Programnotes Muti Conducts
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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.