Sir Mark Elder Conductor Dvo Rák the Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109

Program ONe HuNDreD TWeNTy-SeCOND SeASON Chicago Symphony orchestra riccardo muti Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen regenstein Conductor emeritus Yo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Wednesday, November 28, 2012, at 6:30 (Afterwork Masterworks, performed with no intermission) Sir mark Elder Conductor Dvo ˇrák The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109 Shostakovich Symphony No. 1, Op. 10 The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBBM Newsradio 780 and 105.9 FM for its generous support as media sponsor of the Afterwork Masterworks series. Thursday, November 29, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, November 30, 2012, at 1:30 Saturday, December 1, 2012, at 8:00 Sir mark Elder Conductor alice Coote Mezzo-soprano Dvo ˇrák The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109 Berlioz Les nuits d’été, Op. 7 Villanelle Le spectre de la rose Sur les lagunes Absence Au cimetière (Clair de lune) L’île inconnue ALiCe Coote IntErmISSIon Shostakovich Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10 Allegretto—Allegro non troppo Allegro Lento—Largo—Lento— Allegro molto 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 antonín Dvo ˇrák Born September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic). Died May 1, 1904, Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Golden Spinning Wheel, op. 109 ntonín Dvořák wasn’t the first he studied piano, organ, and viola, Acomposer to reject the family eventually becoming a decent business for a life in music. Robert enough violist to earn a living as Schumann was the only one of four an orchestra musician when he brothers to abandon his father’s couldn’t make any money from his book publishing company for compositions. After he moved to another career. František Dvořák, Prague in 1857, he became prin- a butcher in a village just north of cipal viola in the orchestra for the Prague, also expected his son to new Provisional Theater (later the continue in the trade. František National Theater). For the rest of played the zither and even wrote his life, he treasured the memory a few tunes for the local band, but of playing a concert there in 1863 he didn’t think of composing as an under his idol, Richard Wagner, occupation. He was irate when his which included the overture to thirteen-year-old son dropped out Tannhäuser, the prelude to Tristan of his apprenticeship as a butcher and Isolde, and excerpts from Die and moved to nearby Zlonice to Meistersinger and Die Walküre. In study music. 1871, Dvořák left the orchestra Antonín Dvořák learned to play to devote more time to composi- the violin as a small boy, and he tion, but he soon realized that he composed marches and waltzes would have to teach to get by. For for the village band. In Zlonice, many years, his father doubted the ComPoSED FIrSt CSo InStrUmEntatIon 1896 PErFormanCE two flutes and piccolo, two (U.S. PrEmIErE) oboes and english horn, FIrSt PErFormanCES January 1, 1897, Auditorium two clarinets, two bassoons June 3, 1896, Prague Theatre. Theodore and contrabassoon, four (private) Thomas conducting horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, tim- October 26, London (public) moSt rECEnt CSo pani, bass drum, cymbals, PErFormanCE triangle, harp, strings October 28, 2006, Orchestra Hall. Daniel aPProxImatE Harding conducting PErFormanCE tImE 27 minutes 2 wisdom of his son’s choice of music reputation in this country, and also over the life of a butcher. inspired some of his best-loved Then in 1873, Dvořák’s works music, including the American began to attract attention. The String Quartet and his last successful premiere of his patriotic symphony—the ninth, known cantata Heirs of the White Mountain as From the New World. After he on March 9 launched his fame returned home in April 1895, in his homeland. Later that year, Dvořák composed two last string he married Anna Cermáková, quartets that were his final essays the sister of the Prague actress in abstract music, cleared his head, Josefina, who had, nearly a decade and then unexpectedly turned his before, rebuffed his advances. (Like attention to the symphonic poem. Mozart and Haydn, he married This late-in-life career move was not his first love, but her sister.) inspired by the rediscovery of The In 1874, Dvořák took stock of his Garland, a collection of ballads by situation: he had begun to taste the nationalist poet Karel Jaromír success; his wife was pregnant with Erben—poetry that Dvořák had their first child; and he looked loved for years, but that spoke forward to the pleasures, comforts, to him even more forcefully