041615 Programnotes Rachma

PROGRAM

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

Thursday, April 16, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, April 17, 2015, at 1:30 Saturday, April 18, 2015, at 8:00 Tuesday, April 21, 2015, at 7:30

Semyon Bychkov Conductor Daniil Trifonov Piano Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 1 Vivace Andante Allegro vivace DANIIL TRIFONOV

INTERMISSION

Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 65 Adagio—Allegro non troppo—Adagio Allegretto Allegro non troppo— Largo— Allegretto

Saturday’s concert is sponsored by DLA Piper. 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

Sergei Rachmaninov Born April 1, 1873, Oneg, Russia. Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, California. Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 1

Although Rachmaninov’s Esmerelda. Unable to choose between composi- music is sometimes tion and performance, Rachmaninov ultimately confused with the treacly decided to pursue both, eventually becoming a romanticism of the fine conductor as well. In 1889, the year he and Hollywood soundtracks it Zverev parted ways, he sketched and abandoned once inspired, a piano concerto, but the one he began the fol- Rachmaninov himself was lowing year is his first major work—the one that a serious and aristocratic became his op. 1. This is the score that sealed artist. He was one of the his fate as a composer, and it was completed in a greatest pianists in rush of passion and elation, with Rachmaninov history—an astonishing virtuoso in the heroic working from five in the morning until eight in Liszt tradition—but there was nothing flashy the evening and scoring the last two movements about his stage manner. For a crowd-pleasing in just two and a half days. Rachmaninov played superstar, Rachmaninov was surprisingly somber the first movement with orchestra in a concert and remote. He rarely smiled or courted the of student works at the conservatory in March audience, and even his close-cropped haircut, of a 1892. At the time, Rachmaninov was so certain kind that is ubiquitous today but was highly of his score that he rejected the improvements suspect at the time (like that of a convict, as the suggested by the conductor, and even corrected Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin said) suggested a his tempos and interpretive ideas in rehearsal. stern presence. (Chaliapin also scolded him for his But Rachmaninov’s estimation of his First curt, peremptory bows.) Much later Stravinsky Piano Concerto soon changed. By 1908, having called him “a six-and-a-half-foot-tall scowl.” written a second concerto of great popularity, he Rachmaninov would have become famous was impatient with the defects of his first. “Now I if he had done nothing but concertize. But his plan to take my First Concerto in hand tomorrow,” true aspiration was to be a composer. At the he wrote that April, “look it over, and then decide Moscow Conservatory, his teacher Nikolai how much time and work will be required for its Zverev encouraged him to stick to the piano new version, and whether it’s worth doing anyway. instead of writing music, but Rachmaninov tried There are so many requests for this concerto, and his hand at composing some piano pieces and an it’s so terrible in its present form, that I should like orchestral scherzo, and he even started an opera, to work at it, and, if possible, get it into decent

COMPOSED July 17, 1958, Ravinia Festival. INSTRUMENTATION 1890–July 18, 1891; revised 1917 Byron Janis as soloist, Walter two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, Hendl conducting two bassoons, four horns, two FIRST PERFORMANCE trumpets, three trombones, timpani, March 29, 1892, Moscow (first MOST RECENT triangle, cymbals, strings movement only). The composer CSO PERFORMANCES as pianist March 29, 30, 31 & April 3, 2001, APPROXIMATE Orchestra Hall. Leif Ove Andsnes as PERFORMANCE TIME January 28, 1919, New York City soloist, Leif Segerstam conducting 26 minutes (complete). The composer as pianist August 5, 2009, Ravinia Festival. CSO RECORDING FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Olga Kern as soloist, James 1957. Byron Janis as soloist, Fritz Reiner March 8 & 9, 1912, Orchestra Hall Conlon conducting conducting. RCA (original version). Arthur Shattuck as soloist, Frederick Stock conducting 2 shape . . .” Instead, however, he composed a new and orchestration. Still, it failed to capture the concerto, his Third, in 1909, tailor made for his public’s heart like his great earlier successes. upcoming North American tour. (Rachmaninov “When I tell them in America that I will play introduced the work in New York in November, the First Concerto, they do not protest,” he later but it was the Second Concerto that he played for admitted, “but I can see by their faces that they his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra would prefer the Second or Third.” the following month.) As it turned out, Rachmaninov didn’t get achmaninov’s First Piano Concerto around to revising his First Piano Concerto until begins with the high drama of fanfares late in 1917, in the aftermath of the Russian and cascading piano triplets, so unlike Revolution. It was the last music he would com- Rthe gently captivating openings of the Second pose in his homeland. Just before Christmas, he and Third concertos. The piano dominates the accepted an invitation to perform in Stockholm; proceedings, frequently reminding those who his wife and two daughters eventually joined tackle the solo role that Rachmaninov was a him there. The family settled temporarily in formidable pianist, with enormous hands and Copenhagen, and in 1918, moved to the United remarkable control even in the most frenetic pas- States. Rachmaninov played the premiere of the sages. There are two lyrical main themes, both new version of his first concerto in January 1919 introduced by the orchestra but much richer and in New York City, where the family had taken more complex once the piano takes them over. an apartment. The cadenza, predictably, is huge and dazzling. Before he ever started work revising this con- The slow movement, begun by solo horn over certo, Rachmaninov commented, “It will have to somber chords, turns into a nocturne not unlike be written all over again, for its orchestration is those by Chopin, but decisively stamped by worse than its music.” The new score is virtually Rachmaninov’s emerging personal style, rich a new piece, with the significant exception of harmonic vocabulary, and glittering filigree of the main themes themselves. “It is really good his piano writing. now,” the composer later remarked. “All the The finale begins as aggressive, athletic youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself music—the piano plays streams of endless so much more easily.” It also is a tighter, more sixteenth notes—and then turns soft at the shrewdly paced work. It has, therefore, the best center, in a lovely interlude that is lavishly of both worlds, marrying Rachmaninov’s earliest embroidered by the piano. The very end is of the lyrical instincts with his mature sense of form bring-down-the-house variety.

