(Jupiter) Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98 Chicago Symp
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Please note that CSO music director Riccardo Muti has withdrawn from this week’s concerts due to continuing illness. Guest conductor Edo de Waart replaces Maestro Muti for these performances. Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is substituted for the works by Stravinsky and Busoni. 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, January 17, 2013, at 8:00 Friday, January 18, 2013, at 1:30 Saturday, January 19, 2013, at 8:00 Edo de Waart Conductor Mozart Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 (Jupiter) Allegro vivace Andante cantabile Allegretto Molto allegro IntERMISSIOn Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98 Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Allegro giocoso Allegro energico e passionato These performances have been enabled by the Juli Grainger Fund. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Wolfgang Mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 (Jupiter) ronically, it’s Mozart’s last three longer believe that Mozart wrote Isymphonies rather than the these three great symphonies for famous requiem that remain the the drawer alone—that goes against mystery of his final years. Almost as everything we know of his working soon as Mozart died, romantic myth methods. But we don’t know what attached itself to the unfinished orchestra or occasion he had in pages of the requiem left scattered mind. Apparently a series of sub- on his bed; a host of questions— scription concerts was planned for who commissioned the work?; who the summer of 1788, when Mozart finished it?; was Mozart poi- entered the three symphonies in his soned?—inspired painters, novelists, catalog, but there’s no evidence that biographers, librettists, playwrights, the performances took place. and screenwriters to heights of Mozart, who didn’t expect the imaginative re-creation. We now C major symphony performed know those answers: the requiem is today to be his last, never called it unfinished, but not unexplained. the Jupiter. According to an entry The final symphonies, on the in the British publisher Vincent other hand—no. 39 in E-flat, the Novello’s diary, Mozart’s son Franz “great” G minor (no. 40), and Xaver reported that the London the Jupiter (no. 41)—continue to impresario Johann Peter Salomon beg more questions than we can gave the work its nickname after answer. Even what was once the the most powerful of the Roman most provocative fact about these gods. The title first appeared works—that Mozart never heard in print for a performance in them—is now doubtful. We no Edinburgh on October 20, 1819. CoMpoSed MoSt reCeNt CSo approxiMate completed August 10, 1788 perforMaNCe perforMaNCe tiMe December 6, 2008, 34 minutes firSt perforMaNCe Orchestra Hall. Bernard date unknown Haitink conducting CSo reCordiNgS 1954. Fritz Reiner firSt CSo iNStruMeNtatioN conducting. RCA perforMaNCe flute, two oboes, two 1981. James Levine February 3, 1893, Auditorium bassoons, two horns, two conducting. RCA Theatre. Theodore trumpets, timpani, strings Thomas conducting A 1978 performance conducted by Sir Georg Solti is included in From the Archives, vol. 6. 2 The nickname itself suggests The Andante, with muted strings that the Jupiter Symphony was to counter the noonday brilliance accepted as the summit of instru- of the opening movement, exposes mental music within a few years the darkness that often is at the of its composition. At least until heart of Mozart’s music. This is a 1808, when Beethoven premiered world of poignant contemplation, his Fifth Symphony in the same yearning, and distress. It’s as heart key, it could safely be mentioned wrenching as Pamina’s great aria as the C major symphony, without from The Magic Flute and even more danger of confusion. (Beethoven’s remarkable for being in a major key. begins in C minor and only ends The minuet and trio are unusually in the major.) Schumann, who rich and complicated, both musi- wrote at length about many pieces cally and emotionally, for all their he admired, thought it “wholly plain, traditional dance forms. above discussion,” like the works The finale, which includes a of Shakespeare; Mendelssohn and famous fugue at the end, is as Wagner both modeled youthful celebrated as any single movement symphonies on it. of eighteenth-century music. It Salomon’s nickname probably begins innocently enough, with an was suggested by the majesty and innocuous do-re-fa-mi theme, and nobility of the first movement, turns into a tour de force of classi- which includes the brilliant sound cal counterpoint. Five themes are of trumpets and drums and features presented, developed, and restated; stately dotted