Riccardo Muti Conductor Robert Chen Violin Mozart Divertimento in D Major, K

Program

One Hundred Twenty-Third 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 3, 2013, at 8:00 Saturday, October 5, 2013, at 8:00 Tuesday, October 8, 2013, at 7:30 Friday, October 11, 2013, at 1:30

Riccardo Muti Conductor Robert Chen Violin Mozart Divertimento in D Major, K. 136 Allegro Andante Presto Hindemith Violin Concerto At a moderate tempo Slow Lively Robert Chen

Intermission

Prokofiev Suite from Romeo and Juliet Montagues and Capulets Juliet the Young Girl Madrigal Minuet Masks Romeo and Juliet Death of Tybalt Friar Laurence Romeo and Juliet before Parting Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb

These concerts are generously sponsored by Cindy Sargent. Sponsorship of the music director and related programs is provided in part by a generous gift from the Zell Family Foundation. 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 Phillip huscher

Wolfgang mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. divertimento in d major, k. 136

Mozart’s fi rst composi- these years—Exsultate, jubilate for soprano and tions, an Andante and an orchestra; the Haff ner Serenade, the Turkish Allegro for keyboard, Violin Concerto—all of which have appeared on were written down by Chicago Symphony programs over the years. Leopold, one of history’s proudest stage fathers, ith the exception of Mozart’s First when Wolfgang was just Symphony (K. 16), the D major fi ve years old. Even divertimento on this week’s earlier, the boy had tried programW is the earliest piece by Mozart the to write what he called a Chicago Symphony has performed. It is one of concerto in his own system of notation, which as three works for strings written early in 1772. a family friend recalled, consisted mainly of a Th e sixteen-year-old Mozart may well have “smudge of notes, most of which were written thought of them as string quartets—with one over inkblots that he had rubbed out.” After 1761, player per part—but, over the years, they have music began to fl ow, with increasing frequency, just as often been played by string orchestra, from his little hands. Inevitably, however, despite as they are this week. (Th e divertimento title Wolfgang’s astonishing talent—“Everyone whom apparently isn’t Mozart’s own.) Th e three works I have heard says that his genius is incomprehen- are also sometimes called “Salzburg sympho- sible,” Leopold wrote when his son was only nies,” but that too is misleading. In any case, six—many of the earliest works in his offi cial they are the fi rst important works in which catalog are little more than child’s play. Mozart wrote for the classic combination of Eventually, however, signs of Wolfgang’s true two violin parts with viola over a bass line. Th e promise and unique, once-in-a-generation gift Divertimento in D major, the fi rst in the set, began to emerge. Of the fi rst three hundred has three movements: an energetic Allegro with numbers in Köchel’s famous catalog, most of an unusually fl orid fi rst violin part; a tender, them identifying compositions written before graceful Andante; and an urgently paced fi nale Mozart turned twenty-one, a handful of works with a showy, contrapuntal midsection. stand out. K. 183, a remarkable symphony in It’s possible that this is one of the quartets G minor—his twenty-fi fth, according to the Leopold off ered to the publishing house of standard numbering—is the earliest of his Breitkopf and Härtel in February of 1772, with- symphonies to have found a place in the standard out success. Th e prestigious Viennese company’s repertoire. K. 271, a piano concerto known as lack of interest in an untested teenage composer the Jeunnehomme, is the fi rst of Mozart’s land- is hardly surprising. In fact, during Mozart’s life- mark pieces in that form that is still regularly time, only some 130 of the 626 works in Köchel’s played today. Th ere are other notable works from catalog were printed and sold. ComPosed fIrst Cso PerformanCes InstrUmentatIon 1772 July 1, 1965, Ravinia Festival. Seiji strings Ozawa conducting fIrst PerformanCe aPProXImate March 22, 23 & 24, 1979, Orchestra date unknown PerformanCe tIme hall. János Ferencsik conducting 15 minutes most reCent Cso PerformanCes February 14, 15, 16 & 19, 2008, Orchestra hall [no conductor] 2 Paul Hindemith Born November 16, 1895, Hanau, Germany. Died December 28, 1963, Frankfurt, Germany. violin Concerto

