Christoph Eschenbach Conductor Beethoven Overture to Egmont, Op

Home , Bernard Rands, Christoph Eschenbach, Egmont (Beethoven), Overture (Bruckner)

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, December 19, 2013, at 8:00 Friday, December 20, 2013, at 1:30 Saturday, December 21, 2013, at 8:00

Christoph Eschenbach Conductor Beethoven Overture to Egmont, Op. 84 Rands . . . where the murmurs die . . . First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Intermission

Bruckner Symphony No. 9 in D Minor Solemn. Misterioso Scherzo: Fast, lively Adagio: Slow, solemn

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to 93XRT, Redeye, The Onion, and Metromix for their generous support as media sponsors of the Classic Encounter Series. 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

Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria. overture to Egmont, op. 84

Beethoven met Bettina and—perhaps above all, because of its theat- Brentano in May 1810, rical nature—the opera Leonore (later known when he was hard at work as Fidelio). Th e incidental music for Goethe’s on his incidental music Egmont that Beethoven introduced in Vienna for Goethe’s Egmont. He that June was Beethoven’s fi rst score for the stage sang and played two of since Leonore, and it shows the composer striving his recent Goethe settings for an ever-greater sense of dramatic intensity. for her, because he knew In the fi rst stern notes of the overture (as well that she was a good friend as in the impassioned fast music that follows), of the great poet. Bettina Beethoven conveys a seriousness and urgency wrote to Goethe about the composer with such unexpected in music. Th e story of Egmont is enthusiasm that he answered her at once, serious business, to be sure, for it’s not just a suggesting that Beethoven meet him that tale of freedom and national liberation, but also summer in Karlsbad. In letter after letter that of a hero who dies for his cause, a theme that month, Bettina boasted to Goethe about prompted Beethoven to write some of his most Beethoven’s remarkable talent, and in particular powerful music throughout his career. Even of the way he had uncovered a “new sensuous in Beethoven’s time, the event that inspired basis in the intellectual life.” On May 28, she Goethe’s drama was ancient history: Count even quoted Beethoven: “Music, verily, is the Egmont, who led the Flemish resistance against mediator between the life of the mind and the Spanish rule of the Netherlands, was the senses.” beheaded in the Brussels marketplace on June 5, We don’t know which of Beethoven’s works 1568. But to Beethoven it was both personal and Bettina knew (aside from the Goethe songs he timely, recalling his own Flemish ancestry and performed for her), but several of his recent scores closely paralleling the current political situation had revealed a thrilling union of masterly tech- in Vienna, which had been occupied by the nique and powerful expression—the Fifth and French since May 1809. (During the bombard- Sixth symphonies, the Appassionata piano sonata, ment, Beethoven hid in his brother’s cellar and the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Piano Concerto, covered his head with pillows to mute the noise.)

ComPosED most rECEnt Cso rECorDIngs 1809–10 Cso PErFormanCEs 1954. Fritz reiner conducting. VAi November 17, 18, 20 & 23, (video) FIrst PErFormanCE 2004, Orchestra Hall. Mikko 1957. Fritz reiner conducting. CSO June 15, 1810; Vienna, Austria Franck conducting (From the Archives, vol. 17: Beethoven) FIrst Cso PErFormanCEs InstrUmEntatIon 1972. Sir Georg Solti conducting. December 16 & 17, 1892, Auditorium two ﬂ utes and piccolo, two oboes, two London Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, 1989. Sir Georg Solti conducting. two trumpets, timpani, strings London aPProXImatE 1990. Sir Georg Solti conducting. PErFormanCE tImE Sony (video) 8 minutes

2 he Egmont overture itself is a compact tone poem, and, like the Leonore over- tures Beethoven wrote for his opera Fidelio,T it previews not only the central conflicts of the drama, but its resolution as well. Here Beethoven depicts the oppression of the Spanish rule (the slow opening is particularly grave), Count Egmont’s determination and rebellious spirit, the uprising of the Netherlanders, and Egmont’s fate. In an unexpected pause near the end—followed by the emphatic rhythm of the opening—Beethoven even depicts Egmont’s beheading, noting in his sketches that death “could be expressed by a silence.” Egmont’s posthumous triumph, however, is clear from the overture’s victorious close.

eethoven sent Goethe a copy of his The Incident at Teplitz. Goethe bows to passing royalty, Egmont music in the spring of 1811, while Beethoven walks on. but the two men didn’t meet until Bthe summer of 1812, when they spent time (he preferred Mozart’s music), but as a com- together at the spa town of Teplitz. Goethe panion he dismissed him without hesitation was never convinced of Beethoven’s genius as an “utterly untamed personality.”

