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, March 21, 2013, at 8:00 Friday, March 22, 2013, at 1:30 Saturday, March 23, 2013, at 8:00 Sunday, March 24, 2013, at 3:00 Tugan Sokhiev Conductor Mathieu Dufour Borodin In the Steppes of Central Asia Khachaturian Flute Concerto (Adapted from the Concerto by Jean-Pierre Rampal) Allegro con fermezza Andante sostenuto Allegro vivace Mathieu Dufour First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Intermission Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36 Andante sostenuo Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco

These concerts are sponsored by Mr. & Mrs. Thomas C. Heagy. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Comments by GeDanrardiel J Maffc Béu rn eyPhilli Phillip Huscp heHurscher

Alexander Borodin Born November 12, 1833, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Died February 27, 1887, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

In the Steppes of Central Asia

orodin’s sole essay in pro- Rubinstein. Rimsky-Korsakov Bgram music was originally recalled these two instigators in composed in response to a his memoirs: proposal by two mysterious gentlemen, Messrs. Tatishchev and It must be admitted that the Korvin-Kryukovsky. Early in 1879, personalities of these gentle- in time for the silver jubilee of the men, who had lived in Paris reign of Tsar Alexander II in 1880, till then, appeared somewhat Tatishchev and Korvin-Kryukovsky odd; their mode of conversa- prepared a scenario for a series of tion as well as their manners tableaux vivants illustrating events recalled Bobchinsky and from those twenty-five years. Dobchinsky [the buffoonish They approached twelve Russian couple from Gogol’s play The composers in all to ask if they Inspector General]. could provide music for sections of this project. Apart from Borodin Despite their odd appearance, himself, these included his col- their project seemed both plausible leagues from the so-called Mighty and feasible, and resulted in at Handful—Rimsky-Korsakov, least two enduring works: one was Mussorgsky, and Cui (though not Mussorgsky’s march The Capture Balakirev)—as well as Tchaikovsky of Kars (effectively a rewrite of a and the head of the Saint march he originally had written Petersburg Conservatory, Anton for another multicomposer project, composed Most recent CSO Instrumentation 1880 performances two , and english April 17, 1953 (subscription horn, two , two First performance concert), Orchestra Hall. , four horns, two April 20, 1880, Rafael Kubelík conducting , three , Saint Petersburg , strings May 14, 1966 (Popular Concert), Orchestra Hall. First CSO Approximate Jean Martinon conducting performance performance time March 13, 1903, Auditorium 7 minutes Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting

2 Mlada, with a newly composed trio Russian troops. A second theme in “oriental” style), and the other on english horn presents the song Borodin’s In Central Asia, today of the camel drivers. After a steady more widely known as In the Steppes crescendo, the Russian folk song is of Central Asia. played fortissimo in C major. Then, The jubilee project was never as the camel train passes, both the realized, as the two gentlemen dis- Russian theme and the “oriental” appeared without a trace. However, theme are played simultaneously in Borodin’s contribution, greatly easy counterpoint. admired by Rimsky-Korsakov, was When the composer Taneyev, first heard conducted by the latter much impressed with this contra- at a concert organized by the con- puntal feat, asked Borodin how he tralto Darya Leonova on April 20, had achieved it, Borodin cheerfully 1880. Borodin subsequently showed admitted he had specially com- the score to Franz Liszt in Weimar, posed the “oriental” theme in coun- who was much taken with the terpoint with work and championed it widely the Russian (Borodin dedicated the work to him folk song, and in gratitude). Soon it was Borodin’s then separated single most performed work in his them to fit lifetime, and it did much to spread them into the his fame in both Europe and in the work accord- United States. ing to the illustrative lthough the work theoretically program. It Aportrays the triumph of the was, nonethe- Russian army over the subdued less, a trick people of Central Asia, Borodin’s which was music presents a more harmonious to impress Composer Sergei Taneyev, Tchaikovsky’s student and a relationship. It opens with high sus- several other colleague of Borodin tained notes on flute and harmon- composers, ics from the first . Against including this spacious backdrop, we hear Gustav Holst, who closely modeled an insouciant Russian folk song A Somerset Rhapsody after Borodin’s played by solo . Then, after work, only this time using entirely the folk song’s repetition by solo authentic folk themes. horn, comes the steady plod of the camel train escorted by mounted —Daniel Jaffé

