Program

ONe HuNDreD TweNTieTH SeASON Chicago symphony orchestra Music Director Helen regenstein Conductor emeritus Yo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, January 27, 2011, at 8:00 Friday, January 28, 2011, at 8:00 Saturday, January 29, 2011, at 8:00 Tuesday, February 1, 2011, at 7:30 mitsuko Uchida Conductor and Piano music by Wolfgang mozart No. 11 in F Major, K. 413 Allegro Larghetto Tempo di menuetto Divertimento in B-flat Major, K. 137 Andante Allegro di molto Allegro assai First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

IntermIssIon

Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 [Allegro maestoso] Andante Allegro vivace assai

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra graciously salutes John Hart and Carol Prins for their generous support of the CSO through their commitment to the Center Stage Society. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. 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

Wolfgang mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, . Died December 5, 1791, , Austria.

Piano Concerto no. 11 in F major, K. 413

ozart arrived in Vienna a little that this break had altered their Mbefore eight in the morning relationship forever. on March 16, 1781. He could Mozart was the greatest pianist not wait to escape the provincial of his time. Today his performances atmosphere of Salzburg and the would be televised and posted on stifling presence of the man he YouTube, but we don’t know how knew as manager, teacher, critic, Mozart looked as he sat at the friend, mentor, and father. He keyboard—whether, for example, wrote home to Leopold the day he leapt at the keys, as the movies after he arrived; the letter is full of suggest, with adolescent delight. the empty chatter of a twenty-five- In all the newspaper reports there year-old determined to conquer is scarcely one line as revealing as the big city and excited to be on Mozart’s own about a colleague: his own. Not one of Leopold’s “She stalks over the clavier with letters to his son from this period her long bony fingers in such an has survived, but we can tell from odd way.” There are vivid remarks Wolfgang’s replies, each carefully scattered throughout his letters signed “Ever your most obedient about pianists who grimaced and son,” that his father apparently flopped about while playing, or felt totally abandoned and perhaps who distorted the music with a betrayed. They both recognized free-wheeling use of rubato, and he

ComPosed most reCent InstrUmentatIon 1782–83 Cso PerFormanCes solo piano, two oboes, two November 4, 1995; Orchestra bassoons, two horns, strings FIrst PerFormanCe Hall; , probably January 11, conductor and piano Cadenza 1783, in Vienna, with the by Mozart July 3, 2005; ravinia composer as soloist Festival; Joseph Kalichstein, aPProxImate FIrst Cso piano, with James Conlon PerFormanCe tIme PerFormanCe conducting 23 minutes February 26, 1952; Orchestra Hall; Myra Hess, piano, with rafael Kubelík conducting

2 once advised his sister to play with still had two more to complete for “plenty of expression, taste, and the 1783 Lenten concert series. fire.” That comment, and another (From phrase of his—“it should flow like studying oil”—argue that Mozart’s music the paper he should never sound mechanical, used, it seems although that is what later genera- clear that he tions made of it. Few musicians worked on all whose opinions we might still value three concer- have left us detailed descriptions of tos simultane- Mozart’s playing. Muzio Clementi, ously; he did the famous pianist who was once not finish one pitted against Mozart in a contest, before starting later recalled simply that he “had another.) never heard anyone perform with “These such spirit and grace.” concertos,” Mozart’s father, Leopold. Anonymous oil portrait, Between 1782, the year after he continued, ca. 1765 he moved to Vienna, and 1786, “are a happy Mozart wrote fifteen piano medium concertos. This is an incredible between what is too easy and too outpouring of important music, and difficult; they are very brilliant, it corresponds precisely to Mozart’s pleasing to the ear, and natural, heyday as a performer. These without being vapid. There are also concertos were his main performing passages here and there from which vehicles—also his primary source connoisseurs alone can derive of income—and time has placed satisfaction; but these passages are them among the crowning glories written in such a way that the less of all music. There is little else in discriminating cannot fail to be all Mozart’s output, aside from the pleased, though without knowing great operas, to compare with the why.” Few composers since could, magnificence, subtlety, and consis- in all honesty, have said the same. tent brilliance of these scores, and These three concertos were in no other works did Mozart so written shortly before The Marriage ingeniously merge the symphonic, of Figaro, with which they share operatic, and chamber music styles an almost unreasonable melodic into a uniquely personal language wealth, and at the same time as the of expression. six string quartets Mozart dedicated On December 28, 1782, to Haydn. They are as close to Wolfgang wrote to his father that chamber music as one can imagine, he had finished a piano concerto in scale and intimacy of dialogue. In (probably the one in A major, fact, Mozart advertised copies of the K. 414), and that, although he was scores for sale—even before he fin- swamped—“I have so much to do ished writing the music—in versions that often I do not know whether that could be performed with one I am on my head or my heels”—he player to a string part and without

