Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Renaud Capuçon Violin Ravel

Program

OnE HunDRED TwEnTi ETH 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 13, 2011, at 8:00 Friday, January 14, 2011, at 1:30 Saturday, January 15, 2011, at 8:00 Sunday, January 16, 2011, at 3:00 Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor renaud Capuçon Violin ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales Modéré Assez lent Modéré Assez animée Presque lent Assez vif Moins vif Epilogue (Lent) Korngold Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 Moderato nobile Romance: Andante Finale: Allegro assai vivace REnAuD CAPuçOn

INtermISSIoN tchaikovsky Symphony no. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 (Pathétique) Adagio—Allegro non troppo Allegro con grazia Allegro molto vivace Finale: Adagio lamentoso

The appearance of Yannick Nézet-Séguin is endowed in part by the Nuveen Investments Emerging Artist Fund.

Steinway is the ofﬁcial piano of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

1 CommeNtS By PHiLLiP HuSCHER

maurice ravel Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France.

Valses nobles et sentimentales

ranz Schubert was the first (He improvised waltzes throughout Fimportant composer to write the the wedding festivities of his dear word “waltz” on a score. By then— friend Leopold Kupelweiser, letting the early 1820s—waltzing had lived no one else near the piano; by a down its reputation as a scandalous fortuitous stroke of fate, one of the demonstration of excessive speed tunes remembered by the bride and and intimate physical contact on passed down through her family the dance floor. Schubert knew the was sung to Richard Strauss, who waltz (from the German walzen, arranged it for piano in 1943.) In to turn about) as a charming social the last years of his pitifully brief dance, more upbeat than the life, Schubert published many of his traditional ländler—although he waltzes, including the thirty-four knew it only from the safety of his Valses sentimentales and twelve Valses piano stool, where he was spared nobles that Maurice Ravel would romantic encounter, the hazards play some seventy-five years later. of severe nearsightedness (he kept Ravel had little in common with his spectacles on even in bed), and Schubert, aside from the slight stat- the embarrassment of standing less ure that disqualified both of them than five feet tall in his dress shoes. from military service. Ravel had From his seat at the piano, Schubert the social graces and the wardrobe observed the life that eluded him. to shine at parties, as well as the

ComPoSed moSt reCeNt tambourine, glockenspiel, 1911, for piano; orchestrated CSo PerFormaNCe celesta, two harps, strings in 1912 December 5, 2006, Pierre Boulez conducting aPProxImate FIrSt PerFormaNCe PerFormaNCe tIme May 9, 1911, piano version INStrumeNtatIoN 18 minutes February 15, 1915, orches- two flutes, two oboes tral version and english horn, two CSo reCordINg clarinets, two bassoons, 1957, Fritz Reiner FIrSt CSo four horns, two trumpets, conducting, RCA PerFormaNCe three trombones and tuba, november 12, 1920, timpani, bass drum, side Frederick Stock conducting drum, cymbals, triangle,

2 money to enjoy the fine life and to were asked to guess the composer collect antiques, mechanical toys, of each piece on the program. and endless bric-a-brac. This same Ravel’s Valses were variously attrib- sensibility encouraged a passion uted to Kodály, Satie, Chopin, and for Viennese waltzes at an early Gounod, among others, although age. In 1911, after Ravel discov- apparently no one suggested ered Schubert’s piano waltzes, he Schubert. However, according to decided to write his own set of Ravel, “a minute majority” correctly noble and sentimental waltzes, tak- identified his music. ing his cue from the title and classic The following year, Ravel agreed simplicity of his predecessor’s to orchestrate the waltzes as a pieces. He dedicated the score to ballet score for which he sup- the “delicious and ageless pleasure plied the title—Adelaide—and of a useless occupation.” the scenario—a series of fleeting The eight Valses nobles et sentimen- romantic encounters during a party tales for piano were first performed in Adelaide’s Paris salon. Adelaide in May 1911, at a “Concert sans is no longer staged, but Ravel’s noms d’auteurs,” a kind of concert music, newly attired in shimmering quiz show not unlike Name That orchestral colors, quickly found a Tune, where audience members home in concert halls.

Symphony Center Information

The use of still or video cameras Please turn off or silence all and recording devices is prohibited personal electronic devices in Orchestra Hall. (pagers, watches, telephones, digital assistants). Latecomers will be seated during designated program pauses. Please note that Symphony Center is a smoke-free environment. Please use perfume, cologne, and all other scented products Your cooperation is greatly sparingly, as many patrons are appreciated. sensitive to fragrance.

Note: Fire exits are located on all levels and are for emergency use only. The lighted Exit sign nearest your seat is the shortest route outdoors. Please walk—do not run—to your exit and do not use elevators for emergency exit. Volunteer ushers provided by The Saints—Volunteers for the Performing Arts (www.saintschicago.org)

3 erich Wolfgang Korngold Born May 29, 1897, Brno, Czechoslovakia. Died November 29, 1957, Hollywood, California.

