PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony 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 , Op. 17 Gershwin 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, , 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 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 which also was at opened in written for Koh. September of 2013 with the world premiere of fter living primarily in the United ’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 , 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 , three , , 2013 These are the first Chicago Symphony timpani, percussion, harp, strings Orchestra performances. FIRST PERFORMANCE APPROXIMATE September 7, 2013; , INSTRUMENTATION PERFORMANCE TIME London, England two flutes and piccolo, two 5 minutes and english horn, two and bass , two and , 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, . Died January 23, 1981, . 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 briefly with (later 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 , 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 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 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 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 introduced the ; still the main point of reference. The ending is the First Essay for Orchestra grand and serious. and the famous ; 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 for . 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.

George Gershwin Born September 26, 1898, Brooklyn, New York. Died July 11, 1937, Hollywood, California. Rhapsody in Blue

This was the twenty- and dark young man—,” The second of twenty-three New York Times reported. And, launched by the pieces on a Sunday spectacular clarinet cadenza that Gershwin had afternoon program jotted down in his sketchbooks scarcely a month misleadingly titled before, Rhapsody in Blue made history. “An Experiment in Organized by bandleader , the Modern Music,” and concert proposed to trace the evolution of jazz, it followed The Livery although the comments printed in the program, Stable Blues (with barn- boasting about “the tremendous strides which yard sound effects), a have been made in popular music from the day “semi-symphonic” arrangement of of discordant jazz, which sprang into existence tunes, and a Suite of Serenades by Victor Herbert. about ten years ago from nowhere in particular” “Then stepped upon the stage, sheepishly, a lank are hardly promising. Rhapsody in Blue alone

4 Composers in Chicago

In conjunction with A Century of Progress International Exposition—the World’s Fair held in Chicago to celebrate the city’s centennial—several concerts were given at the Auditorium Theatre under the auspices of Chicago Friends of Music. The first concert of the series on June 14, 1933, was a celebration of American music, and during the first half of the program, Frederick Stock led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Henry Hadley’s In Bohemia Overture and Deems Taylor’s Through the Looking-Glass Suite. After intermission, conductor William Daly and pianist George Gershwin took the stage for the thirty-four-year-old composer’s , , and Rhapsody in Blue.

“We may put by forever explanation, apologia, and réserve in writing about American music after hearing George Gershwin and his compositions last night at the Auditorium. Gershwin is American music translated in terms of audacity, humor, wit, cleverness, spontaneity, vitality, and overwhelming naturalness. Nothing like his Concerto in F has ever been heard in the symphonic world, and if it is not the very essence of Amercanism, I do not know my profession nor the art it serves,” wrote Herman Devries in the Chicago American. “Gershwin vibrates to the tune of a people and is animated by its own pulse beat. . . . He is the music of America.”

Gershwin and Daly appeared once more with the Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival on July 25, 1936, for a gala concert during the festival’s first season. A capacity crowd—by some Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1933 estimates over 8,000 people, many climbing trees for a glimpse of the performers—packed the park to hear an all-Gershwin concert that again featured the Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue with the composer as soloist, along with Daly leading An American in Paris and a suite from Porgy and Bess.

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 Ironically, Gershwin knew nothing about Rhapsody in Blue until a few weeks before the concert, when he saw his name in the New York Tribune: “George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto.” When Gershwin called Whiteman to ask him what this was all about, the bandleader managed to persuade the twenty-five-year-old composer to write something scored for piano and orchestra for his concert, even if it wasn’t a concerto in name. Shortly thereafter, with time quickly running out, he offered the services of his band arranger, Ferde Grofé, to help with the orches- tration. Gershwin wrote most of the piece on an upright piano in the family apartment on West 110th Street, where Grofé dropped by, almost daily, as he later recalled, “for more pages of George’s masterpiece, which he origi- nally composed in two-piano form.”

espite the rushed, haphazard cir- cumstances of its composition, Rhapsody in Blue is a more carefully Ddesigned and thematically tight work than is often claimed. The first fourteen measures, from the clarinet’s opening wail to the jaunty, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra first performed accented theme in the winds that shortly music by Gershwin—with the composer as soloist in his follows, contain the raw material for much Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue—at the Auditorium of the piece. Nearly two-thirds of the way Theatre on June 14, 1933. The concert was given as part through, a big piano cadenza—Gershwin of the Century of Progress, the World’s Fair celebrating the centennial of the city of Chicago. improvised, playing from blank pages—leads to the famous main slow theme. With a final justified Whiteman’s dubious “experiment” by stretch of brilliance and panache, Gershwin single-handedly opening a new chapter in the brings to a close what is arguably the most history of jazz. beloved fifteen minutes in American music.

COMPOSED July 25, 1936, Ravinia Festival. INSTRUMENTATION 1924, for two pianos The composer as soloist, William solo piano, two flutes, two oboes, Daly conducting two clarinets and , orchestrated for jazz ensemble by two bassoons, two saxophones, Ferde Grofé March 20, 1954, Orchestra Hall. three horns, three trumpets, three Leonard Pennario as soloist, George later revised and reorchestrated for trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, Schick conducting symphony orchestra banjo, strings MOST RECENT FIRST PERFORMANCE APPROXIMATE CSO PERFORMANCES February 12, 1924, New York City. The PERFORMANCE TIME May 23, 2012, Orchestra Hall. composer as soloist 15 minutes Cyrus Chestnut as soloist, David Robertson conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES CSO RECORDING June 14, 1933, Auditorium Theatre. July 29, 2014, Ravinia Festival. 1990. conducting from The composer as soloist, William Kevin Cole as soloist, James the keyboard. Deutsche Grammophon Daly conducting Conlon conducting

