PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony 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

Thursday, November 19, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, November 20, 2015, at 8:00 Saturday, November 21, 2015, at 8:00 Pinchas Zukerman Conductor, , and Stephanie Jeong Violin Mozart Overture to The Magic Flute, K. 620 Telemann Viola in G Major Largo Allegro Andante Presto PINCHAS ZUKERMAN Tartini, orch. Respighi Pastorale Grave—Allegro sostenuto Largo—Presto PINCHAS ZUKERMAN J.S. Bach Concerto for Two in D Minor, BWV 1043 Vivace Largo, ma non tanto Allegro PINCHAS ZUKERMAN STEPHANIE JEONG

INTERMISSION Mozart Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543 Adagio—Allegro Andante con moto Menuetto: Allegretto Allegro

These concerts are generously sponsored by the Zell Family Foundation. 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 PhillipDaniel HuscherJaffé Phillip Huscher

Wolfgang Mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Overture to The Magic Flute, K. 620

Emanuel Johann Perinet with music by Wenzel Müller, which Schikaneder was a treated a very similar subject. Schikaneder felt versatile actor-cum- compelled to alter his original story—hence The impresario, who in his Magic Flute’s curious change of direction midway youth made an impression through as the evil sorcerer turns out to be the as Shakespeare’s Hamlet. benign Sarastro, who introduces the hero, Prince In 1780, his troupe made Tamino, to a series of initiations which make an extended stay in him part of Sarastro’s enlightened circle. It has Salzburg. There been widely speculated that many of the rites Schikaneder became of passage performed in The Magic Flute derive friendly with the already renowned Mozart from freemason rituals Schikaneder and Mozart family. Mozart, then aged twenty-four, wrote his would have known as members of the same first piece for Schikaneder—a recitative and aria lodge. The overture’s very opening portentous for soprano soloist to be inserted in the chords, it is suggested, mimic the prescribed impresario’s production of August Werthes’s knock on the door of the lodge room: that same comedy Die zwey schlaflosen Nächte (Mozart’s harmonized rhythm is heard again within the manuscript of this was discovered in 1979). Singspiel in the temple scene when Tamino’s By 1791, Schikaneder, now nudging forty, initiation trials are about to begin. was having more success in various comic Mozart worked against the clock to complete roles, and he planned to cast himself as the the music for The Magic Flute, and only com- bird catcher Papageno in a new Singspiel (a pleted the overture two days before the premiere. German-language genre of dramatic enter- All the more remarkable, then, that apart from tainment with song) which he himself adapted the solemn opening chords—which reappear from a story in a new volume of oriental tales, once again midway through the overture—all Dschinnistan, by Christoph Martin Wieland. The the music is unique and fresh sounding in the original story was relatively straightforward: an scampering excitement of the ensuing Allegro, evil sorcerer kidnaps the daughter of the Queen with its offbeat accents. There is some poignancy, of Night, who is then rescued by a handsome too, in the fact this was one of the very last pieces prince. This may well have been the tale Mozart Mozart completed: he died just over two months would have set to music, but for a rival produc- after that premiere. tion of Die Zauberzither, a fairy story by Joachim Daniel Jaffé

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1791 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME December 31, 2001, Orchestra Hall. 6 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Carlos Kalmar conducting September 30, 1791; Vienna, Austria CSO RECORDING August 16 & 18, 2012, Ravinia 1962. Hans Rosbaud conducting. CSO Festival. James Conlon conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES (From the Archives, vol. 6: Mozart) (complete opera) March 17 & 18, 1893, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore INSTRUMENTATION Thomas conducting two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, July 9, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Hans two bassoons, two horns, two Lange conducting trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings 2 Born March 14, 1681, Magdeburg, Germany. Died June 25, 1767, Hamburg, Germany. Viola Concerto in G Major

