• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Program One hunDReD TwenTieTh 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, December 9, 2010, at 8:00 Saturday, December 11, 2010, at 8:00 Xian Zhang Conductor Stephen Hough Piano music by Piotr Tchaikovsky Concert Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 56 Quasi rondo: Andante mosso Contrasts: Andante cantabile—Molto vivace STePhen hOugh Suite no. 4 in g Major, Op. 61 (Mozartiana) gigue Minuet Prayer, after a transcription by Liszt Theme and Variations InTermISSIon Piano Concerto no. 2 in g Major, Op. 44 Allegro brillante e molto vivace Andante non troppo Robert Chen violin John Sharp cello Allegro con fuoco STePhen hOugh Saturday’s concert is sponsored by Mayer Brown LLP. Steinway is the official piano of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Program One hunDReD TwenTieTh 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 Friday, December 10, 2010, at 1:30 Xian Zhang Conductor Stephen Hough Piano music by Piotr Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no. 3 in e-flat Major, Op. 75 Allegro brillante—Cadenza—Tempo 1—Vivacissimo STePhen hOugh First Chicago Symphony performance Suite no. 4 in g Major, Op. 61 (Mozartiana) gigue Minuet Prayer, after a transcription by Liszt Theme and Variations InTermISSIon Piano Concerto no. 2 in g Major, Op. 44 Allegro brillante e molto vivace Andante con troppo Robert Chen violin John Sharp cello Allegro con fuoco STePhen hOugh Steinway is the official piano of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. 2 CommenTS by PhiLLiP huSCheR lthough he wrote piano music throughout his career, Piotr ATchaikovsky is not remembered for his many solo piano pieces, but for a handful of large-scale works for piano and orchestra. The first of these, his iconic Piano Concerto no. 1, written on the same scale as his mature symphonies, quickly became one of his most performed works (after a rocky start) and eventually one of the most popular pieces in the repertoire. Theodore Thomas chose it for the Chicago Symphony’s very first concert, in October 1891—the concerto was just sixteen years old at the time and already a great public favorite—and it was performed here nearly every season during the first decades of the twentieth century. But Tchaikovsky’s subsequent works for piano and orches- An oil portrait of Piotr Tchaikovsky tra—two more concertos and a concert by Nikolay Kuznetov, 1893 fantasy—have long been overshadowed by the towering First Concerto, despite their wealth of musical riches and novel ideas about form and substance—and despite Tchaikovsky’s own belief in their worth. This week, we concentrate on those little-known works: Piano Concerto no. 2, which the Chicago Symphony has only programmed three times in 119 downtown seasons; the Concert Fantasy, performed in Orchestra Hall just once before, during the Orchestra’s inaugural season; and Piano Concerto no. 3, which is receiving its CSO premiere. 3 Piotr Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia. Died November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Concert Fantasy for Piano and orchestra, op. 56 (December 9 & 11 only) f all Tchaikovsky’s works for movements”—in other words, the Opiano and orchestra, none concert fantasy we hear this week. is more original and adventure- Yet even after that, he sometimes some than this piece, which is referred to the piece as a piano neither full-blown concerto nor concerto. Only after the score was straightforward one-movement completed did he actually call it fantasia. It is difficult to know a fantasy. what Tchaikovsky’s objectives were The new work was clearly exactly, but, having recently fin- designed as a showcase for a ished his Second Piano Concerto, virtuoso pianist—the heart of the perhaps he simply sensed that it was first of its two movements is a time to try something different. “I grand rhapsody for piano alone, as am feeling a surge of energy, and an big and as flashy as anything in the impatience to set about something concertos. We know that he began new,” he wrote to Nadezhda von thinking about the piece shortly Meck in March 1884, just before he after hearing the nineteen-year-old began work on the piece. His diary German pianist Eugen d’Albert, a entries that spring are a litany of student of Franz Liszt, in Moscow false starts and frustrations, with early in 1884. At the end of July, ideas proposed and then rejected after he had already been working for a symphony, a piano concerto, on the fantasy for a month or so, a suite, and finally, in July, “a he wrote to von Meck of “a certain concert