Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Christian Tetzlaff Violin Janáček

Home , Cello Concerto (Salonen), Helix (composition), Insomnia (composition), It Remains to Be Seen, Nyx (Salonen), Piano Concerto (Salonen)

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, April 10, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, April 11, 2014, at 8:00 Saturday, April 12, 2014, at 8:00 Sunday, April 13, 2014, at 3:00

Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Christian Tetzlaff Violin Janáček Overture to From the House of the Dead First Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concert performances

Dvořák Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 53 Allegro, ma non troppo Adagio, ma non troppo Finale: Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo Christian Tetzlaff

Intermission

Salonen Nyx First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Janáček Sinfonietta Allegretto Andante—Allegretto Moderato Allegretto Allegro

The appearance of Christian Tetzlaff is made possible with generous gifts from Daniel R. Murray and the John Ward Seabury Distinguished Soloist Fund. 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 leoš Janáček Born July 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia. Died August 12, 1928, Moravská Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. overture to From the House of the Dead

“Th at black opera of mine memoir of his four years in a Siberian prison is giving me plenty of camp, in 1860. (When Dostoyevsky entered work,” Janáček wrote to prison in 1850, at the age of twenty-eight, he was his muse Kamila already a published novelist. Forbidden to write Stösslová in November in prison, he started making notes, the source 1927. He was of the novel itself, during a stay in the prison seventy-four; From the hospital.) Like the opera Janáček made from House of the Dead would its pages, Th e House of the Dead is populated by be his last opera. “It scores of characters, some of whom step forward seems to me as if in it I only once and are not heard from again. Janáček am gradually descending lower and lower, right was particularly attracted to the idea of creating to the depths of the most wretched people of an opera without traditional leading roles. humanity. And it is hard going.” Th e overture to the opera was written last, Janáček began sketching the opera in February although much of its material comes from a 1927. Act 3 was on his desk when he died in violin concerto Janáček began in 1926 and August 1928, awaiting nothing more than the eventually left unfi nished in order to compose occasional touch-up. Instead of a libretto, he the Glagolitic Mass. Janáček originally titled referred to lists of characters and incidents, with the concerto Soul and then later Th e Pilgrimage page references to Dostoyevsky’s Th e House of the of a Little Soul. (It was reconstructed and fi rst Dead, on which the new piece was based. (He performed in 1988.) Th e overture itself is linked translated from Russian into Czech as he went.) thematically to the opera—the powerful opening It was an unconventional way of working on an theme recurs in act 1, for example—but also opera, but then, From the House of the Dead is a betrays its origins with its extensive music for highly unconventional opera—totally freed from solo violin. Like the opera it introduces, the the traditions of the form, it is essentially a work overture inhabits a strange, haunting world all that creates its own kind of music theater. its own, with little regard for convention—from Tolstoy regarded Th e House of the Dead as moment to moment, it suggests bits and pieces of Dostoyevsky’s fi nest work. “I do not know a a concerto, a tone poem, a fanfare—or traditional book better than this in all our literature, not picturesque scene setting. At the head of the even excepting Pushkin,” he wrote in 1880. score, Janáček quotes Dostoyevsky: “In every Dostoyevsky wrote his novel, a fi ctionalized creature a spark of God.”

ComPoSED These are the ﬁ rst Chicago aPProXImaTE 1927–28 Symphony Orchestra subscription PErFormanCE TImE concert performances. 6 minutes FIrST PErFormanCE April 12, 1930; Brno, Czechoslovakia InSTrUmEnTaTIon four ﬂ utes and two piccolos, two FIrST CSo PErFormanCE oboes and english horn, three clarinets July 9, 1993, ravinia Festival. libor and bass clarinet, three bassoons Pešek conducting and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets and bass trumpet, three trombones, tenor tuba and bass tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings

2 antonín Dvořák Born September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic). Died May 1, 1904, Prague. Violin Concerto in a minor, op. 53

