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Home , Claudio Abbado, Final Symphony, Franz Schubert, Klaus Tennstedt, Riccardo Muti

PROGRAM

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

Thursday, June 19, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, June 20, 2014, at 8:00 Saturday, June 21, 2014, at 8:00

Riccardo Muti Conductor Schubert Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D. 485 Allegro Andante con moto Menuetto: Allegro molto Allegro vivace

INTERMISSION

Mahler Symphony No. 1 in Slow. Dragging. Like a sound of nature—At the beginning, very leisurely With strong movement, but not too fast Solemn and measured, without dragging Stormily

These performances are generously sponsored by Randy and Melvin . Sponsorship of the music director and related programs is provided in part by a generous gift from the Zell Family Foundation.

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

Franz Schubert Born January 31, 1797, Himmelpfortgrund, northwest of , . Died November 19, 1828, Vienna, Austria. Symphony No. 5 in B-fl at Major, D. 485

Th e fi rst surviving entries student ensemble of the Imperial and Royal in Schubert’s diary date City College at the age of twelve, and occa- from mid-1816, just weeks sionally conducted as well. He wrote his fi rst before he began his Fifth symphony for this orchestra in 1813, around Symphony. Schubert the time he left the college to begin teaching mentions , in his father’s school. (He was later accused Goethe, and Schiller; “the of trying to evade military conscription; in magic notes of Mozart’s fact, he was rejected for service because he was music”; the pleasures of a shorter than the minimum height of fi ve feet.) walk in the country on a Th e symphony was fi nished in early October hot summer’s evening; and a party honoring of 1816; unlike most of Schubert’s orches- Salieri. But there’s only one passing reference to tral works, it was performed almost at once writing music—the uncharacteristic, pecuniary by a private orchestra that met in a friend’s admission: “Today I composed for money for the house. It’s hard to imagine that the crowd fi rst time.” No doubt writing music was so that night didn’t fi nd it an enchanting work. commonplace for the young —so much a It has become the most popular of the six natural part of his routine—that it didn’t demand so-called early —preceding only the further comment. By 1816, the nineteen-year-old U n fi n i s h e d and the Great—although as Donald Schubert had already written a lifetime’s music, Tovey pointed out, “every work Schubert left us including 145 (many of them now consid- is an early work.” It was known throughout the ered classics) in 1815 alone. What Schubert did nineteenth century as the symphony without call attention to was the unusual fact that for once trumpets and drums (although it omits clari- he was paid for what he did daily, and did with a nets as well). consistency and brilliance that rarely accompanies If you wanted to demonstrate the essence of such prodigality. Generous remuneration, Schubert’s distinctive gifts, the opening of the however, was not steady in Schubert’s life, and B-fl at symphony would serve perfectly, for its when he died only twelve years later—music’s sunny woodwind chords, tripping violin line, and youngest tragic loss—he had little more than unforced melody demonstrate a natural talent clothes and bed linens to leave behind. that has never been surpassed. Yet for all the apparent ease and simplicity of its beginning, chubert began his Fifth Symphony in Schubert’s fi rst movement builds to a brilliant September 1816. He knew the orchestra and complex development section, marked by a S from the inside—he began playing in the bold harmonic design and masterful polyphony. COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1816 July 23, 1940, Ravinia Festival. John fl ute, two oboes, two bassoons, two Barbirolli horns, strings FIRST PERFORMANCES January 21 & 22, 1943, Orchestra Hall. autumn of 1816; Vienna, Austria APPROXIMATE Hans Lange conducting (private) PERFORMANCE TIME 30 minutes October 17, 1841; Vienna, Austria MOST RECENT (public) CSO PERFORMANCES CSO RECORDING October 20, 22 & 22, 2011, Orchestra 1960. conducting. RCA Hall. conducting 2 In the slow movement, Schubert manipulates of a ) reminds us that the student orchestra the tonal plan in a way that is totally his, drop- in which Schubert played knew not only Mozart ping into a new key third lower for his and Haydn, but also the first two symphonies by second theme, to magical effect. If this music Beethoven. The quick finale is unabashedly merry, seems Mozartean, at least in its elegant theme, a fitting conclusion to a work that admits darker the third movement (labeled a minuet, but more thoughts but continually keeps them at bay.

