PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SECOND SEASON Chicago Symphony Riccardo Muti Music Director Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, May 16, 2013, at 8:00 Saturday, May 18, 2013, at 8:00 Tuesday, May 21, 2013, at 7:30 Juanjo Mena Conductor Peter Serkin Smetana The Moldau FROM Má vlast Takemitsu riverrun PETER SERKIN First Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concert performances Villa-Lobos Amazonas First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

INTERMISSION Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 (Pastoral) Awakening of Happy Feelings on Arriving in the Country: Allegro ma non troppo Scene by the Brook: Andante molto mosso Merry Gathering of Country Folk: Allegro— Thunderstorm: Allegro— Shepherd’s Song. Happy and Thankful Feelings after the Storm: Allegretto

This concert is part of the CSOA’s 2012–13 Rivers Festival, which is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The appearance of conductor Juanjo Mena is generously sponsored by Nuveen Investments. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. COMMENTS BY GERARDPHILLIP HMUSCHERcB URNEY D ANIELPHILLI JAFFÉP HUSCHER

Bed ˇrich Smetana Born March 2, 1824, Leitomischl, Bohemia. Died May 12, 1884, Prague, Czechoslovakia.

The Moldau FROM My Country

lthough his name came to conductor Johannes von Herbeck Asymbolize the Czech music that Czechs made good perform- spirit, Bedřich Smetana spent most ers but were not capable of writing of his early career outside his native significant music, Smetana was country. In 1860, however, after determined to create a national returning to Prague for a vacation, style of composition. Má vlast (My he wrote: “It is sad that I am forced country), a cycle of six orchestral to seek my living in foreign lands, tone poems, is the ultimate fruit far from my home which I love so of Smetana’s mission, testament to dearly and where I would so gladly his intense national pride and the live. . . . My heart is heavy as I take brilliant success he achieved. “I am leave of these places. Be happy, my the creator of the Czech style in the homeland, which I love above all, dramatic as well as the symphonic my beautiful, my great, my only field,” he wrote in 1882, the year homeland . . . your soil is sacred to the complete My Country was me.” e following year, Smetana performed for the first time, and by moved to Prague for good. then few could argue with him. With e Bartered Bride, the In October 1874, just four weeks opera he began in 1862, Smetana after Smetana began concentrated revealed that his patriotic feelings work on the first tone poem in My went far beyond mere homesick- Country, he went completely deaf ness. Still incensed by the offhand (he had begun to have trouble with remark made by the second-rate his hearing that summer). Like

COMPOSED MOST RECENT CSO APPROXIMATE November–December 1874 PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE TIME April 15, 2006, Orchestra 11 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. Paavo Järvi conducting April 4, 1875, Prague CSO RECORDINGS INSTRUMENTATION 1952. Rafael Kubelík FIRST CSO two flutes and piccolo, two conducting. Mercury PERFORMANCE , two , two 1977. Daniel January 13, 1894, Auditorium , four horns, two Barenboim conducting. Theatre. Theodore trumpets, three trombones Deutsche Grammophon Thomas conducting and tuba, timpani, tri- angle, cymbals, bass drum, harp, strings

2 Beethoven before him, he now which intertwine and increase and wrote music constantly, almost later grow and swell into a mighty defiantly. In November 1877, he melodic stream.” Later Smetana remarked that “in these three years explained how that idea blossomed of deafness I have completed more into a detailed, full-color portrait of music than I had otherwise done in the Moldau: ten.” e bounty included the first four parts of My Country, an opera, e composition depicts the and the string quartet he called course of the river, from its From My Life—a chilling personal beginning where two brooks, record of his difficulties. one cold, the other warm, join a stream, running through he second tone poem of My forests and meadows and a TCountry, Vltava (e Moldau), lovely countryside where merry has always been the most popular feasts are celebrated; water- of the six pieces, and it is one sprites dance in the moonlight; of music’s greatest landscape on nearby rocks can be seen paintings. Smetana’s friend, the the outline of ruined castles, conductor Mori Anger, said the proudly soaring into the sky. music came to the composer one Vltava swirls through the Saint day when the two of them went John Rapids and flows in a out into the countryside, looking broad stream toward Prague. It for the spot where two rivers join passes Vyšehrad and disappears together: “within him sounded majestically into the distance, the first chords of the two motifs where it joins the Labe.

