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

Tuesday, September 30, 2014, at 7:30

Riccardo Muti Conductor Tchaikovsky The Tempest, Op. 18 Debussy La mer From Dawn to Noon on the Sea Play of the Waves Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea

INTERMISSION

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36 Andante sostenuto Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco

This concert series is made possible by the Juli Grainger Endowment. 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

Pyotr Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Viatka, Russia. Died November 18, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Tempest, Op. 18

It was the power of the start or in the middle?), and if not, should Shakespeare that helped he call the work Miranda instead, after the play’s Tchaikovsky to find his captivating heroine. “Is it essential to depict the voice as a composer, first fury of elements in an overture written on a piece in Romeo and Juliet, the where this incidental circumstance serves simply fantasy-overture com- as the point of departure for all the dramatic posed in 1869, and then action?” he asked. Stassov’s reply was swift and four years later in this unequivocal: “Of course there must be,” he fired grand and sweeping back, and he suggested representing the sea “symphonic fantasia” twice—at the beginning and at the end. He also inspired by The Tempest. The idea for writing recommended that the storm itself should erupt music based on The Tempest came from Vladimir in a flash and at full strength, unlike storms in Stasov, the powerful but often prickly Russian nature, to show that it was created by supernat- critic. Stasov was with Tchaikovsky at the ural forces. “Let your storm suddenly take hold Rimsky-Korsakovs’ for Christmas in 1872, and and howl,” he wrote. Still, Tchaikovsky hesitated, he was so taken with Tchaikovsky’s piano claiming, in the words of a true procrastinator, rendition of his new Little Russian Symphony that he preferred to wait for exactly the right that he asked what the composer had planned for moment to begin. But begin he finally did. He his next work. When Tchaikovsky vacillated, finished the rough draft in August—evidently Stasov intervened, as he regularly did with artists after two weeks of solid work in the peaceful he favored. In a letter a few days later, he countryside, “as if moved by some supernatural suggested three subjects worthy of musical force.” The score was ready for performance by treatment: Gogol’s novel Taras Bulba; Scott’s early December. Ivanhoe; and The Tempest. Having succeeded with As with Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest is a Shakespeare in the past, Tchaikovsky did not highly selective reading of Shakespeare’s drama. hesitate to try again. Stassov’s original outline was succinct: Stasov outlined a Tempest scenario for Tchaikovsky, but, although the composer agreed The sea. Ariel, spirit of the air, raising a to the blueprint, he put off starting work imme- tempest at the bidding of the magician diately. One of his first quandaries, in fact, was Prospero. Ferdinand’s ship sinks. The whether there needed to be a tempest in The enchanted island. The first shy awakening of Tempest (and if so, where should he put it—at love between Miranda and Ferdinand. Ariel.

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1873 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME May 10, 11 & 12, 1984. Claudio 23 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Abbado conducting December 7, 1873; Moscow, Russia CSO RECORDING INSTRUMENTATION 1984. Claudio Abbado conducting. CBS FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two November 23 & 24, 1894, Auditorium clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings

2 Caliban. The young couple’s love grows to the expansive and lyrical music for the lovers overwhelming passion. Prospero renounces Miranda and Ferdinand. Brilliantly colored his magic powers and quits the island. shorthand portraits of the spirit Ariel, fleet and The sea. fantastic, and the monstrous Caliban, crude and blundering, sit at the center of the score. But From this, Tchaikovsky crafted a piece in arch the love music returns as if it has never been form—a series of linked episodes of varying interrupted, and it is even more impassioned and weight and drama. He opens with the sea, yearning. (At the climax, Tchaikovsky writes placid and luminous at first, and then, with the fffff for the first time in his music.) Prospero then roll of the timpani, surging with violence and renounces his magic powers, and we are left once unexpected power, as the magician Prospero again with the sounds of the sea, fading toward raises the tempest. The emotional heart of the silence, with “distant, happy Italy” just beyond piece—although not the capstone of the arch—is the horizon.