3 Aram Khachaturian Born June 6, 1903, Kidzhori near Tiflis (Tbilisi), Georgia. Died May 1, 1978, Moscow, USSR. Flute Concerto adapted for flute by Jean-Pierre Rampal

ntil 1948, when he was Conservatory in 1929 and replaced Ubizarrely, yet officially, attacked by students of working-class or for alleged antidemocratic “for- peasant background, includ- malist” tendencies in his music, ing Khachaturian. Aram Khachaturian appeared an Although previously a biology exemplary Soviet composer. In student at Moscow University, the 1920s, as a young Armenian Khachaturian was musically more student of humble artisan back- literate than many of his proletar- ground, he had received particular ian peers, since during that time encouragement from the Soviet he had been a part-time authorities, as their policy then was student at the Gnessin Institute to promote the culture of ethnic and also had studied composition minorities who had been formerly under Mikhail Gnessin, who was “oppressed” under the tsars. himself developing a Jewish folk Khachaturian was a beneficiary, style in his music, and encouraged too, of the Cultural Revolution his pupil to develop an “Armenian” in the late-1920s: Stalin’s call on style. Thus Khachaturian became the eve of the first Five-Year Plan a natural candidate for grooming for “class vigilance,” which, he as a new-style Soviet composer, said, required an extensive purge intended to replace such disgraced of all institutions within the avant-gardists as Mosolov and USSR, resulted in many students Roslavets. After a successful of nonproletarian background start as a film composer, scoring being expelled from the Moscow Armenia’s first sound film Pepo composed Previous partial CSO Instrumentation Violin Concerto, 1940 performance solo flute, two flutes and pic- May 21, 1991, Orchestra colo, two and english arranged for flute by Hall (special concert: horn, two clarinets, two Jean-Pierre Rampal, 1968 Illinois Young Performers bassoons, four horns, three Competition) (first move- trumpets, three trombones First performance ment only). Demarre and tuba, timpani, percus- November 16, 1940, Moscow McGill, flute; Kenneth sion, harp, strings These are the first CSO Jean conducting performances of the Approximate complete concerto. performance time 35 minutes

4 (1934), Khachaturian was formally and urban songs and dances. launched as a concert composer Now commissioned to write an with his Concerto in 1937. “Armenian” ballet—eventually Its premiere was officially deemed to become Gayaneh (in which a great success despite its farcical the celebrated Sabre Dance conditions: held at Moscow’s open- appears)—Khachaturian now air Sokolniki “park of culture and heard, for the first time, first-hand, leisure,” the orchestra, recruited indigenous Armenian folk music from several ad hoc musicians, and singing, elements of which had only one rehearsal, and almost infused the melodic writing in his came to grief when a strong gust Violin Concerto composed the of wind blew away the spectacles following year. of their conductor, Lev Steinberg. Khachaturian was found after- n 1940, Khachaturian and his wards, as the piano soloist Lev Iheavily pregnant wife, Nina Oborin recalled, “deep inside the Makarova (herself a composer), park, crying bitterly with his arms spent the summer in one of the around a birch tree.” houses of rest and creativity, Staraya Despite this, Khachaturian’s Ruza; he brought with him sketches music—exuberant, melodic, and for a violin concerto. Working colorful—was heavily promoted, closely with the Soviet Union’s and he rose rapidly in eminence. star violinist David Oistrakh, he In 1937, he was elected deputy completed the concerto in just over chairman of the Moscow branch two months (and shortly before the of the Union of Soviet Composers. birth of his son Karen). Much of Two years later, having received the the original work’s character was first of his three Order(s) of Lenin, enhanced by Oistrakh’s sugges- the USSR’s highest honor, he was tions; indeed, the violinist rejected appointed vice chairman of the Khachaturian’s original long union’s newly formed Organizing cadenza in the first movement, Committee—in effect, its execu- replacing it with one of his own. tive head. From this key position, The result is one of Khachaturian’s Khachaturian exercised something most popular orchestral works and of a benevolent influence, among certainly the most recorded of all his other things organizing rural concertos. In 1968, French flutist “houses of rest and creativity” Jean-Pierre Rampal, frustrated by where composers could work in Khachaturian’s long procrastination quiet surroundings. over composing a flute concerto that Much of 1939 was spent in he had requested, finally gained the Armenia, the land of his ances- composer’s permission to arrange tors. Born and brought up in the violin concerto for his instru- Georgia, Khachaturian’s forma- ment. Rampal’s arrangement inevi- tive musical influence had been a tably changes the work’s character, trans-Caucasian mix of Georgian, replacing the intense passion of the Armenian, and Azerbaijani folk violin and its ability to play long

