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Home , Arch form, Taras Bulba (rhapsody), The Cunning Little Vixen, Youth (wind sextet)

PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell 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 Janáček 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, , 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 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 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 and piccolo, two and english horn, two and FIRST PERFORMANCE MOST RECENT , two , four May 16, 1883; Prague, Bohemia CSO PERFORMANCES horns, two , three July 8, 1989, Ravinia Festival. James and , , 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 , three bassoons January 23, 1933; Frankfurt-am-Mein, and , 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. Bartók employs new.) This is recapitulation in the deepest sense, his own blend of , which involves a but Bartók never evokes outright dejá vu, only kind of mirror-recapitulation, with the open- the innate, satisfying feeling of familiarity ing material reprised in the correct sequence, and homecoming. but with each theme turned upside down and backwards. Phillip Huscher

BÉLA BARTÓK AND THE CHICAGO SYMPHONY

The Chicago Symphony has benefited from several close ties to Bartók, aside from his own appearance with the Orchestra in 1941, playing his Second Piano Concerto. Fritz Reiner, CSO music director from 1953 to 1962, was a student of Bartók and an early champion of his music. Reiner conducted the U.S. premiere of the First Piano Concerto with the composer at the keyboard, in New York City, during Bartók’s first U.S. tour in 1928. He also led Bartók’s final public performance, in the Concerto for Two Pianos, in 1943, with Bartók’s wife Ditta at the second piano. Although Bartók never learned of it, it was Reiner, along with violinist Joseph Szigeti, who suggested that Koussevitzky commission the Concerto for Orchestra for the Boston Symphony. Sir Georg Solti, CSO music director from 1969 to 1991, also studied with Bartók, his countryman, at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest in the late 1920s. With Fritz Reiner, a former pupil and one Solti always remembered turning pages—on a moment’s notice—at of Bartók’s most dedicated champions in the Budapest premiere of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, the United States with Bartók at the piano, in 1938.

4 Composers in Chicago

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra presented the U.S. premiere of Béla Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto on March 2, 1939, in Orchestra Hall. Twenty-five-year-old Storm Bull—who was, for three years, a student of the composer in Budapest— was the soloist and Frederick Stock conducted.

“Storm Bull is not at all the angry fellow that his name suggests but a smiling, sunny, spirited who looks barely out of his teens,” wrote Edward Barry in the Chicago Tribune.

“[He] revealed himself as an immensely facile pianist. Everything comes off for him without apparent effort. He possesses a good sense of rhythm, and manages to make the music walk along for him in an infectious way. . . . The new concerto is a glittering creation whose colors are mostly on the light side. Its headlong line breaks only two or three times to allow place for perverse little poetic episodes. The concerto’s free harmonic scheme gives it a pleasant, out-of-focus, or oddly angled quality—as if a photographer should decide that the world is better seen obliquely than head on.”

Two years later, on November 20 and 21, 1941, Bartók—in his only appear- ances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra— performed his Second Piano Concerto, also under Stock. Barry reported that the concerto was “. . . easier on second hearing. . . . We were impressed by the concerto’s Program biography for Béla Bartók’s debut appearances with the Chicago enormous rhythmic vigor, Symphony Orchestra in November 1941 the consummate skill with which the composer handles its shifting harmonic background, the challenging way in which dynamic extremes are used, and the frequent emergence of perfectly clear and meaningful . Mr. Bartók softened some of the concerto’s severity and played down its extreme percussiveness. Much of the performance was sensuously beautiful.”

Frank Villella is the director of the Rosenthal Archives. For more information regarding the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s anniversary season, please visit cso.org/125moments.

5 Leoš Janáček Born July 3, 1854, Hochwald (Hukvaldy), Northern Moravia. Died August 12, 1928, Moravska Ostravá, Czechoslovakia. Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen (Edited by Sir )

