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Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti Conductor Rosa Feola Soprano Tchaikovsky the Tempest

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Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti Conductor Rosa Feola Soprano Tchaikovsky the Tempest 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, April 14, 2016, at 8:00 Friday, April 15, 2016, at 8:00 Saturday, April 16, 2016, at 8:00 Friday, April 22, 2016, at 1:30 Sunday, April 24, 2016, at 3:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Rosa Feola Soprano Tchaikovsky The Tempest, Op. 18 Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet INTERMISSION Mahler Symphony No. 4 in G Major Deliberately, without rushing In easy motion, without haste Serene (Poco adagio) Very leisurely ROSA FEOLA The Chicago Symphony Orchestra thanks Julie and Roger Baskes, lead sponsors of the Shakespeare in Music Celebration concert programming. Additional sponsorship support is generously provided by Joyce Chelberg, Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Franke, the Gilchrist Foundation, Pam and Roger Hull, Jim and Kay Mabie, Judy and Scott McCue, and Burton X. and Sheli Rosenberg. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to 93XRT, WBEZ 91.5 FM, and RedEye for their generous support as media sponsors of the Classic Encounter series. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a stage agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. This program is part of the citywide Shakespeare 400 Celebration. COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Pyotr Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840, Viatka, Russia. Died November 18, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Tempest, Symphonic fantasia after Shakespeare, Op. 18 It was the power of whether there needed to be a tempest in The Shakespeare that helped Tempest (and if so, where should he put it—at Tchaikovsky to find his the start or in the middle?), and if not, should voice as a composer, first he call the work Miranda instead, after the play’s in Romeo and Juliet, the captivating heroine. “Is it essential to depict the fantasy-overture com- fury of elements in an overture written on a piece posed in 1869, and then where this incidental circumstance serves simply four years later in this as the point of departure for all the dramatic grand and sweep- action?” he asked. Stasov’s reply was swift and ing “symphonic fantasia” unequivocal: “Of course there must be,” he fired inspired by The Tempest. The idea for writing back, and he suggested representing the sea music based on The Tempest came from Vladimir twice—at the beginning and at the end. He also Stasov, the powerful but often prickly Russian recommended that the storm itself should erupt critic. Stasov was with Tchaikovsky at the in a flash and at full strength, unlike storms in Rimsky-Korsakovs’ for Christmas in 1872, and nature, to show that it was created by supernat- he was so taken with Tchaikovsky’s piano ural forces. “Let your storm suddenly take hold rendition of his new Little Russian Symphony and howl,” he wrote. Still, Tchaikovsky hesitated, that he asked what the composer had planned for claiming, in the words of a true procrastinator, his next work. When Tchaikovsky vacillated, that he preferred to wait for exactly the right Stasov intervened, as he regularly did with artists moment to begin. But begin he finally did. He he favored. In a letter a few days later, he finished the rough draft in August—evidently suggested three subjects worthy of musical after two weeks of solid work in the peaceful treatment: Gogol’s novel Taras Bulba, Scott’s countryside, “as if moved by some supernatural Ivanhoe, and The Tempest. Having succeeded with force.” The score was ready for performance by Shakespeare in the past, Tchaikovsky did not early December. hesitate to try again. Stasov outlined a Tempest scenario for s with Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest is a Tchaikovsky, but, although the composer agreed highly selective reading of Shakespeare’s to the blueprint, he put off starting work imme- drama. Stasov’s original outline diately. One of his first quandaries, in fact, was wasA succinct: COMPOSED MOST RECENT INSTRUMENTATION 1873 CSO PERFORMANCES two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two September 30, 2014, Orchestra Hall. clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, FIRST PERFORMANCE Riccardo Muti conducting two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, December 7, 1873; Moscow, Russia timpani, percussion, strings October 28, 2014; Grosser Musikvereinsaal, Vienna, Austria. FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES APPROXIMATE Riccardo Muti conducting November 23 & 24, 1894, PERFORMANCE TIME Auditorium Theatre. Theodore 26 minutes Thomas conducting CSO RECORDING 1984. Claudio Abbado conducting. CBS 2 varying weight and drama. He opens with the sea, placid and luminous at first, and then, with the roll of the timpani, surging with violence and unexpected power, as the magician Prospero raises the tempest. The emotional heart of the piece—although not the capstone of the arch—is the expansive and lyrical music for the Engraving by Pierre Simon II of The Enchanted Island: Before