Paul Hindemith boasted, during World War I, he formed a string quartet with complete justifi ca- (he would always remember that the ensemble tion, that he could play was playing Debussy’s quartet at the moment every instrument in the news of the composer’s death came over the orchestra at least passably. radio). Later, he began to favor playing the viola, But the violin was and it ultimately became his instrument of Hindemith’s fi rst instru- choice. But even after he had given up playing ment. As a child, he was the violin in public, he agreed, on short notice, to given the violin to play, take over the violin solo in the German premiere while his younger sister of Stravinsky’s Th e Soldier’s Tale in 1923. Toni took up the piano and his brother Rudolf the cello. (Th e Hindemith children eventually ot surprisingly, many of Hindemith’s played together as the Frankfurt Children’s Trio fi rst compositions feature the violin in villages and at social events.) Paul showed prominently, including a very early unusual promise, and, at the age of eleven, he Nsonata for violin and piano, dating from 1912–13, began serious study, fi rst with the Swiss violinist that has been lost. Hindemith continued to Anna Hegner, and then with her teacher, Adolf write violin sonatas throughout his early career, Rebner, who was one of the best known and including one composed in 1917, while he was most highly regarded musicians in Frankfurt. serving in the German army, and another from Paul was soon admitted to the Hoch 1924 that includes variations on a Mozart song Conservatory, where Rebner taught. At the age for its fi nale. Th e fourth in his landmark series of of nineteen, he joined the Frankfurt Opera Kammermusik, ensemble pieces for various com- Orchestra (where he met the conductor Willem binations of instruments, also composed in 1924, Mengelberg, who would later commission this is scored for violin and a small orchestra—it is violin concerto) and the following year, he something of a study for the big-scale concerto became the second violinist in Rebner’s string performed this week. But Hindemith did not set quartet. Eventually, he was drawn to the idea of out to write a full-fl edged violin concerto—the composing (his fi rst composition teacher at the ultimate vehicle for the solo violin—until 1939. Hoch Conservatory was Arnold Mendelssohn, a great-nephew of Felix), but Hindemith continued he 1930s were a diﬃ cult—and ulti- to perform as a violinist, playing both the mately decisive—time for Hindemith. Beethoven and Mendelssohn concertos—two of Once the Nazis came to power in the most challenging works in the violin GermanyT in 1933, Hindemith was branded as repertoire—in public. While he was in the army a degenerate composer, largely because Hitler

