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Please note that pianist Leif Ove Andsnes has withdrawn from these concerts. The CSO welcomes Rudolf Buchbinder, who has graciously agreed to perform. The program remains unchanged. 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, June 13, 2013, at 8:00 Friday, June 14, 2013, at 1:30 Saturday, June 15, 2013, at 8:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Rudolf Buchbinder Piano Wagner Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Funeral March FROM Götterdämmerung Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 Allegro moderato Andante con moto— Rondo: Vivace RUDOLF BUCHBINDER INTERMISSION Bruckner Symphony No. 1 in C Minor Allegro Adagio—Andante Scherzo: Lively Finale: Agitated and fiery These performances have been enabled by the Juli Grainger Fund. Support of the music director and related programs is made possible in part by a generous gift from the Zell 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 Richard Wagner Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Germany. Died February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy. Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Funeral March FROM Götterdämmerung iegfried’s Death was the original then e Young Siegfried, and finally Stitle of the prose sketch for an e Valkyrie each demanded yet opera that grew, over the span of another opera before it to provide twenty-eight years, into the most background and to set all the nec- monumental undertaking in the essary narrative strands in motion. history of music—the four-opera (e final installment in this set of cycle e Ring of the Nibelungen. prequels is e Rhine Gold, techni- e murder of the young hero cally a prologue to the three music Siegfried was Wagner’s starting dramas.) e entire libretto was point, and it remains the climax of privately printed in 1853, the same the full seventeen-hour work. year Wagner began to compose e genesis of e Ring is a tale the music for the four operas, in of Wagnerian length and complex- order. Work progressed steadily ity. Wagner first wrote the text for until 1857, when, midway through the four operas, beginning in the the third work (now simply called autumn of 1848 with the story of Siegfried), Wagner took a twelve- Siegfried’s death. He expanded the year break—long enough not only tale backwards as Siegfried’s Death, to renew his creative juices, but, COMPOSED July 9, 2011, Ravinia Festival trumpets and bass trumpet, 1869–1876 (Rhine Journey). Christoph three trombones and Eschenbach conducting contrabass trombone, tuba, FIRST PERFORMANCE timpani, six harps, triangle, June 2, 2006, Orchestra Hall August 7, 1876; Bayreuth, cymbals, tenor drum, strings (Funeral March). Daniel Germany Barenboim conducting APPROXIMATE FIRST CSO June 30, 2010, Ravinia PERFORMANCE TIME PERFORMANCE Festival (Funeral March). 22 minutes April 1, 1892, Auditorium James Conlon conducting Theatre. Theodore CSO RECORDINGS Thomas conducting INSTRUMENTATION 1959. Fritz Reiner conduct- three flutes and piccolo, ing. RCA MOST RECENT CSO three oboes and english 1991. Daniel Barenboim PERFORMANCES horn, three clarinets conducting. Erato October 12, 2001, Orchestra and bass clarinet, three Hall (Rhine Journey). Daniel bassoons, four horns and Barenboim conducting four Wagner tubas, three 2 in the process, to write two other Isolde—helped pay for a series of monumental works, Tristan and concerts in Zurich in May 1853, Isolde and Die Meistersinger. In with Wagner conducting excerpts 1869, Wagner returned to Siegfried; from four operas. Over the years, later that year, he finally began the there were many other similar cycle’s last music drama, now called Götterdämmerung (e twilight of the gods). he Chicago Symphony played Tmusic from Götterdämmerung its very first season—just fifteen years after the premiere of the Ring in Bayreuth. eodore omas, the orchestra’s founder, was one of Wagner’s greatest champions in the United States. He had already introduced some of Wagner’s most important music to the New World—he led the U.S. premiere of the Overture to e Flying Dutchman on the very first orches- tral concert he ever conducted, in 1862!