Bernard Labadie Conductor Marc-André Hamelin Piano Rigel Symphony in C Minor, Op

Home , Joseph Martin Kraus, Raymond Leppard

Program

One Hundred Twenty-Third 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, May 8, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, May 9, 2014, at 8:00 Saturday, May 10, 2014, at 8:00

Bernard Labadie Conductor Marc-André Hamelin Piano Rigel Symphony in C Minor, Op. 12, No. 4 Allegro assai Largo non troppo Allegro spiritoso First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Haydn Piano Concerto in D Major, Hob. XVIII:11 Vivace Un poco adagio Rondo all’ungherese: Allegro assai Marc-André Hamelin

Intermission

Kraus Symphony in E Minor, VB 141 Allegro spiritoso Adagio non tanto ma con espressione Presto First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 Adagio molto—Allegro con brio Andante cantabile con moto Menuetto: Allegro molto e vivace Finale: Adagio—Allegro molto e vivace

Friday’s concert honors the memory of Elizabeth Hoffman. Saturday’s concert is sponsored by Mayer Brown LLP.

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

Henri-Joseph rigel Born February 9, 1741, Wertheim, Germany. Died May 2, 1799, Paris, France. symphony in C minor, op. 12, no. 4

Although the Chicago includes more than twenty works for orchestra. Symphony has performed In all, fourteen symphonies for orchestra were music by more than a printed in Paris during Rigel’s lifetime. On thousand composers over February 2, 1774, one of Rigel’s symphonies was the past 123 seasons, it performed on a program at the Concert Spirituel, has never before played a a prestigious series held in the Tuileries Palace, work by Henri-Joseph and that same year, Rigel (with his wife Marie Rigel, whose C minor serving as engraver) brought out his fi rst col- symphony opens this lection of six symphonies, op. 12. Th e C minor week’s concert. (Joseph symphony performed this week is the fourth Martin Kraus, whose E minor symphony comes work in that set. after intermission, is another newcomer to the Orchestra’s repertoire.) Rigel is virtually unknown n Paris at the time, the rage was for big to audiences today, but he was one of the most orchestras, greatly expanded in size and highly regarded composers in Paris, a great music quality over the early eighteenth-century capital, in the last years of the nineteenth century. Istandard, and Rigel accordingly wrote large-scale Rigel was born in Germany, studied with eff ects and virtuosic parts, knowing that the the well-known Neapolitan composer Niccolò Parisian players were among the best in Europe. Jommelli in Stuttgart, and then, after being In 1780, Jean-Benjamin de Laborde, Rigel’s sent to France “for the education of a young biographer, wrote that “All his eff ects are clear; person,” as his fi rst biographer put it, he settled his greatest symphonic pieces consistently have in Paris in 1767, at the age of twenty-six. Th at a natural melody.” Th e C minor symphony same year, his name appeared for the fi rst time has the typical three movements of the day: in the catalog of the prestigious Leipzig music a dramatic rapid opening; a slow, arialike publisher, Breitkopf, as the composer of seven centerpiece; and a spirited fi nale. Th e music is symphonies. (Six keyboard sonatas, published in fully responsive to all the latest developments Paris that year, are dedicated to Mlle Dupin de in European music. “He dislikes factions,” Francueil, who would later become the aunt of Laborde wrote, “and he does not devote himself George Sand.) exclusively to any genre; but recognizing the Although he composed fourteen works for the benefi ts of each style (French, Italian, German) stage—the music is mostly lost—Rigel’s chief he is one of the foreigners amongst us who do success was with his instrumental music, which the greatest honor to music in France.”

ComPoseD FIrst Cso PerFormanCes aPProXImate before 1774 These are the ﬁ rst Chicago Symphony PerFormanCe tIme Orchestra performances. 17 minutes FIrst PerFormanCe date unknown InstrUmentatIon two oboes, bassoon, two horns, strings

2 Joseph Haydn Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau, Austria. Died May 31, 1809, Vienna, Austria. Piano Concerto in D major, Hob. XVIII:11

Th is was Haydn’s most the symphony, an overstatement that nonetheless popular concerto during conveys his dominance in this form for so many his lifetime. It was years during its early development. published by eight houses in fi ve diff erent countries lthough Haydn wrote one hundred and regularly performed and eight symphonies, sixty-eight in Europe’s musical string quartets, and forty-seven piano capitals. But by the time sonatas,A the catalog of his complete works lists the Chicago Symphony a scant seventeen concertos composed over was founded, a little more three decades—and most of those are lost. than a hundred years after Haydn’s concerto was Many apparently were written quickly, for a composed, it had become a rarity on concert single performance, and then set aside, with programs. Oddly, it has never completely no eye to the future. Of those that remain, two regained its popularity, even as Mozart’s piano cello concertos, the E-fl at trumpet concerto, concertos, written around the same time, have three violin concertos, and this single piano become part of our essential musical diet. concerto (compared to Mozart’s groundbreak- Unlike Mozart, Haydn was not a virtuoso ing twenty-seven), are the best known. pianist. (He was, however, a thoroughly compe- tent keyboard player, as his musicians knew well his D major concerto was published in from rehearsing with him; his frequently mis- 1784; the title page called it “the only interpreted statement to his biographer, Georg Piano Concerto of Haydn which so far Greisinger, that he “was no mean keyboard hasT appeared in print,” a claim that would remain player” was simply characteristic of his life-long accurate for the rest of his life. Apparently, with modesty.) Haydn never experienced anything like this work Haydn was composing specifi cally for Mozart’s career as an international traveling key- the modern piano rather than the old-fashioned board star, and he was not by nature a showman. harpsichord, for which he had written several Th at helps explain why he made so little impact earlier concertos. Th e form was enjoying great in the very forms where Mozart excelled—opera popularity at this time—Mozart introduced six and the piano concerto, both of which thrive new piano concertos in Vienna the same year on the drama of the solo voice pitted against Haydn’s score was published—but it isn’t clear the crowd. Instead, Haydn became known as a what prompted Haydn’s return to the concerto. composer of symphonies—even as the “father” of In any case, with this one work he established his

