Programnotes Brahms Double

Please note that osmo Vänskä replaces Bernard Haitink, who has been forced to cancel his appearance at these concerts. Program One HundRed TwenTy-SeCOnd 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, October 18, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, October 19, 2012, at 8:00 Saturday, October 20, 2012, at 8:00 osmo Vänskä Conductor renaud Capuçon Violin gautier Capuçon Cello music by Johannes Brahms Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Op. 102 (Double) Allegro Andante Vivace non troppo RenAud CApuçOn GAuTieR CApuçOn IntermIssIon Symphony no. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 un poco sostenuto—Allegro Andante sostenuto un poco allegretto e grazioso Adagio—Allegro non troppo, ma con brio 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 Johannes Brahms Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany. Died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria. Concerto for Violin and Cello in a minor, op. 102 (Double) or Brahms, the year 1887 his final orchestral composition, Flaunched a period of tying up this concerto for violin and cello— loose ends, finishing business, and or the Double Concerto, as it would clearing his desk. He began by ask- soon be known. Brahms privately ing Clara Schumann, with whom decided to quit composing for he had long shared his most inti- good, and in 1890 he wrote to his mate thoughts, to return all the let- publisher Fritz Simrock that he had ters he had written to her over the thrown “a lot of torn-up manuscript years. Clara, clearly stunned, at first paper” into the Traun River, and hoped to extract “everything relat- that he had abandoned his fifth ing to his artistic or private life.” symphony. (But Brahms was not “But he would not hear of it,” she yet done writing music: inspired by wrote in her diary on October 16. the playing of clarinetist Richard “And so today I handed them over Mühlfeld, he wrote a clarinet trio to him with tears.” Two days later, and quintet in 1891 and two clari- Brahms conducted the premiere of net sonatas in 1894; Clara’s death ComPosed most reCent Cso aPProxImate 1887 PerFormanCes PerFormanCe tIme december 11, 2007, 31 minutes FIrst PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. Robert Chen, October 18, 1887; Cologne, violin; Jan Vogler, cello; Sir Cso reCordIngs Germany. The com- Mark elder conducting 1986. isaac Stern, violin; poser conducting yo-yo Ma, cello; Claudio July 13, 2012, Ravinia Abbado conducting. CBS Festival. nicola FIrst U.s. Benedetti, violin; 1996. itzhak perlman, violin; PerFormanCe Leonard elschenbroich, yo-yo Ma, cello; daniel January 5, 1889, new cello; Christoph Barenboim conducting. york City. Theodore eschenbach conducting Teldec Thomas conducting InstrUmentatIon FIrst Cso solo violin and solo cello, PerFormanCe two flutes, two oboes, two January 18, 1895, clarinets, two bassoons, Auditorium Theatre. eugene four horns, two trumpets, Boegner, violin; Bruno timpani, strings Steindel, cello; Theodore Thomas conducting 2 in 1896 prompted his last work, the During the summer of 1887, Four Serious Songs.) after Brahms settled in a rented The Double Concerto, written for villa overlooking Lake Thun in the great violinist Joseph Joachim Switzerland, he seized upon a novel and Robert Hausmann, the cellist plan. In August, Brahms wrote in the Joachim Quartet, was less a Joachim one last letter, saying work of farewell than of reconcilia- that he had been unable to resist tion. In 1887, Brahms and Joachim composing a new concerto for him were no longer speaking. They had and Hausmann, and that if Joachim been best friends almost from the wasn’t interested, he should simply day they met in May 1853 (Brahms write “I decline” on a postcard. “If was twenty, Joachim twenty-two). not,” Brahms It was Joachim who had introduced continued, the shy young composer to the “my questions Schumanns, leading Robert to begin. Would write an influential newspaper col- you like to see umn proclaiming Brahms a “young a sample? I am eagle,” and arousing in Clara feel- now copying ings of an intensity and emotional the solo parts. complexity that she would never Do you feel completely shake. Brahms and like getting Joachim were close for many years; together with they talked often, about everything Hausmann to that mattered to them, from affairs check them of the heart to business (Joachim for playability? offered indispensable advice on Could you technical matters throughout the think about Composer and pianist Clara Schumann composition of Brahms’s Violin trying the Concerto). Then, in 1880, Joachim, piece with who had always been a helplessly Hausmann and with me at the jealous man, began to suspect that piano, and eventually with the his wife, the contralto