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Home , Emmanuel Chabrier, Florent Schmitt, Symphony in C (Bizet)

Program

OnE HunDrED TwEnTy-FirST SEASOn Chicago 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, February 23, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, February 24, 2012, at 8:00 alain altinoglu Conductor Chabrier España Bizet Symphony in Allegro vivo Adagio Allegro vivace Allegro vivace

IntermIssIon schmitt La tragédie de Salomé, Symphonic Poem, Op. 50 Prelude—Dance of the Pearls The Enchantments of the Sea—Dance of Lightning—Dance of Terror

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

emmanuel Chabrier Born January 18, 1841, Ambert, France. Died September 13, 1894, Paris, France.

España

spaña is the sole survivor of a idea to compose a Spanish piece. Eonce-prestigious career. The Chabrier had once thought of being only work by Emmanuel Chabrier a painter himself. He followed that is still performed with any reg- the work of the groundbreaking ularity, it began as a simple souvenir French artists during his lifetime, of six months in Spain. Chabrier regularly noting how closely their and his wife spent the latter half of ideas paralleled his own. Chabrier 1882 traveling the country, stop- posed for Manet on three occa- ping in Toledo, Seville, Granada, sions, the last time in 1881, only Malaga, Valencia, and Barcelona. months before the Chabriers set Chabrier’s score is one of the off for Spain. When Manet died high points in the late-nineteenth in 1883, Chabrier bought several century’s fascination with the of his canvases, including his last Iberian peninsula that also inspired major work, the celebrated Bar aux Édouard Manet’s paintings of the Folies-Bergère, which he hung over 1860s, Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole his piano. (At the time of his death in 1873, and Bizet’s the in 1894, Chabrier owned a small following year (joined in the next museum’s worth of significant art, century by Debussy’s Iberia and including seven oils by Manet, six Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole). by Monet, three by Renoir, and Chabrier’s close friendship with one Cézanne.) Manet—his neighbor from 1879 to Although Chabrier dabbled in 1883—may have first given him the composition from childhood, and

ComPosed most reCent InstrumentatIon 1883 Cso PerFormanCes two flutes and piccolo, two December 9, 1986, , two , four FIrst PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. Erich bassoons, four horns, four november 4, 1883, Paris, Leinsdorf conducting trumpets, three France and tuba, timpani, triangle, July 13, 1991, ravinia snare drum, bass drum, Festival. Gennady FIrst Cso cymbals, two harps, strings PerFormanCe rozhdestvensky conducting January 25, 1895, Auditorium aPProxImate Theatre. Theodore PerFormanCe tIme Thomas conducting 6 minutes

2 became a pianist of impressive vir- he would need the full range of tuosity, he first followed the family orchestral colors to do justice to tradition and pursued law as his his vivid memories. España, as the profession. He continued to write piece was finally called, is not only music on the side while working as full of memorable folklike tunes, a civil servant in the Ministry of but it also benefits from Chabrier’s the Interior in Paris, but, in a sense, keen attention to the rhythmic Chabrier only came into his own patterns of Spanish dance. As the as a composer after hearing Tristan composer predicted, España was a and Isolde in in 1880. He great success from the start—it was resigned from the ministry later encored at the premiere, and was that year, became a confirmed—if praised by composers as different not obsessive—Wagnerian, and as (who knew a decided to devote the rest of his life thing or two about authenticity in to composition. Spanish music) and It was España, however, a very non-Wagnerian musical post- card, that made him an over- night sensation. While touring Spain, Chabrier filled his notebooks with details about the rhythms of Spanish dance music (he concluded it was impos- sible to notate the actual rhythm of a malagueña), the cut of the danc- ers’ black felt hats, “the admirable Sevillan derrière, turning in every direction while the rest of the body stays immobile.” Near the end of the Spanish tour, Chabrier wrote home to his friend, the Wagnerian conductor , that as soon as he returned to Paris he intended to compose an “extraordinary fantasia”—a remi- niscence of the music and dance Manet’s last portrait of Chabrier, 1881 that he had found so intoxicating in Spain. It would, he promised, (who conducted España on several incite the audience to a fever pitch occasions). Even Chabrier, however, of excitement. Chabrier began the cannot have imagined the popular- piece as a work for piano duet—it ity its main theme would achieve was called Jota, after the lively seventy-three years later as a Perry Spanish dance—but soon realized Como single on the Hit Parade.

