Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director

PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOURTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra 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, March 26, 2015, at 8:00 Saturday, March 28, 2015, at 8:00

Edo de Waart Conductor Orion Weiss Piano Ippolito Nocturne for Orchestra First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 Allegro maestoso Andante Allegretto ORION WEISS

INTERMISSION

Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90 Allegro con brio Andante Poco allegretto Allegro

The appearance of Orion Weiss is endowed in part by the Nuveen Investments Emerging Artist Fund. 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

Michael Ippolito Born January 28, 1985, Tampa, Florida. Nocturne for Orchestra

Michael Ippolito is both a originally a chamber work for flute, violin, and composer and a performer piano, and later rescored for orchestra, takes its whose still-young career initial cue from the work by the Spanish surreal- has ignored the old-fash- ist painter and sculptor Joan Miró, who died in ioned boundaries: he has 1983, two years before Ippolito was born. collaborated with classical, folk, and jazz musicians— in everything from MICHAEL IPPOLITO COMMENTS ON experimental improvisa- NOCTURNE FOR ORCHESTRA tion to traditional klezmer music. He studied at the Juilliard School (with My Nocturne was originally inspired by Joan John Corigliano, the CSO’s first-ever compos- Miró’s 1940 painting of the same name. I was er-in-residence, from 1987 to 1990) and at the first drawn to the pure visual appeal of Miró’s University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of fantastical figures and swirling lines, but I was Music, and was a composer fellow at the Aspen also intrigued by the idea of a “nocturne” with Music Festival. Ippolito is now assistant professor so much energy and whimsy. As I thought about of composition at Texas State University. the tension between the title and the image, the Not surprisingly, given the variety of his other approaches to the nocturne came to my musical experiences, the range of sights and mind—from the Whistler paintings and the sounds that generate Ippolito’s own music is dreamy world of Chopin and Field that inspired wide: an Ansel Adams photograph, a field him, to the colorful and diverse Debussy pieces, recording of a Croatian folk song, poems by Carl to the creaking and sliding “night music” of Sandburg and Siegfried Sassoon, three Japanese Bartók. In the end, my piece is about the differ- haiku about mushrooms. Recent works include ent connotations of the title as much as it is about a string quartet inspired by Bruce Chatwin’s an imagined nocturnal scene. book The Songlines; a large ensemble piece, West Nocturne is in three large sections. The of the Sun, which takes its name from a novel by opening evokes a hazy world, with allusions to Haruki Murakami; Lights Out!, for violin and familiar nocturnal imagery floating in and out piano, inspired by old-time radio shows; and A of focus. The middle section is a wild scherzo Feast of Fools, a piece for large ensemble based inspired by Miró’s bizarre nocturne. At the end, on the medieval celebration of “drunkenness and the music from the opening section returns, with bawdy humor, of social inversion, ceremonial a brief nod to Chopin before the music evaporates parody, and licensed foolishness.” His Nocturne, to nothing.

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES horns, two trumpets, three trombones, 2010, for flute, violin, and piano These are the Chicago Symphony tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, 2011, for orchestra Orchestra’s first performances. piano, strings

FIRST PERFORMANCE INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE February 27, 2012, New York City two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, PERFORMANCE TIME two clarinets, two bassoons, four 10 minutes

2 Wolfgang Mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503

Mozart wrote twelve grueling schedule: “I don’t think that this way I piano concertos in less can possibly get out of practice.” The three years than three years. We can beginning in 1784 marked Mozart’s heyday as a follow his extraordinary performer, and these twelve concertos were his progress almost day by main performing vehicles. day, because in 1784 he began to catalog his he C major concerto we now know works, entering each of as K. 503 wraps up this exceptional his compositions in a period—it is the twelfth and final work small, hand-bound inT Mozart’s outpouring of concertos, and the volume as soon as he finished it. (He even took last one he would write for more than a year. the book with him on trips, since he never knew It comes at the end of 1786, a very busy year when he might complete one of several works in that began with two operas—The Impresario progress.) He listed six piano concertos that year and The Marriage of Figaro—and included two alone, an astonishing creative achievement and other piano concertos and the last of the horn something of a logistical feat as well, since during concertos, as well as the E-flat piano quartet those same twelve months he worked on several and several other remarkable pieces of chamber other substantial scores; maintained a heavy music. Mozart worked simultaneously on the teaching schedule; gave many concerts; enter- C major concerto and the Prague Symphony, tained a number of house guests; suffered from a completing the former on December 4 and the kidney infection; recorded the birth of his second symphony two days later. (With a few days son; and moved his entire family, not once, but left on the calendar, he turned out one of his twice, to new lodgings. most original compositions, the concert aria This was the busiest, most productive period with obbligato piano, Ch’io mi scordi di te.) of Mozart’s life, and he consistently worked For many years, the C major piano concerto at the peak of his powers, both as a composer was seldom played, particularly compared to its and as a performer. He apparently thrived on a immediate predecessor in C minor, which imme- high-energy existence and a packed calendar—on diately attracted attention with its unusually March 3, when he wrote to his father that he dark and dramatic colors. K. 503 is quite unlike had twenty-two concerts in thirty-eight days, any other concerto in the series. It’s certainly he couldn’t fail to see the bright side of such a the grandest and most symphonic of all. The key

