Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director
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PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Friday, November 27, 2015, at 8:00 Saturday, November 28, 2015, at 8:00 Sunday, November 29, 2015, at 3:00 Marin Alsop Conductor Jon Kimura Parker Piano Clyne Masquerade First CSO performances Barber Second Essay for Orchestra, Op. 17 Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue JON KIMURA PARKER INTERMISSION Dvořák Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70 Allegro maestoso Poco adagio Scherzo: Vivace Finale: Allegro 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 Anna Clyne Born March 9, 1980, London, England. Masquerade On a historic occasion of the teacher-student lineage of the soloists for a magnitude earlier whom it was composed (Jaime Laredo and composers such as Samuel Jennifer Koh) and at the same time to Bach’s Barber, George famous concerto for two violins. Clyne’s final Gershwin, or Antonín CSO commission, performed last May, more Dvořák cannot have than a year after the London Proms premiere, is imagined, the Last Night The Seamstress, a violin concerto which also was at the Proms opened in written for Koh. September of 2013 with the world premiere of fter living primarily in the United Anna Clyne’s Masquerade, which was broadcast States since 2002, the 2013 Proms globally by the BBC and viewed by millions. This premiere of Masquerade reunited Clyne week’s performances of Masquerade reunite withA her native London, where she grew up in Clyne, who was the Chicago Symphony’s Mead a home in which folk music and the Beatles Composer-in-Residence from 2010 until last reigned, and where she wrote her first fully June, with Marin Alsop, who conducted the notated piece, for flute and piano, at the age premiere—and made history of her own that of eleven. Clyne studied cello at Edinburgh night (“After months of planning,” she wrote on University before she moved to New York. At the Huffington Post later that month, “the Last twenty-three, she received a scholarship to Night of the Proms finally arrived. I was going to study composition at the Manhattan School conduct classical music’s biggest party of the year of Music, and her career as a composer soon and, as news reports across the world made clear, took off. Clyne has since received several become the first woman to conduct this important honors, including eight consecu- august occasion.”) tive ASCAP Plus awards and a Charles Ives Clyne was entering the third season of her Fellowship from the American Academy of Chicago Symphony residency at the time, and Arts and Letters. Prince of Clouds, available the Orchestra had already played two works she as a digital download on CSO Resound, had written for them. Night Ferry, premiered was nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award under Riccardo Muti’s baton in February 2012, for Best Contemporary Composition. was designed to complement the music of Franz Schubert, and found its dark colors and volatile Anna Clyne on Masquerade shape after Clyne read that Schubert suffered from cyclothymia, a form of depression. Prince asquerade draws inspiration from of Clouds, performed in December of 2012, is the original mid-eighteenth-century a double violin concerto that pays homage to M promenade concerts held in London’s COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES trumpets, three trombones, tuba, 2013 These are the first Chicago Symphony timpani, percussion, harp, strings Orchestra performances. FIRST PERFORMANCE APPROXIMATE September 7, 2013; Royal Albert Hall, INSTRUMENTATION PERFORMANCE TIME London, England two flutes and piccolo, two oboes 5 minutes and english horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three 2 pleasure gardens. As is true today, these concerts controlled, sense of occasion and celebration. were a place where people from all walks of life It is this that I wish to evoke in Masquerade. mingled to enjoy a wide array of music. Other The work derives its material from two melo- forms of entertainment ranged from the sedate to dies. For the main theme, I imagined a chorus the salacious, with acrobatics, exotic street enter- welcoming the audience and inviting them tainers, dancers, fireworks, and masquerades. I into their imaginary world. The second theme, am fascinated by the historic and sociological “Juice of Barley,” is an old English country dance courtship between music and dance. Combined melody and drinking song, which first appeared with costumes, masked guises, and elaborate in John Playford’s 1695 edition of The English settings, masquerades created an exciting, yet Dancing Master. Samuel Barber Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania. Died January 23, 