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Home , Bernard Haitink, Bruno Walter, George Szell

Program

ONe HuNDReD TweNTIeTH SeASON Chicago Symphony orchestra Helen Regenstein Conductor emeritus Yo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, June 2, 2011, at 8:00 Friday, June 3, 2011, at 1:30 Saturday, June 4, 2011, at 8:00 Sunday, June 5, 2011, at 3:00 Conductor mahler Symphony No. 9 in D Major Andante comodo In the tempo of a moderate landler Rondo-Burleske: Allegro. Very defiantly Adagio. Very slow and reserved

There will be no intermission.

Steinway is the official piano of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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

Born July 7, 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia. Died May 18, 1911, , .

Symphony no. 9 in d major

ecause this symphony is faltering rhythm in the cellos—was BMahler’s last completed work, Mahler’s erratic heartbeat. and because he died tragically of Few ’ works invite heart disease at the age of fifty autobiographical interpretation shortly after finishing it, leaving as readily as Mahler’s. This is a behind his beautiful wife Alma and particular distinction—and also young daughter Anna, it’s often a curse—of music as expressive considered both his farewell and as Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. his most deeply personal score. Certainly Mahler’s own personal , who conducted turmoil and spiritual uncertainty the premiere thirteen months at the time he wrote this symphony after Mahler’s death, said that he account for its searching, fearlessly recognized the ’s own introspective nature, and he didn’t gait in the limping rhythm of the discourage others from reading it march at the climax of the first this way. “In it something is said movement. Decades later, Leonard that I have had on the tip of my Bernstein suggested that the sym- tongue for some time,” he wrote to phony’s opening—with its hesitant, Walter in 1909.

ComPoSed July 19, 2009, Ravinia aPProximate 1909–April 1, 1910 Festival. James Conlon PerFormanCe time 87 minutes FirSt PerFormanCe June 26, 1912, Vienna. Bruno inStrumentation CSo reCordingS walter conducting four flutes and piccolo, 1976. Carlo Maria four oboes and english Giulini conducting. FirSt CSo horn, three clarinets, e-flat Deutsche Grammophon PerFormanCe clarinet and bass clarinet, 1982. Sir April 6, 1950, Orchestra Hall. four bassoons and contra- conducting. conducting bassoon, four horns, three 1995. Pierre Boulez conduct- trumpets, three trombones ing. Deutsche Grammophon moSt reCent and tuba, timpani, cymbals, CSo PerFormanCeS bass drum, tam-tam, June 15, 2006, triangle, glockenspiel, Orchestra Hall. Daniel chimes, two harps, strings Barenboim conducting

2 In 1907, two years before he of his way to sidestep the issue of began this symphony, Mahler’s writing nine symphonies, knowing world had been turned upside that neither down. On March 17, he resigned Beethoven as artistic director of the Vienna nor Bruckner Court Opera after ten years at got farther the job, capitulating to friction than that, by with the administration and rising calling Das anti-Semitism in the press. (His Lied von der career didn’t falter, however: in Erde (which June, he signed a contract with the followed in New York, his Eighth where he would make his debut Symphony) conducting Tristan and Isolde on “a symphony New Year’s Day 1908.) On July 5, for contralto, with her children after Mahler had taken his fam- tenor, and ily to Maiernigg (where he could orchestra,” write in peace) for the summer, his without giving it a number. And four-year-old daughter Maria died only a few days after completing his of scarlet fever. A few days later, next symphony, which he openly— the family physician diagnosed and perhaps defiantly—called the heart disease that would kill his Ninth, Mahler plunged into a the composer himself in less than tenth, as if to make certain he had four years. fooled the gods of superstition. But Mahler refused to return to they, of course, had the last laugh. Maiernigg the next summer, All three of these works—the last so Alma found them a house in of his eleven symphonic creations— Toblach, in the Dolomites—a big were written while Mahler was farmhouse with eleven rooms, obsessed with the idea of death, two verandas, and two bathrooms, and in various ways they all reveal “admittedly somewhat primitive, how deeply he was shaken by its but in a splendid situation,” as she immediacy. But Mahler didn’t give put it, referring to its sweeping in without a fight—even though his mountain view. There, over the doctors tried to restrict his diet and course of the next three sum- warned him to cut out the swim- mers, Mahler completed his last ming, cycling, and hiking he so works— and enjoyed. His last four years, packed the Ninth Symphony—and began with conducting engagements, the tenth symphony which was left intense spurts of composition, and unfinished when his heart finally personal affairs (a meeting with gave out. Sibelius in 1907; posing for Rodin Mahler’s Ninth Symphony is in 1909; and a single, dreaded, neither his ninth (that most fateful often-postponed session with Freud of symphonic numbers) nor his in 1910) hardly reflect the routine final symphony. He had gone out of an invalid.