Amalie three of us with orchestra in some Spies, was having an affair with town or other? I won’t say out loud Fritz Simrock, Brahms’s publisher. and specifically what I quietly hope Brahms wrote a long letter insisting and wish . .” This was the peace on Amalie’s innocence—a clumsy offering that Joachim ultimately attempt to patch up the Joachims’ could not refuse, and, like many a faltering marriage that only pre- listener since, he melted as soon as cipitated their divorce and put an he heard the music. end to the friendship between the With Hausmann, Joachim two men. For years, Brahms wrote met Brahms at Clara’s house in to Joachim and sent him scores, Baden-Baden in late September; but, although he continued to play it was the first time the two men Brahms’s music, Joachim no longer had spoken in seven years. They wanted his companionship. played through the work around 3 Clara’s piano, and then with the Thomas (with Victor Herbert, in local orchestra. Although the music his pre-operetta days, as the cellist), the score was dismissed as “not the most catchy thing imaginable.” It was years before the Double Concerto was accepted as the equal of Brahms’s other concertos—it was the last of the four to appear on Chicago Symphony programs— and it is still the least- often played. The idea of writing a concerto for more than one soloist was unfamil- Violinist Joseph Joachim and cellist Robert Hausmann iar in the late nineteenth century, and even making went splendidly and the Brahms, who knew music history conversation showed no signs of better than any composer of the strain (Brahms and Joachim imme- day, probably could not think of any diately reverted to the intimate distinguished models other than “du”), the old closeness was gone, the double violin concerto by Bach; and their friendship seemed now, Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for for certain, to be over for good. violin and viola; and Beethoven’s Together, the three men began to Triple Concerto for violin, cello, prepare for the premiere, which the and piano. Brahms’s pairing of composer conducted in Cologne violin and cello was particularly the following month. The recep- unexpected. “Surely this wonderful tion was surprisingly tepid, and combination has never been tried even Brahms’s old friend Theodore before,” Clara wrote at the time, Billroth later told the critic and it is truly without precedent. Eduard Hanslick that he found Brahms himself described the score the concerto’s closely wrought style simply as a “strange flight of fancy,” tedious and wearisome, “a really although it is the logical culmina- senile production,” as he taste- tion of his longtime interest in lessly put it. As with Beethoven, the baroque concerto grosso form, whose final, visionary works were with its team of soloists. (Brahms, dismissed because of his deafness, incidentally, was a great champion the novelties of Brahms’s old age of Handel’s music, and in 1874 convinced even his best friends that he conducted a performance of he was simply washed up. At the Solomon in Vienna.) American premiere in New York Brahms had written his two in 1889, conducted by Theodore piano concertos for himself to play, 4 and he had composed his violin the whole first movement is an concerto in consultation with extended dialogue—by turns Joachim. Now, however, he was on intimate, heated, consoling, and his own, and he was clearly uncom- ultimately conciliatory—for two fortable. “I ought to have handed instruments so alike in design yet on the idea to someone who knows so very different in character. The the violin better than I do (Joachim solo music throughout is extraor- has unfortunately given up com- dinarily difficult, yet there is very posing),” he wrote to Clara at one little obvious virtuoso spectacle. point. “It is a very different matter (Brahms saves for a few, telling writing for instruments whose moments the simple but stunning nature and sound one only has a effect of having the violin and cello chance acquaintance with, or only play in octaves.) The orchestral hears in one’s mind, from writing writing, for all its power, is uncom- for an instrument that one knows monly clear and economical. The as thoroughly as I know the piano.” entire movement is a masterful (Clara reminded him, apparently union of symphonic energy and without providing consolation, that inward lyricism. he had written four symphonies.) In the slow movement, a horn call Music for solo cello with orches- cues a generous, deep-voiced mel- tra, in particular, was unusual in ody played by the soloists, again in Brahms’s day (Robert Schumann’s octaves. Brahms’s command of color Cello Concerto of 1850 was not yet is so subtle and his orchestration so known).

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