SCHUBERT’S SYMPHONIES: FROM THE SKETCHED AND UNFINISHED TO THE NUMBERED AND COMPLETE

rom sometime around 1811 until his death seventeen years later, Franz Schubert began at Fleast thirteen symphonies. This season, Riccardo Muti and the CSO will play the eight that have come down to us in performable condition, including one famous symphony, known as no. 8, that is itself unfinished. The num- bering of Schubert’s symphonies has long presented quandaries. Although Schubert sketched Symphony no. 7 in full, he never orchestrated the score, and it is therefore unplayable (except as orchestrated by others). As a result, some scholars have proposed . Schubert at the , oil on canvas, 1899 renumbering symphonies nos. 8 and 9 as nos. 7 and 8, respectively. (The sug- gestion has not caught on; the CSO sticks to the other hands and published as no. 10. Here is the original numbering.) A final symphony, which rundown of all of Schubert’s symphonic attempts exists only in sketches and was left incomplete at that survive, with the standard catalog numbers the composer’s death, has been reconstructed by assigned by in 1951. —P.H.

Symphony, D major. First movement only. ?1811 D. 2b Symphony No. 1. D major Completed by October 1813 D. 82 Symphony No. 2. B-flat major December 1814–March 1815 D. 125 Symphony No. 3. D major May–July 1815 D. 200 Symphony No. 4. . (Tragic) Completed by April 1816 D. 417 Symphony No. 5. B-flat major September–October 1816 D. 485 Symphony No. 6. . [Sometimes known as the Little C major] October 1817–February 1818 D. 589 Symphony. D major. Two movements in piano sketch May 1818 D. 615 Symphony. D major. Sketches After 1820 D. 708a Symphony No. 7. E major. Sketched in score; not orchestrated August 1821 D. 729 Symphony No. 8. . (Unfinished) October 1822 D. 759 Symphony No. 9. C major. (Great) 1825–1828 D. 944 Symphony. D major. [Sometimes known as no. 10]. Sketches mid-1828 D. 936a

3 Born July 7, 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia. Died May 18, 1911, Vienna, Austria. Symphony No. 1 in D Major

When Alma Schindler program symphony, or a symphony plain and fi rst met Gustav Mahler, simple—or whether it should contain four or whom she later married, fi ve movements. Figuring all that out was not she could only remember an act of indecisiveness, but of exploration. And how much she had by the time Mahler published this music as his disliked his First Symphony no. 1 some fi fteen years after he began Symphony. She wasn’t it, he had not only discovered for himself what a alone. Th e history of this symphony could be, but he had changed the way symphony, even into we have defi ned that familiar word ever since. relatively recent times, is one of misunderstanding and rejection. Th e fi rst e begin in Kassel in 1884, with performance, in Budapest in 1889, was greeted Johanna Richter, a soprano destined with indiff erence, bewilderment, and, in the for fame not as a singer, but as the words of the local critic, “a small, but, for all that, inspirationW for Mahler’s fi rst true masterpiece, audible element of opposition.” Mahler seldom the Songs of a Wayfarer, and as a stimulus for understood the animosity his music aroused. A this symphony. Mahler had gone to Kassel as few years later, after Alma had taken his name a conductor, but found the working conditions and converted to the cause, Mahler wrote to her unsatisfactory. Whatever he missed in his work after conducting the First Symphony: he gained in life and love. Johanna Richter—or, “Sometimes it sent shivers down my spine. Damn more precisely, unreturned love—unlocked it all, where do people keep their ears and their Mahler’s deepest feelings that year and set hearts if they can’t hear that!” his course, not as an accomplished conductor, But as Alma knew, people didn’t always feel which he surely was, but as a composer of what Mahler felt. For years the First Symphony vision and daring. It took the rest of the musi- led an unhappy existence, greeted by chilly cal establishment a while to see it that way. receptions whenever it was played and plagued Mahler followed an unorthodox path in by the composer’s continual fussing, both over getting from Johanna Richter to his First details and the big picture. No other symphony Symphony, but it’s one he would choose again gave him so much trouble. He couldn’t even and again when writing m usic, and it’s the decide if this music was a , a process as much as the composer himself that

