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Home , CSO Resound, Georg Solti, In the South (Alassio), John Eliot Gardiner, Joseph Szigeti, Percy Pitt

Program

One Hundred Twentieth Season Chicago Music Director Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, January 20, 2011, at 8:00 Saturday, January 22, 2011, at 8:00 Sir Conductor Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements = 160 Andante—Interlude:q L’istesso tempo— Con moto Elgar (Alassio), Op. 50

Intermission Bartók for Orchestra Introduzione: Andante non troppo—Allegro vivace Giuoco delle coppie: Allegro scherzando Elegia: Andante non troppo Intermezzo interrotto: Allegretto Finale: Presto

Steinway is the official 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

Igor Stravinsky Born June 18, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia. Died April 6, 1971, New York City.

Symphony in Three Movements

o composer has given us more Stravinsky is again playing word Nperspectives on a “symphony” games. (And, perhaps, as has than Stravinsky. He wrote a sym- been suggested, he used the term phony at the very beginning of his partly to placate his publisher, who career (it’s his op. 1), but Stravinsky reminded him, the score was quickly became famous as the finished, that he had been com- composer of three scores missioned to write a symphony.) (, , and The Rite Then, at last, a true symphony: in of Spring), and he spent the next few 1938, Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, years composing for the theater and together with Mrs. John Alden the opera house. When, in 1920, he Carpenter and several of her friends finally returned to writing music for in Chicago, asked Stravinsky to an orchestra on stage, he compose something to honor the composed the of Wind fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Instruments, which isn’t a symphony Symphony Orchestra in the in the classical sense of the word. 1940–41 season. To celebrate a (Stravinsky intentionally uses the milestone in the life of a great plural, alluding to the original American orchestra, Stravinsky meaning of the word, which implies decided to tackle the “standard” instruments sounding together.) by writing a in With the , the four orthodox movements, his great work of 1930, scored for a Beethoven orchestra.

Composed Most recent , drum, piano, 1942–August 7, 1945 CSO performance harp, strings March 3, 2009; First performance Orchestra Hall; Pierre Approximate January 24, 1946; New Boulez performance time York City, the composer 22 minutes conducting Instrumentation two and piccolo, two CSO recordings First CSO , three and 1993, Sir performance bass , two conducting, November 17, 1960; and , four 2009, Pierre Boulez conduct- Orchestra Hall; Hans horns, three , ing, CSO Resound Rosbaud conducting three and ,

2 Two years later, Stravinsky began I will not say that it expresses my sketches for this Symphony in feeling about them, but only that, Three Movements—his final essay without participation of what I on what a symphony can mean. think of as my will, they excited (From time to time he regretted my musical imagination. And the not having called it simply Three impressions that activated me were Symphonic Movements.) In the not general, or ideological, but spe- Symphony in C, Stravinsky had cific: each episode in the symphony enjoyed masquerading as Haydn, is linked in my imagination with a but the new Symphony in Three specific cinematographic impression Movements is much more a work of of war. its own time. The third movement even In a program note written for contains the genesis of a war plot, the premiere in 1946, Stravinsky though I accepted it as such only asserted that the symphony was after the composition was com- , although touched pleted. The beginning of the move- “by this arduous time of sharp and ment is partly and in some inexpli- shifting events, of despair and hope, cable way a musical reaction to the of continual torments, of tension, newsreels and documentaries I had and, at last, cessation and relief.” seen of goose-stepping soldiers. The Two years later, he wrote a letter to square march beat, the brass-band the composer insisting instrumentation, the grotesque that “if passages from the program crescendo in the tuba—these are all notes are used to imply extramusical related to those abhorrent pictures. in my work, I have to Though what I call my impres- disclaim any responsibility for such sions of world events were derived interpretations.” This was charac- almost entirely from films, the root teristic Stravinsky, and even though of my indignation was a personal the composer’s followers had heard experience. One day, in , in words to this effect time and time 1932, I saw a squad of Brown Shirts again, they always suspected there enter the street below the balcony was more to the story. Finally, in of my room in the Bayerischer Hof Dialogues and A Diary, published and assault a group of civilians. The in 1963, Stravinsky wrote openly latter tried to defend themselves about the genesis of the symphony. with street benches, but they were Those comments follow. soon crushed beneath these clumsy shields. The police eventually arrived, of course, but the attackers on had all dispersed. That same night the Symphony in I went with and the photographer Eric Schall to a small Three Movements Allée restaurant. As we dined, a gang in swastika armbands entered he symphony was written under the room. One of them began to Tthe impression of world events. talk insultingly about Jews and to