During his lifetime, elemann was unusually prolific and Georg Philipp Telemann versatile—it was said he could write was considered the in any desired style, and he sometimes greatest German com- turnedT out new works like a short-order cook. poser of the time. Neither He composed more than 40 operas, 46 Passions, J.S. Bach nor Handel some 125 orchestral suites, another 125 con- could compete with the certos, 130 trios, 145 pieces for keyboard, and extent of his fame. When almost literally countless other works, large his vast Musique de and small. (The Guinness Book of World Records table—or Tafelmusik— once listed him as the most prolific composer of collection was published in 1733, the subscription all time, a largely meaningless feat that is also list included not only wealthy merchants in hard to pin down, since so many of his and his Hamburg (where Telemann reigned as the leading contemporaries’ compositions have been lost. composer for nearly half a century), but nobility Steve Allen, the late TV star and pop-song from throughout Europe and music lovers from as writer, is said to be the most prolific composer of far away as London, Copenhagen, Cadiz, and the more easily documented “modern times.”) Riga. Fifty-two of the 206 advance subscriptions came from abroad, an astonishing feat in an era f Telemann’s surviving 125-plus when most people rarely ventured far from their —calling for one to four birthplace or followed the news in other coun- soloists, and sometimes without a soloist tries. Handel himself placed an order from Oat all—there is just one for solo viola. It was London. Bach ordered a different collection of probably composed in the late 1710s, around the Telemann’s music five years later. Telemann was a time Telemann wrote that he was not a great friend of both Handel, with whom he corre- lover of concertos, a statement (published in his sponded into his old age, and Bach, and even was 1718 autobiography) which has been taken to godfather to the Bach son who took one of his mean he was fed up with the empty virtuoso names, Carl Philipp Emmanuel. (It was C.P.E. display pieces then in vogue. Throughout the Bach who ultimately would succeed Telemann in viola concerto, Telemann is more concerned with his Hamburg post after Telemann died in 1767.) content than flash, and he often favors show- But Telemann’s star faded quickly. By the casing the deep, rich notes of the viola’s lower beginning of the nineteenth century, his music register over operatic high notes and endless rarely figured in concert programs, and a revival coloratura. Unlike many of his contemporaries, of Der Tod Jesu in Vienna in 1832 is thought especially Vivaldi, Telemann preferred an older to be the last performance of one of his major four-movement design rather than the newly scores until the twentieth century. Although popular tripartite form. The G major viola the Chicago Symphony played music by Bach concerto alternates slow and fast movements, and Handel its very first season, the Orchestra allowing for an arresting, majestic opening waited sixty-two years to program its first work and a rapid-fire finale, with a light Allegro and by Telemann. a songful G minor Andante in between. Phillip Huscher

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCE APPROXIMATE ca. 1761–1721 June 11, 1966, Orchestra Hall. PERFORMANCE TIME William Schoen as soloist, Antonio 12 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Janigro conducting date unknown INSTRUMENTATION solo viola, strings, continuo 3 Giuseppe Tartini Born April 8, 1692, Piran, Slovenia. Died February 26, 1770, Padua, Italy. Pastorale (orchestrated by Ottorino Respighi) Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective

This Pastorale was the first make arrangements of all kinds of earlier music, piece by Giuseppe Tartini from Renaissance motets and baroque keyboard to appear on Chicago works to piano pieces by Rossini. Symphony Orchestra The Chicago Symphony’s 1927 program book programs. In the same identifies Giuseppe Tartini as “one of the great arrangement by Ottorino masters of violin playing.” He also was a highly Respighi that is played regarded composer, teacher, and theorist—or as this week, the October the Chicago writer put it, “a musical sci- 1927 performances were the entist whose researches in the phenomena of first in America. Chicago sound were of real value to his art.” Tartini audiences already knew Respighi as the com- originally studied law (although he was best poser of the brilliantly colored symphonic poems known at the university in Padua for his skill The Fountains of Rome and The Pines of Rome, in fencing), and ultimately defied his parents’ both of which had been introduced to Chicago desire that he become a priest by pursuing a in the past decade. But they also knew Respighi career in music. He soon was known as a master as a lover—and restoration expert, of sorts—of of the violin—he is said to have abandoned his older music. Frederick Stock, the Orchestra’s wife for four years in order to concentrate on second music director, had led the Chicago perfecting his technique—and a favored per- Symphony in Respighi’s first suite of Ancient Airs former. He ultimately founded a violin school and Dances, an orchestral arrangement of in Padua, and began to turn out a large body of Renaissance lute pieces (including one by music for string instruments. His most famous Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the astronomer), work is the so-called Devil’s Trill Sonata, said just six years earlier. And in 1924, Stock had to have been inspired by a dream in which the given the U.S. premiere of Respighi’s Concerto Devil seized Tartini’s violin and began to play a gregoriano, a concerto-like fantasy on a theme tormented piece characterized by wild trilling. drawn from Gregorian chant, which Robert The Pastorale heard on this week’s program, Chen will play here under Riccardo Muti in which is an arrangement Respighi made in 1908 February. Respighi developed an interest in of Tartini’s in A major, shows music history early on, while studying with Luigi Tartini as a master of natural Italian song and Torchi, a pioneering Italian musicologist. Several beautiful, idiomatic string writing. It has two of Respighi’s own first works are highly influ- movements—each moving from stately, slow enced by the seventeenth- and eighteenth- music into more spirited virtuoso territory. century music he was transcribing at the time. Throughout his career, Respighi continued to Phillip Huscher