Th e year the Chicago of the composer’s three concertos, following one Symphony was founded, for piano written in 1876 and preceding the great the Orchestra gave the cello concerto by some fi fteen years. American premiere of an important new work vořák had learned to play the violin during its third week of as a small boy, and he also composed concerts. Th e program marches and waltzes for the village book for October 30, Dband. In Zlonice, he studied piano, organ, and 1891 (exactly fourteen viola, eventually becoming a decent enough days after the Orchestra’s violist to earn a living as an orchestra musician inaugural concert), lists Dvořák’s Violin when he couldn’t make any money from his Concerto as “new,” and the program annotator, compositions. After he moved to Prague in 1857, like anyone writing about contemporary music, he became principal viola in the orchestra for hedged his bets on Dvořák’s future reputation. the new Provisional Th eater (later the National Of the Bohemian composer’s recent decision to Th eater). For the rest of his life, he treasured relocate to the United States, a new world he the memory of playing a concert there in 1863 would later famously depict in a symphony, he under his idol, Richard Wagner, that included said only, “it remains to be seen to what extent the overture to Tannhäuser, the prelude to Tristan the infl uences of another civilization may aff ect and Isolde, and excerpts from Die Meistersinger his musical expression.” and Die Walküre. In 1871, Dvořák left the Dvořák was hardly unknown at the time, even orchestra to devote more time to composition, if he hadn’t yet written some of the works on but he soon realized that he would have to teach which his reputation rests today, including the to get by. For many years, his father doubted New World Symphony and the Cello Concerto. In the wisdom of his son’s choice of music over fact, Th eodore Th omas, the Chicago Symphony’s the life of a butcher, the family business. founder and fi rst music director, picked Dvořák’s Th en in 1873, Dvořák’s works began to attract Husitská Overture as the fi nal work on the attention. Th e successful premiere of his patriotic Orchestra’s very fi rst concert. And later that cantata Heirs of the White Mountain on March 9 season, Th omas programmed more Dvořák: launched his fame in his homeland. Later that the Scherzo capriccioso, one of the Slavonic year, he married Anna Cermáková, the sister Rhapsodies, and the D major symphony (no. 6, of the Prague actress Josefi na, who had, nearly but then known as no. 1) that was composed the a decade before, rebuff ed his advances. (Like same year as the violin concerto. Dvořák’s Violin Mozart and Haydn, he married not his fi rst love, Concerto, little more than a decade old when the but her sister.) In 1874, Dvořák took stock of his Chicago Symphony introduced it, is the second situation: he had begun to taste success; his wife

ComPoSED FIrST CSo PErFormanCES InSTrUmEnTaTIon 1879, revised 1880 October 30 & 31, 1891, Auditorium solo violin, two ﬂ utes, two oboes, two Theatre. Max Bendix as soloist, clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, FIrST PErFormanCE Theodore Thomas conducting two trumpets, timpani, strings October 14, 1883 (u.S. premiere) aPProXImaTE moST rECEnT PErFormanCE TImE CSo PErFormanCES 31 minutes June 4, 5 & 6, 2009, Orchestra hall. Janine Jansen as soloist, Sir Mark elder conducting 3 was pregnant with their first child; and he looked mailed back pages of suggested improvements, forward to the pleasures, comforts, and traditions and by May 9, 1880, Dvořák told his pub- of family life. But he craved recognition and he lisher that he had redone the entire concerto needed money. In July, he entered fifteen of his accordingly, “without missing a single mea- newest works in a competition for the Austrian sure.” Joachim made still further changes to State Music Prize, a government award designed his solo part—“Although the work proves that to assist struggling young artists. The judges were you know the violin well,” he wrote, “certain Johann Herbeck, the director of the Imperial details make it clear that you have not played Opera in it yourself for some time”—and then arranged Vienna; for a run-through in Berlin in November 1882. Eduard But he never played the concerto in public; the Hanslick, premiere was given nearly a year later in Prague a man of by František Ondříček. (Plans for Joachim to famous, often perform it in London in 1884 fell through.) caustic, opin- ions and one t’s clear from the powerhouse opening of of the most this work that Dvořák knew and admired influential Brahms’s new violin concerto. (Brahms later critics of the Ireturned the compliment: after hearing Dvořák’s nineteenth Cello Concerto, he is reported to have said, century; and, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one could sitting on the write a cello concerto like this? Had I known, panel for the I would have written one long ago.”) The entire first time, first movement is serious and dramatic, and, for Johannes all its richness of color and harmony, it’s still Brahms, the classical in formal outline. A short cadenza leads Violinist Joseph Joachim biggest name the way to the spacious, gloriously lyrical Adagio, encouraged Dvořák to write a in Viennese nearly as long as the symphonically scaled first violin concerto music. movement. The sparkling finale is one of the Dvořák won composer’s best, and the proudly Czech turn of the first its themes and syncopated rhythms suggest that, prize of four hundred gulden, and he felt a kind for all his fascination with America, Dvořák was of encouragement and validation that money still something of an “old world” composer. can’t buy. The citation praised his “genuine and original gifts,” and noted, not unfairly, that he postscript. Since introducing Dvořák’s possessed “an undoubted talent, but in a way Violin Concerto to America, the which as yet remains formless and unbridled.” Chicago Symphony has given the (He competed and won again the next three U.S.A premieres of more than three hundred years in a row.) works, including Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Dukas, Elgar’s t was Brahms who introduced Dvořák Enigma Variations, four tone poems by Strauss to violinist-composer-conductor Joseph (Till Eulenspiegel, Also sprach Zarathustra, Joachim, who encouraged Dvořák to write Don Quixote, and Ein Heldenleben), Sibelius’s Ia violin concerto. Joachim gave the premiere Second Symphony, Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, of Brahms’s Violin Concerto on the first day of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, Holst’s The 1879, shortly before Dvořák started to com- Planets, Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite, Bartók’s pose his; it was a banner year for violinists. Second Piano Concerto, Boulez’s Livre pour When Dvořák sent Joachim the manuscript cordes, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Insomnia, and, most of his new score that November, the violinist recently, Thea Musgrave’s Autumn Sonata.