3 aim his remarks in our direction. the final, rather too commercial, With the afternoon street fight still D-flat sixth chord—instead of the in our eyes, we hurried to leave, expected C—in some way tokens but the now-shouting Nazi and my extra exuberance in the Allied his myrmidons followed, cursing triumph. The figure and threaten- ing us the while. Schall protested, and at that they was developed from the rhumba in began to kick the timpani part in the introduction and to hit to the first movement. It is some- him. Miss de how, inexplicably, associated in my Bosset ran to a imagination with the movements of corner, found war machines. a policeman, The first movement was likewise and told him inspired by a war film, this time Sergei Soudeikine’s a man was of scorched earth tactics in China. portrait of Vera de Bosset, who became Stravinsky’s being killed, The middle part of the movement second wife but this was conceived as a series of instru- information mental conversations to accompany did not arouse a series of cinematographic scenes him to any action. We were rescued showing the Chinese people by a timely taxi and though Schall scratching and digging in their was battered and bloody, we went fields. The music for clarinet, piano, directly to a Police Court. The and strings that mounts in intensity magistrate was as little perturbed and volume until the explosion with our story, however, as the of the three chords . . . , and that policeman had been. “In Germany then begins all over again, was all today, such things happen every associated in my mind with this minute,” was all he said. Chinese documentary. But to return to the plot of the The formal substance of the movement, in spite of contrast- symphony—“Three Symphonic ing such as the canon Movements” would be a more for bassoons, the march music exact title—exploits the idea of predominates until the which counterplay between several types is the stasis and the turning point. of contrasting elements. One such The immobility at the beginning of contrast, the most obvious, is that this fugue is comic, I think—and of harp and piano, the principal so, to me, was the overturned instrumental protagonists. Each has arrogance of the Germans when a large obbligato role and a whole their machine failed. The exposi- movement to itself and only at tion of the fugue and the end of the turning-point fugue, the Nazi the symphony are associated in my queue de poisson, are the two heard plot with the rise of the Allies, and together and alone.

4 Born June 2, 1857, Broadheath, near Worcester, . Died February 23, 1934, Worcester, England.

In the South (Alassio), Op. 50

hen Henry James toured Italy the Mediterranean being rough & Win the 1870s, he encountered grey? Who cares for gales? . . . We hoards of “grave English people have such meals! Such wine! Gosh! who looked respectable and bored.” We are at last living a life.” Three decades later, when Edward Elgar had gone to Italy in Elgar went to the Italian Riviera, December 1903 not to escape craving sunshine and relaxation, the damp and cold of an English he discovered the roads “full of winter, but to regain his strength English nursery maids and old and inspiration after the exhausting English women and children.” He work of finishing and quickly abandoned his first , to begin his first symphony. He in tourist-clogged Bordighera, just failed on all three counts. Several across the French border, finding it days into their stay in Alassio, his “lovely but too cockney for me,” and wife Alice wrote in her diary, “Still moved on to Alassio, farther along cold & grey & windy—E. and A. the coast in the direction of Genoa. much depressed at these condi- “This place is jolly,” he wrote, “real tions & wondering if they will not Italian & no nursemaids calling out pack up & go home. E. feeling no ‘Now Master Johnny!’ ” Although inspiration for writing.” Edward Alassio did not provide the cloud- himself wrote to his dear friend less skies Elgar sought, he discov- Alfred Jaeger (immortalized in the ered the true Italy that has long magnificent and moving “Nimrod” intoxicated travelers. “What matter music in the Enigma ):

Composed Most recent drum, , , 1903–February 21, 1904 CSO performance triangle, , two March 28, 2000; Orchestra harps, strings First performance Hall; conducting March 16, 1904; London, the Approximate composer conducting Instrumentation performance time three flutes and piccolo, two 19 minutes First CSO oboes and english horn, two performance clarinets and , November 4, 1904; two bassoons and contra- Auditorium Theater; , four horns, three Theodore Thomas trumpets, three trombones conducting and tuba, timpani, bass