ComPosed most reCent aPProXImate 1939 Cso PerformanCes PerformanCe tIme november 15, 16 & 17, 1984, Orchestra 24 minutes fIrst PerformanCe hall. Mark Peskanov as soloist, Leonard March 4, 1940, Amsterdam Slatkin conducting fIrst Cso PerformanCes InstrUmentatIon October 28 & 29, 1948, Orchestra solo violin, two ﬂ utes and piccolo, hall. Ruth Posselt as soloist, Pierre two oboes, two clarinets and bass Monteux conducting clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, percussion, strings 3 had walked out of a performance of Hindemith’s Hindemith writes three movements in the opera Neues vom Tage (News of the day), infu- traditional sequence, with slower music in the riated by the sight of a soprano singing from middle. The two outer movements are equally her bathtub. “It is obvious that [it] shocked weighted in terms of size, substance, and signifi- the Führer greatly,” Hindemith wrote to his cance (a concerto finale is often both slighter and publisher late in 1934. “I shall write him a lighter). The solo violin carries both movements, letter . . . in which I shall ask him to convince in music that dazzles with the complexity of its himself to the contrary.” But, in the meantime, technical challenges at one point and then soars Joseph Goebbels spoke out publicly about the in magnificent flights of lyricism at others. The horror of modern composers “allowing naked solo writing is expressive and highly personal, women to appear on the stage in obscene scenes as if the essence of Hindemith’s own troubled in a bathtub, making a mockery of the female life at the time was concentrated into a single sex.” Hindemith wasn’t mentioned by name, violin line. The slow middle movement is the but the message was clear. He made a powerful heart of the concerto. It is like a great dramatic statement on the value of art—and the role of monologue—aside from a very dramatic out- the artist in society—in his 1935 opera Mathis burst near the end, the orchestral writing here der Maler, about the sixteenth-century German is particularly spare, the texture reminiscent of painter Mathias Grünewald, who was himself chamber music—and the violin seems to speak torn between his commitment to art and a life of for Hindemith himself, an exile and a seeker at political activism. That work, too, was attacked the pivotal time in his life. and eventually banned. After Hindemith figured prominently in the exhibition of Entartete Musik postscript about Hindemith and (Degenerate music) in 1938, he had little choice Chicago. Hindemith came to the United but to leave his native Germany for good. States for the first time in 1937, and he returnedA in both 1938 and 1939. The letters he indemith composed his Violin Concerto wrote home to his wife Gertrude reveal a man while he was temporarily living in struggling to find his place—and a job—in a new Switzerland in 1939, in self-imposed world. On his first U.S. tour, he appeared as viola Hexile. He had already tackled the central issues soloist in his Der Schwanendreher with mem- of writing a work for solo violin and orchestra bers of the Chicago Symphony at the Chicago with his chamber concerto, the Kammermusik Arts Club. The next year, Hindemith made his no. 4. And, in 1930, he had even counseled American conducting debut with the CSO, lead- Igor Stravinsky, who initially balked at the idea ing his Kammermusik no. 1 and the Symphonic of writing a violin concerto—“but I am not a Dances. In 1939, he returned to Chicago to violinist!”—and turned to Hindemith for advice. attend a concert of his music given by University Hindemith managed to convince Stravinsky that of Chicago students, but he didn’t appear with his lack of experience playing the violin would in the Orchestra. During his visit, however, he met fact allow him to “avoid a routine technique and with CSO music director Frederick Stock, who would give rise to ideas which would not be sug- asked him to write a piece for the Orchestra’s gested by the familiar movement of the fingers.” fiftieth anniversary, then two seasons away. “The Reassured, Stravinsky proceeded. (His Violin specifics still need to be discussed,” Hindemith Concerto, successfully premiered in Berlin in wrote to Gertrude in March. Hindemith 1931, will be performed by Leila Josefewicz and began a piece for the Chicago Symphony’s the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Susanna anniversary—a kind of free fantasy, as he called Mälkki, later this month.) Then, nearly a decade it, on an old Virginian ballad about poor Lazarus later, Hindemith himself tackled the form and the rich man—but then abandoned it and managed to create something original and midway when he realized he had been so busy fresh—and utterly devoid of the routine—despite working on other scores that he couldn’t finish an intimate, first-hand knowledge of the instru- it in time. Hindemith’s score for Poor Lazarus ment matched by virtually no other composer. was later published in its incomplete state.

4 sergei Prokofi ev Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine. Died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia. suite from Romeo and Juliet