piece for piano in two d’Albert,” whom he had by then ComPoSed moST reCenT aPProXImaTe 1884 CSo PerFormanCe PerFormanCe TIme August 10, 1980; Ravinia 26 minutes FIrST PerFormanCe Festival; william Tritt, March 6, 1885; Moscow pianist; erich Kunzel conducting FIrST CSo PerFormanCe InSTrumenTaTIon March 4, 1892; Auditorium solo piano, three flutes, two Theatre; Julie Rivé-King, oboes, two clarinets, two pianist; Theodore bassoons, four horns, two Thomas conducting trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, strings 4 heard on many occasions: “In my wealth of instrumental detail. The opinion, he is a pianist of genius.” piano part, which ranges from deli- But although d’Albert was the orig- cate filigree to inal inspiration for the fantasy, he racing octaves, was not picked to give the premiere is sheer, non- the following March. That honor stop bravura. went instead to Sergei Taneyev—he The second had already played Tchaikovsky’s movement first and second concertos—who is titled had a huge audience success with Contrasts, a the piece both in Moscow and in carryover from Saint Petersburg a month later. The its original Concert Fantasy remained highly role as part popular during the composer’s life- of his third time, but quickly fell into obscurity orchestral in the years immediately after his suite. This Tchaikovsky’s patron, Nadezhda von Meck death. The fact that it has not been music, with its performed in Orchestra Hall in two polar- 119 years—the Chicago Symphony opposite themes, had seemed all played it twice at the Ravinia wrong to Tchaikovsky to open the Festival—is symptomatic of its suite, but here it makes a thrill- neglect in concert halls worldwide ing finale to the fantasy. Now today. In recent years, it has, at long Tchaikovsky seems to relish the last, begun to enjoy a revival. dualism of his two main ideas— Tchaikovsky’s Concert Fantasy a slow melody over strumming has two movements. The first is arpeggios and a fast folklike dance misleadingly titled Quasi rondo, tune—dramatically juxtaposing despite the fact that its structure them and ultimately combining bears no relationship to traditional them to great effect. The entire fan- rondo form. (Perhaps Tchaikovsky tasy is a novel way of writing a big simply meant to suggest the high showpiece for piano and orchestra spirits of many classical rondo fina- outside the grand concerto tradi- les he admired.) It is more of a big tion, but Tchaikovsky continued to and expansive sonata form move- worry over its design. At one point, ment, with a magnificent cadenza he even wrote a new ending for the for the soloist in place of the first movement (it is based on the conventional development section. Contrasts material) so that it could We know that Tchaikovsky took be performed separately. But for his time scoring this movement, many decades, and partly because and his care shows in the subtly of its idiosyncratic form, the concert changing orchestral sonorities and fantasy was rarely played at all. 5 Piano Concerto no. 3 in e-flatm ajor, op. 75 (December 10 only) n 1889, Tchaikovsky said he manuscript, and, in the summer Iwanted to write one final sym- of 1893, he began to recycle the phony to bring his career to a close. rejected symphonic material into It would be dedicated to the tsar, a piano concerto—his third. That he announced. He didn’t begin same year, he also began another drafting the piece until the spring new symphony which did, in fact of 1891, at the time of his first trip turn out to be his last—the one to the U.S. (During his return that would be known as Pathétique. home that May, Tchaikovsky wrote At first, he apparently intended in his diary: “Walking below deck, to make the new piano concerto working, reading . made sketches another large-scale work in three for a future symphony.”) It was the movements, like his first two, following year before he actually but after considerable effort he composed the opening and closing reconsidered—“it has turned out movements of a new symphony in to be disgracefully long,” he wrote E-flat. That October, newspapers to his former student, Alexander in Saint Petersburg announced that Siloti—and he opted instead for Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony a concise piece in one unbroken would receive its stretch of music, based on the premiere during the discarded symphony’s opening coming season. movement. Work was finished in Then in December, October 1893, the same month the Tchaikovsky decided Pathétique was given its premiere to destroy his new in Saint Petersburg, to a luke- symphony.

Load more

  12

Copy Link