5 “This visit has been, is, artisti- dimensions and electric colors. cally a complete failure & I can do Elgar may have sidestepped that nothing. The symphony will not be term to avoid comparison with the written in this sunny (?) land.” new tone poems by But the essence of Italian life (at the time of the premiere he affected Elgar, despite the cold and asked that the program notes not the gales and swarms of mosquitoes mention Strauss’s name), for much as annoying as the tourist crowds. about Elgar’s overture recalls the In Alassio, he began a concert style, substance, and sheer orches- overture, in place of the promised tral splendor of Strauss. These two symphony, that is perhaps his composers were kindred spirits sunniest and most energized work. in many ways, and their artistic It depicts the Italian holiday that outlooks were never more closely largely eluded him, and it is music aligned than in the early years that Elgar never would have writ- of the twentieth century. When ten at home in England, for even Strauss heard a performance of a dispiriting stay in Italy offered Elgar’s in glimpses of life’s greatest pleasures. 1902, he proposed a toast to “the In his manuscript, he wrote this first English progressivist, Meister passage from Tennyson’s The Daisy: Edward Elgar,” and remained Elgar’s friend for life. In the South What hours were thine begins with a rapid unfurling of and mine a large orchestral chord, very like In lands of palm and the opening of Strauss’s southern pine (which Elgar admired), followed by In lands of palm, of the kind of dancing horns Strauss orange-blossom had already made famous. Of olive, aloe, and maise and vine he precise idea for In the South Tcame to Elgar during an And from Byron’s Childe Harold: afternoon stroll near Alassio. “I was by the side of an old Roman way. A . . . a land peasant stood by an old ruin, and Which was the mightiest in its in a flash it all came to me—the old command conflict of armies in that very spot And is the loveliest . . . long ago, where now I stood— Wherein were cast . . . the contrast of the ruin and the . . . the men of ! shepherd.” In a letter to Percy Pitt, Thou art the garden of who wrote the program note for the the world. premiere, Elgar marked his initial theme “Joy of Life (wine & maca- Although Elgar called In the roni),” but, in fact, it’s an idea he South a concert overture, it’s really had sketched several years before, a tone poem—his largest orchestral depicting Dan, a friend’s bulldog, movement at the time—of weighty “triumphant (after a fight).” (Dan

6 is officially memorialized in the for Music” (he begins at the line, eleventh of the , “As the moon’s soft splendour”). when he falls into the river Wye, With this little song—titled “In paddles upstream, and reaches the shore with a victorious bark.) The rest of In the South, however, leaves England far behind, beginning with the reflective shepherd’s music that soon follows, with, as the com- poser told Pitt, “romance creeping into the picture.” Elgar lingers in this relaxed and genial mood for some time until the music into a forceful and determined passage marked grandioso. There he writes two more lines from Tennyson into his manuscript: Alassio, on the gulf of Genoa, where Edward and Alice Elgar vacationed What Roman strength Turbia show’d In ruin, by the mountain road Moonlight”—Elgar returns to the shores of the Mediterranean, for Here, and in the uncharacteristi- it was there, on the curving coast cally dissonant pages that follow, not far from Alassio, that Shelley Elgar recalls “the strife and wars, spent the last months of his short the ‘drums and tramplings’ of a life. When Henry James made his later time.” This gives way to a pilgrimage to Shelley’s house, he delicate canto populare first sung wrote, “I can fancy a great lyric by the —an unidentified poet sitting on the terrace of a popular song that Elgar eventually warm evening and feeling very confessed he had written himself. far from England.” Elgar’s own He later turned this lovely music final pages say the same thing, in into a real song, taking words from music of warmly melodic and life- a poem by Shelley, “An Ariette loving exuberance.

7 Béla Bartók Born March 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, (now part of Romania). Died September 26, 1945, New York City.

Concerto for Orchestra

or all the prestige his music little better—the English language Fcommands today among was a minefield, and home was now American , Béla Bartók a spartan hotel room. The Bartóks was unhappy and largely ignored were perplexed by American ways, during the last four years of his like eating cracked wheat for break- life, which he spent in this country. fast, and they were dumbfounded The sad departure from his native by a subway system so vast they , in late 1940, to escape once spent three hours wandering the Nazi invasion, was a nightmare underground before they emerged, itself for both Bartók and his wife shamefaced, into the sunlight. Ditta, with a furtive night-train Bartók complained of “creative trip through Italy to Switzerland, impotence,” and, in truth, he passage by bus through , a wrote nothing of substance dur- merciless customs inspection at the ing his first two years here. He Spanish border, a night spent wan- played a few scattered concerts, dering through Lisbon in search of including a duo-recital with his a place to sleep, and, finally, a rough wife in Chicago that got very bad crossing on an American cargo reviews—one “as bad as I never got ship, with all luggage left behind. in my life,” according to the com- The first weeks in New York were poser, his mastery of our tongue

Composed Instrumentation CSO recordings August 15–October 8, 1943 three flutes and piccolo, 1955, three oboes and english conducting, RCA First performance horn, three clarinets and 1969, Seiji Ozawa December 1, 1944 bass clarinet, three bas- conducting, Angel soons and contrabassoon, First CSO four horns, three trumpets, 1981, Sir Georg Solti performance three trombones and tuba, conducting, London December 2, 1948; timpani, side drum, bass 1989, Orchestra Hall; George drum, tam-tam, cymbals, conducting, Deutsche Szell conducting triangle, two harps, strings Grammophon Most recent Approximate 1992, Pierre Boulez CSO performance performance time conducting, Deutsche October 2, 2009; Orchestra 35 minutes Grammophon Hall; Paavo Järvi conducting