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION ca. 1731 U.S. premiere (RESPIGHI ORCHESTRATION) October 28 & 29, 1927, Orchestra Hall. solo viola, strings FIRST PERFORMANCE Jacques Gordon as soloist, Frederick date unknown Stock conducting APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 12 minutes

4 Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany. Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig, Germany. Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043

A great deal of Bach’s the four figures, it was probably just business music survives, but, as usual. incredibly, there’s much more that didn’t. his concerto is the only surviving one by Christoph Wolff, today’s Bach for two solo violins. The challenge finest Bach biographer, of writing for two identical solo instru- speculates that over two mentsT is something later composers rejected in hundred compositions favor of a contrasting pair (Mozart’s well-known from the Weimar years , the Sinfonie concertante, is are lost, and that just 15 scored for violin and viola; Brahms chose the to 20 percent of Bach’s output from his subse- violin and ). Baroque composers, however, quent time in Cöthen has survived. Two-fifths of loved symmetry, and Bach takes full advantage the cantatas he wrote in Leipzig have never been of having twin solos by writing lines that criss- found. The familiar Bach-Werke-Verzeichneis, a cross, mirror, echo each other, and toss phrases catalog that attaches a BWV number to each of back and forth, like questions and answers. Bach’s compositions, lists 1,120 works nonethe- One can hardly imagine two violinists fighting less, and the tally continues to grow as new scores over these parts, for they are equally expressive, are uncovered. melodic, and demanding. What Bach writes for A very large portion of Bach’s orchestral one violin he quickly offers the other, and the music is lost; the existing twenty-some solo solo writing throughout the concerto becomes a concertos, six Brandenburg Concertos, and four model of subtle negotiation and considerate give orchestral suites no doubt represent just the tip and take. In the middle movement, the second of the iceberg. After Bach moved to Cöthen in violin appears to be the leader, although the 1717 and was no longer tied down with prepar- first violin temporarily gains the upper hand by ing music for weekly church services, he had coming in on a higher pitch. the time to write many of what would become There are three movements in the traditional his best-known works. During his six years fast-slow-fast pattern. The first and last are in Cöthen, he composed the six Brandenburg designed according to the ritornello principle, Concertos, the six suites for solo cello, much whereby music for the full ensemble recurs of the keyboard music we still play (the first throughout, setting off the music for the soloists. book of The Well-Tempered Clavier, the two-part The central slow movement is a spacious aria for inventions and three-part sinfonias, the English two. The soloists behave like two friends who, and French suites), miscellaneous sonatas and eager to tell the same lovely story, keep interrupt- partitas, and more than a dozen concertos. That ing each other, repeating one another’s favorite is a lifetime’s output all by itself, though for a lines, and urging the tale seamlessly forward. composer whose complete catalog numbers in They speak together only at the end. Phillip Huscher

COMPOSED July 23, 1937, Ravinia Festival. John December 13, 14, 15 & 18, 2012, 1717–1723 Weicher and Robert Quick as soloists, Orchestra Hall. Jennifer Koh and Hans Lange conducting Jaime Laredo as soloists, Harry FIRST PERFORMANCE Bicket conducting date unknown MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES July 15, 2005, Ravinia Festival. Pinchas two solo violins, harpsichord, strings February 3 & 4, 1893, Auditorium Zukerman and Miriam Fried as Theatre. Johann Marquardt and APPROXIMATE soloists, James Conlon conducting Franz Esser as soloists, Theodore PERFORMANCE TIME Thomas conducting 16 minutes 5 Wolfgang Mozart Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543