3 Toru¯ Takemitsu Born October 8, 1930, Tokyo, Japan. Died February 20, 1996, Tokyo, Japan.

riverrun

akemitsu decided to become a Ultimately, in a way that gave his Tcomposer at the age of six- output its distinctive sensibility, he teen, while listening to music on explored both Western innovation the radio as he recuperated from and Japanese tradition at the same pneumonia. He began to study time. Takemitsu was one of the scores and to teach himself to play first important composers to bridge the piano. At eighteen, he sought the musical worlds of the East and out Yusuji Koyose as his teacher; the West. He was inspired by the although he studied with him on complex relationship between the and off for a while, Takemitsu two—their similarities as well as remained largely self-taught. (His differences. e assimilation wasn’t main source of education, he once always easy. (He once remarked, said, is “this daily life, including all for example, that it’s very difficult of music and nature.”) Significantly, for Japanese composers to write Takemitsu first studied Western, fast music.) not traditional Japanese, music. Takemitsu had a broader (“During the war in Japan, listen- understanding of music than most ing to Western music was forbid- composers because he learned our den,” he recalled. “And so, when music as a foreigner, and he studied the war was over, we young people his own country’s music as someone were thirsty for [it].”) It was another who knew Western music first. decade before Takemitsu became He also walked the mountains of aware of the music of his own land. Indonesia, stopping in the villages

COMPOSED FIRST CSO INSTRUMENTATION 1984 PERFORMANCE solo piano, three flutes, July 14, 1985, Ravinia piccolo and alto flute, three FIRST PERFORMANCE Festival. Peter Serkin, piano; oboes and english horn, four January 10, 1985, Los Seiji Ozawa conducting clarinets, E-flat and Angeles. Peter Serkin, piano; contrabass clarinet, three conducting MOST RECENT CSO bassoons and contrabas- PERFORMANCE soon, four horns, three These are the first July 17, 1988, Ravinia trumpets, three trombones, Chicago Symphony Festival. Peter Serkin, timpani [?], percussion, two Orchestra subscription piano; Christoph harps, celesta, strings concert performances Eschenbach conducting APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 14 minutes

4 to listen to their music. He once continually rushing past led him spent a few days on a small, remote to think of sound as a continuum, Australian island with a group of like flowing water. He began bushmen (Takemitsu was the first to compose with that in mind, Japanese person to visit the island) starting with Water Music in 1960, and found music unlike any we later saying that he wanted to write know. Song and dance among the a series of pieces in which their aborigines aren’t separate from essential materials “pass through human experience, and he found various metamorphoses, culminat- it difficult to draw a distinction ing in a sea of tonality.” Takemitsu between what was music and what became interested in mutability and was life—the bushmen didn’t even process—he said, for example, that have a special word for “music.” In his percussion work, Seasons, is not 1967, working on a commission about the four seasons themselves, from the New York Philharmonic, but the changes between them. Takemitsu attempted to write for symphony orchestra and tradi- akemitsu became fascinated tional Japanese instruments for the Tby Finnegan’s Wake in the early first time. at work—November 1970s, sensing the continuity Steps—forced him to accept differ- between ences so profound that they were, his own as he remarked, beyond words. In develop- his fusion of these traditions and ing ideas cultures, Takemitsu anticipated about what he envisioned as our future: music and “Indeed, I believe that, in time, James diverse cultures born of diverse Joyce’s peoples will be merged into one fluid synthesis, that human beings will language come to have one culture, immense and the and on a global scale.” novel’s treatment akemitsu grouped many of of life, James Joyce, author of Finnegan’s Wake This works into series based on dreams, themes from literature or nature— and the trees, constellations, gardens, rain. passage of e underlying idea of all the time. A water-based compositions is one number of pieces written under the of endless flow—rain falling into spell of Finnegan’s Wake took Joyce’s rivers, which in turn empty into words as their titles: Far calls, coming the ocean, creating what Takemitsu far! for violin and orchestra in 1980; called “a sea of tonality.” e A Way a Lone for string quartet in image first came to the composer 1981; and riverrun for piano and as he was riding a subway train in orchestra in 1984. “ey are all,” the Tokyo in 1948: the roar of trains composer said, “deeply connected

