Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO
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PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, March 17, 2016, at 8:00 Friday, March 18, 2016, at 1:30 Saturday, March 19, 2016, at 8:00 Michael Tilson Thomas Conductor Emanuel Ax Piano Stravinsky Scherzo à la russe Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 Allegro moderato Andante con moto— Rondo: Vivace EMANUEL AX INTERMISSION Sibelius Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43 Allegretto Andante, ma rubato Vivacissimo— Finale: Allegro moderato This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. 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 Igor Stravinsky Born June 18, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia. Died April 6, 1971, New York City. Scherzo à la russe This little piece has a big A master of economical recycling, history: it began as music Stravinsky immediately chose to reuse North for film, was replaced Star material to fulfill a commission from with a score by Aaron Whiteman, the jazzman who had first made Copland (with lyrics by his name in the world of symphonic music by Ira Gershwin), recycled commissioning Gershwin to write Rhapsody for Paul Whiteman and in Blue nearly two decades earlier. Whiteman his jazz band, and finally and his band gave the premiere in a radio revamped as a work for broadcast in September 1944. Stravinsky full symphony orchestra. soon re-orchestrated his miniature as a jovial What Stravinsky originally set out to write in curtain-raiser for symphony concerts, and 1943 was, first of all, “not ‘film music,’ which led the premiere with the San Francisco is . an emotional counterpart to scenery, but Symphony in 1946. music for film use,” as he later made clear in Memories and Commentaries, the 1960 set of elying its origins in a war film, the published conversations with Robert Craft. Scherzo à la russe is a genial little (With Craft’s death this past November, we have Russian-style scherzo—literally a lost one of our few vital links to the great Bjoke, from scherzare, to joke or to jest—like a composer’s life and work.) Whatever his objec- scene from Stravinsky’s earlier Petrushka or tive, he soon parted company with the filmmak- something out of The Fairy’s Kiss. It takes as ers of The North Star. (The film by Samuel its starting point the sound of a village band, Goldwyn, a piece of wartime propaganda with a launched with a barrage of accordion-like screenplay by Lillian Hellman and starring Anne triads. Even within its tiny four-minute Baxter and Walter Huston, went on to receive six framework, Stravinsky finds room to insert Academy Award nominations, including one for two separate trios before returning to the Copland. He lost to Alfred Newman.) village square. COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1944 July 13, 1963, Ravinia Festival. The two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two composer conducting clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, FIRST PERFORMANCE three trumpets, three trombones January 15 & 17, 1970, Orchestra Hall. March 22, 1946, San Francisco. and tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, Bruno Maderna conducting The composer conducting piano, strings MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME December 14, 15 & 16, 1989, Orchestra 4 minutes Hall. Leonard Slatkin conducting August 2, 1996, Ravinia Festival. Christoph Eschenbach conducting 2 Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria. Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 On December 17, 1808, a doubt wretched, for rehearsals had gone badly. Viennese paper announced For one thing, Beethoven had so annoyed the a concert to be given by members of the Theater an der Wien orchestra Ludwig van Beethoven at the previous month that they now insisted that the Theater an der Wien he sit in the anteroom whenever he wasn’t needed five days later: “All the at the keyboard and wait for the concertmaster to pieces are of his own check with him between movements. Beethoven composition, entirely new, was so desperate to see this concert take place and not yet heard in that he agreed. (It promised him both wide public.” Although exposure and a nice profit.) Beethoven’s publicist fudged that last detail ever Not surprisingly, there wasn’t enough time for so slightly, the list of world premieres lined up for the orchestra to learn so much challenging new one evening is astonishing: both the Fifth and music. Reichardt remembered that “it had been Sixth symphonies; the Choral Fantasy; and this found impossible to get a single full rehearsal work, Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. (Those for all the pieces to be performed, every one of who didn’t like too much new and unfamiliar them filled with the greatest difficulties.” The