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Home , Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Funeral march, Gustav Mahler, Jaap van Zweden

Please note that has withdrawn from these concerts on the advice of his doctor. The CSO welcomes Donald Runnicles, who has graciously agreed to conduct. Mendelssohn’s replaces Bartók’s two Rhapsodies for violin.

PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOURTH SEASON Chicago Zell Director Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, October 9, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, October 10, 2014, at 1:30 Sunday, October 12, 2014, at 3:00

Donald Runnicles Conductor Violin Mendelssohn in E Minor, Op. 64 Allegro molto appassionato— Andante— Allegretto non troppo—Allegro molto vivace ROBERT CHEN

INTERMISSION

Mahler Symphony No. 5 Part 1 : With measured step. Strict. Like a cortege Stormily. With greatest vehemence Part 2 : Vigorously, not too fast Part 3 Adagietto: Very slow Rondo-Finale: Allegro giocoso. Lively

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

Felix Mendelssohn Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg, . Died November 4, 1847, , Germany. Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64

On July 30, born only a year apart. They became 1838, Felix friends in 1825, the year Ferdinand Mendelssohn David, fifteen, gave his first concerts in wrote to his , and , sixteen, friend, the composed the magnificent Octet for distinguished strings. That summer, after Abraham German violinist Mendelssohn moved his family to Ferdinand 3 Leipziger Strasse in Berlin, the two David, “I’d like young men became regular chamber to write a violin music partners as well. concerto for you next winter; one in Ten years later, when Mendelssohn E minor sticks in my head, the begin- was named conductor of the Leipzig ning of which will not leave me in Gewandhaus Orchestra, he asked peace.” With those lines, Mendelssohn Ferdinand David to be his concertmas- began his last great work—a master- ter. In 1843, Mendelssohn founded the piece to refute claims of a career in Leipzig Conservatory; he appointed decline and a concerto that would prove David to head his violin staff. as popular as any ever written. Sketches Although Mendelssohn had written confirm that Mendelssohn knew very to David some five years earlier of his early on how this music would go, and intention to compose a concerto for him, an extensive correspondence with it wasn’t until 1844 that he found time to David, spanning six years, shows how work on it in earnest. The concerto was much care went into the details. completed on September 16, but as late as Mendelssohn was the architect, David December 17 he wrote to David one last his technical advisor. time, asking him to look at some changes David and Mendelssohn were kindred he had penciled in, even though he had spirits; both were celebrated prodigies, already sent the score off to his publisher,