—and he had commissioned Wagner’s one “American” work, the Centennial March written to honor the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In 1871, before the The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Sir Georg Solti perform act 3 of Ring was even finished, omas Götterdämmerung; Orchestra Hall, April 1973 had asked Wagner’s permission to perform orchestral excerpts from the cycle. (Wagner turned him programs, funded in various ways down, no doubt realizing that but always conducted by Wagner American copyright laws didn’t himself, in London, Paris, Vienna, protect foreign composers.) Prague, Budapest, Saint Petersburg, and Moscow. Concerts in London he idea of performing excerpts in 1855 gave Wagner his first Tfrom Wagner’s operas and chance to hear crucial sections music dramas originated with of Lohengrin before tackling the the composer himself. e first music of the Ring. In Paris in 1860, of Otto Wesendonk’s many gifts Wagner conducted an evening of and loans—even before Wagner orchestral highlights for an audience borrowed Otto’s wife Mathilde that included Gounod, Meyerbeer, as inspiration for Tristan and and Berlioz, who went home to 3 write a famous, uncomprehend- vigorous music that moves rapidly ing review of the Tristan prelude. across great vistas. Wagner programmed selections Siegfried is killed in the third from the Ring as early as 1862, at act of Götterdämmerung and his the series of concerts in Vienna for body carried back to the hall of the which Brahms assisted in copy- Gibichungs, which is destroyed in ing the music. In later years, both Brünnhilde’s great pyrotechnical before and after the premiere of the finale that immediately follows. Ring in Bayreuth in 1876, Wagner Siegfried’s funeral march begins conducted orchestral excerpts from from a point of complete stasis— the cycle, first to raise money for signaled by the hesitant beating of the premiere and then to help erase the timpani—and grows steadily Bayreuth’s first deficit—but also to to a formidable climax. “e moon let people hear passages from the breaks through the clouds,” Wagner music dramas outside the opera writes in his stage directions, “and house, since, as he admitted, he had lights up the funeral procession written nothing for the concert hall. ever more brightly as it reaches the heights.” e combination of great he music from Götterdämmerung darkness and blinding brilliance Tperformed this week begins creates music of an enormous inten- at daybreak, at the moment when sity and force. en, as mists rising Brünnhilde sends Siegfried off into from the Rhine envelop the scene, the world to seek deeds of glory. In the procession disappears into the Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, we hear distance, and the music returns his horn calls from afar, and then to silence. 4 Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria. Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 n December 17, 1808, a by the generous standards of the OViennese paper announced a nineteenth century—were three concert to be given by Ludwig van movements from the Mass in C, Beethoven at the eater an der the concert aria Ah! perfido, and Wien five days later: “All the pieces improvisations at the keyboard by are of his own composition, entirely the composer. new, and not yet heard in public.” “ere we sat from 6:30 Although Beethoven’s publicist till 10:30,” the composer J. F. fudged that last detail ever so Reichardt later recalled, “in the slightly, the list of world premieres most bitter cold, and found by lined up for one evening is aston- experience that one might have too ishing: both the Fifth and Sixth much even of a good thing.” What symphonies; the Choral Fantasy; should have been the greatest night and this work, Beethoven’s fourth of Beethoven’s career was ruined by piano concerto. (ose who didn’t too much music and too little heat. like too much new and unfamiliar e performances were no doubt music at one sitting surely stayed wretched, for rehearsals had gone home that night.) To round out this badly. For one thing, Beethoven substantial program—long even had so annoyed the members of COMPOSED MOST RECENT CSO CSO RECORDINGS 1805–1806 PERFORMANCE 1942. Artur Schnabel, piano; November 23, 2010, Frederick Stock conducting. FIRST PERFORMANCES Orchestra Hall. Vladimir RCA March 1807 (private); Vienna, Feltsman, piano; Sir Andrew 1963. Van Cliburn, piano; Austria. The composer Davis conducting Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA as soloist INSTRUMENTATION 1972. Vladimir Ashkenazy, December 22, 1808; Vienna, solo piano, one flute, two piano; Sir Georg Solti Austria. The composer oboes, two clarinets, two conducting. London as soloist bassoons, two horns, two 1983. Alfred Brendel, piano; trumpets, timpani, strings FIRST CSO James Levine conducting. PERFORMANCE Philips CADENZAS November 4, 1892, tbd Auditorium Theatre. Ferruccio Busoni, APPROXIMATE piano; Theodore PERFORMANCE TIME Thomas conducting 34 minutes 5 the eater an der Wien orchestra most members of the audience were the previous month that they now surprised that he went straight to insisted that he sit in the anteroom the keyboard and started to play. whenever he wasn’t needed at the Anyone who troubled to buy a keyboard and wait for the concert- ticket to this concert would have master to check with him between known that a concerto begins with movements. Beethoven was so a long orchestral exposition that desperate to see this concert take gives you all the tunes before the place that he agreed.

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