Claude Debussy Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. Died March 25, 1918, Paris, France. La mer (Three Symphonic Sketches)

Although Debussy’s Sanguinary Islands,” was borrowed from a short parents once planned for story by Camille Mauclair published during the him to become a sailor, 1890s. When Debussy’s own score was printed, La mer, subtitled Three he insisted that the cover include a detail from Symphonic Sketches, The Hollow of the Wave off Kanagawa, the most proved to be his greatest celebrated print by the Japanese artist Hokusai, seafaring adventure. then enormously popular in France. Debussy’s childhood We also know that Debussy greatly admired summers at Cannes left Turner’s work. His richly atmospheric seascapes him with vivid memories recorded the daily weather, the time of day, and of the sea, “worth more than reality,” as he put it even the most fleeting effects of wind and light at the time he was composing La mer some thirty in ways utterly new to painting, and they spoke years later. As an adult, Debussy seldom got his directly to Debussy. (In 1902, when Debussy feet wet, preferring the seascapes available in went to London, where he saw a number of painting and literature; La mer was written in the Turner’s paintings, he enjoyed the trip but mountains, where his “old friend the sea, always hated actually crossing the channel.) The name innumerable and beautiful,” was no closer than Debussy finally gave to the first section of La a memory. mer, From Dawn to Noon on the Sea, might Like the great British painter J.M.W. Turner, easily be that of a Turner painting made sixty who stared at the sea for hours and then went years earlier, for the two shared not only a love of inside to paint, Debussy worked from memory, subject but also of long, specific, evocative titles. occasionally turning for inspiration to a few other sources. Debussy first mentioned his new here’s something in Debussy’s first work in a letter dated September 12, 1903; symphonic sketch very like a Turner the title he proposed for the first of the three painting of the sun rising over the sea. symphonic sketches, “Calm Sea around the TheyT both reveal, in their vastly different media, 3 those magical moments when sunlight begins La mer was to glow in near darkness, when familiar objects controversial emerge from the shadows. This was Turner’s even during favorite image—he even owned several houses rehearsals, from which he could watch, with undying fasci- when, as nation, the sun pierce the line separating sea and Debussy told sky. Debussy’s achievement, though decades later Stravinsky, than Turner’s, is no less radical, for it uses famil- the violinists iar language in truly fresh ways. From Dawn to tied hand- Noon on the Sea can’t be heard as traditional kerchiefs to program music, for it doesn’t tell a tale along a the tips of standard time line (although Debussy’s friend their bows in Eric Satie reported that he “particularly liked the protest. The bit at a quarter to eleven”). Nor can it be read as a response at The front cover of the first edition piece of symphonic discourse, for it is organized the premiere of La mer, for which Debussy chose without regard for conventional theme and was mixed, Hokusai’s print The Hollow of the development. Debussy’s audiences, like Turner’s though largely Wave off Kanagawa before him, were baffled by work that takes as unfriendly. It its subject matter color, texture, and nuance. is hard now Debussy’s second sketch too is all suggestion to separate the reaction to this novel and chal- and shimmering surface, fascinated with sound lenging music from the current Parisian view of for its own sake. Melodic line, rhythmic regular- the composer himself, for during the two years ity, and the use of standard harmonic progres- he worked on La mer, Debussy moved in with sions are all shattered, gently but decisively, by Emma Bardac, the wife of a local banker, leaving the fluid play of the waves. The final Dialogue behind his wife Lily, who attempted suicide. Two of the Wind and the Sea (another title so like weeks after the premiere of La mer, Bardac gave Turner’s) captures the violence of two elements, birth to Debussy’s child, Claude-Emma, later air and water, as they collide. At the end, the sun known as Chou-Chou. Debussy married Emma breaks through the clouds. La mer repeatedly Bardac on January 20, 1908. The night before, resists traditional analysis. “We must agree,” he conducted an orchestra for the first time in Debussy writes, “that the beauty of a work of art public, in a program which included La mer. This will always remain a mystery, in other words, we time, it was a spectacular success, though many can never be absolutely sure ‘how it’s made’.” of his friends still wouldn’t speak to him.