3 Bernard rands Born March 2, 1934, Sheﬃ eld, England.

. . . where the murmurs die . . .

As the year of the big father got up and went to work every morn- Verdi and Wagner ing,” Rands once told an interviewer, “and anniversaries draws to a I believe I have to do the same.” Before close, we turn our turning to composition, he began his attention much closer to career with a degree in literature from the home, to one of our own University of Wales. (Th ese two interests giants, Bernard Rands, came together when he began to set texts who is celebrating his to music, as in apókryphos, which was pre- eightieth birthday in miered by the Chicago Symphony in 2003.) March. Since immigrat- As a composition student of Reginald Smith ing to this country in 1975, Rands has won Brindle in the 1950s, Rands became fascinated several of our most prestigious awards, including with the lyrically inclined serial music of the the Pulitzer Prize, and his music has been played Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola. Rands by our leading orchestras, including the Chicago went to Italy in 1958 to study not only with Symphony, which introduced Rands to local Dallapiccola, but also with Luciano Berio and audiences in 1993, with performances of the Roman Vlad. In the early 1960s, he attended suites from Le tambourin, which had won the the composition classes of Pierre Boulez and Kennedy Center Friedheim Award seven years Bruno Maderna at Darmstadt. (Less than a earlier. Music by Rands, who now lives in decade later, Boulez and the BBC Symphony downtown Chicago, was most recently on this Orchestra commissioned three works from orchestra’s programs in May of 2011, when CSO him.) In 1966, Rands was awarded a Harkness music director Riccardo Muti conducted the International Fellowship that brought him to the premiere of Danza petriﬁ cada—the title comes United States; he spent a year each at Princeton from Nobel Prize–winning poet Octavio and at the University of Illinois. He returned Paz—which was commissioned by the CSO as to England to teach at York and at Oxford, but part of Chicago’s celebration of the bicentennial immigrated to the United States in 1975 and of Mexico’s independence and the centennial of became a citizen in 1983. Within a year, this the Mexican Revolution. new U.S. citizen had won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for his song cycle for tenor and orchestra, ands was born into a working-class Canti del sole (Songs of the sun), the second in family in the coal-mining com- a set of three cycles—the others are the Canti munity of Sheﬃ eld, England, and lunatici (Songs of the moon) of 1982 and the Rdeveloped his serious, no-nonsense work Canti dell’eclisse (Songs of the eclipse) from ethic regarding composition early on. “My 1992. Rands also won the 1986 Kennedy Center

ComPosED FIrst Cso PErFormanCEs aPProXImatE 1993 These are the fi rst Chicago Symphony PErFormanCE tImE Orchestra performances. 10 minutes FIrst PErFormanCE December 11, 1993, New york City InstrUmEntatIon three ﬂ utes, alto ﬂ ute and piccolo, two oboes, three clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, strings

4 Friedheim Award for Le tambourin, Suites 1 and here the murmurs 2. The music is related to an opera about the die . . . is part of a series Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh that began, of pieces by Rands in a sense, when Rands visited the Vincent van whose titles are taken from a single early Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on its opening …Wpoem by Samuel Beckett—part of a group of day in 1973, and climaxed with the long-awaited four poems collectively titled Dieppe. These premiere of Vincent at Indiana University on compositions (Rands’s way of “mining the April 8, 2011. various images and meanings of the poem,” In this country, Rands taught at the California as he has said) are . . . body and shadow . . . for Institute for the Arts, the University of orchestra; . . . among the voices . . . for chamber California at San Diego (where he founded the choir and harp; . . . in the receding mist . . . for contemporary performing ensemble SONOR), flute, harp, and string trio; . . . and the rain . . . for Boston University, and the Juilliard School horn, harp, and string trio; and . . . sans voix of Music. In 1988, he was named Walter parmi les voix . . . for flute, viola, and harp, Bigelow Rosen Professor of Composition at commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Harvard University, and, in 1989, he began a Orchestra for Pierre Boulez’s seventieth birthday. seven-year tenure as the composer-in-residence At the time of the 1993 New York premiere, of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Rands has won Rands wrote the following comments awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim, about . . . where the murmurs die . . . : Koussevitzky, and Fromm foundations; the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Three musical characters constitute the Letters; and the National Endowment for the essential materials on which this short work Arts. He was elected to the American Academy for orchestra is based. A persistent dotted of Arts and Letters in 2004. Today, Rands’s large rhythmic cell is combined with upper and catalog of works, which dates back to 1960, num- lower mordent and turn patterns to create a bers more than one hundred published compo- simple, folklike melodic line. These figures, sitions. In April, a new large-scale work, a piano so common in and characteristic of much concerto commissioned by the Boston Symphony baroque music, are gradually embellished to honor Rands’s birthday and composed for and transformed until they result in a com- pianist Jonathan Biss, will be premiered in plex network of relationships and references Boston, with later performances scheduled at the with an elaborate texture. From this condi- Leipzig Gewandhaus and with the BBC Scottish tion emerges a long cantilena line, carried Orchestra at the BBC Proms in London next primarily by flutes and trumpets, which, August. The BBC Philharmonic also is devoting supported by sparse orchestral accompani- a three-day festival to Rands’s music in June. ment, concludes the work.

