Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Home , Also sprach Zarathustra, An Alpine Symphony, Bernard Haitink, Elektra (opera), Symphonia Domestica

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, April 28, 2016, at 8:00 Friday, April 29, 2016, at 8:00 Saturday, April 30, 2016, at 8:00

Bernard Haitink Conductor Till Fellner Piano Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482 Allegro Andante Rondo: Allegro TILL FELLNER

INTERMISSION

Strauss An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64

Thursday’s concert is generously sponsored by Daniel R. Murray. Saturday’s concert is generously sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. Dietrich M. Gross. COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher

Wolfgang Mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482

Mozart wrote three piano concertos—an incredible outpouring of import- concertos while he ant music that corresponds, not coincidentally, worked on The Marriage of to his heyday as a performer. When Leopold Figaro during the winter Mozart visited Wolfgang in Vienna early in of 1785–86. This was the 1785, he saw that his son’s life was a whirlwind of most productive period in public appearances, complicated immeasurably by his life, and the only the convention of hauling one’s own instrument reasonable way to explain along to each performance. “Since my arrival,” he the enormous and varied wrote to Nannerl, “your brother’s fortepiano has output of these six been taken at least a dozen times from the house months is to assume that the intense work on the to the theater or to some other house.” complicated musical and dramatic structures of There are passages for the piano in the E-flat the opera set his mind racing with more ideas major concerto he wrote that hectic Figaro winter than a single four-act opera could contain. that are not fully written out, because Mozart Neither the challenge of the purely mechanical was then, more than ever, short of time. (Besides, task of writing it all down, nor the infinitely he composed the concerto expressly for his own greater one of conceiving so much glorious music, use.) Those fragmentary measures speak not of appears to have inconvenienced Mozart in the carelessness, but merely impatience; they also least. Throughout the winter, he kept to his remind us that Mozart regularly improvised and regular routine of teaching and performing, ornamented certain phrases as he played. while also maintaining a full social calendar. The The three concertos of the Figaro winter are only activity that seems to have suffered was his Mozart’s first to include clarinets, his favorite correspondence, and so we have only a sketchy wind instrument, and they dominate the E-flat account of his daily life at the time. work as they do no other piano concerto. (It is Mozart’s piano concertos were his main per- the first concerto to have been conceived with forming vehicles—as well as his primary source clarinets in mind; the next in the series, K. 488, of income. From 1782, the year after he moved to was actually begun earlier, but with oboes Vienna, until 1786, Mozart wrote fifteen piano instead; Mozart switched to clarinets when he

COMPOSED July 9, 1955, Ravinia Festival. Rudolf INSTRUMENTATION Entered in Mozart’s catalog on Serkin as soloist, Eduard van solo piano, flute, two clarinets, two December 16, 1785 Beinum conducting bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings FIRST PERFORMANCE MOST RECENT December 23, 1785; Vienna, Austria, CSO PERFORMANCES CADENZAS with the composer as soloist July 24, 2005, Ravinia Festival. First movement: Paul Badura-Skoda Emanuel Ax as soloist, James Third movement: Johann FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Conlon conducting Nepomuk Hummel March 14 & 15, 1924, Orchestra June 8 & 13, 2006, Orchestra Hall. Hall. Wanda Landowska as soloist, Daniel Barenboim conducting from APPROXIMATE Frederick Stock conducting the keyboard PERFORMANCE TIME 33 minutes