5 with the image of water,” and he and syntax of Takemitsu’s music. even began using a musical motif e piano enters in measure two based on the word “sea”—E-flat (S, and plays almost continuously to the in German terminology), E, A. very end, where it has the very last notes all to itself (the haunting rep- iverrun” is the first word of etition of two perfect fifths, a major rJames Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, third apart—the point from which and it also continues the novel’s Adams’s Eros Piano picks up). last unfinished thought. As Joyce Here are Tōru Takemitsu’s own himself said, the book “ends in the words about riverrun: middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence.” e music flows in the form Takemitsu’s score reflects the novel’s of a musical tributary derived circularity—it even begins, like from a certain main current, Finnegan’s Wake, midstream, as if wending its way through the the musical conversation had already scenery of night toward the sea begun elsewhere. (e Joycian of tonality. e motif, and the process came full circle years later intervals of the major seventh in a way that Takemitsu could not and the major third, almost have anticipated when the American like simple symbols, gradually composer took the final disperse and always give birth measures of riverrun as the point of to a variety of melodic sub- departure for his own Eros Piano.) species. While they sometimes roughout riverrun, the solo confront one another, they piano has an important and highly do not necessarily represent detailed role. Neither domineering a dialectic development, but nor highly virtuosic, it is simply continually keep occurring, indispensable to the sound, color, disappearing, and recurring.

6 Heitor Villa-Lobos Born March 5, 1887, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Died November 17, 1959, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Amazonas

ith his symphonic poem in harmony had been unproductive, WAmazonas, composed in 1917 come to write such an extraordi- and finally premiered in 1929, nary work? Part of the answer is the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos that Rio de Janeiro, where he was established himself as a world-class born and bred, was no provincial modernist composer. Made into backwater, but a thriving cosmo- a ballet four years later by Serge politan city where operas by Verdi, Lifar, Amazonas shares something Mascagni, Wagner, and Puccini of the dark, atavistic world of were performed just months after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. All their European premieres. It was the more remarkable, then, that also a city where musicians were Villa-Lobos composed it less than much in demand. From an early five years after that revolutionary age, Villa-Lobos mastered the cello, ballet’s premiere, even succeeding guitar, and clarinet, and played in in outstripping its orchestral audac- several of Rio de Janeiro’s street- ity. Never shy about promoting his music groups. own genius, Villa-Lobos described Another significant influence was Amazonas as “music of nature, his father, Raul Villa-Lobos, who alongside which Beethoven’s worked at the National Library Sixth Symphony and [Wagner’s] and, among several enthusiasms, Siegfried . . . are no more than well- had a particular interest in music. mannered samples of nature, to be Raul also was something of a exhibited in store windows.” writer, and his short stories— So how did this self-taught many of them based on classical composer, whose few formal lessons Greek mythology—were to be

COMPOSED INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE 1917 two flutes and two piccolos, PERFORMANCE TIME two oboes and english horn, 13 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE two clarinets, E-flat and bass May 30, 1929, Paris clarinet, two bassoons and two contrabassoons, four These are the first horns, two trumpets and two Chicago Symphony cornets, three trombones Orchestra performances and tuba, timpani, percus- sion, harp, piano, celesta, viola d’amore, violinophone or cythara de arco, strings

7 an inspiration to his son. When remains heedless of his advances. Raul died suddenly in 1899, young e god, insulted, avenges himself Heitor was forced to earn a living by summoning a monster from for his family by performing in the river, from whose advance theater and cinema in the girl flees in terror, either Rio de Janeiro. plunging herself into the river to As a young man, Villa-Lobos escape or finally being consumed almost certainly attended per- by the monster–the ambiguity of formances by Diaghilev’s Ballets Villa-Lobos’s scenario makes either Russes when that company toured ending possible. Rio de Janeiro in September 1913, Villa-Lobos annotated the score staging such erotically charged with the events illustrated by the ballets as Balakirev’s Tamara music and integrated some genuine and Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un Amazonian Indian themes. Yet one faune. In 1917, the Ballets Russes should perhaps not worry too much returned to Rio, presenting several about matching sonic impressions Stravinsky works—Petrushka, with incidents from the story. Firebird, and Fireworks–as well as Rather, what makes Amazonas so Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. ough remarkable is its orchestral scoring, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was not far exceeding what is to be found in staged that season, it is possible that Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring not only Villa-Lobos heard or encountered in terms of quantity and types of the score of its four-hand piano instruments, but also in Amazonas’s arrangement, since its harmonic ambitiously detailed scoring for audacity seems to have inspired his the . Villa-Lobos own Amazonas. calls for a large body of strings, subdivided into an involved, rich eanwhile, in 1916, Villa-Lobos texture to evoke the Amazonian Mhad composed four symphonic sounds of wind and water: not only poems based on pseudo-Greek do we have the usual division of myths. ese included Myremis, first and second violins, but the based on a short story written in violas also are divided into two 1896 by Raul Villa-Lobos, which groups, the cellos divided into four, concerns a young virgin who bathes and the basses into eight. To this in the Archelous, a river much body of strings, Villa-Lobos added venerated in Greek legend, then two unusual instruments: a viola suffers tribulations at the hands d’amore, related to the viol family, of gods and monsters. is was which in the twentieth century was clearly the source of the supposed to enjoy something of a renais- Amazonian legend depicted by sance (being played by Hindemith Amazonas, which portrays a young and later used by Prokofiev in his virgin who bathes wantonly in the ballet Romeo and Juliet); and a vio- Amazon, admiring her own beauty linophone, a type of violin ampli- in the water’s reflection. ough the fied not through a conventional god of the winds caresses her, she hollow wooden body, but through