3 While Mahler was sketching his for Nature; the longing to Ninth Symphony in 1909, he wrote live on it in peace, to enjoy it to Alma: completely, to the very heart of one’s being, before death The “works” of this person or comes, as irresistibly it does. that . . . are the ephemeral and mortal part of him; but what a he Ninth Symphony is the man makes of himself—what Tfourth of Mahler’s essays in he becomes through the untir- “conventional” four-movement ing effort to live and to be—is form, but it breaks with tradition permanent. . . . What we leave at once: it’s the first important behind us is only the husk, the symphony since Haydn to begin shell. The Meistersinger, the with a slow movement. (Several, Ninth, Faust—all of them are including Mahler’s own third, only the discarded husk! have slow finales.) But this is a new kind of slow movement, one Unlike Wagner, Beethoven, or that in its urgency, power, com- Goethe, Mahler couldn’t trust plexity of material, and dramatic that what he left behind would scheme—nearly all its character- ever be understood or valued. He istics except its tempo—behaves died without knowing the kind of like a symphonic first movement. acceptance and admiration that (It also includes much music that even Beethoven often enjoyed. isn’t slow—allegro appears atop Although the Eighth Symphony several passages, but the pre- was warmly received at its premiere dominant speed remains andante in September 1910 (shortly after comodo—comfortable, easy.) Mahler completed the Ninth), it “The whole movement,” Berg was his only real triumph as a com- wrote, “is based on a premoni- poser during his lifetime; nothing tion of death which constantly else in his public career suggested recurs. . . . That is why the that he would be remembered tenderest passages are followed (except, perhaps, as a conductor), by tremendous climaxes like new and that his Ninth would one day eruptions of a volcano.” In fact, be accepted into the company of the entire movement appears to those by Beethoven and Bruckner. be organized around these recur- When Alban Berg—another ring crescendos—each, until the composer whose life also would final one, larger and more disrup- be tragically cut short—played tive than the last. (The devastating, through the score of Mahler’s penultimate climax is marked Ninth Symphony, he wrote to his “Mit höchster Gewalt”—with wife Helene: the greatest force.) In this music, Mahler retells his own private The first movement is the nightmare—with its successive most glorious he ever wrote. waves of ominous premonitions— It expresses love of this earth, in purely musical terms.

4 It’s simple enough to tell what organized, and richly orches- was on Mahler’s mind when he trated music. Mahler inscribed wrote this movement—the main the manuscript “to my brothers theme resembles the motto of in Apollo,” and he addresses the Beethoven’s Farewell piano sonata; leader of the muses with a virtuosic, at one point, he sneers at a waltz elaborate, and almost savage display by Johann Strauss, Jr. called Enjoy of counterpoint. Near the end is Life—but the personal details have one magnificent passage of sudden nothing to do with the force of the serenity—particularly stunning in music. (The late Lewis Thomas, this context—crowned by a noble in his best-selling book of essays, trumpet melody (itself a transfor- Late Night Thoughts on Listening to mation of one of the movement’s Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, wasn’t more raucous tunes). reminded of Mahler’s concerns; The slow finale, a grave and spa- instead, he saw the end of humanity cious adagio to balance the opening and envisioned a world in which Andante, is a great hymn, begun by thermonuclear bombs have begun the full string choir. The writing is to explode.) austere and extraordinarily beauti- In the following scherzo, Mahler ful; at one point a shining violin draws on both the minuet and its theme floats over a countermelody, historical forerunner, the ländler, to very low in the basses, with nothing coin a kind of music that’s far more but octaves of silence between. complex, worldly, and pointed than Eventually a broad chorale for either. Deryck Cooke mentions that the full orchestra unfolds, swells, this movement sounds simple and and then recedes into a passage of cheerful when played on the piano, pastoral calm and great clarity over and that the hollowness and bitter, a strumming harp before rising to a ironic flavor originate in its fan- final climax. tastical scoring. (The ending, with The end is as much about silence, brief, whispered asides for various stillness, and waiting as about winds, a solo viola, and finally the the notes themselves. The first piccolo, is a marvel of brilliant violins sing a phrase from the color.) There are two episodes (they , the songs of grief would be called trios in a more on children’s deaths that Mahler, to conventional context) in different his eventual horror, wrote shortly tempos—the first a vulgar sound- before the death of his own daugh- ing waltz; the second slow, gentle, ter Maria. In the last two dozen almost sentimental. measures, very slow and ppp—one The third movement is another of the emptiest and most moving new kind of character piece; Mahler pages ever written—the music calls it a rondo-burleske and wants gradually, peacefully, and resolutely it played “very defiantly.” From the slips away. opening measures, which present several concise motives in a flash, Phillip Huscher is the program annota- this is dense, concentrated, tightly tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2011 Chicago

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