Programnotes Muti Conducts Br
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Please note that Christof Fischesser has canceled due to illness. The CSO welcomes Eric Owens, who has graciously agreed to perform at these concerts. PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, June 23, 2016, at 8:00 Saturday, June 25, 2016, at 8:00 Sunday, June 26, 2016, at 3:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Erin Wall Soprano Okka von der Damerau Mezzo-soprano Steve Davislim Tenor Eric Owens Bass-baritone Chicago Symphony Chorus Duain Wolfe Director Music by Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 9 in D Minor Solemn. Misterioso Scherzo: Fast, lively Adagio: Slow, solemn INTERMISSION Te Deum Te Deum laudamus: Allegro moderato— Te ergo quaesumus: Moderato— Aeterna fac cum Sanctis tuis: Allegro moderato. Solemn, with power— Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine: Moderato— In te, Domine, speravi: Moderately, with movement ERIN WALL OKKA VON DER DAMERAU STEVE DAVISLIM ERIC OWENS CHICAGO SYMPHONY CHORUS These concerts are generously sponsored by Rosemarie and Dean L. Buntrock. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. 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 Anton Bruckner Born September 4, 1824, Ansfelden, near Linz, Austria. Died October 11, 1896, Vienna, Austria. Symphony No. 9 in D Minor Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective Bruckner was at work he had finished in 1884, as a possible finale. But on his Ninth Symphony when he began to write the transition necessary the day he died. He to take us from the serenity of E major, with spent the morning at his which the third movement of the symphony Bösendorfer piano going ends, to the brilliant C major of the Te Deum, he over sketches for the realized the futility of the plan and simply left finale. He skipped lunch, us three magnificent movements and a pile of saying he had no appetite, sketches. (This week’s concert, which places the and gave up his afternoon Te Deum after the symphony—with an intermis- walk because of the wind. sion between—gives a sense of what Bruckner He later complained of feeling suddenly cold, had in mind.) and, just before he died, he asked his house- Sadly, had Bruckner not been sidetracked by keeper for some tea. the endless revision of his earlier symphonies “It will be my last symphony,” he had told a that was suggested by his students, he would guest several years before. At the time of his have had time to finish his Ninth Symphony. death, three movements were complete, but (He might even have begun a tenth.) Bruckner Bruckner had been struggling with the finale regularly fell victim to the criticism and recom- for many months. In the nearly two hundred mendations of others, even though the criticism sketches he left for that movement, we can see was often pointless and the recommendations that his hands had grown weak—persistent were sometimes absurd—and contrary to the trembling made writing difficult—and we can composer’s own wishes. Throughout his life, tell, from the nature of the fragments themselves, Bruckner was crippled by a fearful and indecisive that he was having trouble pulling his thoughts nature that led him to accept a job as schoolmas- together and completing the work. When he first ter (his duties included farm labor and spreading realized that he might not have the strength to manure) when he really wanted a career in music, finish it, he recommended the Te Deum, which and later kept him from applying for the post COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE April 1891–October 1896 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME July 13, 1996, Ravinia Festival. 66 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Semyon Bychkov conducting February 11, 1903; Vienna, CSO RECORDINGS December 19, 20 & 21, 2013, Austria, in Ferdinand Löwe’s 1975. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Orchestra Hall. Christoph unauthorized edition Deutsche Grammophon Eschenbach conducting October 23, 1932; Vienna, Austria, 1976. Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. in Bruckner’s original version INSTRUMENTATION Angel three flutes, three oboes, three 1985. Sir Georg Solti conducting. FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES clarinets, three bassoons, eight horns London February 19 & 20, 1904, Auditorium (four doubling on wagner tubas in Theatre. Theodore Thomas the Adagio), three trumpets, three conducting (U.S. premiere) trombones and tuba, timpani, strings June 25, 1994, Ravinia Festival. Christoph Eschenbach conducting 2 of cathedral organist at Linz, even though he when he heard the church choir next door) and coveted the job. As a result, he reached the age of deep-seated faith. All his life he was fascinated forty before writing a single great piece. by the idea of death, and he eventually developed Shortly after completing his Eighth Symphony an obsession with viewing dead bodies. In 1888, in 1887, Bruckner began to have renewed doubts when the remains of Beethoven and Schubert about his work. He needlessly recomposed his were removed to Vienna’s Central Cemetery, First Symphony and, at the insistence of Franz Bruckner went to see for himself what was left Schalk, one of his most ambitious students, he of his two heroes. He knew for certain that their also redid the Third. He agreed that the Second music would endure, and he wanted to ensure Symphony, as well as the F minor mass, would that his would, too. But it was only in 1927, with benefit from a touch up. Because of all these the formation of the International Bruckner unnecessary distractions, his weakening health, Society, which began to issue definitive editions and a new wave of insecurity, Bruckner found based on a critical study of his manuscripts, that that he couldn’t complete his Ninth Symphony, the composer was vindicated. even though he had been at it for nine years. (He once told a visitor, “The Ninth will be my ruckner begins his last symphony in the masterpiece. I just ask God that he’ll let me live depths of D minor (and there’s little until it’s done.”) doubt that, like Beethoven in his Ninth, Bruckner didn’t easily stand up to others, but Bhe planned to conclude some three movements he took comfort from his belief that posterity later in the brilliance of D major). Only a minute would prove him right. In 1892, while he was into the piece, we are in D-flat major and quickly struggling with the Ninth Symphony, he had the move on to E major—this is going to be an manuscripts for his earlier symphonies bound exciting and frequently surprising harmonic together and stored in a sealed parcel. The will adventure. The beginning of this symphony, he wrote in 1894 dictated that they should go as with most of Bruckner’s, is one continuous to the Vienna State Library for safekeeping. If unfolding. We can’t accurately judge the size Bruckner feared that his death would remove the or scope of Bruckner’s territory until we reach only obstacle between his music and the eager the first climax—a ferocious fff unison theme hands of unsympathetic editors, he was right. from the entire orchestra; only then do we begin The manuscript of the Ninth Symphony passed to sense the vastness of the space yet to come. directly to Ferdinand Löwe—another “devoted” Analysts often have stumbled in trying to relate student—who published it in 1903 (seven years this extraordinary first movement to traditional after the composer’s death), mutilated almost sonata form, for, although it does develop and beyond recognition. Of all Bruckner’s sympho- restate material, Bruckner’s methods are very nies, the Ninth suffered the worst fate. It was much his own. He makes a number of slow the newly published Löwe edition (see sidebar ascents to great fff peaks, but each time, although on page 4) that Theodore Thomas used when he the approach seems familiar, the view from led the Chicago Symphony in the U.S. premiere the top is slightly different. And each time the of the work in February 1904, and the truncated summit reveals further peaks ahead. The last symphony was so compact that it was played climax is deafeningly final, and yet it refuses to on the first half of the concert between an aria choose between D major and D minor, so that, by Mozart and a song by Schubert performed even as the movement comes to an end, Bruckner by the great diva of the era, Madame Ernestine prepares to go on. Schumann-Heink. The scherzo settles for D minor, but only after Perhaps only a man who specifically dictated considerable stalling—the odd opening chord, that his body should be embalmed, as Bruckner sustained by the winds while the violins spell did in his will, would also take pains to seal out the notes it is made of, remains wonderfully away his life’s work, hoping to preserve it, safe ambiguous. The full orchestra, fortissimo and from decay, for eternity. Bruckner was a man very insistent, finally establishes D minor. The of unshakable religious conviction (he once mood is sinister throughout, and when the oboe knelt during the middle of counterpoint class tries to inject a note of cheerfulness, the rest of 3 “Brilliant, poetic, solid, dainty” After the first season of the Chicago Orchestra and George Ellsworth Holmes as soloists, along with closed in late April 1892, Theodore Thomas and his the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus (prepared by new ensemble embarked on a seventeen-concert W.L.