the equipment, and, from the beginning, he used to say, to take his naps by degrees. the symphony seemed like his ideal form. After

ComPoSeD InStrUmentatIon aPProXImate 1948–49 three fl utes and piccolo, two oboes PerFormanCe tIme and english horn, two clarinets and 27 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe , two bassoons and February 27, 1949; dallas, Texas , four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, FIrSt CSo PerFormanCeS timpani, cymbals, snare drum, bass These are the Chicago Symphony drum, bells, strings Orchestra’s fi rst performances.

4 hearing his Second Symphony in 1938, Copland time when the quest to write the Great American said, “Schuman is, so far as I am concerned, the Symphony was at its peak. Schuman’s materials musical find of the year.” His Symphony no. 3, are tough, his language often knotty and unspar- composed in 1941—and premiered by Serge ing. But it is all deeply felt, and, even in a work as Koussevitzky, an early champion of Schuman’s dark as the Sixth Symphony, it is often abidingly music, thanks to Copland’s endorsement—won lyrical. “My music can always be sung,” he once the first ever New York Critics’ Circle Award. said. Throughout the Sixth, Schuman favors—as he often does—music that separates the various lthough Schuman’s Third has remained orchestral choirs. In the “introductory” Largo, it his most popular symphony—it is as if he is keeping the brass, the winds, and the was the first of his symphonies the strings apart, so that when their musical worlds CSOA played—Schuman himself said that the begin to overlap, there is a real sense of occasion. Sixth—the one that our orchestra is performing In the faster music that follows—the equivalent for the first time this week—was his favorite. of a first movement Allegro—this often creates Designed in one large continuous movement, a powerful kind of urgent dialogue, with various it does in fact suggest the four movements of groups of instruments tossing ideas at each other. symphonic convention within its single span— Schuman’s transitions are as riveting as the an opening movement followed by a scherzo, sections they link. Following the great orches- a slow movement, and a finale. Expanding tral climax that ends the opening Allegro, he the blueprint further, Schuman begins with a writes a passage for timpani alone, its rhythmic weighty, slow introduction and ends with an patterns leading inevitably, yet mysteriously, epilogue in an even slower tempo. Writing at into the quietly stirring scherzo-like section. the time of its premiere, the conductor Antal From that music into the slow lyrical heart of Doráti suggested that these two sections the symphony, and then, gradually accelerating “provide a frame for the work; or rather to into the finale (which increases in tempo itself), use an architectural analogy, have a function Schuman moves forward with the steady pace similar to the two piers of a bridge—to hold of a true symphonic master. The opening of the and support the span of the whole structure.” finale, with its pounding fffchords, is hair-raising Schuman’s Sixth Symphony marks a high (Schuman suggests “wild”). The epilogue begins point in the great outpouring of American sym- big, with a broad, singing violin theme, and then phonies composed during the 1930s and ’40s—a grows quieter, slower, and darker.

5 Born January 23, 1977, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

“Athletes have the he was wrapping up his own concerto, he could Olympics,” Mason Bates say, without overstatement, that “every note of wrote on his blog two the piece is written with her blazing musical summers ago. “Composers personality in mind.” have—the violin con- Th is past January—more than a year after certo?” At that point, he the premiere of his new Violin Concerto in was absorbed with work Pittsburgh (with this week’s performers, violinist on his fi rst concerto, for Anne Akiko Meyers and conductor Leonard the violinist Anne Akiko Slatkin)—the Symphony devoted Meyers. “Few symphonic two weeks to a “Beethoven and Bates” festival forms challenge the composer as much as the that paired his recent compositions (Th e B-Sides, violin concerto,” he wrote at the time, refl ecting ) with familiar landmarks by the in particular on the fact that the violin has an nineteenth-century master (the C major mass, unsurpassed emotional power and virtuosity, and the Seventh Symphony). yet it doesn’t have the sonic weight of the piano or the cello, for example. It was the issue of ates initially drew wide attention balance that led Bates ultimately to abandon in April 2009—a kind of exposure using the electronic component that distin- Beethoven cannot have imagined—when guishes many of his previous works in this new Bthe fi rst YouTube Symphony Orchestra, in its concerto. “I wanted the fi ddle front and center,” highly publicized debut concert, he wrote. played the fi nal section of Th e B-Sides with Bates has always been attracted to the violin’s Bates performing electronica in the middle of range—“huge, beautiful leaps are possible in the orchestra (as he later did in performances even the most lyrical passages.” He began by of the complete work in Chicago). Bates had playing around with a long, leaping melody that already begun to make a name for himself with eventually became his “way in” to writing the his provocative way of incorporating electronics piece, as well as the concerto’s central theme. within orchestral music. Later works, such as Th roughout the composition of the concerto, Alternative Energy, written for Riccardo Muti Bates would send Meyers “digital gift packages” and the Chicago Symphony in 2011, which even that allowed her to preview what he was writing. used sound samples from a Fermilab particle Th e two had many serious technical discussions accelerator, revealed new directions that Bates via Skype. As a kind of warm-up for his own would take as he continued to expand his sonic full-length concerto, Bates wrote cadenzas for vocabulary. (A new CD, Stereo Is King, shows Meyers to play in upcoming performances of how he stretches himself in the “smaller” world Beethoven’s Violin Concerto that gave him the of chamber music.) Although his fusion of chance to begin tailoring his ideas to her tech- sound worlds initially drew a lot of attention, nique and individual way of playing. By the time it really was a matter of natural growth for