Violin Concerto in d major, op. 35

t could be argued that Erich two one-act operas he composed IKorngold was destined to com- at sixteen. “One’s first reaction,” pose music; certainly he was aided Richard Strauss later wrote, “upon by a father who gave him Wolfgang learning that these compositions as a middle name, and, as Vienna’s are by an adolescent boy, is of awe leading music critic, could ensure and fear . . . this firmness of style, his son what no other composer mastery of form, individuality of in history could boast—one good expression and harmony, is truly review for each new work. Erich amazing.” With the opera he caused a sensation at an even composed at the age of twenty, Die younger age than the precocious tote Stadt (The dead city), which Mendelssohn a century before. In enjoyed extraordinary popularity 1907, at the age of ten, he played throughout the 1920s, it appeared through his cantata, Gold, at the that, like Mozart or Mendelssohn, piano for Mahler, who called him a Korngold might actually sustain the genius. His fame was secure at thir- remarkable success of his youth. teen, when the Vienna Court Opera Although Korngold’s status produced his ballet The Snowman. in the music world remained The Munich Court Opera produced high—a Vienna newspaper poll

ComPoSed moSt reCeNt CSo trombone, timpani, 1945 PerFormaNCe cymbal, gong, bass drum, February 26, 1994; Orchestra tubular bells, glockenspiel, FIrSt PerFormaNCe Hall; Samuel Magad, violin; xylophone, vibraphone, harp, February 15, 1947, with Mariss Jansons conducting celesta, strings Jascha Heifetz as soloist June 28, 1997; Ravinia aPProxImate Festival; Gil Shaham, violin; FIrSt CSo PerFormaNCe tIme Christoph Eschenbach PerFormaNCe 24 minutes April 3, 1947; Jascha Heifetz, conducting violin; Désiré Defauw CSo reCordINg INStrumeNtatIoN conducting A 1994 performance with two flutes and piccolo, two Samuel Magad, violin, and oboes and english horn, Mariss Jansons conducting two clarinets and bass is included on From the clarinet, two bassoons Archives, vol. 21: Soloists of and contrabassoon, four the Orchestra III. horns, two trumpets,

4 in 1932 ranked him and Arnold writing for the movies. “It was as if Schoenberg as the two greatest he had taken a vow not to compose living composers!—his career a single note outside the genre did not turn out the way his early of film music for as long as the champions would have guessed. In horror [World War II] was raging October 1934, the director Max throughout the world,” his wife Reinhardt sent Korngold a telegram Luzi later suggested. As a result, inviting him to Hollywood to adapt he continually ignored requests Mendelssohn’s incidental music from his friend, the distinguished for A Midsummer Night’s Dream violinist Bronislaw Huberman, for for a new film version. Korngold a concerto. In fact, he had sketched accepted, and, although he planned a violin concerto as early as 1937, to work there for six weeks, he but stopped work when a violinist signed on with Warner Brothers friend told him the solo part was and ended up staying until May of too demanding. Finally, in 1945, 1935. (His first assignment was to when Huberman asked one more write the music for Captain Blood, time, Korngold “immediately stood which made Errol Flynn a star.) up, went to the piano and played Beginning that year, he divided a theme,” according to Luzi, that his time between Los Angeles would turn out to be one of the and Vienna, and then, with the main tunes in the concerto he had Anschluss in 1938, he moved his long refused to compose. Korngold family (including his parents and immediately retrieved his old brother) to Hollywood. (He became sketches and a U.S. citizen in 1943.) his Violin Korngold’s film work was an Concerto was unexpected departure from the completed Mozart- or Mendelssohn-like before the end career for which he had seemed of the year. destined, but it brought him new It marked fame. He won Academy awards Korngold’s for scoring Anthony Adverse and return to com- The Adventures of Robin Hood, posing for the and nominations for The Private concert hall Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and rather than The Sea Hawk. His last film was the movie Deception, with Bette Davis playing theater. Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata— As it Jascha Heifetz Korngold himself was the pianist— turned out, and Paul Heinreid performing it was Jascha Korngold’s own cello concerto Heifetz, not Huberman, who gave (actually played by Eleanor Aller, the premiere of Korngold’s new Leonard Slatkin’s mother). concerto, became its first champion, During his Hollywood years, and recorded it in 1953. “In spite Korngold devoted himself to of the demand for virtuosity in

5 the finale,” recycled from Another Dawn, a Korngold movie Warner Brothers made, wrote, “the according to the composer’s son, work with its simply because they didn’t want to many melodic waste the “elaborate and expensive and lyric standing sets” from The Charge of episodes was the Light Brigade. A second lyrical contemplated theme is borrowed from Juarez. The rather for elegant second movement, titled a Caruso Romance, takes its main material than for a from the Frederick March–Olivia Paganini.” de Haviland movie Anthony In Heifetz, Adverse. The dazzling finale Alma Mahler the composer includes music from The Prince and continued, the Pauper. Korngold dedicated the he had found score to someone who provided a both Caruso significant link with his far-away and Paganini in one person. beginnings—Alma Mahler-Werfel, The concerto is the first concert who had been an admirer since his work of Korngold’s to put his film prodigy days in Vienna and had music to new use. The dramatic, kept in close contact throughout his eloquent opening theme was Hollywood years.

