Alain Altinoglu Conductor Chabrier España Bizet Symphony in C Major Allegro Vivo Adagio Allegro Vivace Allegro Vivace
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Program OnE HunDrED TwEnTy-FirST 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, February 23, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, February 24, 2012, at 8:00 alain altinoglu Conductor Chabrier España Bizet Symphony in C Major 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 Carmen 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, oboes, two clarinets, four FIrst PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. Erich bassoons, four horns, four november 4, 1883, Paris, Leinsdorf conducting trumpets, three trombones 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 Munich 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 Manuel de Falla (who knew a decided to devote the rest of his life thing or two about authenticity in to composition. Spanish music) and Gustav Mahler 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 Charles Lamoureux, 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 georges Bizet 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 Reynaldo Hahn, 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 fugue; 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 Charles Gounod, 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. Jean Martinon 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 opera 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 Prix de Rome 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.