3 Born October 25, 1838, Paris, France. Died June 3, 1875, Bougival, near Paris, France.

symphony in C major

his now-famous symphony by secure place in the repertoire, while TGeorges Bizet, never performed Hahn’s works are rarely performed. during the composer’s lifetime, Georges Bizet was a remarkable waited eighty years for its premiere. young talent. He was admitted to , a close friend the Paris Conservatory two weeks (and lover) of Marcel Proust and a before his tenth birthday and won composer of operettas and charm- the first of many prizes only six ing, though slight songs, owned months later. (Over the years, he the manuscript for years, but didn’t was given prizes—several of them consider it worthy of attention. It first-place awards—in solfeggio, had been given to him, along with piano, organ, and ; his piano several other Bizet manuscripts, by playing, in particular, won the the composer’s widow Geneviève, praise of Liszt and Berlioz.) Bizet who evidently exceeded Hahn in began to study counterpoint with her lack of appreciation for her Pierre Zimmerman, a distinguished husband’s music. In 1933, Hahn teacher near retirement age, whose donated his Bizet scores to the Paris main contribution to his student’s Conservatory, without offering the development may have been his least hint that they included one of frequent absences from the class- music’s little miracles—this delight- room, when his substitute was ful Symphony in C major composed , then on the verge by a precocious seventeen-year- of international fame. (Gounod was old. Nearly eighty years later, it is married to Zimmerman’s daughter Bizet’s symphony that has found a Anna.) Gounod quickly recognized

ComPosed most reCent aPProxImate October–november 1855 Cso PerFormanCes PerFormanCe tIme May 14, 2000, Orchestra Hall. 28 minutes FIrst PerFormanCe bobby McFerrin conducting February 26, 1935, basel, Cso reCordIng July 23, 2000, ravinia Switzerland 1968. Festival. itzhak conducting. rCA FIrst Cso Perlman conducting PerFormanCe InstrumentatIon March 4, 1943, Orchestra two flutes, two oboes, two Hall. Hans Lange conducting clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings

4 Bizet’s exceptional gifts and asked premonition him to assist with various musical in the scene projects, and, in 1855, to make a where she piano-duet version of his new First reads death in Symphony. It is surely no coin- the cards that cidence that later that year Bizet she fainted decided to write his own. while leaving Bizet began his symphony on the stage.) October 29, 1855, just four days Although after his seventeenth birthday. it wasn’t an Perhaps because the model of immediate Gounod’s score was still in his hit, Carmen mind, Bizet worked with apparent soon found ease and speed, finishing the work many admir- Bizet’s teacher, Charles Gounod in less than a month. But despite ers, including the brilliance of this first effort, Brahms, who Bizet was not destined to be a sym- went to see the twenty times phonic composer. He began and in 1876 alone, and Nietzsche, who abandoned a new symphony twice thought it the ideal antidote to after winning the in Wagner mania. (Wagner himself 1857. Another symphony, begun in dismissed it as “much tastelessness,” 1860, occupied him on and off for according to his wife Cosima.) eight years before he finally intro- Eventually Carmen’s overwhelming duced it as an orchestral suite titled popularity substantially elevated Roma. (It originally was planned Bizet’s posthumous status, although as a symphonic tour of Italy, with he unfairly became known as a one- separate movements for Rome, work composer in the process. Venice, Florence, and Naples.) In 1933, Jean Chantevoine, a But in the 1860s, Bizet found respected Beethoven scholar, inven- his true calling. The Pearl Fishers, toried the Bizet holdings at the which premiered in 1863, was not Paris Conservatory and uncovered a success with the public or the the Symphony in C major. Initially, critics (except for the invariably no one showed any interest in the perceptive Berlioz), but it is the work—a popular opera composer’s work of a born opera composer, student symphony—until D. C. overflowing with the promise that Parker, who had recently published would ultimately be fulfilled in his the first English biography of final work, Carmen. Bizet didn’t Bizet, brought it to the attention live to see Carmen acclaimed as one of the influential conductor Felix of the true classics of music theater. Weingartner. Weingartner imme- He fell ill shortly after the premiere diately grasped the significance of and died the night of the thirty- the discovery and arranged to give third performance. (That night the the premiere in Basel in 1935. The Carmen, Célestine Galli-Marié, is symphony quickly became an audi- said to have been so overcome with ence favorite, and, in Balanchine’s