the Cell of Prospero, part of the lovers Miranda famous John Boydell Shakespeare print series, based on the painting by Henry Fuseli, 1797 and Ferdinand. Brilliantly colored short- The sea. Ariel, spirit of the air, raising a tem- hand portraits of the spirit Ariel, fleet and pest at the bidding of the magician Prospero. fantastic, and the monstrous Caliban, crude and Ferdinand’s ship sinks. The enchanted island. blundering, sit at the center of the score. But The first shy awakening of love between the love music returns as if it has never been Miranda and Ferdinand. Ariel. Caliban. The interrupted, and it is even more impassioned and young couple’s love grows to overwhelming yearning. (At the climax, Tchaikovsky writes passion. Prospero renounces his magic fffff for the first time in his music.) Prospero then powers and quits the island. The sea. renounces his magic powers, and we are left once again with the sounds of the sea, fading toward From this, Tchaikovsky crafted a piece silence, with “distant, happy Italy” just beyond in arch form—a series of linked episodes of the horizon. 3 Pyotr Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy-Overture after Shakespeare No other play by although the composer originally wrote a happy Shakespeare has inspired ending because he couldn’t imagine how dying as many composers as lovers could dance. But none of these works Romeo and Juliet. has surpassed the popularity of Tchaikovsky’s Throughout the romantic fantasy-overture. era in particular, the The Russian composer Mily Balakirev appar- drama held an ently first suggested the play to Tchaikovsky enormous—and some- as early as the summer of 1869. He continued times nearly fatal— to push the subject and, when Tchaikovsky attraction. After Berlioz wavered, he prodded him. In a letter dated saw Romeo and Juliet in a Paris theater and fell October 6, 1869, he offered literary observations, desperately in love with Harriet Smithson, who suggested general guidelines for treating the played Juliet, he announced his intention to subject, and even dictated four measures of music marry the actress and to write a dramatic to open the work. Before Tchaikovsky’s Romeo symphony based on the play—and did both and Juliet was finished (and it was another ten within a decade. (Riccardo Muti led the CSO in years before it reached its final form), Balakirev Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet here last week.) The had approved and rejected a number of themes, marriage was a mistake, however, and they later recommended a new introduction in the style of separated, but the symphony is one of his a Lisztian chorale, and presented his preferred greatest works. tonal scheme, based on a fondness for keys with More than twenty operas have been written on five flats or two sharps. Romeo and Juliet, including Bellini’s I Capuleti e Surprisingly, Tchaikovsky found his own i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues), voice with this work; Romeo and Juliet, with a mezzo-soprano as Romeo (in the tradi- a “Fantasy-Overture after Shakespeare,” is his tion of trouser roles), and Gounod’s enduring first masterpiece. The original version, composed treatment, with the ending rewritten so that the in just six weeks, was performed in March 1870, lovers die at the same moment, singing in unison. with Nicolai Rubinstein conducting. A new Bernstein’s urban West Side Story suggests that version, completed that summer, incorporated the fascination with this subject hasn’t waned Balakirev’s idea of a slow chorale at the begin- in our own time. And Prokofiev’s 1940 ballet is ning. It was played in Saint Petersburg in early now recognized as a twentieth-century classic, 1872. Although Tchaikovsky and Balakirev had COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE October 7–November 27, 1869; revised CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME 1870, 1880 January 12, 13, 14, & 15, 2012, 21 minutes Orchestra Hall. Sir Mark FIRST PERFORMANCE Elder conducting CSO RECORDINGS March 16, 1879; Moscow, Russia 1954. Antal Doráti conducting. July 27, 2014, Ravinia Festival. James Mercury Conlon conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES 1981. Daniel Barenboim conducting. February 3 & 4, 1893, INSTRUMENTATION Deutsche Grammophon Auditorium Theatre. Theodore two flutes and piccolo, two oboes Thomas conducting 1986. Sir Georg Solti conducting. and english horn, two clarinets, two London July 4, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Ernest bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, Ansermet conducting three trombones and tuba, timpani, 1988. Claudio Abbado conducting. CBS bass drum, cymbals, harp, strings 1995. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec 4 In 1878, while he was recuperating from his failed marriage at his brother Modest’s house, Tchaikovsky turned to Romeo and Juliet and was struck by its potential as a great operatic subject. (One night that May, when Modest and Sasha went to the theater to see Romeo and Juliet, Tchaikovsky stayed home, put his nieces and nephews to bed, and then read the Shakespeare play for himself.) “Of course I’ll compose Romeo and Juliet,” he wrote to Modest from Brailov in June, excited by the prospect of writing a new opera.
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