ComPoSeD InStrUmentatIon aPProXImate 2012 solo violin, two fl utes and piccolo, two PerFormanCe tIme oboes and english horn, two clarinets 30 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe and bass clarinet, two bassoons and december 7, 2012; Pittsburgh, contrabassoon, four horns, three Pennsylvania trumpets, three trombones, tuba, percussion, timpani, piano, celesta, FIrSt CSo PerFormanCeS harp, strings These are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s fi rst performances. 6 someone who first heard an orchestra listening the first work written as part of this residency, to Pink Floyd and Moody Blues albums and was premiered here on February 2, 2012, with then later started going to hear the Richmond Muti conducting, and then taken to Carnegie Symphony in Virginia, where he grew up. His Hall on the Orchestra’s tour the next fall. His career has been defined by the process of putting Liquid Interface was performed here last June it all together, and, in the process, finding and under Jaap van Zweden as part of the CSO’s refining his own distinctive voice as a composer. Rivers Festival. Bates currently is writing a new work, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, based on fter a traditional musical upbringing the work of Jorge Luis Borges, to be premiered in Richmond, which included piano here under Riccardo Muti in June 2015. lessons and singing in the choir—along withA composition classes given by Dika Newlin, Mason Bates on his Violin Concerto among the last of Schoenberg’s pupils—Bates Composers paint with sound, and my sonic pal- studied composition and English literature in the ette has been growing rapidly in large-scale sym- Columbia–Juilliard joint program. He worked phonies fusing orchestral and electronic sounds. with and , the But the pops, clicks, and thuds of present Chicago Symphony’s first composer-in-residence challenges in a violin concerto: the subtle textures (to whom he would dedicate Liquid Interface), and of this eighteen-inch instrument would be quickly then moved to the Bay Area in 2001 to enroll painted over by the powerful colors of such a big in the Ph.D. program at Berkeley’s Center for palette. So, in order to fully showcase the violin, I New Music and Audio Technologies. His career, stepped back into the acoustic universe—but with like his music, is a singular mix of Old-World my ears still humming with exotic sounds. establishment and New Age culture: he has The search for novel sounds pushed me, been lavished with big-league honors from surprisingly, into primeval territory, resulting institutions such as the American Academy in a concerto filled with ancient animals. First in Rome and the American Academy for Arts and foremost is the solo violinist, who inhabits and Letters (an award that “acknowledges the two identities: one primal and rhythmic, the composer who has arrived at his or her own other elegant and lyrical. This hybrid musical voice”), and he also has spent many nights as a creature is, in fact, based on a real one. The DJ, spinning and mixing at dance clubs in San Archaeopteryx, an animal of the Upper Jurassic Francisco, New York City, Berlin, and Rome. famously known as the first dinosaur-bird hybrid, His output has progressed as an increasingly can be heard in the sometimes frenetic, some- thoughtful negotiation between, as Bates puts times sweetly singing solo part. The searching it, “the dance-floor origins of electronica and melody that underlies the entire work, not heard the concert hall.” His , commissioned in full until we are well into the first movement, by the YouTube Symphony in 2011, has been has in fact been peering at us from behind the viewed by an audience of nearly two million orchestral fauna all along. people. In 2012, Bates was given the prestigious Unfolding continuously out of the explosive Heinz Award for the way his music “has moved first movement, the middle movement (Lakebed the orchestra into the digital age and dissolved memories) explores this melody dreamily, con- the traditional boundaries of classical music.” juring the lakebed in southern where the Archaeopteryx fossil was discovered. Eerie, ince being named one of the hazy sonorities give way to a kind of underwater Chicago Symphony’s Mead epiphany, pushing us airborne into the finale. In Composers-in-Residence in 2010 (along this last movement (The rise of birds), the soloist Swith ), the Orchestra has played stays aloft on a jet stream of notes, inspired Bates’s Music for Underground Spaces (choreo- equally by Bach inventions and sparkling graphed by Alejandro Cerrudo as Deep Down electronica. The work’s final measures transform Dos and performed by Hubbard Street Dance the soloist fully from dinosaur into bird, with Chicago) in April 2010, and The B-Sides, under the melody floating high above an orchestra of Riccardo Muti, in May 2011. Alternative Energy, fluttering textures.