5 brilliant 1947 choreography, one unassuming confidence and verve. of the most performed of all ballet The slow movement, with a fugal scores. (Balanchine introduced it episode straight out of Gounod, as Le Palais de cristal, or the Crystal contains a beautifully sinuous Palace, and later called it simply solo that Carmen might well envy. Symphony in C.) Even in the work of a seventeen- year-old, writing his first major lthough Bizet may well have orchestral score, we can detect Awithheld his score because the fine ear for color and rhyth- of its obvious indebtedness to mic élan that later distinguishes Gounod’s First Symphony, he virtually every page of Carmen. apparently failed to recognize how Tchaikovsky’s admiring verdict superior it is to its model in every of that opera could as easily respect. Gounod’s own models were apply here: “The music has no Haydn and early Beethoven sym- pretensions to profundity, but it phonies, and Bizet’s score inevitably is so charming in its simplicity, recalls the clarity and grace of high so vigorous, not contrived but classicism. But there is nothing in instead sincere . . . .” Bizet’s career any of these predecessors to match cannot be compared to those of the youthful freshness and melodic the other, more famous teenage charm of Bizet’s work. Each of composers—Mozart, Schubert, the fast movements—a spirited and Mendelssohn, who also all opener in , a breezy died young. As the work of an third-movement scherzo, and the exceptionally gifted young man, light-footed finale—spills over however, this first symphony has with original ideas, handled with rarely been surpassed.

6 Florent schmitt Born September 28, 1870, Blâmont, France. Died August 17, 1958, Paris, France.

La tragédie de Salomé, symphonic Poem, op. 50

lorent Schmitt still turns up in time,” and he wrote to Schmitt that Fall the books about Stravinsky he considered the score “one of the as the man who stood up in the greatest masterpieces of modern middle of at music.” “I am only playing French its chaotic premiere and shouted music,” Stravinsky told Schmitt at for all the ladies—he chose a the time, “—yours, Debussy, Ravel.” less flattering term—of the six- When The Rite was introduced to teenth arrondissement to shut up. the Parisian public in May 1913, Schmitt’s music, once praised by many recognized what we today, Stravinsky himself, has all but dis- lacking a familiarity with Schmitt’s appeared—even his most celebrated music, can no longer hear—that work, The Tragedy of that is the epochal score for The Rite of performed this week, hasn’t been Spring owes a great deal to The played by the Chicago Symphony Tragedy of Salome. Stravinsky and in nearly seven decades. Schmitt were friends and admir- When La tragédie de Salomé ing colleagues at the time. When was published in 1911—two years Stravinsky fell ill with typhoid before the Rite of Spring premiere— fever a few days after the legendary Schmitt dedicated the score to Rite premiere, Schmitt regularly Stravinsky. A few months later, visited his sickbed. Later that year, while Stravinsky was working on Stravinsky publicly praised an The Rite, he admitted that Schmitt’s article Schmitt wrote about The Rite, Salome had given him “greater joy and in 1914, he dedicated one of the than any work I have heard in a long Three Japanese Portraits to Schmitt.

ComPosed most reCent InstrumentatIon 1907–1910 Cso PerFormanCe two flutes and piccolo, two October 19, 1945, oboes and english horn, FIrst PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. Désiré two clarinets and bass ballet: 1907, Paris Defauw conducting , three bassoons Symphonic poem: January 8, and contrabassoon, four 1911, Paris aPProxImate horns, three trumpets, PerFormanCe tIme three trombones and tuba, FIrst Cso 30 minutes timpani, snare drum, tri- PerFormanCe angle, cymbals, bass drum, February 6, 1920, tam-tam, glockenspiel, two Orchestra Hall. Frederick harps, strings Stock conducting