1981, New York City. Second Essay for Orchestra, Op. 17 Samuel Barber was one of forget this unpleasant thing and go and the lucky ones. His talent play football. was discovered early and nourished by an unusually At the age of fourteen, Samuel became a charter musical family. (His aunt student at the new Curtis Institute of Music. He was the distinguished studied conducting briefly with Fritz Reiner (later Metropolitan Opera music director of the Chicago Symphony), who contralto Louise Homer.) said he had no talent on the podium. Several of his He began playing piano at student compositions, however, were the work of the age of six and an advanced composer, and a few, including Dover composing at seven. When, at nine, he informed Beach and the Cello Sonata, have earned perma- his parents he intended to be a composer—words nent places in the repertory. Success came early parents seldom greet with joy or sympathy—he to Barber—he was only twenty-three when the was encouraged. “Dear Mother,” his Philadelphia Orchestra gave the world premiere of confession begins, his first orchestral score, the Overture to The School for Scandal; his next, Music for a Scene from Shelley, I have written to tell you my worrying was introduced by the New York Philharmonic secret. To begin with I was not meant two years later. In 1937, his Symphony no. 1 was to be an athlet [sic]. I was meant to be a the first music by an American to be performed at composer and will be I am sure. I’ll ask you the Salzburg Festival. (Later, his Vanessa was the one more thing—Don’t ask me to try and first American opera to be staged there.) COMPOSED MOST RECENT INSTRUMENTATION 1942 CSO PERFORMANCES two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and June 30, 1953, Ravinia Festival. Eugene english horn, two clarinets and bass FIRST PERFORMANCE Ormandy conducting clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, April 16, 1942, New York City three trumpets, three trombones, November 13, 14, 15 & 18, tuba, timpani, side drum, bass drum, 2003, Orchestra Hall. David FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES cymbals, tam-tam, strings Zinman conducting November 24, 1959, Orchestra Hall. Walter Hendl conducting APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME July 18, 1942, Ravinia Festival. George 11 minutes Szell conducting 3 Barber’s music was performed and championed a fast and witty fugal passage, changes the pace, by some of the most celebrated figures of his day— texture, and mood, the original subject matter is Vladimir Horowitz introduced the Piano Sonata; still the main point of reference. The ending is Arturo Toscanini the First Essay for Orchestra grand and serious. and the famous Adagio for Strings; Leontyne “The essayist is a self-liberated man,” Price regularly sang many of the songs; Barber E.B. White wrote, “sustained by the child- wrote Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for Eleanor ish belief that everything he thinks about, Steber and his ballet Medea for Martha Graham. everything that happened to him, is of general interest.” It is precisely this single-minded runo Walter, the great Austrian conduc- commitment to expressing his own feelings that tor, first heard Barber’s music courtesy distinguished Barber’s finest work, even though of Toscanini, and he was so impressed it made him no friends in the avant-garde music Bthat he commissioned Barber to write a Second circles that flourished after World War II. Essay for Orchestra, as a companion to the one In 1971, nearly thirty years after the Second Toscanini had premiered. Composed early in Essay, Barber summed up the attitude that had 1942, it was the last major work Barber wrote always governed his career, both in his heyday before he was inducted into the Air Force. and when he was criticized for being hopelessly Barber chose his title carefully. The Second out of fashion: Essay, like his First, is a short discourse on a central topic. It doesn’t allow for the symphonic When I write an abstract piano sonata or scale or multiple narrative strands of the novel. a concerto, I write what I feel. I’m not a Like the celebrated essays by E.B. White that self-conscious composer. It is said that I appeared in The New Yorker at the time, Barber’s have no style at all but that doesn’t matter. score is personal, impassioned, and to the point. I just go on doing, as they say, my thing. I His main idea is a lovely, supple theme intro- believe this takes a certain courage. duced by the flute and quickly taken up by other winds. The strings expand on the material, and Today, as his music continues to gain in favor, the essay grows more animated. A sudden tutti it’s clear that Barber, not his critics, will have the chord clears the air; although the next section, last word.