8 still as uncertain as his verdict on At least temporarily, his health life in America. In April 1942, improved, and when he returned to Bartók’s health took a turn for the New York in October, he took the worse; several medical examina- finished score with him. “Perhaps tions proved inconclusive. There it is due to this improvement,” he were good days and bad, periods of had written to Szigeti “(or it may high fever, occasional hospital stays. be the other way around) that I Pain in his joints made walking dif- have been able to finish the work ficult. It was, truly, the beginning that Koussevitzky commissioned.” of the end. Koussevitzky, who conducted the And then, like the miracle great first performance with the Boston music always is, a masterpiece Symphony in December 1944, was born. In May 1943, Serge called the Concerto for Orchestra Koussevitzky, music director of the “the best orchestral piece of the last Boston Symphony, visited Bartók in his hospital room, prepared to write a check for $500, half payment for an orchestral piece he wished to commission in memory of his late wife Olga. Bartók was reluctant, fearing he wouldn’t be able to complete the work, but he finally accepted the offer—and Koussevitzky’s check. Had Bartók known the truth, he never would have agreed. The suggestion for the commission had not come directly from Koussevitzky (never a cham- With Fritz Reiner, a former pupil and one of Bartók’s most dedicated champions in the U.S. pion of Bartók before), but from (and CSO music director from 1953 to 1963) Joseph Szigeti and Fritz Reiner, who greatly admired Bartók’s music and knew him well enough to know twenty-five years,” an assessment that he would refuse any effort he few were to challenge. viewed as charity. The Bartóks spent the summer at word about Bartók’s title, Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. AConcerto for Orchestra. At first, Bartók busied himself Bartók’s work wasn’t the first, but prowling around the local library— only the most celebrated example he read an English translation to bear this seemingly paradoxical of with no apparent title, which focuses the spotlight difficulty. By mid-August, he was not on one solo instrument, but on ready to put pen to paper, and the orchestra itself. Hindemith, found to his surprise that he was , and Bartók’s working “practically day and night” fellow Hungarian—and dear on the Koussevitzky commission. friend—Zoltán Kodály had written

9 by oboes in thirds, clarinets in for orches- sevenths, flutes in fifths, and muted tra before trumpets in major seconds. The him, just Elegia for Olga Koussevitzky is, as Michael in Bartók’s words, a “lugubrious Tippett, death-song.” It’s also a prime exam- , ple of the composer’s “night music,” and Shulamit full of haunting, evocative sounds, Ran would and, ultimately, a deep calm. after his great The Intermezzo interrotto is success. The exactly that—an interrupted concerto for intermezzo—the disruption being orchestra is a the march tune of Shostakovich’s Bartók and his second wife, particularly Leningrad Symphony. Bartók first Ditta Pásztory twentieth- heard the symphony on the radio century idea— in Saranac Lake and thought a reflection of the unprecedented the marching theme so banal he virtuosity of the modern orchestra couldn’t resist saying so—in music and of the desire to pour new wine that dissects the tune and then into old bottles. holds it up to the ridicule of the With no traditional form to entire orchestra. It’s also worth follow, Bartók picked one he often remembering that Bartók had long favored: a symmetrical, mirror-like questioned Koussevitzky’s cham- arrangement of five movements, pionship of Shostakovich’s music with a large, dark-hued andante at at the neglect of his own. Bartók the center; light, quicker interludes wasn’t a vindictive or mean-spirited on either side; and a powerful fast man, but surely he enjoyed having movement to anchor each end. The the last laugh. The finale is first sounds we hear are full of mys- music, brilliant and lively—espe- tery and gloom, which don’t begin cially in its perpetuum mobile sec- to suggest the sunlight, dancing, tions—based on a straightforward, and outright humor that are right singable tune and constructed with around the corner. The tone of both the contrapuntal dexterity of a the opening movement and the master craftsman. It is, above all, central Elegia is stern, even tragic. a life-affirming statement from a The second and fourth movements man close to death. will disrupt the mood, but only the Bartók attended the trium- life-asserting finale can dispel it. phant premiere of the Concerto The Giuoco delle coppie is for Orchestra in December 1944, one of Bartók’s most celebrated perhaps detecting the first signs of creations, in which pairs [coppie] a new wave of enthusiasm for his of instruments take turns present- music. In the remaining months ing an unprepossessing little tune of his life, he completed all but launched by two bassoons at the the last few measures of the Third interval of the sixth, and followed Piano Concerto. He left a viola

10 concerto commissioned by William year and continued to play recitals Primrose in a pile of sketches (later of her husband’s music. She died reconstructed by Tibor Serly). in November 1982. In July 1988, Bartók was unable to begin a sev- the remains of Béla Bartók were enth commissioned returned to his native Hungary for by Ralph Hawkes. a state burial. Bartók died in West Side Hospital, in New York City, in September 1945; he was buried, without ceremony or speeches, in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. His widow Ditta moved Phillip Huscher is the program annota- back to the following tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2011 Chicago

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