4 Esa-Pekka Salonen Born June 30, 1958, Helsinki, Finland. Nyx

Last month, Esa-Pekka Concerto with the CSO in April 2008, and Leila Salonen was awarded the Josefowicz, the soloist in the Violin Concerto in prestigious Nemmers February 2011. Unusually, the Violin Concerto Prize in Music was commissioned by two orchestras—the Los Composition by the Angeles Philharmonic, where Salonen was music Bienen School of Music at director from 1992 to 2009, and the Chicago Northwestern University, Symphony—and a dance company, the New York a biennial award given to City Ballet. Th e fi rst performance was given in the most accomplished Walt Disney Concert Hall in April 2009, on the names in music today next-to-last program Salonen would lead as the (previous winners include John Adams, Kaija L.A. orchestra’s music director. Saariaho, and, most recently, Aaron Jay Kernis). Th e honor will bring him into close contact with lthough today Salonen is one of the few Northwestern students and faculty over the next major musical fi gures who is known two years, as well as heightening his relationship as both a composer and a conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which, ofA distinction, when he entered the Sibelius as Salonen pointed out in his acceptance remarks, Academy in Helsinki in the 1970s, it was to “has long been a musical home away from home study horn and composition. He enrolled in for me.” Jorma Panula’s conducting class because he felt Although Salonen fi rst appeared as a con- that young composers should learn to lead their ductor with the Chicago Symphony in 1988, own works. Composing remained Salonen’s he led a work of his in Chicago for the fi rst focus: in Helsinki, he studied with the vision- time in April of 2003, when he gave the U.S. ary Einojuhani Rautavaara, and in the early premiere of Insomnia, a dark and turbulent 1980s, he worked with Niccolò Castiglioni nocturne he had composed the year before. in Milan and in the Finnish Broadcasting (Th e CSO had been introduced to Salonen’s Company studios. His earliest large-scale music when it played his LA Variations under orchestral works date from this time (as does Christoph Eschenbach at Ravinia the previous Floof, a setting for soprano and small ensem- summer. In Orchestra Hall, the Orchestra ble of texts by Polish science fi ction writer played this pivotal work under Alan Gilbert in Stanislaw Lem, which was the fi rst of Salonen’s 2006.) In recent years, Salonen has conducted compositions performed here in Symphony two large-scale concertos in Chicago—both of Center, on a MusicNOW concert in 2001). them played here by their original performers, After leading an acclaimed performance of Yefi m Bronfman, who performed the Piano Mahler’s Th ird Symphony on short notice in

ComPoSED InSTrUmEnTaTIon aPProXImaTE 2010–11 three fl utes and two piccolos, three PErFormanCE TImE oboes and english horn, three clari- 18 minutes FIrST PErFormanCE nets, e-fl at clarinet and bass clarinet, February 2011; Paris, France. The three bassoons and contrabassoon, composer conducting four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, vibraphone, FIrST CSo PErFormanCES glockenspiel, tam-tam, tom-toms, bass These are the fi rst Chicago Symphony drum, bongos, woodblock, tubular Orchestra performances. bells, sizzle cymbal, gongs, piano, celesta, harp, strings