5 cantalena lines with the flute’s cooler Oistrakh’s lead, Rampal chose to tone and shorter-breathed phrases. replace with one of his own). Rampal also had to telescope or The concerto’s heart is surely in otherwise rewrite certain passages the twilight world of the central to accommodate the flute’s rela- Andante sostenuto, one of whose tively smaller range (just as today themes derives from a funeral song Mozart’s Khachaturian originally composed Clarinet for the film Zangezur (1938). For Concerto all its bittersweet quality (and the is routinely cool Gymnopédie-style opening)—a rearranged for quality all the more apparent with the modern a flute soloist—there is a sense of clarinet, grief that is unassuageable: listen whose range to how the soloist’s final sustained is restricted A-flat remains at odds with the compared orchestra’s chillingly implacable to the basset A minor descent. instrument it By contrast, the initially breezy originally was finale (its key and to some extent intended for). its character clearly inspired by the Yet Rampal ’s finale of Brahms’s concerto) pro- Jean-Pierre Rampal sensitive vides a perfect complement to the arrangement melancholy of the slow movement. has not only No wonder the concerto became won the so popular during World War II, admiration and championship of with its mournful slow movement flute players around the world, but speaking so eloquently to a people also earned the approval of the resisting a brutal invasion, fol- composer himself. lowed by this brisk and ultimately optimistic conclusion. Yet there or all its ebullience, most are still echoes in the finale of the Fapparent in the opening and more fragile emotions heard in the final movements, melancholy never previous movements, some of them seems far away in Khachaturian’s in thematic recollections which concerto. One may note the raise this concerto well above the chromatic sighing quality of the simple exercise in Socialist real- orchestral link to the lyrical second ism too many critics have assumed subject, or the rather forlorn it to be. counterpoint between soloist and clarinet which prefaces the first —Daniel Jaffé movement cadenza (which, taking

6 Piotr Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Viatka, Russia. Died November 18, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36

chaikovsky was at work on his the one he himself received from TFourth Symphony when he Antonina, threatening suicide. The received a letter from Antonina first inspired one of the great scenes Milyukova claiming to be a in opera; the latter precipitated a former student of his and declaring painful and disastrous marriage. that she was madly in love with We have since learned enough him. Tchaikovsky had just read about Tchaikovsky, and about the Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, hoping agony of repressed homosexuality, to find an opera subject, and he saw to understand why he would choose fateful parallels between Antonina to marry a woman he didn’t even and Pushkin’s heroine, Tatiana. know as a kind of cover. (Less than Perhaps Tchaikovsky confused art a year earlier, Tchaikovsky had and life; in any event, the conse- begun an extraordinary relation- quences were dire. It is hard to say ship, conducted exclusively by cor- which letter provoked the stronger respondence, with Nadezhda von response from Tchaikovsky—the Meck, and he delighted in the com- despairing letter Tatiana writes bination of intellectual intimacy to the cold-hearted Onegin, or and physical distance.) On June 1,

Composed Most recent CSO CSO recordings May 1877–January 19, 1878 performances 1951. Rafael Kubelík January 15, 2008, conducting. Mercury First performance Orchestra Hall. Alexander 1984. Sir Georg Solti March 4, 1878; Moscow, Polianichko conducting conducting. London Russia July 29, 2012, Ravinia 1988. Claudio Abbado Festival. James First CSO conducting. CBS Conlon conducting performance 1997. Daniel Barenboim November 3, Instrumentation conducting. Teldec 1899, Auditorium two flutes and piccolo, two Theatre. Theodore A 1957 performance with oboes, two clarinets, two Thomas conducting conducting bassoons, four horns, two is included in Chicago trumpets, three trombones Symphony Orchestra in and tuba, timpani, triangle, the Twentieth Century: , , strings Collector’s Choice. Approximate performance time 44 minutes

7 1877, Tchaikovsky stopped work on brother Anatoly rushed to Moscow the first three movements of this to tell Antonina. She listened symphony and visited Antonina calmly and served them tea. Milyukova for the first time. A day Tchaikovsky’s marriage or two later he proposed. lasted less than three months. He didn’t tell Nadezhda von On October 13, Anatoly took Meck of his plans until three days Tchaikovsky to Switzerland, then before the wedding. In that letter on to Paris and Italy. Tchaikovsky he confessed that he had “lived asked that the unfinished manu- thirty-seven years with an innate script of the Fourth Symphony be aversion to marriage. . . . In a day or sent from Moscow, and he com- two my marriage will take place,” pleted the scoring in January 1878. he wrote in closing. “What will He finished Eugene Onegin the happen after that I do not know.” following month. That March, he Tchaikovsky quickly learned that, sketched the violin concerto in just in addition to the obvious strain of eleven days. When he returned living with someone to whom he to Russia in late April, his prob- felt profound physical aversion, he lems with Antonina were still would grow to disdain Antonina, unresolved—she first accepted and particularly after the stunning then rejected the divorce papers, discovery that she knew not one and later extracted her final revenge note of music. “My heart is full,” by moving into the apartment he wrote to von Meck. “It thirsts to above his—but the worst year of his pour itself out in music.” life was over. It was music that kept him going. When he was able to escape, tem- he temptation to read a program porarily, to Kamenka, he found sol- Tinto Tchaikovsky’s Fourth ace in his fourth symphony and by Symphony is as old as the work working intermittently on Eugene itself. Since Nadezhda von Meck Onegin. He returned to Moscow in allowed Tchaikovsky to dedicate late September, barely in time to the symphony to her (without begin the fall term at the conserva- mentioning her name) and was con- tory, and discovered, surely without tributing generously to support his surprise, that he could maintain the career, she demanded to know what façade no longer. Many years later, the work was about. Tchaikovsky’s he confessed that he waded into the response, often quoted, is a detailed Moscow River, hoping to contract account, filled with emotional a fatal chill, and stood with the icy thoughts and empty phrases— water up to his waist until he could, words written after the fact to literally, stand no more. He then satisfy an indispensable patron. fled to Saint Petersburg, where a When Tchaikovsky mentions fate, psychiatrist prescribed a complete however, his words ring true; this change of scenery and a permanent was a subject that had haunted him separation from Antonina. Nicolai since 1876, when he saw Carmen Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky’s and was struck by the “death of the