7 The two composers had first met trips around the Mediterranean, in Paris, where Schmitt moved in from Morocco to Turkey, while he 1889 to attend the conservatory and lived at the Villa Medici after win- to study with and ning the prestigious Prix de Rome Gabriel Fauré. In Paris, Schmitt in 1900. began a lifelong friendship with The story of Salome had been a Ravel, who was also in Fauré’s favorite subject of many artists since class; met many of the big-name the last decades of the nineteenth composers of the day, including century—in painting (Gustave Satie, Puccini, Debussy, and Falla; Moreau, Odilon Redon), literature and joined a club of young art- (Stéphane Mallarmé, Gustave ists—Ravel was a founding mem- Flaubert, Oscar Wilde), and music ber—linked by their progressive (Massenet’s Hérodiade, based on mindset and their pride in being Flaubert’s short story, and Richard “avant-garde.” In 1909, Stravinsky Strauss’s one-act operatic setting began attending their meetings, of Wilde). Just three months after which were held after concerts the huge success of Strauss’s Salome on Saturday nights at the painter at the Châtelet in Paris in May Paul Sordes’s house on the rue 1907, Schmitt learned that Robert Delong. They called themselves the d’Humières, the new director of the Apaches—Parisian fascination with elegant Théâtre des Arts, wanted American Indians was running him to write music for a mime- drama on the Salome theme. The entire project was intended as a showcase for Loie Fuller, the pioneering American dancer who was born Marie Louise Fuller in the Chicago suburb that is now called Hinsdale. Schmitt accepted at once and wrote the score in two months. The Tragedy of Salome, an hour-long ballet in seven tableaux, Portrait of Loie Fuller by Frederick Glasier, 1902 was a great success on opening night later that high at the time, piqued in 1900 year and was performed some fifty by a musical play titled Les indiens times that season. Sioux. Exoticism of all kinds was Two years later, Schmitt decided in the air, and stories about the to refashion The Tragedy of Salome Orient, in particular, were the rage. as a two-part symphonic poem for Schmitt’s own appetite for exotic the concert hall, half as long as subjects had been awakened by his the original dance piece, but with

8 a greatly expanded orchestration. by intermittent flashes of lightning (Schmitt had apparently felt that and highlighted by a momentary his musical ideas were severely glimpse of a nude Salome, con- compromised by the size of the cludes with Salome throwing the Théâtre des Arts, which forced him head of John the Baptist into the to write for an orchestra of just sea. In the final Dance of Terror, twenty instruments.) It was this according to d’Humières’s original new version that Schmitt published scenario, “the storm bursts. A furi- in 1911, complete with its dedica- ous wind envelops her. . . . a hur- tion to Stravinsky. ricane rocks the sea. Waterspouts of sand are hurled from the desert ven in its concentrated form, solitude. . . . Everything is humbled Ethis Salome unfolds as a series and crestfallen on account of of dances of varying character—a the dancer’s infernal delirium.” portrait of the legendary seductress Those pages are filled with fierce painted exclusively by gesture percussive effects, bitonal chords, and music. Schmitt sets the scene violent syncopations, and irregular with a mysterious, harmonically rhythmic patterns—shockingly sav- ambiguous prelude. Salome then age music that anticipates the most begins her first dance before celebrated passages in Stravinsky’s Herod—the initially innocent The Rite of Spring. Dance of the Pearls. The second part of the symphonic poem begins postscript. The friendship with the atmospheric and evoca- Abetween Schmitt and Stravinsky tive Enchantments of the Sea, in cooled in time. Stravinsky tried to which underwater visions beckon distance himself from his praise of Salome. The last two scenes—the The Tragedy of Salome. In 1935, he Dance of Lightning and the Dance lost to Schmitt in his attempt to of Terror—move swiftly toward fill Paul Dukas’s vacant seat in the tragedy and violence, and capture Institut de France. By then, neither something of the frenzy and excite- man had good things to say about ment of the dancing that mesmer- the other. ized Schmitt when he visited the Asiatic side of Istanbul. The Dance of Lightning, originally staged in Phillip Huscher is the program annota- complete darkness, illuminated only tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2012 Chicago

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