5 anton Bruckner Born September 4, 1824, Ansfelden, near Linz, Austria. Died October 11, 1896, Vienna, Austria. symphony no. 9 in D minor

Bruckner was at work on ends, to the brilliant C major of the Te Deum, his ninth symphony the he realized the futility of the plan and simply day he died. He spent the left us three magnifi cent movements and a pile morning at his of sketches. Bösendorfer piano going Sadly, had Bruckner not been sidetracked by over sketches for the the endless revision of his earlier symphonies fi nale. He skipped lunch, that was suggested by his students, he would saying he had no appetite, have had time to fi nish his ninth symphony. and gave up his afternoon (He might even have begun a tenth.) Bruckner walk because of the wind. regularly fell victim to the criticism and recom- He later complained of feeling suddenly cold, mendations of others, even though the criticism and, just before he died, he asked his house- often was pointless and the recommendations keeper for some tea. were sometimes absurd—and contrary to the “It will be my last symphony,” he had told a composer’s own wishes. Th roughout his life, guest several years before. At the time of his Bruckner was crippled by a fearful and indecisive death, three movements were complete, but nature that led him to accept a job as schoolmas- Bruckner had been struggling with the fi nale ter (his duties included farm labor and spreading for many months. In the nearly two hundred manure) when he really wanted a career in music, sketches he left for that movement, we can see and later kept him from applying for the post that his hands had grown weak—persistent of cathedral organist at Linz, even though he trembling made writing diﬃ cult—and we can coveted the job. As a result, he reached the age of tell, from the nature of the fragments themselves, forty before writing a single great piece. that he was having trouble pulling his thoughts Shortly after completing his Eighth Symphony together and completing the work. When he fi rst in 1887, Bruckner began to have renewed doubts realized that he might not have the strength to about his work. He needlessly recomposed his fi nish it, he recommended the Te Deum, which First Symphony, and, at the insistence of Franz he had fi nished in 1884, as a possible fi nale. But Schalk, one of his most ambitious students, he when he began to write the transition necessary also redid the Th ird. He agreed that the Second to take us from the serenity of E major, with Symphony, as well as the F minor mass, would which the third movement of the symphony benefi t from a touch-up. Because of all these

ComPosED most rECEnt aPProXImatE 1891–1896 Cso PErFormanCEs PErFormanCE tImE November 12, 13 & 14, 2009, Orchestra 66 minutes FIrst PErFormanCE Hall. Bernard Haitink conducting February 11, 1903; Vienna, Austria Cso rECorDIngs (unauthorized Löwe edition) InstrUmEntatIon 1975. Daniel Barenboim conducting. three ﬂ utes, three oboes, three Deutsche Grammophon October 23, 1932; Vienna, Austria clarinets, three bassoons, eight horns (original version) 1976. Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. (four doubling on wagner tubas in Angel the Adagio), three trumpets, three FIrst Cso PErFormanCEs trombones and tuba, timpani, strings 1985. Sir Georg Solti conducting. February 19 & 20, 1904, Auditorium London Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting (u.S. premiere)

6 THE WAGNER TUBA

Wagner tubas were a quartet of these instruments—two although they were housed at the invented by Richard tenor and two bass tubas—an arrange- theater until at least 1939. Wagner for The Ring ment that has become standard. The list of other major works that of the Nibelung—but Wagner had already begun Das incorporate the Wagner tubas is short: they are not tubas. Rheingold, the first work in the Ring Bruckner’s Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth He designed them cycle, before he conceived the new symphonies; Elektra, Die Frau ohne to bridge the gap instrument. The sketches of 1853 give Schatten, and An Alpine Symphony between horns and the famous Valhalla motif to trom- by Richard Strauss; Schoenberg’s trombones; they use bones, but the full score, completed Gurrelieder; and The Firebird and The the same mouthpiece the following year, specifies the new Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. as the horn and are tubas that have since borne his name. —P. H. played by members of Wagner’s original instruments, made the horn section. Wagner wrote for for Bayreuth, evidently no longer exist,