COMPOSED INSTRUMENTATION CSO RECORDINGS 1903–March 1905 two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and 1960. Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA english horn, two clarinets, three bas- 1976. Sir Georg Solti conducting. FIRST PERFORMANCE soons and contrabassoon, four horns, London October 15, 1905; Paris, France three trumpets and two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, 1978. Erich Leinsdorf conducting. FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES tam-tam, triangle, glockenspiel, bass (From the Archives, vol. 5: Guests in January 29 & 30, 1909, Orchestra Hall. drum, two harps, strings the House) Frederick Stock conducting 1991. Sir Georg Solti conducting. APPROXIMATE July 8, 1937, Ravinia Festival. Ernest London PERFORMANCE TIME Ansermet conducting 26 minutes 2000. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES 2001. Daniel Barenboim conducting. August 7, 2012, Ravinia Festival. James EuroArts (video) Conlon conducting October 17, 19 & 22, 2013, Orchestra Hall. Susanna Mälkki conducting

4 Pyotr Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36

Tchaikovsky was at work intimacy and physical distance.) On June 1, on his Fourth Symphony 1877, Tchaikovsky stopped work on the first when he received a letter three movements of this symphony and visited from Antonina Antonina Milyukova for the first time. A day or Milyukova claiming to be two later he proposed. a former student of his He didn’t tell Nadezhda von Meck of his plans and declaring that she until three days before the wedding. In that letter was madly in love with he confessed that he had “lived thirty-seven him. Tchaikovsky had just years with an innate aversion to marriage. . . . In read Pushkin’s Eugene a day or two my marriage will take place,” he Onegin, hoping to find an opera subject, and he wrote in closing. “What will happen after that saw fateful parallels between Antonina and I do not know.” Tchaikovsky quickly learned Pushkin’s heroine, Tatiana. Perhaps Tchaikovsky that, in addition to the obvious strain of living confused art and life; in any event, the conse- with someone to whom he felt profound physical quences were dire. It is hard to say which letter aversion, he would grow to disdain Antonina, provoked the stronger response from particularly after the stunning discovery that she Tchaikovsky—the despairing letter Tatiana knew not one note of music. “My heart is full,” writes to the cold-hearted Onegin, or the one he he wrote to von Meck. “It thirsts to pour itself himself received from Antonina, threatening out in music.” suicide. The first inspired one of the great scenes It was music that kept him going. When he in opera; the latter precipitated a painful and was able to escape, temporarily, to Kamenka, disastrous marriage. he found solace in his fourth symphony and by We have since learned enough about working intermittently on Eugene Onegin. He Tchaikovsky, and about the agony of repressed returned to Moscow in late September, barely in homosexuality, to understand why he would time to begin the fall term at the conservatory, choose to marry a woman he didn’t even know and discovered, surely without surprise, that as a kind of cover. (Less than a year earlier, he could maintain the façade no longer. Many Tchaikovsky had begun an extraordinary years later, he confessed that he waded into the relationship, conducted exclusively by corre- Moscow River, hoping to contract a fatal chill, spondence, with Nadezhda von Meck, and he and stood with the icy water up to his waist until delighted in the combination of intellectual he could, literally, stand no more. He then fled to

COMPOSED March 21, 22, 23 & 24, 2013, Orchestra CSO RECORDINGS May 1877–January 19, 1878 Hall. Tugan Sokhiev conducting 1951. Rafael Kubelík conducting. Mercury June 29, 2013, Morton Arboretum. FIRST PERFORMANCE Carlos Miguel Prieto conducting 1957. Fritz Reiner conducting. CSO March 4, 1878; Moscow, Russia (Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the INSTRUMENTATION Twentieth Century: Collector’s Choice) FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, November 3 & 4, 1899, Auditorium 1984. Sir Georg Solti conducting. two clarinets, two bassoons, four Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting London horns, two trumpets, three trombones, July 17, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Willem tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass 1985. Sir Georg Solti conducting. ICA Van Hoogstraten conducting drum, strings Classics (video) 1988. Claudio Abbado conducting. CBS MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME 1997. Daniel Barenboim conducting. July 29, 2012, Ravinia Festival. James 44 minutes Teldec Conlon conducting