6 Antonín Dvořák Born September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic). Died May 1, 1904, Prague. Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70

To the late nineteenth In the spring of 1884, Dvořák went to London century, Dvořák was the at the invitation of the Royal Philharmonic composer of five sympho- Society, whose members received him with nies. His first four enthusiasm and affection. After he returned symphonies, never home in June, the society elected him a member published during his and commissioned a new symphony, but Dvořák lifetime, were unknown. waited six months before he began to work on it. This powerful D minor work was published in n a sense, this symphony was born the day 1885 as Symphony no. 2, Dvořák first heard Brahms’s new Third simply because it was the second symphony by Symphony, and that was the music that Dvořák to come off the printer’s press, even Istill filled his head when he sat down that though it was the seventh to come from the December to begin sketching. composer’s pen. Dvořák, who was perhaps the had already played a decisive role in Dvořák’s only one capable of setting the record straight, life, lending support and encouragement, and didn’t, when, at the top of this manuscript, he persuading his own publisher, Fritz Simrock, wrote Symphony no. 6—discounting a first to take him on. Although Brahms insisted symphony that was never returned from an their admiration was reciprocal, history has orchestral competition and thus presumed lost. tended to hear Brahms’s voice in Dvořák’s Like his nineteenth-century colleagues Schubert music, and not the other way around. and Bruckner, Dvořák has been good to musicol- The work on the new symphony went ogists, who sometimes make a living straightening quickly—three months from the first sketch to up after the fact. The music itself—what was the finished product—but not smoothly. The known of it—has long been loved by the public. sketches are a muddle; many pages are incom- But only with the publication of Dvořák’s first plete, as if Dvořák did not know how to con- four symphonies in the 1950s (the long-lost First tinue. In February 1885, he wrote to Simrock, Symphony was rediscovered after the composer’s informing him of the new symphony and death and performed for the first time in 1936) mentioning Brahms’s name in the same breath: did we begin to use the current numbering. By “I don’t want to let Brahms down.” By March 17 now, even musicians who grew up knowing this the work was done, and Brahms could not possi- symphony as no. 2 have come to accept it as no. 7. bly have been disappointed with the result.

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1884–March 17, 1885 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME June 4, 5 & 6, 2009, Orchestra Hall. Sir 38 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE conducting April 22, 1885; London, England. The CSO RECORDINGS August 8, 2012, Ravinia Festival. James composer conducting 1967. Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. Conlon conducting CSO (From the Archives, vol. 9: A Tribute FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES to Carlo Maria Giulini) INSTRUMENTATION March 9 & 10, 1894, two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two 1984. James Levine conducting. RCA Auditorium Theatre. Theodore clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, Thomas conducting two trumpets, three trombones, July 9, 1968, Ravinia Festival. Stanisław timpani, strings Skrowaczewski conducting

7 his is arguably Dvořák’s finest sym- that the printed score bear the German Anton phony. Nearly a century ago, when rather than the Czech Antonín, which the com- the esteemed British writer and critic poser took as a personal attack on his nationality. DonaldT Tovey ranked this D minor symphony Ultimately they compromised on Ant.—the with Schubert’s great C major symphony and the neutral abbreviation saving not only space but a four by Brahms, it was not because of Dvořák’s friendship as well. indebtedness to either of those composers, but Dvořák said that the main theme of the first because he truly thought this work worthy of movement came to him while he stood on the that exalted comparison. The D minor sym- platform waiting for the train from Pest to arrive phony not only represents a mastery of form at the State Station, an unlikely inspiration made comparable to that of Schubert or Brahms—and more likely by the knowledge that Dvořák spent new to Dvořák—but it searches for a deeper hours of his adult life monitoring the progress meaning than audiences had come to expect of trains in rail yards wherever he lived. (When from the composer of popular Slavonic dances. he moved to New York, he loved watching the Boston trains come in.) The second theme—in B-flat, and far too lovely to have been launched by a locomotive—leads to a magnificent and generous paragraph. The development of these materials is short and densely packed. The move- ment ends not with the tragic power which it has so brilliantly harnessed, but in a sudden demise. The second movement is remarkable not only for the quality of its material, but also for the way it unfolds, freely and unpredictably. This is very rich music, both intimate and open- hearted; sweeping lyricism gives way to brief, emerging comments from the horn, the clarinet, or the . The Largo of the later New World Symphony may always be more famous and more easily remembered, for it is a big and gorgeous tune, but Dvořák never surpassed the achieve- Dvořák’s family shortly after their arrival in New York ment of this movement. Many scherzos are dance music, but this one nearly lifts an audience to its feet—and Fritz Simrock greeted this new symphony—as sometimes prompts a bit of podium activity as most of Dvořák’s music—with the transparent well—with its lively and infectious rhythm. disappointment that it was not another set of There is also the added excitement of an accom- Slavonic dances which he could quickly print and paniment that suggests two beats to the bar and a easily sell, making both him and Dvořák richer. melody that wants three. With the finale, tragedy Dvořák, who understood that music brings reappears, rules a number of themes, dictates a its own riches, was irritated that Simrock was particularly stormy episode midway through, and unmoved by the symphony’s great success at its admits a turn to D major only at the very end. London premiere under the composer’s direction. And so the two were set for a confrontation. That came soon enough when Simrock offered a mere three thousand marks for the symphony (which Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the Dvořák considered an insult), and then insisted Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.

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