8 a metal horn and resonator. e such a richly endowed orchestra, it violinophone often was played in is hardly surprising that Amazonas Rio de Janeiro’s theaters and music did not receive its first perfor- halls, where no doubt Villa-Lobos mance until twelve years after its first encountered it while earning composition—on May 30, 1929, his living as a musician. Its strange in Paris’s Maison Gaveau. On the hooting and whistling qualities same program was the first per- are well exploited in Villa-Lobos’s formance of the revised version of depiction of the background of Edgard Varèse’s Amériques, which, birdsong (supplementing the very although inspired by the cityscape wild-sounding “birdcalls” of vari- of New York, is for a similarly large ous woodwind instruments) and orchestra and again starts with rustling which accompanies his relatively lyrical restraint before heroine’s bath. introducing more ferocious mate- e score also specifies a rial. us bracketed with Varèse, complement of woodwinds fit for a Villa-Lobos found himself hailed Richard Strauss tone poem, includ- by La revue musicale as having cre- ing a little E-flat clarinet; gives ated through his musical interpreta- the option of using four or eight tion of a “native legend” a work of horns; and requires a large battery “universal significance.” of percussion, including various native and Brazilian rattles. Given —Daniel Jaffé

9 Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria.

Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 (Pastoral)

ven by nineteenth-century feelings which awaken in men Estandards, the historic concert on on arriving in the countryside. December 22, 1808, was something 2d piece: scene by the brook. of an endurance test. at night, 3d piece: merry gathering of Beethoven conducted the premieres country people, interrupted by of both his Fifth and Pastoral 4th piece: thunder and storm, symphonies, played his Fourth into which breaks 5th piece: Piano Concerto (conducting from salutary feelings combined the keyboard), and rounded out the with thanks to the Deity. program with the Gloria and the Sanctus from the Mass in C; the Although Beethoven wasn’t by concert aria Ah! perfido; improvisa- nature a man of words (spelling and tions at the keyboard; and the Choral punctuation led a perilous existence Fantasy, written in great haste at the in his hands), he normally said last moment as a grand finale. what he meant. We must then take If concertgoers that evening read him at his word, believing that he their printed program—the luxury had good reason (for the only time of program notes still many decades in his career) to preface his music in the future—they would have with a few well-chosen words and found the following brief guide to that curious disclaimer “more an the Sixth Symphony, in Beethoven’s expression of feeling than painting.” own words: Perhaps Beethoven was anticipat- ing the controversy to follow, for in Pastoral Symphony, more an 1808, symphonies weren’t sup- expression of feeling than posed to depict postcard scenes or painting. 1st piece: pleasant bad weather.