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1844 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME September 29, 2012, 27 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Orchestra Hall. Anne-Sophie March 13, 1845; Leipzig, Mutter as soloist, Riccardo CSO RECORDINGS Germany Muti 1947. Mischa Elman as soloist, Désiré Defauw conducting. RCA January 25, 2013, Chiang FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Kai-Shek National Concert 1962. as soloist, August 4, 1893, Music Hall Hall, , . Robert Walter Hendl conducting. VAI at the World’s Columbian Chen as soloist, Osmo (video) Exposition. Maud Powell Vänskä conducting as soloist, Theodore 1979. Kyung-Wha Chung Thomas conducting August 7, 2013, Ravinia Festival. as soloist, Sir as soloist, Carlos conducting. London (video) February 7 & 8, 1896, Miguel Prieto conducting Auditorium Theatre. Emile 1980. as soloist, Sauret as soloist, Theodore conducting. INSTRUMENTATION Thomas conducting violin, two , two July 26, 1941, Ravinia Festival. oboes, two , two 1993. Itzhak Perlman as soloist, as soloist, , two horns, two conducting. Carlos Chávez conducting trumpets, timpani, strings Erato Breitkopf & Härtel. “I very much section and the recapitulation. The solo- want to have your views on all this,” ist now takes the spotlight at the most he wrote, “before I turn it over to the dramatic moment in the movement—it’s printer.” David gave the world premiere a powerful and satisfying tactic. The on March 13, 1845, with the Leipzig concludes with a series of Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by arpeggios that continues even after the Danish Niels Gade. It was a orchestra bursts in with the main theme, great success. a reversal of their traditional roles. The concerto turned out to be Novelty shouldn’t overshadow the Mendelssohn’s last orchestral work, a music’s less historic moments. The first powerhouse finale to a career burdened movement is one of Mendelssohn’s by the promise of spectacular early greatest creations—there’s evidence accomplishment—even the Italian and of his fastidious craftsmanship and Scottish hadn’t surpassed the inspiration in every bar. Notice, in par- masterpieces of his teens—the Octet ticular, how he handles the important and the Overture to A Midsummer change of key and mode (from minor to Night’s Dream. In achievement and major): the solo violin quickly descends popularity, the violin concerto proved to three octaves to its lowest G, where it be their equal. becomes the line to a new melody in the clarinets and flutes. his violin concerto has long In his own Scottish Symphony, been too well known for an Mendelssohn had played with going easy appraisal of its real virtues from one movement to another without andT innovations. In 1921, Donald a break. He now conceives his entire Tovey wrote, “I rather envy the enjoy- concerto, in three movements, as one ment of anyone who should hear the continuous flow of music. The first Mendelssohn concerto for the first time bridge is accomplished by a single and find that, like , it was full of note—a low B in the —that quotations.” Perhaps the most famous outlasts the final chord of the opening of the quotations in the concerto is the Allegro like a stuck key on a . very opening, a wonderful, singing The sustained B finally rises the half step violin melody launched after just two to C, suggesting a new key—C major— measures of orchestral “curtain”—a and, in turn, a new movement. theme so effortlessly right that it The Andante is one of Mendelssohn’s comes as a surprise to learn that it gave loveliest , a full Mendelssohn considerable trouble. paragraph of sweet melody and sensitive Although Mendelssohn wasn’t the scoring. The mood darkens midway first composer to introduce his soloist at through, with the entrance of trumpets the start of a concerto, he seized on the and timpani. The bridge to the finale is happy idea of letting soloist and orches- accomplished by fourteen measures at tra explore the exposition together, a transitional , in the character abandoning the traditional double - of a recitative before a showstopper sition (one for orchestra alone, a second aria. This is truly virtuosic material— led by the soloist). The idea was part of roulades, scales, and rapid passage Mendelssohn’s design from the begin- work in virtually every measure—cast ning, and it was followed by nearly every in Mendelssohn’s characteristic fleet nineteenth-century composer, except and dancing style. The scurrying main for Brahms and Dvořák. Equally novel theme carries the day at the expense (though less imitated) is Mendelssohn’s of a little march tune that passes for a decision to move the soloist’s cadenza second subject. There’s a fancy coda, from the end of the movement to the and, in the final bar, the soloist’s high E crucial juncture of the development pierces the stratosphere. Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Gustav Born July 7, 1860, Kalischt, . Died May 18, 1911, , Austria. Symphony No. 5

The lone trumpet call that direct link, in other words, with the world opens this symphony Mahler has left behind. And Mahler has hardly launches a whole new given up song for symphony. In fact, the new chapter in Mahler’s focus on purely instrumental symphonies seems music. Gone is the to have freed Mahler to produce, at the same picturesque world of the time, an extraordinary outpouring of songs, first four symphonies— including most of his finest. And, although music inspired by folk they are not sung—or even directly quoted—in tales and song, music that Symphonies nos. 5 through 7, their presence, and calls on the human voice their immense importance to Mahler, is contin- and is explained by the written word. With the ually felt. The great lumbering march that strides Fifth Symphony, as put it, Mahler across the first movement of this symphony, for “is now aiming to write music as a musician.” example, shares much in spirit, contour, and Walter had nothing against the earlier works; in even detail with the first of the fact, he was one of the first serious musicians to and the last of his understand and to conduct those pieces long settings, “Der Tamboursg’sell” (The drummer before it was fashionable to champion the boy), both written while the symphony also was composer’s cause. Walter simply identified what taking shape. other writers since have reemphasized: the Mahler was a “summer composer,” as he put unforeseen switch to an exclusively instrumental it, compressing a year’s pent-up musical work symphonic style, producing music, in into the one holiday he enjoyed as a professional Symphonies nos. 5 through 7, that needs no conductor. “His life during the summer months,” programmatic discussion. his wife Alma later recalled, “was stripped of all In fact, the break in Mahler’s compositional dross, almost inhuman in its purity.” He wrote style is neither as clean nor as radical as we might night and day, and several projects took shape in at first think. The trumpet call that opens this his head at . In June of 1901, he settled in symphony is a quotation from the climax of the a villa at Maiernigg on the Worthersee, where, first movement of the Fourth Symphony—a before the summer was over, he wrote four of the

COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1901–1902 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME July 6, 2007, Ravinia Festival. James 71 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Conlon conducting October 18, 1904; , Germany. CSO RECORDINGS May 20, 21 & 22, 2010, Orchestra Hall. The composer conducting 1970. Georg Solti conducting. London Semyon Bychkov conducting 1980. Claudio Abbado conducting. FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION Deutsche Grammophon March 22 & 23, 1907, Orchestra Hall. four flutes and four , three conducting 1986. Sir Georg Solti conducting. Sony oboes and english horn, three (video) July 20, 1978, Ravinia Festival. clarinets, bass and clarinet Lawrence Foster conducting in D, three bassoons and contrabas- 1990. Sir Georg Solti conducting. soon, six horns, four trumpets, three London , , timpani, harp, bass 1997. Daniel Barenboim conducting. drum, , small bass drum, snare Teldec drum, , slapstick, tam-tam, triangle, strings 1997. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Arthaus Musik (video)

4 Rückert songs, three of the Kindertotenlieder (also first performance, and as late as 1911, the last to texts by Rückert), and “Der Tamboursg’sell,” year of his life, he said: and drafted two movements of his Fifth Symphony. Each piece, dating from the same I cannot understand how I could have time, shares something with the others—the written so much like a beginner. . . . Clearly kind of cross-referencing that is at the heart of the routine I had acquired in the first four Mahler’s working method. symphonies had deserted me altogether, as Although Mahler left no scenario to follow though a totally new message demanded a for this symphony—no outward sign that this new technique. is explicit, programmatic music—it is so obvi- ously dramatic music. For , Mahler had written funeral marches before— perhaps the most important Mahler scholar the first three symphonies all include them—but writing today, the Fifth Symphony “initiates a this is a new kind of funeral music: tough as new concept of an interior drama.” The idea of nails, lean, scrubbed clean of simple pictorial a programmatic symphony has not vanished, “it touches. It is a much more concise movement has gone underground, rather, or inside.” than the tremendous march that opens the Mahler has even left us a few clues, not Resurrection Symphony. Here the march gives dictating what the music should mean to us, but way to a defiant trio—a terrible outburst of grief; suggesting what it meant to him. The central then the cortege returns, followed by the trio, scherzo is “a human being in the full light of now dragged down to the march’s slow, lumber- day, in the ing pace. Near the end there is a new idea, full prime of his of yearning—a rising minor ninth falling to the life.” And octave—that will find fulfillment in the second the famous movement, just as that movement will echo Adagietto is, things already developed here. The trumpet calls if we believe the first movement to a close, in utter desolation. Willem The second movement is both a companion to Mengelberg’s and a commentary on the first. It is predominately assertion, angry and savage music, with periodic lapses into Gustav the quieter, despairing music we have left behind. Mahler’s dec- There is one jarring moment, so characteristic laration of his of Mahler, when all the grief and anger spills love for Alma, over into sheer giddiness—a momentary indis- presented to cretion, like laughter at the graveside. The music his wife with- quickly regains its composure, but seems even out a word more disturbed. Near the end, the trumpets and of explanation. trombones begin a noble brass , brave and As in the later Seventh Symphony and the affirmative. For a moment it soars. And then, sud- projected Tenth, the Fifth Symphony is divided denly, almost inexplicably, it loses steam, falters, into five movements. But more important are and falls flat. It is one of Mahler’s cruelest jokes. the numbers defining three basic parts, with the The great central scherzo caused problems at weighty scherzo standing alone in the middle. the first rehearsal. From Cologne, Mahler wrote Part 1 views life as tragedy, moving from the to Alma: bleak funeral march of the first movement to the deflated climax of the second. The third part The scherzo is the very devil of a move- approaches, and ultimately achieves, triumph. ment. I see it is in for a peck of troubles! Part 2, the lively scherzo, is the hinge upon Conductors for the next fifty years will all which the music shifts. take it too fast and make nonsense of it; and The first movement caused Mahler consid- the public—oh, heavens, what are they to erable trouble. He continued to retouch the make of this chaos of which new worlds are until 1907, three years after the forever being engendered?