2 response not to another of the winds, but to the violins. The entire movement is enlivened by that kind of careful, imaginative detail. As always in Mozart’s concertos, the interplay between instruments, and between piano and orchestra, suggests the intimacy of chamber music; here the effect is heightened in particular by the number of wind solos. The first Viennese audience applauded the C minor Andante so insistently that Mozart played it again. It is one of his finest slow movements, A pen-and-ink and watercolor drawing of central Vienna’s launched by a simple, yet indescribably Kohlmarkt in 1786 by Carl Schütz poignant theme. Mozart writes three increasingly elaborate variations on the opening theme, the first two for completed the score in 1786.) In fact, the E-flat the piano with only the most discreet accompa- concerto is saturated with the sound of wood- niment. Around the second variation, Mozart winds; even the bassoon often catches the ear wraps two episodes, one for winds alone, the with ripe melodic interjections. other a duet for flute and bassoon. The final variation is expansive and dramatic, surprising he first movement benefits from the in its details—listen for the glint of C major in a exceptional richness and variety of C minor world—and endlessly complicated in its Mozart’s scoring, for its primary emotional progress. materialT is little more than boilerplate cere- The finale begins as genial hunting music, only monial music, decked out with fanfares and to have the hunt frozen in place by the interjec- trumpet-and-drums heroics. Yet at every turn, tion of a courtly minuet, with its wistful echoes Mozart invests anonymous gestures with of the Andante and still more glorious writing personality and interest. Listen, for example, for the winds. This mixture of ballroom and to the opening six measures, with its horn duet sunny outdoors, of high spirits and quiet intro- answered by bassoons; Mozart then repeats the spection, is typically Mozartean, and it gives the passage, giving the duet to clarinets, and the finale an unexpected depth.

3 Richard Strauss Born June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany. Died September 8, 1949, Garmisch, Germany. An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64

The idea to write an I. Night; sunrise/ascent; forest (hunt)/ Alpine symphony began waterfall (Alpine sprite)/flowery mead- in Strauss’s boyhood, with ows (shepherds)/glacier/thunderstorm/ a mountain hike on which descent and rest. the party got lost going up and drenched to the II. Rustic pleasures, dance, folk festival/ skin coming down. When procession. young Richard got home, he ran to the piano and III. Dreams and specters (after Goya). improvised a fantasy based on the adventure, “a lot of nonsense and IV. Liberation through work; artistic gigantic Wagnerian tone painting,” as he told his creation. Fugue. friend Ludwig Thuille. Even after his childhood pastime had developed into a serious, gigantic Nothing came of that until May 1911, the talent and he had produced the dazzling series of month Gustav Mahler died. Although he and orchestral tone poems that made him the most Strauss had never been close, nor even of the celebrated composer of his day, he could not same mind artistically—Mahler once said that forget a day spent on a mountain. he and Strauss were tunneling from opposite In 1900, after Ein Heldenleben had been sides of the same mountain and might eventu- successfully launched, Strauss wrote to his ally meet in the middle—Strauss wrote in his parents that he was considering one more tone diary, “The death of this aspiring, idealistic, poem, which “would begin with a sunrise in and energetic artist is a heavy loss.” This was Switzerland.” (He had recently written what is the moment childhood memory, abandoned perhaps the grandest, most impressive sunrise in sketches, and a deeper vision of man’s place on all music, in Also sprach Zarathustra.) He even jot- the earth became An Alpine Symphony. This new ted down a few themes. In 1902, Strauss outlined piece grew to represent “the ritual of purifica- a plan for a symphony in four parts: tion through one’s own strength, emancipation

COMPOSED MOST RECENT cymbals, bass drum, side drum, 1911–February 1915 CSO PERFORMANCES triangle, cowbells, tam-tam, celesta, February 22, 23, 24 & 25, organ, timpani, and strings; plus an FIRST PERFORMANCE 2007, Orchestra Hall. Semyon off-stage brass group consisting October 28, 1915; Berlin, Germany Bychkov conducting of an additional twelve horns, two trumpets, and two trombones FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION December 1 & 2, 1916, Orchestra Hall. four flutes and two piccolos, three APPROXIMATE Frederick Stock conducting oboes, english horn and heckelphone, PERFORMANCE TIME two clarinets in B, one clarinet in 51 minutes August 2, 1986, Ravinia Festival. Edo C, E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, de Waart conducting four bassoons and contrabassoon, CSO RECORDING eight horns, four wagner tubas, four 1992. Daniel Barenboim conducting. trumpets, four trombones and two Erato tubas, two harps, wind machine, thunder machine, glockenspiel,