ComPoseD most reCent CaDenZas by 1784 Cso PerFormanCes wanda Landowska June 5 & 6, 1980, Orchestra Hall. FIrst PerFormanCe Raymond Leppard conducting from aPProXImate date unknown the harpsichord PerFormanCe tIme 19 minutes July 18, 1986, Ravinia Festival. Alfred FIrst Cso PerFormanCes Brendel, Raymond Leppard conducting March 20 & 21, 1931, Orchestra Hall. José Iturbi as soloist, Frederick InstrUmentatIon Stock conducting solo piano, two oboes, two horns, strings

3 authority in a form Mozart was thought to own. and the difficulties of the piano part here are Within the year, Haydn’s score was printed in not the more obvious, crowd-pleasing ones—the Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London. high-wire acrobatics on which many a solo career Haydn writes in the standard three movements, depends. The piano writing in the slow movement but just as he managed to work wonders with the abounds in long stretches of the most intricate conventions of symphonic form again and again, rhapsodic decoration, but the satisfaction of this each of the concerto movements offers a fresh music is in its captivating, confiding manner, not take on a familiar form. The joys of Haydn’s writ- in its flash. The lively finale is a rondo on a dance ing are always simple and unassuming—a quirky theme from Bosnia and Dalmatia, complete turn of phrase, an unexpected harmony, a teasing with trills and syncopations and the sounds of a rhythmic pattern. Few of his compositions are drone accompaniment—the most common kind ostentatious—in fact, much of his best music of dance music comfortably at home in the grand is actually much harder to play than it sounds, piano concerto.

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4 Joseph martin Krauss Born June 20, 1756, Miltenberg am Main, Germany. Died December 15, 1792, Stockholm, Sweden. symphony in e minor, VB 141

Of all the forgotten names became Gustav’s favored musician, and, in 1792, in the history of music, attended the masked ball at which his patron Joseph Martin Kraus is was assassinated—the incident that would later one of the greatest inspire Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. Kraus him- mysteries. When he made self died from tuberculosis later that same year. his four-year grand tour of European music centers in e do not know how many sym- the 1780s, traveling phonies Kraus wrote; the fourteen through Germany, that survive span his entire career, Austria, Italy, France, and fromW his earliest student days in Mannheim England, he met Joseph Haydn in Vienna. Haydn to a funeral symphony for Gustav III, written later said he thought Kraus was a genius on the just a few months before his own death. Th e level of Gluck, Salieri, and even Mozart. “Th at authorship of the E minor symphony performed man has a great style,” he reportedly commented, this week used to be up for debate: one source, a “the like of which I have found in no one else.” In manuscript housed in Regensburg, is attributed Vienna, Kraus joined the same Masonic lodge as to Kraus; another, printed by the Paris pub- Mozart. Wherever he went, he moved in the lisher Boyer, credits Giuseppe Cambini as the right circles, from an artistic point of view. composer. (Kraus visited both Regensburg and After a substantial German education, which Paris on his European tour.) Recent scholarship included studies in philosophy and law at Mainz has placed the work fi rmly in Kraus’s catalog, and Göttingen, Kraus went to Stockholm, where but, even so, the exact date of its composition he was bent on a career in music at the court of is a matter of conjecture. Apparently Boyer Gustav III. It was Gustav who ultimately sent decided that Kraus was not well enough known him on the grand tour to absorb the musical to sell in Paris, and used Cambini’s name, which fashions in continental Europe. In his travels, evidently had market appeal at the time, instead. Kraus met not only Haydn, but Gluck and Kraus’s E minor symphony, in the traditional Salieri as well. (He arrived in England in time to three-movement design, demonstrates the fruits participate in the Handel centenary celebrations of a happy union of German training, cosmo- of 1785.) After he returned to Stockholm, he politan outlook, and genuine originality.