5 It is hard to know just how fast Mahler felt A single note from the horn—so fresh and this music should go—it is marked “vigorously, unexpected, with the sound of strings still in not too fast”—and today his peculiar mixture of our ears—calls us back to earth. The finale ländler (a nice country ) and waltz (more begins at once with the suggestion of one of upscale) seems neither chaotic nor nonsensical, the Wunderhorn melodies and then changes although it is still provocative. The whole is direction. This is radiant music, so infectious that an ebullient dance of life, with moments of part of the Adagietto even turns up, virtually simple nostalgia, and, when the horns seem to unrecognizable in these up-tempo surroundings. call across mountain valleys, an almost child- Mahler’s Fifth is his Eroica, moving from tragedy like wonder. to triumph, and his triumph could not be more The much-loved Adagietto is really the intro- sweeping. Ultimately, the same brass chorale duction to the finale, incomplete on its own, not that fell to defeat in the second movement so much musically as psychologically. Ironically, enters and carries the finale to a proper, for many years this was one of the few Mahler rollicking conclusion. excerpts ever played at concerts; it was later Finally, a word about Mahler’s choice of key. borrowed, carelessly, as movie music for Death The Fifth Symphony begins in C-sharp minor in Venice, and won still more new converts. Here and ends five movements later in . Until Mahler finds a fresh kind of lyricism which he Mahler’s time, it was customary to begin and gives not to the winds, which so often sang in end in the same key (or to finish in the relative the earlier symphonies, but to the strings alone, major if the piece started in the minor), and over the gentle, hesitant, almost improvisatory some of Mahler’s symphonies do that. But many strumming of the harp. do not, and this kind of progressive , This must have been very persuasive to as it is often called, is an essential part of his audiences not yet ready for Mahler’s tougher, musical language, an example of how he helped more complex movements. But it is by no means to stretch the boundaries and the meaning of simple music, and although there are fewer notes tonality. In the Fifth Symphony, it underlines the on the page than usual, Mahler is no less precise “inner drama” of the music: the struggle to rise in demanding how they should be played. (The from C-sharp to D, and from minor to major, first three notes of the melody, for example, are underlines the music’s quest to rise from tragedy marked pianissimo, molto ritardando, espressivo, to victory. and crescendo.) And, if this is a song without words, it is intimately related to perhaps the greatest of all Mahler songs, the Rückert setting “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (I am Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago lost to the world), written that same summer. Symphony Orchestra.

© 2014 Chicago Symphony Orchestra

6 PROFILE

Donald Runnicles Conductor

Donald François d’Assise; chief conductor of Runnicles the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New concurrently is York; and general of the general music Freiburg theater and orchestra from director of the 1989 until 1993. Deutsche Oper Runnicles’s recent recording of Berlin (DOB); Wagner arias with chief conductor and the DOB Orchestra won the 2013 of the BBC Gramophone Award for best vocal Scottish recording. His extensive discogra- Symphony Orchestra; and music phy contains complete recordings of director of the Grand Teton Music Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Britten’s Festival in Jackson, Wyoming. He also Billy Budd, Humperdinck’s Hansel is principal guest conductor of the and Gretel, and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Runnicles Montecchi, as well as Mozart’s , enjoys close and enduring relationships Orff ’s Carmina Burana, and Beethoven’s with several of the world’s most signifi- Ninth Symphony. cant opera companies and . Donald Runnicles was awarded the He is especially celebrated for his Order of the British Empire in 2004. interpretations of romantic and He holds honorary degrees from the post-romantic symphonic and opera University of , the Royal repertoires, which are core to his Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, musical identity. and the San Francisco Conservatory The current season’s highlights of Music. include a new production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens at San Francisco Opera; FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES April 27, 28, 29, 30 & May 2, 1995, Orchestra Hall. new productions at the DOB of Mozart’s Symphony no. 39 and Holst’s The Planets Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk July 11, 1997, Ravinia Festival. Elgar’s In the South and Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet, along Overture, Beethoven’s Concerto no. 4 with with eight revival titles; and guest Menahem Pressler, and Mendelssohn’s Symphony conducting engagements with the Berlin no. 3 Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES April 15, 16, 17, 18 & 21, 1998, Orchestra Hall. and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Wagner’s Idyll, Haydn’s Concerto in Prior posts include music director D major with John Sharp, Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of the San Francisco Opera from 1992 of , and Britten’s Variations on a to 2008, where, during his tenure, Theme of Frank Bridge Runnicles led the world premieres of July 7, 2000, Ravinia Festival. Cimarosa’s Concerto ’s Doctor Atomic, Conrad for Two Flutes with and Jeanne Susa’s The Dangerous Liaisons, and Galway, Mozart’s Concerto no. 2 with James the U.S. premiere of Messiaen’s Saint Galway, and Elgar’s Symphony no. 1