5 Saint Petersburg, where a psychiatrist prescribed a complete change of scenery and a permanent separation from Antonina. Nicolai Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky’s brother Anatoly rushed to Moscow to tell Antonina. She listened calmly and served them tea. Tchaikovsky’s marriage lasted less than three months. On October 13, Anatoly took Tchaikovsky to Switzerland, then on to Paris and Italy. Tchaikovsky asked that the unfinished manuscript of the Fourth Symphony be sent from Moscow and he completed the scoring in January 1878. He finished Eugene Onegin the following month. That March he sketched the violin concerto in just eleven days. When he returned to Russia in late April, his problems with Antonina were still unresolved—she first accepted and then rejected the divorce papers, and later extracted her final revenge by moving into the apartment above his—but the worst year of his life was over. Tchaikovsky with his wife, Antonina Milyukova, 1877 he temptation to read a program into Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony is as old as the work itself. Since Nadezhda Indeed, the icy blast from the horns that opens vonT Meck allowed Tchaikovsky to dedicate the this symphony returns repeatedly in the first symphony to her (without mentioning her name) movement (and once in the finale), each time and was contributing generously to support his wiping out everything in its path. It’s like the career, she demanded to know what the work celebrated fate motive from Beethoven’s Fifth was about. Tchaikovsky’s response, often quoted, Symphony—the one the composer himself com- is a detailed account, filled with emotional pared to fate knocking at the door—except that thoughts and empty phrases—words written it’s more of a disruption than a compositional after the fact to satisfy an indispensable patron. device. Later, Tchaikovsky wrote to the composer When Tchaikovsky mentions fate, however, Sergei Taneyev, a former student: his words ring true; this was a subject that had haunted him since 1876, when he saw Carmen Of course my symphony is programmatic, and was struck by the “death of the two princi- but this program is such that it cannot be pals who, through fate, fatum, ultimately reach formulated in words. That would excite the peak of their suffering and their inescapable ridicule and appear comic. Ought not a end.” He wrote to Nadezhda von Meck: symphony—that is, the most lyrical of all forms—to be such a work? Should it The introduction is the seed of the whole not express everything for which there symphony, undoubtedly the main idea. This are no words, but which the soul wishes is fate, that fatal force which prevents the to express, and which requires to be impulse to happiness from attaining its goal, expressed? . . . Please do not think that which jealously ensures that peace and hap- I aspire to paint before you a depth and piness shall not be complete and unclouded, grandeur of thought that cannot be easily which hangs above your head like the sword understood in words. I was not trying to of Damocles, and unwaveringly, constantly express any new thought. In essence my poisons the soul. symphony imitates Beethoven’s Fifth; that is, I was not imitating its musical thoughts, but

6 the fundamental idea. Do you think there rhythm? If that’s the case,” he concluded, “you is a program in the Fifth Symphony? Not must also be unable to reconcile yourself to the only is there a program, but in this instance majority of Beethoven’s symphonies in which you there cannot be any question about its efforts encounter such things at every turn.” The finale is to express itself. My symphony rests upon a more complex, emotionally and musically, swing- foundation that is nearly the same, and if you ing from the dark emotions of the first movement haven’t understood me, it follows only that to a more festive mood. “If you cannot discover I am not a Beethoven, a fact which I have reasons for happiness in yourself,” Tchaikovsky never doubted. wrote to Mme von Meck, “look at others. Get out among the people. Look what a good time Taneyev was perhaps the first to question they have simply surrendering themselves to the preponderance of what he called ballet joy.” There is one final intrusion of the fateful music in the symphony. In fact, the lilting main horns from the symphony’s opening, but this theme of the opening movement (marked “in time the music quickly recovers, rousing itself to movimento di valse”) and the whole of the two a defiantly triumphant and heroic Beethovenian inner movements—the slow pas de deux with its ending, in intention if not in substance. mournful oboe solo, and the brilliant and playful pizzicato scherzo—remind us that the best of Tchaikovsky’s ballet scores are symphonic in scope and tone. Tchaikovsky was angered by the comment and asked Taneyev if he considered as Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago ballet music “every cheerful tune that has a dance Symphony Orchestra.

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