4 A GUIDE TO AN ALPINE SYMPHONY

The twenty-one individual sections of Strauss’s tone poem are played without pause

1. Night 2. Sunrise 3. The Ascent 4. Entering the Forest, Wandering by the Brook 5. By the Waterfall 6. Apparition 7. Flowery Meadows 8. In the Mountain Pasture 9. On the Wrong Path through Thickets and Undergrowth 10. On the Glacier 11. Precarious Moments 12. On the Summit 13. Vision 14. Rising Mists 15. The Sun Gradually Dims 16. Elegy 17. Calm before the Storm 18. Thunderstorm, Descent 19. Sunset 20. Epilogue (Dying Away of Sound) 21. Night

Storm among the Alps, ca. 1856, by German-born American artist Albert Bierstadt through work, and the adoration of eternal, to London for a festival of his music, he said that glorious nature.” of all his orchestral works he would most like to Strauss continued to sketch for some time. conduct the Alpine Symphony. (He was forced to For inspiration, he had only to look up from the settle for the Symphonia domestica, which calls for polished desk he had positioned in front of the a smaller orchestra.) windows of his workroom in Garmisch—the Although An Alpine Symphony is a contin- house recently built with the royalties from uous stretch of music, Strauss has marked off Salome—at the magnificent Alps beyond. In twenty-one sections in the score—a traveler’s November 1914, Strauss began to orchestrate the itinerary of the day’s journey. With so much vivid piece, completing work on February 8, 1915. The and illustrative music in a single span, the work premiere, on October 28, received little notice (it is more tone poem than symphony, though there was the second year of World War I), but Strauss are still hints of Strauss’s original subdivision was pleased with his newest composition—and into four movements. In fact, Strauss felt that his final tone poem—and he urged Hugo von with this score he had at last found the right bal- Hofmannsthal, the celebrated librettist of his ance of absolute and program music. (Not every- blockbuster operas Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier, one bought his argument. The prickly theorist to catch a later performance: “It really is a good and critic Theodor Adorno abhorred the “crass piece,” he wrote, with obvious satisfaction. Even externality of the relationship between program years later, when critical opinion began to devalue and form.” Hindemith thought it would be “bet- the work for its over-the-top Hollywood effects, ter to hang oneself than ever to write music like Strauss held firm: in 1947, when he was invited that.”) Strauss’s orchestra is lavish—including

5 cowbells and a wind machine—and he uses this must have sounded when it was played it with unfailing imagination and remarkable in an arrangement for two pianos at one of finesse, even for the man responsible for some Schoenberg’s groundbreaking concerts spon- of the most stunning sounds in recent music. sored by his Society for the Private Performance (At the dress rehearsal he remarked, “At last I’ve of Music.) The centerpiece of the score is the learned how to orchestrate.”) arrival at the summit, announced by the stam- mering of the solo oboe, apparently stunned by n Alpine Symphony, moving from sunrise the high-altitude view and lack of oxygen, and to sunset, begins and ends in the quiet climaxing with an ecstatic outpouring, scored for darkness of night. Strauss being Strauss, the full orchestra, that combines several themes music’sA greatest master of the blockbuster encountered on the way up. moment, all twenty-one stops on his musical The glory of An Alpine Symphony is not in travelogue are highlights, although admittedly the details, however, but in the scope of the some are more spectacular than others. There are whole, and in the emotional depth Strauss finds, many celebrated examples of pictorial writing, particularly on the summit and in the spacious including a fine A major sunrise to rival the one and reflective closing pages. There we see the in Also sprach Zarathustra, the sound of hunting mountain’s challenge and the setting sun as horns vaulting through the valleys below (played metaphors; An Alpine Symphony suddenly encom- by an off-stage band of twelve horns, two trum- passes the whole of life. pets, and two trombones), a cascading waterfall, and an even wetter storm later on—a wild and noisy outburst, complete with the sounds of thunder and wind, that makes the rainstorm of Strauss’s childhood memory remarkably vivid Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the and unforgettable. (You can only imagine how Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.