COMPOSED MOST RECENT CADENZA 1786, completed on December 4 CSO PERFORMANCES Orion Weiss February 23 & 25, 2006, Orchestra FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. Alfred Brendel as soloist, Daniel APPROXIMATE date unknown, possibly in Barenboim conducting PERFORMANCE TIME December 1786 32 minutes July 23, 2006, Ravinia Festival. Andreas Haefliger as soloist, James FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES CSO RECORDING Conlon conducting December 13, 1955, Orchestra 1958. André Tchaikowsky as soloist, Hall. Rudolf Serkin as soloist, Fritz Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA INSTRUMENTATION Reiner conducting solo piano, one flute, two oboes, two July 13, 1956, Ravinia Festival. bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, Leon Fleisher as soloist, Igor timpani, strings Markevitch conducting

3 itself—C major (the one Haydn later picked for the depiction of light in The Creation)—regularly inspired some of Mozart’s most brilliant and majestic music, such as the earlier piano concerto in the same key (K. 467), or the Jupiter Symphony yet to come. K. 503 is, in fact, Mozart’s longest concerto, the first movement alone running to a more than generous 432 measures.

n The Classical Style, Charles In 1784, Mozart began to catalog his music (Index of all my works) Rosen writes of the “almost neutral character of the material” same pitch.) When, at the beginning of the Iin the first movement, and for once, Mozart’s development section, the piano seems to begin on subjects seem deliberately conventional. The first the wrong notes (again in the knocking rhythm), sixteen measures, for example, offer little more the effect is so striking that Beethoven decided than grand cadential flourishes—a commonplace to borrow it for his own Fourth Piano Concerto, series of chords that would seem more fitting written twenty years later, at the same point in at the very end, to bring down the curtain. the movement and in the identical rhythm. But in the seventeenth measure, Mozart adds The Andante is another sonata-form move- a tiny gesture in the oboes and bassoons, first ment, on a much more intimate scale, with piano in C major, then in C minor, introducing an phrases so lavishly decorated that one can only ambiguity of mood that will color the entire wonder how Mozart would have further embel- movement with a continual flickering of light lished them in performance, as was common and shadow. And, in the very next measure, he practice at the time. launches a plain rhythmic figure that will take The rondo finale begins cheerfully enough, but over the whole movement, much as Beethoven’s again the clouds roll in, and music that seemed famous knocking theme dominates his Fifth buoyant at first soon appears less certain. A Symphony. (The rhythm is the same—three particularly dark and passionate episode appears short hammer strokes followed by a longer midway through. The ending is upbeat, inventive, note—although Mozart places all four on the and brilliant.

4 Johannes Brahms Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany. Died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria. Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90

The Chicago Symphony adventuresome song composer, said, “Brahms played Brahms’s Third writes symphonies regardless of what has Symphony its very first happened in the meantime.” He didn’t mean that season. By that time, as a compliment, but it touches on an important Johannes Brahms, still truth: Brahms was the first composer to develop very much alive, had successfully Beethoven’s rigorous brand of sym- stopped writing symphonic thinking. phonic music. Little more Hans Richter, a musician of considerable than a year before, he had perception, called this F major symphony announced his decision to Brahms’s Eroica. There’s certainly something quit work on his fifth symphony. It was a time of Beethovenesque about the way the music is devel- tying up loose ends, finishing business, and oped from the most compact material, although clearing the desk. (Brahms was a tidy man; he the parallel with the monumental, expansive left virtually no evidence of his unfinished Eroica is puzzling, aside from the opening tempo fifth symphony.) (Allegro con brio) and the fact that they are both It’s hard to imagine a time when Brahms’s third symphonies. Brahms’s Third Symphony is Third Symphony was contemporary music. To his shortest and his most tightly knit. Its sub- many listeners today, it’s emphatically classic (in stance came to him in a relatively sudden spurt: it the sense of a work of enduring excellence, cozily was mostly written in less than four months—a familiar and harmless), but several hundred flash of inspiration compared to the twenty years people walked out of the first Boston Symphony he spent on his First Symphony. Brahms was performance in 1884. (It had been introduced enjoying a trip to the Rhine at the time, and he to America a month before at one of Frank van quickly rented a place in Wiesbaden, where he der Stucken’s Novelty Concerts in New York.) could work in peace, and canceled his plans to But Brahms’s Third was once a novelty, tough for summer in Bad Ischl. The whole F major sym- orchestras and difficult for audiences. phony was written nonstop. Even when Brahms’s music was new, it was hardly radical. Brahms was concerned with he benefit of such compressed work is a writing music worthy of standing next to that thematic coherence and organic unity by Beethoven; it was this fear that kept him rare even in Brahms. Clara Schumann from placing the double bar at the end of his wroteT to Brahms on February 11, 1884, after first symphony for twenty years. Hugo Wolf, the having spent hours playing through the work