5 London in 1983, Salonen quickly became an but a fascinating one. I leave it to the listener to internationally known conductor for whom judge how well I succeeded. composing was a sideline. Nearly a decade Nyx is a shadowy figure in Greek mythology. passed before he found the time to complete At the very beginning of everything, there’s a another major work. It was with the successful big mass of dark stuff called Chaos, out of which premiere of the LA Variations in 1997, written comes Gaia or Ge, the Earth, who gives birth to showcase the Los Angeles Philharmonic, (spontaneously!) to Uranus, the starry heaven, that Salonen at last entered a new and highly and Pontus, the sea. Nyx (also sometimes known productive phase in his composing career. as Nox) is supposed to have been another child of Ultimately, his decision to step down as music Gaia, along with Erebus. The union of Nyx and director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Erebus produces Day. the end of the 2008–2009 season was motivated Another version says that Cronos (as Time) largely by the desire to dedicate himself more was there from the beginning. Chaos came from fully to composition. Time. Nyx was present as a sort of membrane surrounding Chaos, which had Phanes (Light) Esa-Pekka Salonen on Nyx at its center. The union of Nyx with Phanes Nyx is my return to the genre of pure orchestral produced Heaven and Earth. music since Helix (2005). It employs a large She is an extremely nebulous figure altogether; orchestra and has exposed concertante parts for we have no sense of her character or personality. solo clarinet and the horn section. It is this very quality that has long fascinated me Rather than utilizing the principle of con- and made me decide to name my new orchestral tinuous variation of material, as is the case piece after her. mostly in my recent music, Nyx behaves rather I’m not trying to describe this mythical god- differently. Its themes and ideas essentially keep dess in any precise way musically. However, the their properties throughout the piece, while the almost constant flickering and rapid changing of environment surrounding them keeps changing textures and moods as well as a certain elusive constantly. Mere whispers grow into roar; an character of many musical gestures may well be intimate line of the solo clarinet becomes a slowly related to the subject. breathing broad melody of tutti strings at the end I have always enjoyed the unrivaled dynamic of the eighteen-minute arch of Nyx. range of a large symphony orchestra, but Nyx I set myself a particular challenge when start- seems to take a somewhat new direction from ing the composition process, something I hadn’t my earlier orchestral music: there are many very done earlier: to write complex counterpoint for delicate and light textures, chiaroscuro instead almost one hundred musicians playing tutti at of details bathing in clear direct sunlight. I guess full throttle without losing clarity of the different this is symptomatic of growing older as we real- layers and lines; something that Strauss and ize there are no simple truths, no pure blacks and Mahler so perfectly mastered. Not an easy task, whites, but an endless variety of half shades.