It was the Janáčeks’ killed by a poacher, only for the gamekeeper housekeeper, Marie to see her spirit perpetuated by her progeny.) Stejskalová, who first Janáček, having already tackled a fantasti- drew the composer’s cal subject in a previous opera, Mr. Brouček’s attention to the picture Excursions, was sufficiently charmed by story The Cunning Little Bystrouška’s adventures to transform the Vixen—or Bystrouška, to work into an opera. Writing his own use the heroine’s original (Bystrouška’s author, Rudolf Těsnohlídek, only Czech name. Bystrouška agreeing to write the text for a song, “Verunko!,” was serialized in ’s sung by the gamekeeper), Janáček completed The liberal and widely read newspaper Lidové Cunning Little Vixen in 1924. Janáček’s previous noviny, and according to Marie’s memoirs, she had enjoyed much success in Germany, was reading the latest instalment when she burst but German audiences initially found his animal out laughing. Janáček, overhearing her, asked opera too whimsical. His German publisher, what she was laughing about, and she showed Emil Hertzka (of Universal Edition), concluded him the picture showing the Vixen and her that it would never secure a place in the opera beloved Fox arm-in-arm and carrying a flower. repertory. However, charmed by the orchestral According to Marie, she then told him: “Sir, you interludes, Hertzka suggested to Janáček that he know so well how animals talk, you’re always might arrange a suite from these. The composer writing down those birdcalls—wouldn’t it make rejected Hertzka’s proposal, gruffly stating that a marvelous opera!” the interludes were “too short” to make a suite. After Janáček’s death in 1928, Universal ystrouška concerns a young vixen, who as Edition persuaded the Czech conductor Václav a pup is captured by a gamekeeper; after a Talich to create a suite. Rather than use the brief life as a domestic pet, she—as foxes orchestral interludes, Talich selected virtually Bwill—kills the gamekeeper’s chickens, and then all the orchestral music of act 1, concerning escapes to enjoy further adventures, eventu- Bystrouška’s capture by the gamekeeper, her ally finding love and her own conjugal bliss. dream of liberty, and her eventual escape after (In Janáček’s opera, Bystrouška is eventually first deceiving then killing his chickens. With

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1921–23 May 14 & 15, 1970, Orchestra Hall. four flutes and two piccolos, two Charles Mackerras conducting (suite oboes and english horn, two clarinets, FIRST PERFORMANCE arranged by Václav Talich, revised by E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, Opera: November 6, 1924; Brno, Václav Smetáček) three bassoons and contrabassoon, Czechoslovakia four horns, three trumpets, three August 11, 1983, Ravinia Festival. trombones and tuba, timpani, Suite (arranged by Mackerras, final Michael Tilson Thomas conducting percussion, harp, celesta, strings revision 2008): November 4, 2010; (suite arranged by Václav Talich, London, England revised by Václav Smetáček) APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 22 minutes

6 the assistance of the conductor Frantisek Škvor memorial concert held at London’s Royal Festival and the composer Jaroslav Řidký, Talich had Hall on November 4, 2010, conducted by his Janáček’s orchestration “tidied” to make it nephew . more “effective.” Talich conducted his suite for the first time in 1937. ne does not need to know the opera to About sixty years later Charles Mackerras, appreciate the suite’s rich evocation of who had studied under Talich in 1948 and birdsong and the abrupt activities of had himself become the leading champion of Owoodland wildlife Janáček observed at firsthand. Janáček, adapted Talich’s suite principally by One may hear, too, an underlying melancholy reverting its orchestration to Janáček’s original, through the suite’s transcription of the first and adding from the opera some music which woodland scene, suggesting the poignant and follows the interlude to scene 2, so creating a uncertain existence of the young vixen. This less abrupt transition to the night scene in which continues into the opening of the next scene (set the Vixen dreams of her liberation. Mackerras in the Gamekeeper’s farmyard), but is trans- recorded a version of his suite live with the formed through the nocturnal interlude (which Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in October 2002 opens with a gently rocking bass , based (issued in 2004 by Supraphon), but made some on a theme which opens the farmyard scene) into minor revisions before his death in 2010 (the burgeoning confidence, which presages the vixen most obvious change being transcribing part of asserting her true nature (in scherzo-style music) the Vixen’s vocal line, previously omitted from and her escape by the end of that first act. the suite, for solo muted ). That final version of the suite was first heard at Mackerras’s Daniel Jaffé

Taras Bulba, Rhapsody for Orchestra

Leoš Janáček was music’s Janáček was born in 1854, the year Liszt most extraordinary late published his revolutionary B minor piano sonata bloomer. He completed and Wagner began Die Walküre. His contem- his first major score at the poraries were Elgar, Humperdinck, Dvořák, age of forty-nine, Mahler, and Wolf—composers who all finished attracted international their careers before Janáček hit his stride. But attention at sixty-one, and artistically, Janáček doesn’t belong to their entered the most prolific generation. The period of his most significant and adventuresome stage and original work is the time of Berg, Ravel, of his career as he neared Stravinsky, Bartók, and Schoenberg—younger his seventies. It is largely the works of his final composers forging a new language—and years, mostly composed in the 1920s, which have the era of such landmarks as Berg’s Wozzeck, given him a place among the important compos- Stravinsky’s Les noces, and Schoenberg’s first ers of his time. twelve-tone pieces.