ComPoseD FIrst Cso PerFormanCes aPProXImate 1780s These are the ﬁ rst Chicago Symphony PerFormanCe tIme Orchestra performances. 15 minutes FIrst PerFormanCe date unknown InstrUmentatIon ﬂ ute, two oboes, bassoon, two horns, strings

5 Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria. symphony no. 1 in C major, op. 21

Th is is a young man’s symphony when Haydn’s fi nal work in the form music. As the fi rst was just fi ve years old and Mozart’s Jupiter a symphony by the greatest scant twelve. But this was perhaps the best—and symphonist who ever certainly the riskiest—way for Beethoven to lived, one might expect stake his claim to their territory. Beethoven clues of the daring and had moved to Vienna in 1792, the year after novelty to come; since it Mozart died, and in the famous words of Count was written at the turn of Waldstein, he was to “receive Mozart’s spirit the century and pre- from Haydn’s hands.” Beethoven learned plenty miered in Vienna, the from the example of Haydn’s music, but the great musical capital, in 1800, one might assume actual lessons he had with the master didn’t go that it is with this work that Beethoven opened a well, and Beethoven quickly understood that new era in music. But, in fact, this symphony if he was to play a role in this great Viennese belongs to the eighteenth, not the nineteenth, tradition, he would have to carve out a place for century; it honors the tradition of Mozart, dead himself, all by himself. less than a decade, and Haydn, who had given Beethoven enough lessons to know that his eethoven began to sketch a symphony student would soon set out on his own. in C major in 1795, and he was still Th e First Symphony is a conservative work struggling with it during a concert tour by the least conservative of composers. (Just Bto Prague and Berlin the following year. But two years later, Beethoven proudly announced Beethoven apparently wasn’t ready to reckon that he would follow a “new path.”) Alexander with this great form yet, and he turned his Th ayer, who wrote the fi rst signifi cant book attention primarily to the piano sonata, which on Beethoven, saw 1800 as a turning point in became the vehicle for his most advanced the composer’s career: “It is the year in which, ideas. In 1799, the year he composed one of his cutting loose from the pianoforte, he asserted his real watershed works, the Pathétique Sonata, claims to a position with Mozart and the still Beethoven decisively returned to the idea living and productive Haydn in the higher forms of writing a symphony. Th e C major sym- of chamber and orchestral compositions—the phony he fi nished early in 1800 is the fi rst of quartet and the symphony.” eight he would compose in thirteen years. It was a bold step for a young composer On April 2, 1800, Beethoven held a concert (Beethoven wasn’t yet thirty) to write his fi rst in Vienna’s Burgtheater, the fi rst he would give

ComPoseD most reCent Cso reCorDIngs 1799–1800 Cso PerFormanCes 1949. Fritz Busch conducting. CSO June 15 & 16, 2010, Orchestra Hall. (Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the FIrst PerFormanCe Bernard Haitink conducting Twentieth Century: Collector’s Choice) April 2, 1800; Vienna, Austria 1961. Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA InstrUmentatIon FIrst Cso PerFormanCes two ﬂ utes, two oboes, two clarinets, 1974. Sir Georg Solti conducting. May 4 & 5, 1894, Auditorium Theatre. two bassoons, two horns, two London Theodore Thomas conducting trumpets, timpani, strings 1989. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London aPProXImate PerFormanCe tIme 25 minutes

6 faceless nor unaccomplished (and the critics of the time found it neither timid nor derivative). Beethoven begins, slyly, with the kind of cadences that normally end a work, stated in the wrong key—or, rather, searching for the right key. (Haydn had used a similar trick in his string quartets, but never to open a symphony.) Beethoven liked the effect so much that he did something comparable in his next work, The Creatures of Prometheus. The entire movement sparkles with genuine energy and is particularly colored by the brilliant and inventive writing for The old Burgtheater in the Michaelerplatz, Vienna; winds (one critic complained that “it sounded engraving by Carl Postl, 1810. Beethoven gave his first more like a wind band than an orchestra”). public benefit concert here on April 2, 1800. The slow movement is charming and graceful; it is slight, as sometimes suggested, only by for his own benefit in this opinionated and the composer’s own later standards. Beethoven difficult music center. In a gesture of savvy public calls the next movement a minuet, but both his relations, he included a symphony by Mozart and tempo (Allegro molto e vivace) and a very swift two numbers from Haydn’s Creation on the pro- metronome marking argue that this is really the gram to set the scene for his own music—some first of his true symphonic scherzos. (Haydn had of it new, like the Septet that quickly became begun to write third-movement scherzos in his one of his most popular pieces, and this First string quartets, but he didn’t transfer that crucial Symphony. Sadly—inexplicably—the Viennese development into his symphonies.) The finale, critics ignored the performance, but the Leipzig with its humorous slow introduction, is as playful correspondent called it “truly the most interest- and spirited as anything in Haydn. It is not yet ing concert in a long time.” the heroic or the revolutionary Beethoven, but it proves brilliantly that the student had learned his eethoven’s First Symphony is scored for teacher’s lessons well. the orchestra of Haydn and Mozart, including the clarinets that weren’t yet a Bstandard feature, and written in the conventional four-movement form he would soon transform. Although it’s a surprisingly cautious work from a Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago bold and sometimes brazen composer, it’s neither Symphony Orchestra.