During Sergei Prokofi ev’s for the only time in Prokofi ev’s career, orchestral last trip to Chicago, in excerpts were premiered before the ballet itself January 1937, he led the had been staged. Th e idea for a ballet version Chicago Symphony in of the Shakespeare play came from the director selections from his new, Sergei Radlov, who was a friend of Prokofi ev still-unstaged ballet, and had mounted the fi rst Russian production Romeo and Juliet. Th is was of Th e Love for Th ree Oranges. He and Prokofi ev the composer’s fi fth visit worked together to fl esh out a scenario early in to Chicago, and he clearly 1935, and the composer began to write the music felt at home: shortly after that summer. But the Kirov Ballet, which had he arrived in town, he sat down with a Tribune commissioned the work, unexpectedly backed reporter and talked freely while eating apple pie out, and the Bolshoi Th eater took over the proj- at a downtown luncheonette. He was staying in ect. Th ere were further problems with the score the same hotel room where he had lived for itself, including Prokofi ev’s initial insistence on several months during his Chicago visit in 1921, a happy ending—“Living people can dance,” he when he presided over preparations for the world later wrote in defense of the decision, “but the premiere of his opera Th e Love for Th ree Oranges. dead cannot dance lying down.” Th e end was He told the Tribune that his Romeo and Juliet ultimately changed to match Shakespeare’s, but featured the kind of “new melodic line” that he then the Bolshoi staﬀ pronounced Prokofi ev’s thought would prove to be the salvation of music “unsuitable to dance” and dropped out as modern music—one, he said, that would have well. Th e premiere of Romeo and Juliet eventually immediate appeal, yet sound like nothing written was given in Brno, Czechoslovakia, without before. “Of all the moderns,” the Herald Prokofi ev’s participation (he didn’t attend the Examiner critic wrote after hearing Romeo and opening in December 1938) and the ballet Juliet later in the week, “this tall and boyish wasn’t staged in Russia until January 1940. In Russian has the most defi nite gift of melody, the the meantime, Prokofi ev made two orchestral most authentic contrapuntal technic [sic], and suites of seven excerpts each, and it was the displays the subtlest and most imaginative use fi rst of these that he conducted in Chicago. (At of dissonance.” this week’s concerts, Riccardo Muti conducts Chicago was the fi rst American city to hear selections from both of these suites.) music from Romeo and Juliet (following recent Although no other play by Shakespeare has performances in Moscow and Paris), and, not inspired as many musical treatments as Romeo

ComPosed most reCent InstrUmentatIon 1935, complete ballet Cso PerformanCes two ﬂ utes and piccolo, two oboes May 5, 6 & 7, 2011, Orchestra hall. and english horn, two clarinets and 1936, two suites for orchestra Riccardo Muti conducting (Suite) bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four fIrst PerformanCe August 5, 2011, Ravinia Festival. James horns, two trumpets and piccolo December 30, 1938, brno, Conlon conducting (Suite) trumpet, three trombones and tuba, Czechoslovakia (complete ballet) September 6, 2011; Grosser timpani, percussion, two harps, piano, Musikvereinsaal, Vienna, Austria. celesta, strings fIrst Cso PerformanCes Riccardo Muti conducting (Suite) January 21 & 22, 1937, Orchestra aPProXImate hall. The composer conducting (u.S. Cso reCordIngs PerformanCe tIme premiere of Suite no. 1) 1982. Sir Georg Solti. London (Suite) 48 minutes

5 and Juliet, including more than twenty operas (Gounod’s, which the teenage Prokofiev saw in Saint Petersburg, is the most enduring), Prokofiev’s is the first large-scale ballet. It’s one of his most important works, merging the primi- tive style of his radical earlier music, a newfound classicism, and the sumptuous lyricism of which he was so proud.

his week’s excerpts begin with Montagues and Capulets—menacing music to depict the warring families, introducedT by the prince’s powerful order to preserve peace. The opening chords, which seem A publicity shot of Prokofiev posing with a pipe in a to grow in intensity to the breaking point, set a Chicago hotel room, 1918 tone of sorrow and inevitable tragedy. The big ominous marching theme, later discovered by the television advertising industry, was originally the girl who will quickly steal his heart. In the more Dance of the Knights from the act 2 ballroom fully sketched portrait of the young girl that scene. The centerpiece of the movement, with its follows, we are reminded that she is an innocent lovely flute solo, is Juliet’s dance with Paris—the thirteen-year-old, capricious and playful, and (in moment Romeo catches his first glimpse of the the midsection flute duet) eager for romance.

