Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Gennady Rozhdestvensky Conductor Stephen Williamson Clarinet Sibeli
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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra welcomes Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who has graciously agreed to conduct this performance while CSO Music Director Riccardo Muti recovers from a hip operation. Please note that Ligeti’s Ramifications has been replaced by Sibelius’s Rakastava. 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 Tuesday, February 16, 2016, at 7:30 Gennady Rozhdestvensky Conductor Stephen Williamson Clarinet Sibelius Rakastava, Op. 14 The Lover The Path of the Beloved Good Evening—Farewell Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 Allegro Adagio Rondo: Allegro STEPHEN WILLIAMSON INTERMISSION Pärt Orient & Occident First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48 Piece in the Form of a Sonatina: Andante non troppo—Allegro moderato Waltz: Moderato, tempo di valse Elegy: Larghetto elegiaco Finale: Russian Theme. Andante—Allegro con spirito CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. 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 Jean Sibelius Born December 8, 1865, Tavastehus, Finland. Died September 20, 1957, Järvenpää, Finland. Rakastava, Op. 14 When Sibelius was just that his music was difficult to perform and seven years old, his family too “modern.” made the forward-looking decision to transfer him ibelius knew that Rakastava was filled with from a popular Swedish strong and distinctive musical ideas, and language preparatory he refused to give up on it. In 1894, the school to the brand new, Syear after the competition, he arranged the work first-ever Finnish lan- for male chorus and string orchestra, and then guage grammar school. four years later he rewrote it again, this time There, he came into for mixed chorus. But it was only when he put contact for the first time with the Finnish folk the score aside, gave it a rest, and returned to it poetry collections—the Kalevala and the one last time in 1911, that the real brilliance of Kanteletar—finding the source for much of the Rakastava emerged at last. By 1911, Sibelius was music that would one day make him famous. a different composer from the one who had found Although he didn’t truly master Finnish until he inspiration in the Kanteletar texts eighteen years was in his twenties, this exposure to the sounds before. Now, internationally famous for Finlandia and rhythms of the language fired his imagina- and the composer of four increasingly visionary tion at an early age and sparked his ongoing symphonies, Sibelius completely rethought project of reading and re-reading these poetry Rakastava. Having uncovered the expressive collections that had been compiled by potential of purely orchestral music, Sibelius Elias Lönnrott in the first half of the now made the radical move of recomposing nineteenth century. Rakastava for instruments alone, the titles of his Sibelius’s first major composition was the three movements the only remaining evidence expansive Kullervo symphony that was based of the original Kanteletar texts. Removing the on the Kalevala, and it was such a success in Finnish words he so loved liberated Sibelius. The 1892 that from that point on Finland looked fourth and final version of Rakastava, in which no further for its greatest composer. In 1893, the rhythm and nuance of the text have been Sibelius began his first opera, The Building of completely internalized, is the one that brought the Boat, also inspired by the Kalevala. That him closest to the emotional content of the same year he set three lyrical love poems Kanteletar poems. Scored for strings and minimal from the Kanteletar for unaccompanied men’s percussion (timpani, sparsely and quietly used chorus, titling the set Rakastava (The lover). in the outer movements, with six soft notes for When he entered Rakastava in a competition the triangle in the central movement), Rakastava sponsored by the Helsinki University Chorus, is a miniature triptych, with the final panel he was told, not for the last time in his career, recalling the unsung narrative of the first. COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1893–1911 May 14, 15 & 16, 2009, Orchestra Hall. string orchestra, triangle, timpani Osmo Vänskä conducting FIRST PERFORMANCE APPROXIMATE Date unknown PERFORMANCE TIME 11 minutes 2 Wolfgang Mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 This concerto is the last secret bloodsuckers, and worthless persons who important work Mozart served only to amuse him at the table and inter- finished before his death. course with whom injured his reputation.” Perhaps He recorded it in his she had learned from Constanze of the 500 gul- personal catalog without den Mozart lent Stadler, a hefty sum that was still