3 any winds, as piano quintets. This subtlety of expression rarely found may have been nothing more than in his earlier music. The F major a marketing ploy—“suitable for concerto, K. 413 is the most performing at home” the ad might restrained, and arguably the most read today—to attract the amateur old-fashioned of the three. From musician and to help pay off the its opening phrases, Mozart seems composer’s snowballing debts. In determined to win over his listeners any event, the scheme was not suc- with pure, natural charm. But the cessful, despite Mozart’s reducing lilting, easy-going first movement the price from six to four ducats for also indicates how Mozart, virtu- the set (apparently at his father’s ally alone among his contempo- insistence). The concertos, however, raries, could say things of substance proved immediately popular in the and weight in the galant and proper concert hall. (They are among only conversational style of the day. (The six of the composer’s piano concer- Allegro abounds in subtle touches; tos that were published during his notice, for example, how the solo lifetime.) As Donald Tovey wrote: piano slips in almost unnoticed to “These concertos are small as the enter the musical argument.) The wild strawberry is small; they are soloist’s part in the slow move- no stunted growths, nor are they ment is a marvel of delicate, subtly school-pieces of educational value; ornamented melody. The finale is they are highly characteristic and Mozart’s last in the style and tempo mature masterpieces.” of a courtly minuet. It is not a stir- These three concertos find ring, emphatic close, but a perfectly Mozart striving for a new clarity satisfying ending to an unusually of language and a leanness and gracious and elegant work.

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divertimento in B-flat major, K. 137

fter returning to Salzburg from home, Mozart composed three Ahis extraordinarily successful, works for stringed instruments. The career-changing first tour of Italy, autographs the young Mozart was barely home are titled for five months before he and his divertimen- father set off for Milan late in the tos, but the summer of 1771. Italy had a won- handwriting derful effect on Wolfgang. He was isn’t Mozart’s. introduced to new musical styles It is possible and exposed to new ideas—and, in that Mozart the manner of a prodigy destined was thinking to fulfill his youthful promise, he of just one absorbed them and made them player to a his own. He received much of part, which his musical education abroad and would make many of his early works were these delight- Mozart in Verona. Formerly attributed to Felice written on the road. By the time ful scores Cignaroli, this oil portrait, Mozart arrived back in Salzburg early efforts at painted early in January in December 1771, after his second writing string 1770 during the first Italian adventure, he had already quartets. Italian tour, is now known begun to make his mark in the (Mozart’s to have been by Saviero dalla Rosa. Mozart here is fields of opera, oratorio, symphony, first “offi- only a few weeks from his and sonata, and he was poised to cial” string fourteenth birthday. transform the piano concerto. And quartets were he was just fifteen years old. composed a Within a few weeks of his return few months later, as a cycle of six to Salzburg, which seemed more works.) Nevertheless, because of provincial each time he came their divertimento designation and

ComPosed InstrUmentatIon aPProxImate 1772 strings PerFormanCe tIme 12 minutes FIrst PerFormanCe unknown These are the first CSO performances

5 their scoring for violins, violas, and to Mozart—if they weren’t in fact basses, rather than the cellos of con- written down—while he was still ventional string quartet makeup, in Milan. they have most often been played It is possible that this is one of by string orchestras. the quartets Leopold unsuccess- The Divertimento in F major— fully peddled to the publishing the second in the set—has three house of Breitkopf and Härtel in movements, but in an unusual February of 1772. The prestigious arrangement, with the slowest Viennese company’s lack of interest movement, a lovely Andante, in an unknown teenage composer placed before two faster ones. A is hardly surprising. In fact, during typically Italian grace and charm Mozart’s lifetime, only some 130 of pervade the entire piece, suggesting the 626 works in Köchel’s catalog that the ideas for this music came were printed and sold.

