Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director
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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, March 5, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, March 6, 2015, at 1:30 Saturday, March 7, 2015, at 8:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Stephanie Jeong Violin Kenneth Olsen Cello Jonathan Biss Piano Ligeti Lontano for Orchestra Beethoven Concerto in C Major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 56 (Triple) Allegro Largo— Rondo alla polacca STEPHANIE JEONG KENNETH OLSEN JONATHAN BISS INTERMISSION Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 17 (Little Russian) Andante sostenuto—Allegro vivo Andantino marziale, quasi moderato Scherzo: Allegro molto vivace Finale: Moderato assai These performances are generously sponsored by the Randy and Melvin Berlin Family Fund for the Canon. 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 György Ligeti Born May 28, 1923, Dicsöszenmárton, Transylvania. Died June 12, 2006, Vienna, Austria. Lontano for Orchestra Like Richard Strauss’s of music opened up before him. He went to Also sprach Zarathustra, Darmstadt for the legendary summer courses which has never com- in composition and worked for a time at the pletely recovered from its electronic studios of the West German Radio in starring role in 2001: A Cologne. This was his opportunity to start over Space Odyssey, György as a composer and to leave behind the outdated, Ligeti’s music first came nationalistic music and folk-song arrangements to widespread attention of his Budapest years—“prehistoric Ligeti,” as he with the 1968 Stanley would eventually call it. Kubrick film. By then, Ligeti had fled his native Hungary and had n the sixties, Ligeti became a great explorer become one of the pioneers of the international of the sonic landscape, and he created several avant-garde. He had grown up sheltered from the of the most striking scores of the modern advances in contemporary European music and Iage, including the landmark Atmosphères of 1961 was anxious to try different things. (In 1952, he (a title he had intended to give to an electronic set to music a Hungarian poem in which the work left unfinished), part of which ended up in narrator travels the world, wondering if he “will Kubrick’s soundtrack, and Lontano, composed ever have another home apart from the sky.”) six years later, a work which, as Ligeti said, After graduating from the Academy of Music in opens and closes “a window on long-submerged Budapest in 1949, Ligeti taught harmony, dream worlds of childhood.” The title, Lontano counterpoint, and analysis there for six years (and (Distant), then, reflects not only Ligeti’s evo- had several of his compositions published), cation of time past, but a musical landscape waiting for a chance to break away. of many layers receding into the distance, In 1956, he escaped occupied Hungary which “shimmer through each other, super- and moved to Vienna. (He had risked his life impose themselves, and produce an imaginary once before, during the bombing of Budapest, perspective through multiple refraction and when he hid in an attic rather than find shelter reflection.” It is a work of dazzling effect, and underground so that he could listen to radio one that reveals itself gradually—“as though broadcasts of new music from West Germany.) [the listener] were stepping from brilliant In Vienna, he met Karlheinz Stockhausen, one sunlight into a dark room and becoming aware of the leaders of the avant-garde, and new worlds little by little of the colors and contours.” COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1967 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME February 8 & 10, 2007, Orchestra Hall. 13 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE David Zinman conducting October 22, 1967; Donaueschingen, Germany INSTRUMENTATION four flutes, two piccolos and alto flute, FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES four oboes and english horn, four February 7, 8 & 9, 1974, Orchestra Hall. clarinets, bass clarinet and contrabass Christoph von Dohnányi conducting clarinet, three bassoons and contra- bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, strings 2 Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria. Concerto in C Major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 56 (Triple) On August 26, 1804, but by Beethoven’s other concertos—the Beethoven wrote to his three for piano that precede it and the two publisher, Breitkopf & for piano and one for violin that follow. Härtel, offering “my There is little doubt that the man behind the oratorio; a new grand Triple Concerto was the archduke Rudolph, who symphony; a concertante began studying piano with Beethoven in 1803. for violin, violoncello, and Rudolph was just a teenager and only moderately pianoforte with full talented, but he had money and a title (he was orchestra; three new the son of