Dmitri Shostakovich Born September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg (now Leningrad), Russia. Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia. Symphony No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 65

Music and war were eleven when the czar was overthrown; ten years linked in Shostakovich’s later, when he had a deeper understanding of mind from early child- both political unrest and music’s incalculable hood. At an age when power, he dedicated his Second Symphony to the other precocious compos- October Revolution. ers were cutting their The triumph and tragedy of war have inspired teeth writing piano a number of musical works through the ages, pieces, Shostakovich including Haydn’s dramatic Mass in Time of wrote a revolutionary War, the noisy heroics of Beethoven’s Wellington’s symphony and the Victory, and, more recently, Britten’s War Funeral March in Memoriam to the Fallen Requiem and Sir Michael Tippett’s A Child of Heroes of the Revolution. Shostakovich was only Our Time. But it’s the wartime symphonies by 3 Dmitri Shostakovich that most powerfully tell of was, for him, its saving grace. “Words are not my individual anguish amid mass devastation—that genre,” he once told Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose reveal personal grief and the victories of the words he did set, in the Thirteenth Symphony, soul against the big, messy backdrop of combat. Babi Yar. “I never lie in music,” Shostakovich Perhaps, in the case of Shostakovich, we know said. (And it was Yevtushenko’s outspoken text, so much about his own personal political battles not Shostakovich’s music, that caused trouble and that we read too generously between the lines, had to be revised after the premiere.) Certainly placing an unnecessary burden on the music. Shostakovich’s own words raise many questions, But in the Seventh (Leningrad) and Eighth even today. The authenticity of Testimony, the symphonies—both written at the height of “Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to World War II and in a tremendous, emotional and edited by Solomon Volkov” is still disputed. white heat—the notes on the page carry a heavy And so we’re left with the music. In his introduc- weight. Both works were designed as public tion to Testimony, Volkov quotes Ilya Ehrenberg, statements, intended to address big issues, and who said, when confronted with the Eighth they’re overwhelming in their sheer size and Symphony, “Music has a great advantage: with- emotional range. Yet despite their monumental out mentioning anything, it can say everything.” scale, it’s a solitary voice that lingers in the Shostakovich himself always maintained a ear after the sounds of trumpets and drums curious silence regarding his Eighth Symphony, have receded. even though he had often spoken out about its predecessor and fellow war symphony, the he conflict between public speech Leningrad. These two works, for all their similar- and private thought is the province ities, could hardly be more different. Unlike the of the twentieth-century Soviet art- Seventh Symphony, the Eighth has no title and ist.T Certainly Shostakovich became its most it isn’t about anything as concrete as the siege of famous victim and his Fifth Symphony the Leningrad. The circumstances that inspired it most astonishing apology ever written in the are less sensational—the original score says only: form of music. Throughout his life, the form “The composer worked on the symphony at the of the symphony was Shostakovich’s public Ivanovo Home for Composers’ Creative Work in forum. Despite—and often because of—political the summer of 1943”—and the music less specific tension, the composer maintained his public in its evocation. But, if anything, the Eighth pose in these big works, leaving the darker, is more deeply motivated. While the Seventh more personal thoughts for his string quartets. chronicles the horrors of war, the Eighth seeks But even the symphonies betray him. For many understanding. And, where the Seventh limits its listeners, the end of the Fifth Symphony, with scope to the triumph of victory, the Eighth looks its heroic cadences, sounds oddly hollow, as if beyond the horizon, to true peace. Shostakovich could play the part no longer. Shostakovich obviously understood the hostakovich casts the work in an irregular curious power of music, strangely tangible yet arrangement of five movements, the last inexplicit—somewhere beyond words. Often this S three linked in one powerful, unbroken COMPOSED MOST RECENT four horns, three trumpets, three 1943 CSO PERFORMANCES trombones, tuba, timpani, xylophone, October 28 & 29, 2010, Orchestra Hall. snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, FIRST