COMPOSED MOST RECENT CSO APPROXIMATE 1807–1808 PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE TIME June 11, 2010, 40 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Orchestra Hall. Bernard December 22, 1808; Haitink conducting CSO RECORDINGS Vienna, Austria. The 1961. Fritz Reiner conduct- composer conducting INSTRUMENTATION ing. RCA two flutes and piccolo, two 1974. Sir Georg Solti FIRST CSO oboes, two clarinets, two conducting. London PERFORMANCE bassoons, two horns, two March 2, 1894, Auditorium trumpets, two trombones, 1988. Sir Georg Solti Theatre. Theodore timpani, strings conducting. London Thomas conducting

10 Beethoven’s idea itself was trusting that “he who has ever had neither novel nor his own. In 1784 a notion of country life can imagine (Beethoven was only fourteen), an without too many descriptive words obscure composer named Justin what the composer has intended.” Heinrich Knecht advertised his newest symphonic creation: Le por- trait musical de la nature (A musical portrait of nature) in five move- ments, including a depiction of the peaceful country- side, the approach of a storm, and a general thanksgiving to the creator once the clouds had passed. It would Beethoven’s autograph score for the second movement coda of the Pastoral Symphony, 1808 take hearing no more than a measure or two of music to explain Our familiar picture of why Knecht has remained obscure Beethoven, cross and deaf, slumped while Beethoven turned the music in total absorption over his world upside down. e descrip- sketches, doesn’t easily allow for tive writing and pastoral subject Beethoven the nature lover. But he matter of Beethoven’s symphony liked nothing more than a walk in are a throwback to the baroque the woods, where he could wander era—think of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons undisturbed, stopping from time or the Pastoral Symphony in the to time to scribble a new idea on Messiah—or at least to Haydn’s the folded sheets of music paper he two oratorios, e Creation and e always carried in his pocket. “No Seasons, the latter written only half one,” he wrote to erese Malfatti a dozen years earlier. two years after the premiere of the History books are right, of Pastoral Symphony, “can love the course, to point out the work’s nov- country as much as I do. For surely elties: the “extra” movement, the woods, trees, and rocks produce the descriptive titles, the programmatic echo which man desires to hear.” element, and pictorial details like ey’re all here in his Sixth the birdcalls in the slow movement Symphony. e most surprising and the village band in the scherzo. thing about the opening Allegro But Beethoven was also right in is how quiet it is: seldom in

11 five hundred measures of music finally the cuckoo (clarinet). But as (well over ten minutes) does many a writer has pointed out, the Beethoven raise his voice. Surely birds are no more out of place here no composer—including the so- than a cadenza in a concerto—the called minimalists—has so clearly nightingale even provides the final understood the impact of repeating obligatory trill. a simple idea unaltered, or slowing e third movement is dance the rate of harmonic change to a music, with a plain, homely, rustic standstill. When, near the begin- peasant dance for a midsection ning of the development section, trio. But the fun is cut short by Beethoven changes the harmony dark clouds and the prospect of only once in the course of fifty rain. ere’s probably no more measures, the effect of that shift impressive storm in all music—the from B-flat to D is breathtaking. whole orchestra surges and shakes, Perhaps the most remarkable aspect trombones appear (for the first of this spacious, relaxed, blissfully time) to emphasize the downpour, untroubled movement is that it and the timpani shows up just to comes from the same pen that gave add the thunder. is is, of course, us—at the same time, no less—that no extra “movement” at all, but firecracker of a symphony, his merely a lengthy, rapid introduc- Fifth, in C minor. tion to the finale. e clouds finally Not even Donald Tovey, with his roll away, the promises better precise use of language, could find a things to come in a wonderfully better word to describe Beethoven’s heartfelt phrase, and the flute, slow movement than “lazy.” We with its staccato scale, raises the can be sure that the laziness is curtain on Elysium. And so, to the intentional, and it’s amazing how yodeling of the clarinet and horn, much this least restful of compos- we willingly believe F major to be ers seems to enjoy the drowsy the most beautiful key on earth. pace, the endless dawdling over e moment is parallel to the great details, the self-indulgent repeti- triumphant sunburst that marks the tions of favorite sections, and the arrival of the finale of Beethoven’s unchecked meandering through the Fifth Symphony, and, although the byways of sonata form. Beethoven means could hardly be less similar, begins with a gentle babbling brook the effect is just as wondrous. (one of those undulating accom- paniment figures that Schubert would later do to perfection) and Phillip Huscher is the program annota- tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. ends with notorious birdcalls. e only problem with the birds is that Daniel Jaffé is a regular contributor to BBC Music Magazine and a special- Beethoven calls so much attention ist in English and Russian music. to them, bringing the music—and He is the author of a biography of the brook—to a halt, and then Sergey Prokofiev (Phaidon) and the specifying first the nightingale Historical Dictionary of Russian Music © 2013 Chicago Symphony Orchestra © 2013 Chicago (flute), then the quail (oboe), and (Scarecrow Press).

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