unnecessary distractions, his weakening health, from decay, for eternity. Bruckner was a man and a new wave of insecurity, Bruckner found of unshakable religious conviction (he once that he couldn’t complete his Ninth Symphony, knelt during the middle of counterpoint class even though he had been at it for nine years. when he heard the church choir next door) and (He once told a visitor, “The Ninth will be my deep-seated faith. All his life he was fascinated masterpiece. I just ask God that he’ll let me live by the idea of death, and he eventually developed until it’s done.”) an obsession with viewing dead bodies. In 1888, Bruckner didn’t easily stand up to others, but when the remains of Beethoven and Schubert he took comfort from his belief that posterity were removed to Vienna’s Central Cemetery, would prove him right. In 1892, while he was Bruckner went to see for himself what was left struggling with the Ninth Symphony, he had the of his two heroes. He knew for certain that their manuscripts for his earlier symphonies bound music would endure and he wanted to ensure that together and stored in a sealed parcel. The will his would, too. But it was only in 1927, with the he wrote in 1894 dictated that they should go formation of the International Bruckner Society, to the Vienna State Library for safekeeping. If which began to issue definitive editions based Bruckner feared that his death would remove the on a critical study of his manuscripts, that the only obstacle between his music and the eager composer was vindicated. hands of unsympathetic editors, he was right. The manuscript of the Ninth Symphony passed ruckner begins his last symphony in the directly to Ferdinand Löwe—another “devoted” depths of D minor (and there’s little student—who published it in 1903 (seven doubt that, like Beethoven in his Ninth, years after the composer’s death), mutilated Bhe planned to conclude some three movements almost beyond recognition. Of all Bruckner’s later in the brilliance of D major). Only a minute symphonies, the Ninth suffered the worst fate. into the piece, we are in D-flat major and quickly It was the newly published Löwe edition that move on to E major—this is going to be an Theodore Thomas used when he led the Chicago exciting and frequently surprising harmonic Symphony in the American premiere of the work adventure. The beginning of this symphony, in February 1904, and the truncated symphony as with most of Bruckner’s, is one continuous was so compact that it was played on the first unfolding. We can’t accurately judge the size half of the concert between a Mozart aria and a or scope of Bruckner’s territory until we reach Schubert song performed by the great diva of the the first climax—a ferocious fff unison theme era, Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink. from the entire orchestra; only then do we Perhaps only a man who specifically dictated begin to sense the vastness of the space yet to that his body should be embalmed, as Bruckner come. Analysts often have stumbled in trying did in his will, would also take pains to seal to relate this extraordinary first movement to away his life’s work, hoping to preserve it, safe traditional sonata form, for, although it does

7 develop and restate material, Bruckner’s methods and A-sharp) that have no place in E major. The are very much his own. He makes a number of first harmony is, unbelievably, a C major triad slow ascents to great fff peaks, but each time, (against an A-sharp in the melody!). although the approach seems familiar, the Bruckner took Wagner’s chromaticism to view from the top is slightly different. And heights so unexpected that Löwe had his work each time the summit reveals further peaks cut out for him when he set out to clean up ahead. The last climax is deafeningly final, Bruckner’s language. One of Bruckner’s boldest and yet it refuses to choose between D major strokes, a chord containing all seven pitches of and D minor, so that, even as the movement the harmonic minor scale, was reduced to a mere comes to an end, Bruckner prepares to go on. diminished seventh chord—a commonplace in The scherzo settles for D minor, but only after the music of Bach, writing some two hundred considerable stalling—the odd opening chord, years before. Bruckner’s chord, coming at the sustained by the winds while the violins spell final, wrenching climax, conveys such utter out the notes it is made of, remains wonderfully terror that, for one moment, we glimpse the ambiguous. The full orchestra, fortissimo and abyss. A horrible moment of silence follows. very insistent, finally establishes D minor. The Bruckner approaches E major, returning not only mood is sinister throughout, and when the oboe to harmonic stability, but to reassuring snatches tries to inject a note of cheerfulness, the rest of of familiar music—the serene violin arpeggios the orchestra is intolerant. The trio, quiet and from the Adagio of his Eighth Symphony and more delicately scored, is a perfect companion in the horn call that opened his Seventh. The sense mood and spirit. of closure and finality is great, and one wonders The Adagio was the last movement Bruckner if Bruckner unconsciously knew that this was the completed, and it carries us very near the crisis last music he would write. of tonality from which Schoenberg eventually would not retreat. The very first phrase, one of the most arresting in all music, is extraor- dinarily rich harmonically. Although we are destined to reach E major in just seven measures, Bruckner seems to explore the universe on the way. The opening unaccompanied violin theme Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago contains, in its first four notes, two (C-natural Symphony Orchestra.