PERFORMANCE Jaap van Zweden conducting tam-tam, strings November 4, 1943, Moscow October 30, 2010, Krannert Center APPROXIMATE for the Performing Arts. Jaap van FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME Zweden conducting October 5 & 6, 1972, Orchestra Hall. 63 minutes Carlo Maria Giulini conducting INSTRUMENTATION CSO RECORDING four flutes and two piccolos, two 1989. Sir Georg Solti conducting. oboes and english horn, two clarinets, London E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 sequence that’s unparalleled in the symphonic orchestra. Page after page brings no relief, only literature. That span of music, lasting a full the occasional shrill cries of the winds or a half hour, is balanced by a single movement, crazed bugle call. nearly as long and heavy with anger and sad- Suddenly, with a drum roll and a couple of ness, at the start. A quick and savage scherzo, grand, ceremonial chords from the full orchestra, marked simply allegretto, stands between. a powerful unison theme is announced. And A solitary strand of music, played by the cellos only then, when the music pulls back quickly and basses, begins the symphony, adagio and from fff to a thread of sound, do we understand fortissimo. Shostakovich moves soberly through that the machine has stopped and that this noble slowly shifting music—dirgelike and contem- new theme has swept us into the serene expanses plative, then angry, even explosive. A barely of the Largo. That theme is the foundation for contained outburst gives way to a long passage of an expansive set of variations and it’s repeated quiet reflection. Midway, the music slowly rises twelve times—always in the low strings—while to its greatest climax and then breaks to reveal ever-new ideas circle above it, including several the mad galloping of the Allegro non troppo, rhapsodic solos. This solemn threnody, restrained capped by wild horn calls and a beating drum. and quiet (many pages don’t rise above a pia- Movement is halted, finally, by an explosion sig- nissimo), is the calm after the storm, but while naled by terrifying drum rolls—leaving us with there’s calm, there’s not yet peace. That comes in the sound of an english horn, the lone survivor, a moment of extraordinary stillness—at the same and a nearly deafening silence. Shostakovich time one of the quietest and most important makes little of the shift from C minor to moments in the score—when the three clarinets C major—the latter has rarely sounded so lead the music up into the pure radiance of a bleak—even though this is our first glimpse of C major triad. our destination, still half an hour away. The final Allegretto, opened up by the discov- Next comes the full force of the Allegretto— ery of C major, has an unexpected air of inno- tremendous and irregular marching music cence. The music is simple and even playful— characterized by the swagger of the brass band, listen to the opening diatonic bassoon melody striding tunes, high-flying piccolo squeals, and a or to the jubilant piping of the piccolo a few bars banging drum. It’s a harrowing vision of the mil- later—and the scene is fresh and pastoral. Even itary march. The music eventually disintegrates— though there are reminders of more troubled at one point there’s little left but the flute on top music midway through—the opening of the sym- and the contrabassoon five octaves below—and phony breaks in at the climax—it’s a bold and then rears up for one last crash. provocative ending for a dark, tragic symphony. The last three movements are conceived as one: It has also proven controversial. Critics found the the climax of the Allegro non troppo becomes finale anticlimactic; the Soviet authorities, unable the beginning of the Largo; the crux of that to reconcile these few rays of sunlight falling movement, in turn, opens onto the great vistas of on so much desolation, called it “an optimistic the final Allegretto. This progression is calcu- tragedy.” But optimistic is too unambiguous a lated with a keen sense of drama and a master’s word for the serene and dreamy, emotionally command of the big picture. The Allegro non complex final pages. Shostakovich leaves it to troppo is a terrifying piece of music, not only each of us to hear this music, as inward and because of its menacing tone and dangerous personal as anything in his symphonic output, in pace, but also because it sounds inhuman, like our own way. the workings of a giant and sinister machine. It begins with rapid, even quarter notes that march relentlessly through every measure, starting in Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago the violas and eventually invading the entire Symphony Orchestra.