6 leoš Janáček Sinfonietta

For every composer like year of his life, Janáček kept a separate diary Mendelssohn or Mozart, about Kamila. Th at same year, he considered who begins to write leaving his wife, as described in the Diary of One signifi cant and lasting Who Disappeared, the song cycle he began the works as a child, there are year he had met Kamila. fi gures such as Bruckner Kamila was the inspiration for most of or Janáček, who don’t hit Janáček’s operatic heroines as well as his second their stride until late in string quartet, subtitled Intimate Letters (origi- life. Janáček certainly nally Love Letters), which tells their story in the would not be known to us passionate but ambiguous language of music. today had he, like Mozart, died at the age of Kamila was with Janáček the day he got the idea thirty-fi ve. But, in his sixties, he was unexpect- for the Sinfonietta in 1926. Th ey were sitting edly inspired, and, after the success of his opera together in the park in the town of Písek (where Jenůfa in 1916, he was instantly famous. For the she lived with her husband, an antiques dealer), next twelve years he wrote regularly, turning out listening to a band concert. Janáček had recently one masterwork after another. received a commission to write a fanfare for a During the fi nal decade of his life, Kamila national festival of gymnastics in Prague, and, Stösslová, thirty-eight years younger than the with the fi rst sounds of this festive outdoor music composer and already married, contributed that afternoon, he knew at once how to proceed. greatly to this creative fl urry as his reluctant Th e idea of a brief fanfare quickly grew into the muse. From the time they met in the summer fi ve-movement Sinfonietta, his largest purely of 1917, Janáček, despite his own marriage of orchestral work. Each movement is scored for a some thirty-fi ve years, wrote her a letter almost diff erent—and unconventional—group of instru- daily, declaring his passion and telling her about ments; the sound of Janáček’s music is so idio- the music that now suddenly fl owed from his syncratic that for years unsympathetic listeners pen. Kamila was polite but indiff erent, but that thought it was simply poorly orchestrated. But hardly seems to have mattered to Janáček. (And the raw, powerful, and often electrifying timbre it apparently didn’t trouble his wife Zdenka at is part of Janáček’s confi dent, utterly individual all, once she realized her husband loved a woman voice—matched by his unexpected choices of who would not return his aff ection.) Over the harmonies and the daring cut of his melodies. next eleven years, he wrote literally thousands of letters, and occasionally Kamila responded. he Sinfonietta opens with echoes of At her insistence, he burned her replies, but he the gymnastics music: brilliant, ath- would usually wait until he received a new letter letic fanfares for trumpets, tubas, and before destroying the previous one. In the last timpani.T Th ese two minutes of music—repetitive ComPoSED moST rECEnT in C and three trumpets in F, two bass 1926 CSo PErFormanCES trumpets, four trombones, two tenor March 5, 6 & 7, 2009, Orchestra hall. tubas and bass tuba, timpani, cymbals, FIrST PErFormanCE Pierre Boulez conducting bells, harp, strings June 26, 1926; Prague, Czechoslovakia March 9, 2009, Carnegie hall. Pierre aPProXImaTE Boulez conducting FIrST CSo PErFormanCES PErFormanCE TImE november 2 & 3, 1950, Orchestra hall. 22 minutes InSTrUmEnTaTIon rafael Kubelík conducting four ﬂ utes and piccolo, two oboes CSo rECorDIng and english horn, two clarinets, 1970. Seiji Ozawa conducting. Angel e-ﬂ at clarinet and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, nine trumpets

7 and wildly dramatic, marked by brittle sonorities, if this movement were cut into pieces, we would short phrases, tough harmonies, and a stubborn struggle a long time to put the fragments back in but relentless a proper, satisfying sequence. move to the The atmospheric and richly detailed third climax—are movement covers a great variety of moods, from unique in the the solemn opening to ferocious brass outbursts. orchestral In rehearsals for the premiere, the principal flut- literature. ist complained that the thirty-second-note runs (Haruki just before the end were unplayable. “Play what Murakami’s you like,” Janáček replied, “but it must sound like epic 2011 the wind.” novel 1Q84 The following movement is a set of variations begins unfor- on an insistent, unassuming theme that becomes gettably with increasingly fascinating in Janáček’s hands. its heroine, There are a number of splendid effects—the Aomame, sudden ringing of a bell, for example, or the slow, stuck in the benediction-like music that halts the flow near back seat of the end. a taxi in a The finale begins simply enough, but through Tokyo traffic the ever-fresh changes of instrumentation, Leoš Janáček with his wife Zdenka jam, the Janáček creates a tension that is relieved only by clangorous the reappearance of the Sinfonietta’s opening sounds of fanfares, encircled now by eerie trills and climax- the Sinfonietta opening blasting from the ing in great, shimmering waves of sound. radio—“probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic,” as Murakami writes. anáček died two years after completing the “She knew nothing about Janáček as a person,” Sinfonietta. He had gone to his cottage he continues, “but she was quite sure that he in the woods, where he was joined for the never imagined that in 1984 someone would be firstJ time by Kamila and her eleven-year-old listing to his composition in a hushed Toyota son. One day the boy disappeared, and, Crown Royal Saloon on the gridlocked ele- while searching the woods, Janáček caught a vated Metropolitan Expressway in Tokyo.”) chill. The boy was found, but Janáček came The second movement, scored for winds, four down with pneumonia and died within days. trombones, and strings, is characterized by Seven years later, Kamila died. Janáček’s Janáček’s unusual combinations of instruments— widow Zdenka outlived them both. high-flying melodies often soar over deep accompaniment figures, with nothing in between—and the unpredictable shift from one Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago idea to another. Janáček’s music has its own logic; Symphony Orchestra.