Prokofiev and Chicago

In the summer of 1917, Chicago question in my mind as to the talent Genius Displays Weird Harmonies” was businessman Cyrus McCormick, Jr., of young Serge.” Although Stock at the headline in the American. “The the farm machine magnate, met the first doubted that it was feasible to music was of such savagery, so brutally twenty-six-year-old composer Sergei bring the Russian composer to the U.S. barbaric,” Henriette Weber wrote, “that Prokofiev while on a business trip to right away, Prokofiev (or Prokofieff, as it seemed almost grotesque to see Russia. Prokofiev was unknown to the U.S. press spelled his name at the civilized men, in modern dress with McCormick, but the composer recog- time) made his debut with the Chicago modern instruments performing it. nized the distinguished American’s Symphony the following season, By the same token it was big, sincere, name at once, because the estate his playing his First Piano Concerto true.” The public loved it. “Every man father had managed owned several under Eric DeLamarter’s baton, and and woman there reacted to it,” Weber impressive International Harvester conducting the Orchestra himself in continued, “and Prokofieff was given machines. McCormick expressed an his Scythian Suite in Orchestra Hall in a thundering ovation that at least in a interest in the composer’s new music, December 1918, both U.S. premieres. slight degree expressed the tumultu- and he eventually agreed to pay “The appearance here of the ous emotions he inspired.” for the printing of his unpublished young Russian, Serge Prokofieff, at Prokofiev returned to Chicago four Scythian Suite. He also encouraged the Chicago Symphony Orchestra more times. In 1921, he oversaw the Prokofiev to come to the United States, concert was the most startling and, in world premieres of his Piano Concerto and asked him to send some of his a sense, important musical event that no. 3, which he played in Orchestra scores to Chicago Symphony music has happened in this town for a long Hall on December 16, and his opera, director Frederick Stock. McCormick time,” wrote Henriette Weber in the The Love for Three Oranges, which was wrote to Stock at once, saying that Herald and Examiner. “Personally he is staged by the Chicago Opera at the Prokofiev “would be glad to come middle-sized and blond, somewhat Auditorium Theatre on the thirtieth. to Chicago and bring some of his gangling about the arms and (The Chicago Symphony also played symphonies if his expenses were paid. shoulders, and entirely business-like in Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony for the But not knowing myself the value of demeanor,” reported the Journal. “His first time that month.) His last visit, in his music, I did not feel justified in business is his music, while he is on the 1937, introduced Romeo and Juliet. taking the risk of bringing him here.” stage, and he would seem to resent After Stock received Prokofiev’s scores, even the time that it takes to bow.” The —P.H. he replied to McCormick: “There is no music itself caused quite a stir. “Russian

6 The Madrigal—a mixture of serenade and lilt- Friar Laurence, waiting to marry the lovers ing party music—sets the scene in the Capulets’ in his cell, is depicted by a solo bassoon with ballroom; the Minuet is stately entrance music strings. A haunting flute solo over shimmer- for their guests. With the furtive, shifty Masks, ing strings—“It was the lark, the herald of Romeo appears at the Capulets (with his fellow the morn,” in Shakespeare (act 3, scene 5)— Montagues, Mercutio and Benvolio) in full introduces Romeo and Juliet’s final moments masquerade. The music perfectly captures both together. This scene recapitulates the many facets the nervousness and boldness of their entry into of their romance, and it is filled not only with hostile territory. Next comes the balcony scene— recollected passion but also, in its oddly halting passionate and tender, richly lyrical, and one of final pages, with the inevitability of their parting. the most rapturous moments in all ballet. This is Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb is a lament—a tragic spacious, magically scored night music, under- march of power and intensity, and, when it’s lined by the melancholy cut of Prokofiev’s grand, overpowered by the lovers’ theme, great poi- floating melodies. gnancy. This is the music that was played at The Death of Tybalt, by contrast, is tightly Prokofiev’s funeral (oddly paralleling the fate packed with incident and action, almost cin- of Fauré and Melisande’s death scene) on a tape ematic in the way it compresses events into a recorder because all of Moscow’s musicians short time. In comments written in his score, had been tapped for the funeral of Stalin, who Prokofiev characterized both the high-bravado had died at the same hour on the same day as duel between Tybalt and Mercutio (“they look the composer. at each other like two fighting bulls; blood is boiling”) and the subsequent encounter between Romeo and Tybalt, who “fight wildly, to the death.” Fifteen powerful, hammering chords tell of Tybalt’s fate. Prokofiev concludes with Tybalt’s Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago funeral procession over a pounding ostinato. Symphony Orchestra.