Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Sir Mark Elder Conductor Jeremy Denk Piano Dvořák Scherzo Capricc
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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, March 10, 2016, at 8:00 Saturday, March 12, 2016, at 8:00 Tuesday, March 15, 2016, at 7:30 Sir Mark Elder Conductor Jeremy Denk Piano Dvořák Scherzo capriccioso, Op. 66 Bartók Piano Concerto No. 2 Allegro Adagio—Presto—Adagio Allegro molto JEREMY DENK INTERMISSION Janáček, ed. Mackerras Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen Janáček Taras Bulba Death of Andrei Death of Ostap Death and Prophesy of Taras Bulba Thursday’s performance has been underwritten by a generous gift from Bill and Jan Jentes. Saturday’s concert is sponsored by Allstate Insurance Company. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. 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 state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. COMMENTS by DanielPhillip HuscherJaffé Phillip Daniel Huscher Jaffé Antonín Dvořák Born September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic). Died May 1, 1904, Prague, Bohemia. Scherzo capriccioso, Op. 66 Theodore Thomas, who York City, in January 1883. The next year, would later found the Thomas introduced this Scherzo capriccioso in Chicago Symphony Brooklyn, on November 8—a year and a half Orchestra, met Antonín after the first performance in Prague. The( New Dvořák in Berlin in May York Times review mistakenly called it a Rondo of 1867, following a capriccioso—or perhaps it was actually billed performance of Fidelio. In that way at the time.) Before moving to Chicago, the diary of his European Thomas gave several more U.S. premieres of trip that spring, Thomas Dvořák’s music, including the great D minor says simply: “The opera symphony (no. 7). itself made a great impression on me. Met Dvořák afterwards.” At the time, Thomas was n Chicago, Thomas programmed the thirty-one years old and had only recently Scherzo capriccioso for the first season of established the Theodore Thomas Orchestra that Chicago Symphony concerts. Written less would quickly become a staple of American Ithan a decade earlier, it is one of the pieces that concert life. Dvořák was just twenty-five, and quickly established Dvořák’s fame as a com- had not yet written any of the music for which he poser of brilliance and panache, with a flair of is famous today. rhythmic lilt and melodic charm. Particularly Thomas eventually would follow Dvořák’s because of its masterful orchestral effects— career very closely, performing many of his including the harp, a rare visitor in the Dvořák works soon after they were written and intro- orchestra—the Scherzo capriccioso captures ducing several important scores to the United Dvořák at his most colorful. It is this aspect of States. His championship of Dvořák in this his abundant talent that first won audiences’ country—as with Wagner, Brahms, and Richard favor, even if it suggests little of the depth of Strauss—helped to make his works a standard the later music. The Scherzo capriccioso was part of the American orchestral repertory while beloved from the start—it was among the they were, in fact, still new. The first of Dvořák’s pieces suggested by audience members for the compositions that Thomas premiered in the Orchestra’s “Popular (Request) Programs” as United States was the Slavonic Rhapsody in early as 1894. It appeared on eleven of the first A-flat major, which he conducted in Cincinnati twenty-five Chicago subscription seasons, and in February 1880, followed by the D major then continued to be a staple of the Orchestra’s symphony (the one we know as no. 6), in New so-called Popular Concerts until the 1960s. COMPOSED July 21, 1945, Ravinia Festival. Alfred INSTRUMENTATION 1883 Wallenstein conducting two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets and FIRST PERFORMANCE MOST RECENT bass clarinet, two bassoons, four May 16, 1883; Prague, Bohemia CSO PERFORMANCES horns, two trumpets, three trombones July 8, 1989, Ravinia Festival. James and tuba, timpani, percussion, FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Conlon conducting harp, strings January 15 & 16, 1892, June 4, 5 & 6, 2009, Orchestra Hall. Sir Auditorium Theatre. Theodore APPROXIMATE Mark Elder conducting Thomas conducting PERFORMANCE TIME 12 minutes 2 Then, like a number of other dazzling orches- performances in Orchestra Hall in more than tral showpieces that once reigned supreme, it forty years and the first subscription concert slipped from the repertory. When the Orchestra performances in nearly seven decades. played the score during its Dvořák festival in 2009, those were the first Chicago Symphony Phillip Huscher Béla Bartók Born March 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, Transylvania (now part of Romania). Died September 26, 