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Program OnE HundrEd TwEnTIETH SEASOn Chicago Symphony orchestra riccardo muti Music director Pierre Boulez 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 John Eliot gardiner Conductor Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements = 160 Andante—Interlude:q L’istesso tempo— Con moto Elgar In the South (Alassio), Op. 50 IntErmISSIon Bartók Concerto 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 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 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, after the score was quickly became famous as the finished, that he had been com- composer of three ballet scores missioned to write a symphony.) (Petrushka, The Firebird, 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 the concert stage, he compose something to honor the composed the Symphonies 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 symphony in C in With the Symphony of Psalms, the four orthodox movements, his great choral work of 1930, scored for a Beethoven orchestra. ComPoSEd moSt rECEnt timpani, bass drum, piano, 1942–August 7, 1945 CSo PErFormanCE harp, strings March 3, 2009; FIrSt PErFormanCE Orchestra Hall; Pierre aPProxImatE January 24, 1946; new boulez conducting PErFormanCE tImE york City, the composer 22 minutes conducting InStrumEntatIon two flutes and piccolo, two CSo rECordIngS FIrSt CSo oboes, three clarinets and 1993, Sir Georg Solti PErFormanCE bass clarinet, two bassoons conducting, London november 17, 1960; and contrabassoon, four 2009, Pierre boulez conduct- Orchestra Hall; Hans horns, three trumpets, ing, CSO resound rosbaud conducting three trombones and tuba, 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- absolute music, 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 Ingolf Dahl 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. connotations 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 Munich, 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 Igor Stravinsky on had all dispersed. That same night the Symphony in I went with Vera de Bosset 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 episodes such as the canon Movements” would be a more for bassoons, the march music exact title—exploits the idea of predominates until the fugue 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 Edward Elgar Born June 2, 1857, Broadheath, near Worcester, England. 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 The Apostles and quickly abandoned his first stop, 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.

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