7 Born September 26, 1898, Brooklyn, New York. Died July 11, 1937, Hollywood, . An American in Paris

When George Gershwin n the early twenties, while Gershwin was arrived in Paris in turning out a steady stream of hits (and March 1928, he was as making the kind of money that is unheard famous as any living Iof in the classical music business), he was more musician. Even in Europe determined than ever to write serious music his best songs, such as that was equally popular. Th e historic premiere “Th e Man I Love,” of Rhapsody in Blue, at New York’s Aeolian “Someone to Watch Over Th eater in 1924, announced to the music world Me,” and “Fascinating that Gershwin was a far more complex and Rhythm,” were whistled ambitious musician than a mere songwriter. on the street, and Rhapsody in Blue was the most (And just to confuse matters, that same year talked-about composition in a city that has Gershwin produced some of his fi nest songs, always loved music. including “Fascinating Rhythm.”) During the Gershwin’s music is still so popular that it’s mid-1920s, while he enjoyed the life of a rich easy to overlook his classical roots. His fi rst celebrity, collecting modern art and moving musical memory was of an automatic piano, in his family out of their dreary apartment into a a penny arcade on 125th Street, playing Anton fi ve-story townhouse on the upper West Side, Rubinstein’s Melody in F—one of those rare Gershwin began to compose a , pieces that had become a popular classic, giving three piano preludes, and this tone poem—a Gershwin the idea at an early age that serious and love song to Paris—while still maintaining his commercial music could be one and the same. As roles as pianist, tunesmith, and conductor. a teenager, Gershwin attended recitals by celeb- rity soloists such as Josef Lhevinne and Efrem n January 1928, Gershwin accepted Zimbalist. He played piano in the Beethoven an invitation to visit friends in Paris. Society Orchestra at Public School 63, and he Recognizing the need for a change from studied as well as piano. Even after Ithe frenetic New York scene—he currently had George quit school at fi fteen to become “probably two hit shows, Funny Face and Rosalie, running the youngest piano pounder ever employed in Tin simultaneously—Gershwin immediately started Pan Alley,” he didn’t forget his greater ambitions. thinking about a “rhapsodic ballet,” which

ComPoSeD moSt reCent aPProXImate 1928 CSo PerFormanCeS PerFormanCe tIme June 7, 2011, Orchestra Hall. Mei-Ann 17 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe Chen conducting december 13, 1928, New york City CSo reCorDIng July 23, 2011, ravinia Festival. david 1990. James Levine conducting. Alan Miller conducting FIrSt CSo PerFormanCeS deutsche Grammophon June 14, 1933, Theatre. InStrUmentatIon william daly conducting (Chicago three fl utes and piccolo, two oboes world’s Fair: A Century of Progress and english horn, two clarinets and International exposition) bass clarinet, three saxophones, two July 25, 1936, ravinia Festival. william bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, daly conducting three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, bells, cymbals, snare drum, February 13, 1945, Orchestra Hall. taxi horns, tom-toms, triangle, wire désiré defauw conducting brushes, woodblock, xylophone, celesta, strings

8 he quickly titled An American in Paris. By the and a sense of cinematic panorama. Despite his time he and his brother Ira boarded a steamer claim that he hadn’t written program music (the for Europe on March 9, George had already play-by-play scenario printed in the score and sketched the piece in versions for one and two often quoted is by Deems Taylor, not Gershwin), . Once in Paris, he continued to work the work is unforgettably descriptive, from its on the score, and he spent one entire afternoon opening walking music (think , shopping the auto supply stores on the Grande Hollywood, 1951) to the car-honking traffic jam. Armée in search of the ideal car horns for the Gershwin did identify the American’s “spasm traffic scene he had in mind. (He took four horns of homesickness” after too many drinks in a home with him for the New York premiere.) street café, but neither he nor Taylor managed At the time, Gershwin told a reporter that An to explain the hot Caribbean rhythm midway American in Paris was “written very freely and through. An American in Paris was a hit at its is the most modern music I’ve yet attempted.” New York premiere, just months after Gershwin It’s certainly Gershwin’s most accomplished came home, and, inevitably, it was soon loved in and ambitious orchestral work to date. For the Paris, too. first time, Gershwin’s trademark jazzy rhythms, bluesy harmonies, and unforgettable melodies are all woven into a big, sophisticated work of symphonic dimensions. By 1928, Gershwin Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago had developed a fine ear for orchestral color Symphony Orchestra.

© 2014 Chicago Symphony Orchestra 9