rhythms in the then, at the end, in the great, opening measures (C major was the miraculous coda, they’re brought traditional key for ceremonial music together in various combinations in the eighteenth century). But the (and sometimes upside-down) in a movement, cast in conventional dazzling display of perfect counter- sonata form, is also light and play- point. With these two minutes of ful. Mozart starts the recapitulation music, Mozart shifts the center of in the wrong key (the subdomi- gravity from the beginning of the nant) as an inside joke and quotes symphony to the end, anticipating the music of a lighthearted aria Beethoven, Brahms, and countless he recently had written to a text other composers who owe him so presumably by Lorenzo da Ponte: much else in this field. Mozart can’t “You are a bit innocent, my dear have known that this work would Pompeo,” a bass sings to an inexpe- bring his own symphonic career to rienced lover, “Go study the ways of an end, but he couldn’t have found the world.” Like Don Giovanni, this a more spectacular and fitting way movement is dramma giocoso—the to crown his achievements, and, at quintessentially Mozartean mixture the same time, to point the way to of the serious and the comic. the future. 3 Johannes Brahms Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany. Died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria. Symphony No. 4 in e Minor, op. 98 rahms’s good housekeeping has music and destroyed all remaining Bdenied us an unfinished fifth evidence of a fifth symphony. symphony to set beside Mahler’s Brahms’s Fourth Symphony is Tenth and Bruckner’s Ninth—two his final statement in a form he had magnificent symphonies left incom- completely mastered, although for plete at their composers’ deaths. We a very long time he was paralyzed know that Brahms was working on by the nine examples by Beethoven. a fifth symphony as early as 1890, Even Beethoven chose not to go during a trip to Italy; apparently he beyond his own ninth, although he soon gave up on it. During the last toyed with a new symphony two years of his life, Brahms conscien- years before his death. It’s dif- tiously destroyed or recycled any ficult to imagine what Beethoven musical scraps cluttering his desk. or Brahms might have done next, He admitted using the opening of since their last symphonies seem his fifth symphony in the string to sum up all either knew of quintet, op. 111, the work he orchestral writing. The difference is intended to be his last. (“It is high that Beethoven’s choral symphony time to stop,” he wrote to his pub- opened up a vast new world for lisher in the note that accompanied the rest of the nineteenth century the score.) Although he went on to to explore, while Brahms reached write a handful of great chamber something of a dead end. But what works, he didn’t return to orchestral a glorious end it is. Brahms was CoMpoSed MoSt reCeNt CSo approxiMate 1885 perforMaNCeS perforMaNCe tiMe May 31, 2011, Orchestra Hall. 40 minutes firSt perforMaNCe Bernard Haitink conducting October 25, 1885, CSo reCordiNgS July 13, 2012, Ravinia Meiningen, Germany. The 1969. Carlo Maria Giulini Festival. Christoph composer conducting conducting. Angel Eschenbach conducting 1976. James Levine conduct- firSt CSo iNStruMeNtatioN ing. RCA perforMaNCe two flutes and piccolo, two February 17, 1978. Sir Georg Solti oboes, two clarinets, two 1893, Auditorium conducting. London bassoons and contrabas- Theatre. Theodore soon, four horns, two 1993. Daniel Barenboim Thomas conducting trumpets, three trombones, conducting. Erato timpani, triangle, strings 4 never one to forge new paths—like recapitulation capped by a power- Bach and Handel, he added little ful coda. to the historical development of In the Andante moderato, music—and yet he always seemed Brahms takes the little horn call to prove that there was more to be of the first measure and tosses it said in the language at hand. throughout the orchestra, subtly Brahms’s Fourth Symphony altering its color, rhythm, and begins almost in midthought, with character as he proceeds. A forceful urgent, sighing violins coming out fanfare in the winds introduces a of nowhere; it often disorients first- juicy new cello theme. (It turns out time listeners. (Brahms meant it to: to be nothing more than the fanfare he originally wrote two prepara- played slowly.) Near the end, tory bars of wind chords and later shadows cross the music. The horns crossed them out, letting the theme boldly play their theme again, but catch us by surprise.) The violins the accompaniment suggests that skip across the scale by thirds— darkness has descended for good. falling thirds and their mirror The lightning flash of the image, rising sixths—a shorthand Allegro giocoso proves otherwise.