1945, New York City. Piano Concerto No. 2 Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective In 1939, when the importance. After he did move to this country in Chicago Symphony gave 1940, he wasn’t considered a significant musical the U.S. premiere of Béla presence, his music wasn’t widely played, and Bartók’s new piano when he toured the country as a pianist, he was concerto, the composer hardly treated like one of the indispensable giants was still living in his of modern music. native Hungary. For Bartók began his career as a pianist, and he several more months, he was an uncommonly gifted one, capable of play- would agonize over ing not only his own brilliant and challenging whether to leave his scores, but also—especially at first—the works homeland and move to the United States to of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (the other Bs). escape the threat of fascism. Although Bartók Both his parents were pianists—his mother gave had played his Second Piano Concerto some lessons to help feed her two children, and she twenty times following its Frankfurt premiere in was Béla’s first teacher. He made his first public 1933, he had refused to give the Budapest appearance as a pianist at the age of eleven, premiere as a political protest, and now he let the playing Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata. During U.S. premiere go to his student, Storm Bull. his student days at the Budapest Academy (he Americans weren’t quick to recognize Bartók’s graduated in June 1903), his friends and teachers COMPOSED CSO PERFORMANCES, INSTRUMENTATION October 1930–October 9, 1931 THE COMPOSER AS SOLOIST solo piano, three flutes and piccolo, November 20 & 21, 1941, Orchestra two oboes and english horn, two clari- FIRST PERFORMANCE Hall. Frederick Stock conducting nets and bass clarinet, three bassoons January 23, 1933; Frankfurt-am-Mein, and contrabassoon, four horns, three Germany. The composer as soloist MOST RECENT trumpets, three trombones and tuba, CSO PERFORMANCES timpani, bass drum, triangle, military FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES March 7, 9 & 12, 2013, Orchestra Hall. drum, cymbals, tam-tam, strings March 2 & 3, 1939, Orchestra Hall. Yefim Bronfman as soloist and Cristian Storm Bull as soloist, Frederick Stock Măcelaru conducting CSO RECORDING conducting (U.S. premiere) 1977. Maurizio Pollini as soloist, Claudio Abbado conducting. August 4, 1970, Ravinia Festival. Deutsche Grammophon Stephen Bishop as soloist, Giuseppe Patanè conducting APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 28 minutes 3 predicted a bright future for him as a virtuoso ike many of Bartók’s works composed pianist—his gifts as a composer didn’t yet around this time (it falls between the merit comment. Fourth and Fifth string quartets), the It was the Budapest premiere of Richard Lconcerto is designed as a grand arch form: here Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in 1902 that two fast, related outer movements frame a central sparked Bartók’s determination to become a adagio. This middle movement, too, is a mirror composer as well. Eventually these two passions form, with broad, slow music interrupted midway merged in a series of uncompromising keyboard by a furious, driven presto. (In the same para- works, particularly the two concertos he wrote graph, Bartók gives us both slow movement and to play himself. (A third concerto, composed in scherzo.) In the slow sections, the strings and the the last year of his life, was written with the full piano engage in a dialogue, like Orpheus and the realization that he would never perform it; it was Furies that Liszt heard in the slow movement intended as a birthday present for his wife Ditta, of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto (the solo who was a fine, though less athletic pianist.) timpani provides a high-profile running com- Both the First and Second piano concertos are mentary). In the fast central section, the heart of virtuosic pieces of a kind Bartók’s fellow students the entire work, Bartók coaxes fantastic sounds at the academy never envisioned—in the Second, from the piano, including tone clusters which the piano rests for a mere twenty-three measures can be played only by placing both hands flat in the first movement. This Allegro moves at over the keys to cover all the notes in the octave. such a rapid pace—this isn’t just a question of The last movement—inevitably, in any of the tempo, but of density of material as well—and composer’s big symmetrical structures—retreads the solo music is so compelling, demanding the same ground as the first, although Bartók everything from racing octave scales to entire continually finds new things to say. (Only the fistfuls of notes, that we scarcely notice that the first, incisive pounding theme is, in fact, entirely strings have nothing at all to do.