music at one sitting surely stayed home that Choral Fantasy, which Beethoven composed at night.) To round out this substantial program— the very last moment (inexplicably thinking the long even by the generous standards of the concert lacked a blockbuster finish), was scarcely nineteenth century—were three movements from rehearsed at all. When it broke down completely the Mass in C, the concert aria Ah! perfido, and during the performance, Beethoven started it improvisations at the keyboard by the composer. over again from the beginning, making a very “There we sat from 6:30 till 10:30,” the long evening even longer. composer J.F. Reichardt later recalled, “in the most bitter cold, and found by experience that y all reports, Beethoven was a terrifically one might have too much even of a good thing.” exciting pianist. He played with spectac- What should have been the greatest night of ular technical facility and tremendous Beethoven’s career was ruined by too much music Bemotional expression. According to his student and too little heat. The performances were no Ferdinand Ries, he cared less about missed notes COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1805–06 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME June 13, 14, 15 & 18, 2013, Orchestra 34 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCES Hall. Rudolf Buchbinder as soloist, March 1807 (private); Vienna, Austria. Riccardo Muti conducting CSO RECORDINGS The composer as soloist 1942. Artur Schnabel as soloist, July 24, 2014, Ravinia Festival. Frederick Stock conducting. RCA December 22, 1808; Vienna, Austria. Jonathan Biss as soloist, James The composer as soloist Conlon conducting 1963. Van Cliburn as soloist, Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1972. Vladimir Ashkenazy as soloist, November 4 & 5, 1892, Auditorium solo piano, one flute, two oboes, two Sir Georg Solti conducting. London Theatre. Ferruccio Busoni as soloist, clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, Theodore Thomas conducting two trumpets, timpani, strings 1983. Alfred Brendel as soloist, James Levine conducting. Philips July 11, 1942, Ravinia Festival. CADENZAS Artur Schnabel as soloist, George Beethoven Szell conducting 3 than character and expression: “Mistakes of the the most familiar one), although Beethoven other kind, he said, were due to chance, but these evidently was thinking of nothing more dramatic last resulted from want of knowledge, feeling, than the music itself when he wrote it. This or attention.” When Beethoven first stepped is a conversation between the strings and the out onstage the night of December 22, 1808, it piano. The strings, playing in staccato octaves, was to play this concerto in G major, and surely begin assertively. The piano responds with rich, most members of the audience were surprised quiet chords—an answer that raises questions that he went straight to the keyboard and started of its own. On it goes, back and forth—the to play. Anyone who troubled to buy a ticket to piano steadfast, the strings gradually weak- this concert would have known that a concerto ening. Sensing victory, the piano unleashes a begins with a long orchestral exposition that brief, rhapsodic cadenza. Finally everyone plays gives you all the tunes before the soloist begins. together, sharing the same chords and the same But Beethoven had begun to examine every rhythm. Over the last chord, the piano poses convention he inherited, to rethink every choice a brand new question, to which Beethoven a composer could make. He realized that the responds by launching into the finale without only way to call greater attention to the soloist’s a pause. Our sense of boundaries is vague: in first line was to do something unexpected. In retrospect, the entire slow movement sounds like his Violin Concerto, first performed several a long introduction to the finale. (That’s exactly months before, he had made the wait almost the case in the Waldstein Sonata, written two interminable and then sneaked the violinist in, so years before.) that if you weren’t paying attention you missed The finale itself doesn’t behave like one at first: it altogether. And here, he caught his audience it’s the only one in all of Beethoven’s concertos completely off guard again by starting with the that doesn’t begin with the soloist stating the piano. It’s a brilliant trick—so perfectly han- main theme, followed by vigorous confirmation dled that it has hardly ever been imitated—and from the full orchestra. Here Beethoven opens Beethoven quickly follows one masterstroke with softly with the strings, in the wrong key. The another—the orchestra enters six bars later in the piano takes the situation in hand with a brilliant, unexpected key of B major. virtuosic new theme, and the rest of the move- The most remarkable thing about this bold ment is swift and thrilling.