Ironically, it’s Mozart’s were printed in groups of three), but they weren’t last three symphonies published during Mozart’s lifetime. rather than the famous Did Mozart ever hear them? Even if the requiem that remain the projected subscription series of 1788 never took mystery of his final years. place, Mozart did tour Germany the following Almost as soon as Mozart year, conducting concerts for which we have died, romantic myth only sketchy details. “A Symphony,” for example, attached itself to the was advertised for the program at the Leipzig unfinished pages of the Gewandhaus on May 12. And back home in requiem left scattered on Vienna, no less a musical big shot than Antonio his bed; a host of questions—who commissioned Salieri conducted concerts on April 16 and 17, the work?; who finished it?; was Mozart 1791, featuring a “grand symphony” by Mozart. poisoned?—inspired painters, novelists, biogra- The fact that the G minor symphony exists in phers, librettists, playwrights, and screenwriters two versions—with and without clarinets— to heights of imaginative re-creation. We now argues that Mozart revised the score for a know those answers: the requiem is unfinished, specific performance. but not unexplained. The final symphonies, on the other hand— he Symphony no. 39 in E-flat major is no. 39 in E-flat, the “great” G minor (no. 40), the least studied and performed of the and the Jupiter (no. 41)—continue to beg more three symphonies, and that in itself is questions than we can answer. Even what was somethingT of a puzzle, for it is no less a mas- once the most provocative fact about these terwork. It doesn’t, however, have the tragic works—that Mozart never heard them—is now romanticism of the G minor symphony or the doubtful. We no longer believe that Mozart magnificent heroics that earned the C major its wrote these three great symphonies for the nickname, the Jupiter. In the nineteenth century, drawer alone—that goes against all we know of when only the most dramatic of Mozart’s works his working methods. But we don’t know what remained in the repertory, the E-flat symphony orchestra or occasion he had in mind. Apparently had no story to tell. Its hallmarks are purely a series of subscription concerts was planned for musical—difficult to pinpoint or explain—and the summer of 1788, when Mozart entered the it’s a work of considerable understatement. three symphonies in his catalog, but there’s no There’s nothing in the first movement that evidence that the performances took place. It’s doesn’t fit the textbook model of classical likely that the works were conceived as a trilogy, sonata form. Even the large slow introduction, with publication in mind (symphonies often which Mozart rarely uses in his symphonies,

COMPOSED MOST RECENT CSO RECORDINGS entered in Mozart’s catalog June 26, CSO PERFORMANCES 1953. Fritz Reiner conducting. VAI 1788 July 11, 2003, Ravinia Festival. Peter (video) Oundjian conducting 1955. Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA FIRST PERFORMANCE May 28, 29, 30 & 31, 2009, Orchestra date unknown 1967. Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. Hall. Bernard Labadie conducting CSO (From the Archives, vol. 9: A Tribute FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES to Carlo Maria Giulini) INSTRUMENTATION January 29 & 30, 1892, flute, two clarinets, two bassoons, two 1982. Sir Georg Solti conducting. Auditorium Theatre. Theodore horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings London Thomas conducting July 12, 1942, Ravinia Festival. George APPROXIMATE Szell conducting PERFORMANCE TIME 25 minutes 6 is a standard feature of Haydn’s output at the of such spare, chamber-music textures. The third same time. But listen to the way Mozart’s movement is one of Mozart’s most celebrated introduction—exalted and grand, with stately minuets, complete with a trio introduced by clar- dotted rhythms and rich chromaticism—sweeps inets and based, for once, on a real rather than almost imperceptibly into the lovely, singing an imaginary ländler. The finale, in perpetual main Allegro (the great Classical Style scholar motion and colored by pervasive humor, is built Charles Rosen pointed out that the melody entirely from one theme, and although Mozart of the Allegro literally extends the unfinished pretends that his “second theme” is new, it is in cadence of the introduction). The effect is subtle fact merely a clever makeover of the first. and very modern—almost cinematic in the seamless merging from one scene to another— Phillip Huscher and the point was not lost on Beethoven, who spent much of his career perfecting the art of transition. Mozart’s Allegro, beginning with a Daniel Jaffé is a regular contributor to BBC Music thread of sound and building to a point of high Magazine and a specialist in English and Russian music. intensity, is made of strong and bold materials, He is the author of a biography of Sergei Prokofiev unostentatiously used. (Phaidon) and the Historical Dictionary of Russian Music The Andante is a marvel of sustained elo- (Scarecrow Press). quence, capped by moments of great power and Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the passion that are all the more remarkable in music Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.

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