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1882–83 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME March 13, 14, 15 & 18, 2003, Orchestra 36 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. David Robertson conducting December 2, 1883; Vienna, Austria CSO RECORDINGS July 15, 2011, Ravinia Festival. 1940. Frederick Stock conducting. Christoph von Dohnányi conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Columbia April 22 & 23, 1892, Auditorium INSTRUMENTATION 1957. Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, 1976. James Levine conducting. RCA July 11, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Hans two bassoons and contrabassoon, four Lange conducting horns, two trumpets, three trombones, 1978. Sir Georg Solti conducting. timpani, strings London 1993. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Erato 5 in its two-piano version: “All the movements standards he set for himself. All four movements seem to be of one piece, one beat of the heart.” end quietly—try to name one other symphony Clara had been following Brahms’s career of which that can be said—and some of its most ever since the day he showed up at the door powerful moments are so restrained the tension some thirty years earlier, asking to meet her is nearly unbearable. famous husband Robert. By 1884, Robert Both the second and third movements hold Schumann—Brahms’s first staunch advocate— back as much as they reveal. For long stretches, was long dead, and Brahms’s on-again-off-again Brahms writes music that never rises above infatuation with Clara was off for good. But piano; when it does, the effect is always telling. she was still a dear friend, a musician of great The Andante abounds in beautiful writing for the insight, and a keen judge of his work. clarinet, long one of Brahms’s favorite instru- Surely, in trying to get her hands around the ments. (The year the Chicago Symphony first three massive chords with which Brahms begins, played this symphony, Brahms met the clarinetist Clara noted in the top voice the rising F, A-flat, Richard Mühlfeld, who inspired the composer’s F motive that had become Brahms’s monogram last great instrumental works, the Clarinet Trio for “frei aber froh” (free but joyful), an optimis- and the Clarinet Quintet.) The third movement tic response to the motto of his friend Joseph opens with a wonderful, arching theme for Joachim, “frei aber einsam” (free but lonely). It’s cello—another of the low, rich sounds Brahms one of the few times in Brahms’s music that the favored—later taken up by the solo horn in a pas- notes mean something beyond themselves. That sage so fragile and transparent it overrules all the particular motive can be pointed out again and textbook comments about the excessive weight of again throughout the symphony—it’s the bass Brahms’s writing. line for the violin melody that follows in mea- There is weight and power in the finale, sures three and four, for example. Clara also can’t although it begins furtively in the shadows and have missed the continual shifting back and forth evaporates into thin air some ten minutes later. from A-natural to A-flat, starting with the first The body of the movement is dramatic, forceful, three chords and again in the very first phrase and brilliantly designed. As Donald Tovey writes of Brahms’s cascading violin melody. Since in his famous essay on this symphony, “It needs the half step from A-natural down to A-flat either a close analysis or none at all.” Two things darkens F major into F minor, the preeminence do merit mention. The somber music in the of F major isn’t so certain in this music, even trombones and bassoons very near the beginning though we already know from the title that it is a theme from the middle of the third move- will win in the end. ment (precisely the sort of thematic reference we In four measures (and as many seconds), don’t associate with Brahms). And the choice of Brahms has laid his cards on the table. In the F minor for the key of this movement was deter- course of this movement and those that follow, mined as early as the fourth bar of the symphony, we could trace, with growing amazement, the when the cloud of the minor mode crossed over progress of that rising three-note motive, or the the bold F major opening. Throughout the finale, falling thirds of the violin theme, or the quicksil- the clouds return repeatedly (and often unexpect- ver shifts of major to minor that give this music edly) and Brahms makes something of a cliff- its peculiar character. This is what Clara meant hanger out of the struggle between major and when she commented that “all the movements minor. The ending is a surprise, not because it seem to be of one piece,” for, although Brahms’s settles comfortably into F major, but because, in connections are intricate and subtle, we sense a way that’s virtually unknown to the symphony their presence, and that they are unshakable. before the twentieth century, it allows the music For all its apparent beauty, Brahms’s Third to unwind, all its energy spent, content with the Symphony hasn’t always been the most easily memory of the symphony’s opening. grasped of his works. Brahms doesn’t shake us by the shoulders as Beethoven so often did, even though the quality of his material and the logic Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago of its development is up to the Beethovenian Symphony Orchestra.