a date, right after The unpaid when officials tallied the composer’s estate. Magic Flute and La Stadler’s true debt to Mozart is one clarinet- clemenza di Tito. The only ists still owe him today: pages upon pages of later entry is the little music as precious as any in the repertory. It’s Masonic Cantata, dated likely that Mozart first heard Stadler play in November 15, 1791. The Requiem, as we know, March 1784, in a performance of his B-flat wind didn’t make it into the list. serenade (K. 361). The Clarinet Trio, written two For decades the history of the Requiem was years later and supposedly finished in a bowling full of ambiguity, while that of the Clarinet alley on one of the many occasions when Mozart Concerto seemed quite clear. But in recent couldn’t separate music from life, may have been years, as we learned more about the unfinished composed with Stadler in mind. By 1789, the Requiem, questions about the concerto began year of the magnificent Quintet for Clarinet and to emerge. The Requiem riddles are now largely Strings (K. 581), virtually every note Mozart solved, damaging a fair amount of romantic wrote for the instrument, including the added myth and cinematic drama in the process. But an clarinet parts for the great G minor symphony, accurate account of the Clarinet Concerto seems was written for Stadler. more uncertain today than ever. We now come to the last year of Mozart’s life. Let’s start with Anton Stadler. Mozart tells us In late August 1791, Mozart set off for Prague to that he wrote the concerto for this great virtuoso supervise the first performances of La clemenza clarinet player, a close friend, a fellow Mason di Tito, accompanied by Stadler, who was to play (although a member of a different lodge), and, on in the Prague orchestra; Franz Xaver Süssmayr, numerous occasions, a spirited gambling com- who would soon inherit the task of finishing panion. Mozart enjoyed Stadler’s friendship and the Requiem; and Constanze. Mozart worked admired his talent, easily accepting that the latter on the opera in the coach, writing two virtuoso was infinitely more generous and reliable than the obbligato solos for Stadler. The premiere on former. The musical skill was evidently prodi- September 6 was decently received, though the gious: “One would never have thought,” wrote a empress Maria Luisa is said to have shouted from critic in 1785, “that a clarinet could imitate the her box, “Una porcheria tedesca!” (“German human voice to such perfection.” But Sophie rubbish,” to use the imperial translation.) Mozart Haibel, Mozart’s sister-in-law, remembered returned home to Vienna, leaving Stadler behind Stadler as one of the composer’s “false friends, to accept thunderous applause and cheers from COMPOSED November 18, 1961, Orchestra November 11, 12 & 14, 2004, Orchestra September–November 1791 Hall. Clark Brody as soloist, John Hall. Larry Combs as soloist, Semyon Weicher conducting Bychkov conducting FIRST PERFORMANCE Date unknown MOST RECENT INSTRUMENTATION CSO PERFORMANCES solo clarinet, two flutes, two bassoons, FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES July 11, 2003, Ravinia Festival. two horns, strings July 25, 1957, Ravinia Festival. Reginald Richard Stoltzman as soloist, Peter Kell as soloist, Georg Solti conducting Oundjian conducting APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 28 minutes 3 his fellow orchestra But by the time the Clarinet Concerto was members for his big published, a decade after Mozart’s death, solos each night. Stadler’s basset clarinet had gone out of favor, On September 28, and the concerto was printed in a version Mozart entered The rewritten for the narrower range of the standard Magic Flute in his clarinet. Even though a contemporary review catalog; the pre- argued that this wasn’t the music Mozart wrote, miere, two nights and Stadler was still alive to protest, players and later in a suburban audiences quickly came to accept this revised Viennese theater, version. Mozart’s autograph score has been lost. was only a partial There is, however, a fragment, 199 measures success. Sometime long and written entirely in Mozart’s hand, of a Anton Stadler, the in the middle of this concerto in G for basset horn (another ancient fellow-Mason for whom crazy schedule—two member of the clarinet family) that nearly dupli- Mozart wrote his Clarinet opera premieres in cates more than half of the first movement of Concerto. Anonymous less than a month, the Clarinet Concerto. Apparently Mozart first silhouette plus work on a conceived this music for basset horn, perhaps as requiem that had early as 1787, and later rewrote and finished it recently been commissioned through a mysteri- for Stadler’s modified clarinet. We can’t be sure ous messenger—Mozart began what would be for whom the earlier concerto was intended, his last concerto, for Stadler’s clarinet.