8 two principals who, through fate, there are no words, but which fatum, ultimately reach the peak of the soul wishes to express, their suffering and their inescap- and which requires to be able end.” He wrote to Nadezhda expressed? . . . Please do not von Meck: think that I aspire to paint before you a depth and gran- The introduction is the seed of deur of thought that cannot be the whole symphony, undoubt- easily understood in words. I edly the main idea. This is fate, was not trying to express any that fatal force which prevents new thought. In essence my the impulse to happiness from symphony imitates Beethoven’s attaining its goal, which jeal- Fifth; that is, I was not imitat- ously ensures that peace and ing its musical thoughts, but happiness shall not be complete the fundamental idea. Do you and unclouded, which hangs think there is a program in the above your head like the sword Fifth Symphony? Not only is of Damocles, and unwaver- there a program, but in this ingly, constantly poisons instance there cannot be any the soul. question about its efforts to express itself. My symphony Indeed, the icy blast from the rests upon a foundation that horns that opens this symphony is nearly the same, and if you returns repeatedly in the first haven’t understood me, it movement (and once in the finale), follows only that I am not a each time wiping out everything Beethoven, a fact which I have in its path. It’s like the celebrated never doubted. fate motive from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—the one the composer Taneyev was perhaps the first himself compared to fate knocking to question the preponderance at the door—except that it’s more of of what he called ballet music in a disruption than a compositional the symphony. In fact, the lilt- device. Later, Tchaikovsky wrote ing main theme of the opening to the composer Sergei Taneyev, a movement (marked “in movimento former student: di valse”) and the whole of the two inner movements—the slow pas Of course my symphony de deux with its mournful oboe is programmatic, but this solo, and the brilliant and playful program is such that it can- pizzicato scherzo—remind us that not be formulated in words. the best of Tchaikovsky’s ballet That would excite ridicule scores are symphonic in scope and and appear comic. Ought tone. Tchaikovsky was angered by not a symphony—that is, the the comment and asked Taneyev most lyrical of all forms—to if he considered as ballet music be such a work? Should it not “every cheerful tune that has a express everything for which dance rhythm? If that’s the case,”

9 he concluded, “you must also be symphony’s opening, but this time unable to reconcile yourself to the the music quickly recovers, rousing majority of Beethoven’s symphonies itself to a defiantly triumphant and in which you encounter such things heroic Beethovenian ending, in at every turn.” intention if not in substance. The finale is more complex, emo- tionally and musically, swinging —Phillip Huscher from the dark emotions of the first movement to a more festive mood. “If you cannot discover reasons for Daniel Jaffé is a regular contributor to BBC Music Magazine and a special- happiness in yourself,” Tchaikovsky ist in English and Russian music. wrote to Mme von Meck, “look at He is the author of a biography of others. Get out among the people. Sergey Prokofiev (Phaidon) and the Look what a good time they have Historical Dictionary of Russian Music simply surrendering themselves (Scarecrow Press). to joy.” There is one final intru- Phillip Huscher is the program annota- © 2013 Chicago Symphony Orchestra © 2013 Chicago sion of the fateful horns from the tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Symphony Center Information

The use of still or video cameras Please turn off or silence all and recording devices is prohibited personal electronic devices in Orchestra Hall. (pagers, watches, telephones, digital assistants). Latecomers will be seated during designated program pauses. Please note that symphony Center PLease nOTe: some programs is a smoke-free environment. do not allow for latecomers to be seated in the hall. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. Please use perfume, cologne, and all other scented products sparingly, as many patrons are sensitive to fragrance.

Note: Fire exits are located on all levels and are for emergency use only. The lighted exit sign nearest your seat is the shortest route outdoors. Please walk—do not run—to your exit and do not use elevators for emergency exit. Volunteer ushers provided by The Saints—Volunteers for the Performing Arts (www.saintschicago.org)

10