Emperor Leopold II), both of which sonatas for pianoforte would prove useful to Beethoven in time. He solo . The title of the symphony is became a good and loyal friend, one of the few really Bonaparte.” Beethoven could always count on during his What an astonishing output Beethoven stormy career. Rudolph was a respectable pianist, lumped together—the prodigious harvest of just although he was never much of a composer, a one season, from the end of 1803 into the first pity since he was the only composition student weeks of the following summer—and it’s hard for Beethoven ever took on. His name will live as us today to believe that Breitkopf didn’t jump at long as Beethoven’s music is played: he is the it. The symphony is, of course, the one we now archduke of the Archduke Trio and the hero of the call Eroica, at Beethoven’s insistence, and the Lebewohl (Farewell) Piano Sonata; the Fourth story of how Napoleon won an empire but lost a and Fifth piano concertos are dedicated to him. symphony is as famous as the music itself. This concerto was the first musical product of their friendship, and Rudolph apparently played e know a great deal about the the piano solo at the first performance. We symphony. But the history of know virtually nothing of that event, including the “concertante” for three the date. And we don’t know why Beethoven soloistsW and orchestra—the work we have chose to write a concerto for this unprecedented come to call the Triple Concerto for sheer solo trio, unless that was Rudolph’s suggestion convenience—is sketchy. From the start it has as well. The idea of a concerto for more than been overshadowed, not just by the Waldstein one soloist was extremely popular in the late and Appassionata sonatas or the Eroica eighteenth century (the most famous is Mozart’s Symphony, with which it is contemporary, Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola), but COMPOSED July 26, 1957, Ravinia Festival. Beaux INSTRUMENTATION 1803–1804 Arts Trio (Menahem Pressler, Daniel solo violin, cello, and piano; one Guilet, and Bernard Greenhouse) as flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two FIRST PERFORMANCE soloists, Georg Solti conducting bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, May 1808; Vienna, Austria timpani, strings MOST RECENT FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES CSO PERFORMANCES APPROXIMATE January 12 & 13, 1900, Auditorium July 7, 2007, Ravinia Festival. Beaux PERFORMANCE TIME Theatre. Leopold Godowsky, Emil Arts Trio (Menahem Pressler, Daniel 35 minutes Baré, and Bruno Steindel as soloists, Hope, and Antonio Meneses) as Theodore Thomas conducting soloists, James Conlon conducting June 7 & 8, 2012, Orchestra Hall. Stefan Jackiw, Pavel Gomziakov, and Kristian Bezuidenhout as soloists, Trevor Pinnock conducting 3 Beethoven’s idea of using the common piano trio the realm of the piano sonata and the concerto. as his solo ensemble was something of a novelty. The first movement of the Triple Concerto is The work was viewed as an oddity and long, although this is due not only to the expand- was rarely performed during the composer’s ing musical universe, but to problems inherent lifetime—Beethoven never played it, even in writing for three soloists: Beethoven often though he often championed his other concertos states a theme twice, once for piano alone, and from the keyboard. Like the Choral Fantasy then again for violin and cello playing as a pair, (for piano solo, chorus, and orchestra), it is an doubling the dimensions of entire passages. unconventional hybrid that requires unusual Tovey believed that “the true solution of performing forces. Long ago, Donald Tovey sug- an art problem is often first achieved on the gested that if we didn’t know that Beethoven had largest possible scale.” And here, in his largest written this concerto, first movement to date, Beethoven makes real we wouldn’t be so headway with the problem that had plagued hard on it. The more each of his three previous concertos—how to perfect examples conceive the opening orchestral exposition so of the composer’s that it presents the important material but saves fourth and fifth the heart of the drama for the second exposition, piano concertos or which introduces the soloist. There are also other the Violin Concerto advances. (If it were not for the extraordinary encourage our opening measures of the concertos that follow— criticism. But Tovey the Fourth Piano Concerto, with its unaccom- points out that those panied piano solo; the Emperor, with its heroic pieces could never cadenza; and the Violin Concerto, with its solo Rudolph von Habsburg, have been written timpani—the beginning of the Triple Concerto Beethoven’s student without the Triple would appear in all the music history books.) and friend Concerto. It is, in his Beethoven begins quietly, with the cellos and words, a “study” for basses of the orchestra—who seem to be trying these other more important and successful works.