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Piano Concerto no. 21 in C major, K. 467

arly in 1785, Leopold Mozart thirty-eight days (“I don’t think Etraveled to Vienna to check that in this way I can possibly get up on his already famous son, out of practice,” he quipped). But newly married (against his father’s nothing had quite prepared him for wishes) to Constanze Weber and the nonstop socializing, perform- at the peak of his popularity as a ing, and composing that he would pianist and composer. Leopold witness during the next ten weeks. reached Vienna on February 10, the Even a long and brutal cold same day Wolfgang entered a new spell, with heavy snowfall and piano concerto, in D minor, in his temperatures so low that several catalog, although when he arrived people froze to death, didn’t curtail at one o’clock in the afternoon, as Wolfgang’s performing schedule he wrote home to Wolfgang’s sister, (Leopold watched in amazement Nannerl, “the copyist was still as his son’s piano was carted out of copying . . . and your brother did the house to a concert nearly every not even have time to play through other day). Their calendar was so the Rondo.” Wolfgang premiered packed with social engagements the work at a concert that night. that Wolfgang and Constanze, Leopold knew his son’s life was like heads of state, were forced to hectic, and that he was giving con- accept different invitations for the certs at a frantic pace—the previous same night. Shortly after Leopold’s March, Wolfgang had written of arrival, the Mozarts hosted an eve- playing twenty-two concerts in ning of chamber music, including

ComPosed FIrst Cso InstrUmentatIon March 9, 1785, entered in PerFormanCe solo piano, one flute, two Mozart’s catalog January 28, 1932; oboes, two bassoons, Orchestra Hall; walter two horns, two trumpets, FIrst PerFormanCe Gieseking, piano, and eric timpani, strings March 10, 1785, Vienna, with DeLamarter conducting the composer as soloist Cadenzas most reCent by Mitsuko uchida Cso PerFormanCe January 11, 2009; Orchestra aPProxImate Hall; , piano, PerFormanCe tIme with 29 minutes conducting

7 performances of three of Mozart’s rather than inconvenienced him. new quartets dedicated to Haydn, During Leopold’s first four weeks attended by Haydn himself, who in Vienna, Wolfgang wrote this told Leopold that “your son is the new piano concerto—in C major— greatest composer known to me hard on the heels of the D minor either in person or by name,” a trib- concerto. These two works, so ute Leopold would proudly repeat close in time yet so different verbatim in the months ahead. in substance and character, are During the day, Wolfgang main- among the glories of his output, tained his teaching schedule, with and with them, Mozart seems to a steady stream of pupils showing have created a new kind of con- up at the Mozarts’ lavish, though certo, more symphonic and closely disorderly lodgings. (Leopold argued than before. Leopold was eventually warmed to Constanze, in the audience for the premiere but he never thought she was a of this concerto, on March 10 (the day after Mozart entered it in his catalog), and, although it was well received, Leopold characteristically reported that Wolfgang took in 559 gulden, with little to say about the music itself. There’s a density of material in the opening movement of the C major concerto that mirrors the round-the-clock frenzy of Mozart’s life at the time, except that the music is perfectly poised and masterfully organized. The entire movement is very broadly con- ceived; more than any of Mozart’s earlier concertos, it has the majesty and vastness of his grand- est symphonies. The solo piano doesn’t enter boldly, with music the orchestra has already introduced, but hesitantly, ushered in by oboe, Mozart’s wife Constanze. Oil portrait by Joseph bassoon, and flute. The piano Lange painted about 1782, Vienna writing throughout is unusually inventive, rich in fancy figuration good housekeeper.) and aggressive in its dialogue with Somehow, throughout this the orchestra. The development period, Mozart also managed section focuses mostly on second- to compose, with astonishing ary material, because Mozart has fluency and brilliance, as if the already explored his main themes distractions of daily life stimulated from so many different angles.

8 If the first movement is sym- just once, like a great soprano voice, phonic in scope, the second, in from high C to low A. (Later, the F major, is operatic, although accompaniment stops for a single there’s no single aria of Mozart’s breathtaking moment, as if, by that encompasses such an its silence, to call attention to a extraordinary range of emo- modulation to A-flat major.) tions or explores so fearlessly the After such time-stopping music, expressive world that lies beyond the finale is, almost of necessity, a words. (It completely upstaged Bo return to simpler, earthier plea- Widerberg’s pretty art-house film, sures. Like an operatic finale, it Elvira Madigan, in the 1960s, at summarily dismisses recent difficul- the same time winning countless ties and revelations. But it spares new admirers for Mozart—and nothing in the way of spirit and wit, tempting concert and record and, in the end, it stands as an ideal promoters to include the name of counterpart to the brilliance and the movie’s heroine as if it were beauty of what had come before. Mozart’s subtitle.) This is one of Mozart’s most profound and endlessly revealing works. In one seemingly unbroken arc, the piano traces a melody that floats over a quiet, pulsating accompaniment— Phillip Huscher is the program annota- rising and circling, plummeting tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2011 Chicago

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