6 Piotr tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia. Died November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Symphony No. 6 in B minor, op. 74 (Pathétique)

ive days after he conducted the of what Tchaikovsky’s glorified, Fpremiere of this symphony, understood, even at the time, the Tchaikovsky drank a glass of magnitude of this loss—not just to unboiled water, a careless move his family (his father was famous that year in Saint Petersburg, for his interpretations of several where countless cases of cholera Tchaikovsky roles) but to the larger had recently been reported. He music world as well. died four days later. When the At the time he died, Tchaikovsky symphony was performed for a was one of the great figures in second time the following week, music: he was at the peak of his the hall was draped in black and creative powers, and he was both a bust modeled after the com- famous and beloved far beyond his poser’s death mask was prominently native Russia. His death came as displayed. An eleven-year-old boy, a shock (he was only fifty-three) who would soon become Russia’s and the suspicious circumstances most celebrated composer, attended surrounding his fatal illness, that concert with his father, the coupled with the tragic tone of his great baritone Fyodor Stravinsky. last symphony—curiously titled Little Igor, whose own music Pathétique—produced a mystique would eventually refute much about the composer’s last days

ComPoSed moSt reCeNt CSo CSo reCordINgS February–August 1893 PerFormaNCe 1952, Rafael Kubelik September 21, 2007; conducting, Mercury FIrSt PerFormaNCe Riccardo Muti conducting 1957, Fritz Reiner October 28, 1893, the conducting, RCA composer conducting INStrumeNtatIoN three flutes and piccolo, two 1976, Sir Georg Solti FIrSt CSo oboes, two clarinets and conducting, London PerFormaNCe bass clarinet, two bassoons, 1984, James Levine April 27, 1894; Auditorium four horns, two trumpets, conducting, RCA Theatre; Theodore three trombones and Thomas conducting tuba, timpani, bass drum, 1986, Claudio Abbado cymbals, tam-tam, strings conducting, CBS 1998, Daniel Barenboim aPProxImate conducting, Teldec PerFormaNCe tIme 45 minutes

7 that still persists today. In 1979, wisely backed off—evidence is the Russian émigré musicologist almost totally undocumented—and Alexandra Orlova published a now- a number of musicologists, includ- infamous article proposing that ing the biographer Alexander Tchaikovsky had in fact committed Poznansky, have refuted suicide by poison, on the orders Orlova convincingly. of his fellow alumni of the School The circumstances surrounding of Jurisprudence, to cover up his the composition of the Pathétique alleged affair with the nephew Symphony are dramatic and myste- of Duke Stenbock-Thurmor. For rious, if less lurid than pulp fiction. a time in the 1980s, suicide and In December 1892, Tchaikovsky homosexuality replaced the quaint abruptly decided to abandon work old tale of cholera and drinking on a programmatic symphony in water, and, as Tchaikovsky’s obitu- E-flat major on which he had been ary was rewritten, the Pathétique struggling for some time—“an irre- Symphony became the chief musi- versible decision,” he wrote, “and cal victim in this tabloid tale. Even it is wonderful that I made it.” (He eventually turned portions of the abandoned symphony into his third piano concerto, which the Chicago Symphony played for the first time in December.) But the failure of the new symphony left Tchaikovsky despondent and directionless, and he began to fear that he was “played out, dried up,” as he put it. (“I think and I think, and I know not what to do,” he wrote to his nephew Bob Davydov, whose friendship and encouragement would help see him through this crisis.) Although he felt that he should give up writing “pure music, that is, symphonic or chamber music,” within two months he had begun the symphony that would prove to be his greatest—and his last. Renewed—and relieved—by Tchaikovsky with his nephew and heir, Bob the old, familiar joy of compos- Davydov, pictured in 1892 ing, Tchaikovsky wrote frantically. Within four days, the first part of Tchaikovsky’s biographer David the symphony was complete and Brown, writing in the sacrosanct the remainder precisely outlined Grove, accepted Orlova’s theory. in his head. “You cannot imagine But in recent years, scholars have what bliss I feel,” he wrote to Bob