COMPOSED MOST RECENT trumpets, three trombones and 1915, revised 1918 CSO PERFORMANCES tuba, timpani, triangle, , December 13, 14, 15 & 18, 2007, cymbals, chimes, harp, organ, strings FIRST PERFORMANCE Orchestra Hall. Mark Elder conducting January 13, 1924; Brno, Czechoslovakia APPROXIMATE INSTRUMENTATION PERFORMANCE TIME FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES three flutes and piccolo, two oboes 23 minutes November 17 & 18, 1949, Orchestra and english horn, two clarinets and Hall. Rafael Kubelík conducting E-flat clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three

7 Throughout his life, Janáček loved all things did I compose this rhapsody.” Janáček picked Russian. He formed a Russian club in Brno in three episodes from Gogol’s tale, each dealing 1897, visited Russia twice in the early years of the with a death—first that of the sons Andrei and twentieth century, and even sent his children to Ostap, and then Taras Bulba himself. Saint Petersburg to study. Of the Russian writers The Death of Andrei depicts the tragedy of he admired, including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Taras’s first son, who falls in love with a Polish it was the novelist and playwright noblewoman and becomes a traitor. The father he loved most. Janáček considered writing music confronts his son, renounces him, and shoots based on Gogol’s tale of Taras Bulba as early as him. “What a Cossack he could have been,” 1905, although several years passed before he he says, “. . . and now, now he’s finished, dead started work on it. He completed the score the ignominiously, like a dog.” Music of romance day before his sixty-first birthday. Still, Taras and battle merge in the abrupt, discontinuous, Bulba is one of Janácek’s “early” compositions. epigrammatic style that is quintessential Janáček. Taras Bulba is Janácek’s first significant orches- (His idiosyncratic language, with its pungent tral work. Like Jenůfa, which was premiered in harmonies and speechlike rhythms, is highly 1904 but didn’t come to attention in the larger indebted to the study of Moravian folk music music world until it was staged in Prague in he undertook more than a decade before the 1916, Taras Bulba would wait to find its audience. famous field work done by Bartók and Kodály.) When it was finally performed for the first time In Taras Bulba, Janáček learned how music can in January 1924, Janáček left the hall as soon as explore conflicting emotions and states of mind. the piece was over (the concert was billed as an Janáček’s music perfectly matches Gogol’s words, early observance of his seventieth birthday and as for example, when he writes of the day Taras he didn’t want to celebrate until the actual day and his sons ride off to fight—the sons holding arrived) and he failed to hear the enthusiastic back tears “out of respect for their father, who crowd calling for him. was perturbed himself, although he struggled not to show it. It was a gray day. The green steppes he violent, bloody story of Taras Bulba glittered brightly. Birds chattered discordantly.” is one of Gogol’s most enduring and In the Death of Ostap, the second son is taken influential works. Ernest Hemingway prisoner by the Poles and transported to Warsaw, calledT it “one of the ten greatest books of all time” where he is tortured and finally executed as his (although Vladimir Nabokov, normally a Gogol father watches from the crowd. A grotesque admirer, likened it to “rollicking yarns about mazurka suggests the Polish victory, the E-flat lumberjacks”). First published as a short story in clarinet Ostap’s screams. Janáček’s music is 1835 and then reworked as a prose epic (of a some- unsparing and disturbing, and nearly as graphic what less-than-epical 150 pages) seven years later, as a photograph. it tells the tale of Taras Bulba, an aging Cossack, To avenge Ostap’s death, Taras Bulba leads and his two sons, and how all three meet their the Cossacks across Poland, where he too is deaths. (The word Cossack means adventurer.) The taken prisoner and sentenced to die at the stake. story is set in sixteenth-century Ukraine, which Flames rise up around him, and Gogol writes the was then under the rule of Poland. Taras Bulba, words Janáček couldn’t forget: “But are there in a dyed-in-the-wool Cossack, is a warrior for life, the world such fires, such tortures, such forces and he pushes his sons onto the battlefield as soon as could overcome Russian strength?” Janáček’s as they are out of school, only to watch them die. answer, with loud bells and roaring organ chords, Janáček claimed that he was drawn to Taras is unequivocal. Bulba because of his belief that “in the whole world there are not fires or tortures strong Phillip Huscher enough to destroy the vitality of the Russian nation,” paraphrasing Gogol’s own lines. “For Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the the sake of these words, which fell into searing Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987. sparks and flames off the stake on which Taras Daniel Jaffé is a regular contributor to BBC Music Bulba, the famous hetman of the Cossacks, died, Magazine and a specialist in English and Russian music.

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