now and traditions of family life. But he that he was back in his homeland. craved recognition and he needed In 1896, Dvořák composed four money. In July, he entered fifteen of symphonic poems based on tales his newest works in a competition drawn from Erben’s anthology; a for the Austrian State Music Prize, fifth, not based on Erben, followed a government award designed to the next year. They were his last assist struggling young artists. The orchestral works. judges included Johannes Brahms, the biggest name in Viennese he Golden Spinning Wheel is the music. Dvořák won the first prize Tthird of the symphonic poems of four hundred gulden, and he that Dvořák wrote in the early felt a kind of encouragement and months of 1896 (he began all three validation that money can’t buy. during the first days of January, Over the next few years, several and worked on them at the same of Dvořák’s works were published, time for several weeks). In late first in Prague and then more February, after he had finished the widely, and his music quickly first two Erben pieces and was still became well known throughout at work on The Golden Spinning Europe and in the United States. Wheel, Dvořák visited Brahms, who By the time he accepted Jeannette urged him to move his family to Thurber’s invitation to take up Vienna—an invitation that Dvořák temporary residence in the United couldn’t seriously consider, since States, beginning in 1892, he was he now felt more attached than enjoying extraordinary critical ever to his native land. We don’t and popular success. Dvořák’s know if Dvořák told Brahms, the American years cemented his great symphonist—and, pointedly, 3 the composer of no symphonic caught in an ill-fated romance. poems—of the new direction his When the king later returns to music had taken. pursue Dornicka, he encounters Taking a cue from Liszt’s her stepmother, who has a young, pioneering tone poems, Dvořák unmarried daughter of her own. assigns a musical theme to each In a turn of events that in our time central character in the action, would surely dominate the media allowing it to be transformed by for weeks, the stepmother takes the the events in the unfolding drama. two girls into the woods, murders (This was also the model for the and dismembers Dornicka, and series of new orchestral works sends her own daughter off to begun by Richard Strauss in the marry the king. (Dornicka’s feet, preceding decade; he was com- hands, and eyes are later sent along posing Also sprach Zarathustra at to the king’s castle.) After the the time Dvořák was working on wedding—celebrated by a wonder- the Erben scores.) Although the fully Dvořákian polka—the king shape of Erben’s narrative largely goes off to war. In the meantime, determined the form of The Golden an old man, wandering in the Spinning Wheel, the influence of his woods, discovers the remains of language had a more profound and Dornicka’s body and is determined subtle impact on Dvořák’s music. to bring her back to life, a make- Throughout the score, the rise and over process that ultimately involves fall of his melodic lines suggest exchanging a golden spinning the declamation of Erben’s verses wheel for her feet, a golden distaff (certain passages of the poem could for her hands, and a golden spindle almost be sung to Dvořák’s corre- for her eyes. When the king returns sponding themes). This is similar to from his triumphant wartime the “speech-melody” that Janáček action, the spinning wheel begins was developing in his operatic writ- to play a song describing the crimes ing at this time. committed by the stepmother and her daughter. The king races to the he Golden Spinning Wheel tells forest, where he finds Dornicka Tthe tale of a young king, out alive and even well, and he takes hunting on horseback, who stops her back to his castle. Although at a cottage to ask for a drink of Erben has the two murderers water, and, immediately falling in torn apart by wolves, Dvořák’s love with Dornicka, the young girl ending is uncomplicated and at the spinning wheel, becomes unequivocally happy. 4 Hector Berlioz Born December 11, 1803, Côte-Saint-André, France. Died March 8, 1869, Paris, France. Les nuits d’été, op. 7 t’s odd that Berlioz, normally the extravaganza for a military band of Imost talkative, opinionated, and two hundred players. revealing of musicians (he was the Berlioz began the first of these first major composer to write his songs, “Villanelle,” in March 1840, memoirs) had so little to say about picking a poem by his friend these extraordinary songs. We don’t Théophile Gautier, and gradu- know why he composed them or ally, over the next few months, set for whom—evidently they weren’t five more of Gautier’s texts.

Load more