8 on February 11, 1893, “assured that was programmatic, but, as he wrote my time has not yet passed and to Bob, “with such a program that that I can still work.” The rest went will remain a mystery to every- smoothly and the symphony was one—let them guess.” Bob was completed, without setbacks, by the only the first to ponder, in vain, the end of August. meaning of this deeply personal Tchaikovsky conducted the work. (And even he, to whom premiere of his new symphony on Tchaikovsky would ultimately October 16 in Saint Petersburg. dedicate the score, couldn’t draw a The audience—“all Saint satisfactory answer from the com- Petersburg”—rose and cheered poser except that it was “imbued when the composer appeared on with subjectivity.”) stage. But after the symphony, Tchaikovsky carried his program the applause was half-hearted; the with him to the grave. Cryptic crowd didn’t know what to make of notes scribbled among his sketches this sober, gloomy music. Leaving at the time refer to a symphony the concert hall, Tchaikovsky about life’s aspirations and disap- complained that neither the audi- pointments—yet another manifes- ence nor the orchestra seemed to tation of the central theme of both like the piece, although two days Swan Lake and Eugene Onegin, later he decided that “it is not that and in fact the great theme of the it wasn’t liked, but it has caused composer’s life: the painful search some bewilderment.” for an ideal that is never satisfied. The morning after the premiere, As scholars have learned more the composer told his brother about Tchaikovsky’s unfulfilled Modest that the symphony needed homoerotic passion for his nephew a title. (Tchaikovsky had originally Bob—a mismatch of youth and thought of calling it the Program middle age, and a tangle of sexual Symphony.) Modest first suggested persuasions in a society fiercely Tragic and then Pathétique, which intolerant of homosexuality—the in Russian carries a meaning closer temptation to read this symphony to passionate, full of emotion and as the composer’s heartbreaking suffering. Tchaikovsky agreed at confession of a painful, repressed once, and in his brother’s presence life has inevitably proved irresist- wrote on the first page the title that ible. In the inexhaustibly expressive, “remained forever,” as Modest later but sufficiently ambiguous language recalled, although the composer of music, Tchaikovsky could tell himself soon had second thoughts. the story of his life—honestly and (Tchaikovsky’s publisher, who unsparingly—without ever giving knew the marketing value of a good up its secrets. The abstract nature of title, ignored the composer’s urgent music has, arguably, never been so request that it simply be printed as fearlessly tested. Symphony no. 6.) The temptation to read some- Like the abandoned E-flat major thing tragic into this score is as symphony, the new B minor score old as the music itself. Even the

9 composer, who didn’t want to greatest melodies. (Tchaikovsky divulge his meaning, admitted carefully directs the emotional before the premiere that it had development of this rich and something of the character of a expansive tune all the way down to requiem. (The trombone incanta- a virtually unprecedented thread tions in the first movement actually of sound, marked pppppp.) The quote a Russian Orthodox chant for recapitulation reorders and tele- the dead.) And surely the first audi- scopes events so that the grand and ence was stunned—or bewildered, expressive melody, now magically as Tchaikovsky noted—by the rescored, steals in suddenly and unconventionally slow and mourn- unexpectedly, to great effect. ful finale, trailing off into silence at The central movements are, by the end, with just cellos and basses necessity, more relaxed. The first is playing pppp. When Tchaikovsky a wonderful, singing, undanceable died so suddenly and violently waltz, famously set in 5/4 time. on the heels of the premiere, the (There’s a real waltz, in 3/4, in symphony became identified at Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.) once, perhaps inextricably, with its The second is a brilliant, dazzlingly composer’s death. By the memorial scored march, undercut throughout performance on November 6, the by a streak of melancholy. Russian Musical Gazette had already The finale begins with a cry of determined that the symphony despair, and although it eventu- was “indeed a sort of swan song, a ally unveils a warm and consoling presentiment of imminent death.” theme begun by the violins against (More than a century later, Orlova’s the heartbeat of a horn ostinato, devotees were to make much of the the mood only continues to darken, slowly fading final pages as a depic- ultimately becoming threatening in tion of suicide.) its intensity. In a symphony marked by telling, uncommonly quiet ges- he score itself, though perhaps tures—and this from a composer Tdulled by familiarity, is one of famous for bombast—a single soft Tchaikovsky’s most inspired cre- stroke of the tam-tam marks the ations. All of its true masterstrokes point of no return. From there it is are purely musical, not program- all defeat and disintegration, over a matic. It begins uniquely, with the fading, ultimately faltering pulse. sound of a very low bassoon solo over murky strings. (This slow introduction is in the “wrong” key, but eventually works its way into B minor.) The entire first movement sustains the tone, although not the tempo, of the somber opening. The soaring principal theme, to be played “tenderly, very songfully, and Phillip Huscher is the program annota- © 2011 Chicago Symphony Orchestra © 2011 Chicago elastically,” is one of Tchaikovsky’s tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.