COMPOSED INSTRUMENTATION CSO RECORDINGS February–March 1881, incorporating four fl utes and three piccolos, four 1971. conducting. much earlier music, and later oboes and english , four clarinets, Angel frequently revised two E-fl at clarinets and bass clarinet, 1981. conducting. three bassoons and contrabassoon, FIRST PERFORMANCE seven horns, four trumpets, three November 20, 1889; Budapest, , tuba, timpani, bass drum, 1983. Sir conducting. . The composer conducting cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, harp, strings 1990. Klaus Tennstedt conducting. EMI FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES November 6 & 7, 1914, Orchestra Hall. APPROXIMATE 1998. Pierre Boulez conducting. conducting PERFORMANCE TIME Deutsche Grammophon 57 minutes 2008. Bernard Haitink conducting. MOST RECENT CSO Resound CSO PERFORMANCES December 1, 2 & 3, 2011, Orchestra Hall. Jaap van Zweden conducting 4 settled on “Symphony in D major, for large orchestra.” (The Blumine move- ment, originally part of the inciden- tal music he wrote for a staging of Scheffel’s narrative poem Der Trompeter von Säkkingen, was subsequently lost. In 1959, a score of the movement turned up at a Sotheby’s auction; it was The Hunter’s Funeral Procession, an engraving by Moritz von performed in 1967 for the first time Schwind, which was Mahler’s inspiration for the Funeral March in the since Mahler’s death.) In Vienna in First Symphony 1900, a notice in the program indicated that Mahler wanted no explanatory gives Mahler’s symphonies their unconventional notes of any kind. Why such indecision? In stamp. Henry James once described a novelist as March 1896, at the time of the Berlin perfor- someone on whom nothing is lost. For Mahler, mance, Mahler wrote to the critic Max Marschalk that defined a symphonist. The First Symphony about adding the program in the first place: is indebted, in various ways, to Johanna Richter, the Wayfarer songs, Mahler . . . At the time my friends persuaded me to wrote for a production of Joseph Victor von provide a kind of program for the D major Scheffel’s Der Trompeter von Säkkingen, a familiar symphony in order to make it easier to children’s round, the wife of Carl Maria von understand. Therefore, I had thought up Weber’s grandson, yodeling, military fanfares, this title and explanatory material after the an early nineteenth-century woodcut, cafe music, actual composition. I left them out for this the opening of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, performance, not only because I think they bird at dawn, a love song he wrote in are quite inadequate and do not even charac- 1880, reveille, the German ländler—and sights, terize the music accurately, but also because sounds, and feelings we will never know. Since I have learned through past experiences how Mahler hadn’t written a large, purely orchestral the public has been misled by them. work before, it took him some time to find the right way to bring all his resources together and Still, Mahler’s First Symphony wasn’t under- to make a convincing whole of so many parts. In stood. Critics in Frankfurt complained about the meantime, life presented new choices, and the program, those in Berlin missed it. (At this love was reawakened by Marion von Weber, the same time, Strauss was writing Till Eulenspiegel, wife of the composer’s grandson. Thus spake Zarathustra, and Ein Heldenleben, The piece Mahler introduced in Budapest on which begged the same questions.) Even though November 20, 1889, was billed as a “Symphonic Mahler finally decided to present this sym- Poem in two parts”—with three movements in phony as abstract music with no story to tell, he part 1 and two in part 2. Only the funeral march wrestled with the same dilemma again in writing was labeled to help listeners coming to the music Symphonies nos. 2 and 3 and came to slightly cold. Today it’s easy to see that it wasn’t the lack different conclusions each time. Mahler’s final of labels or comments, but simply the staggering thoughts on this music were published in 1899 as range and provocative juxtaposition of materials Symphony no. 1, in four movements, and that’s that bothered the first audience. For the next how it’s known today. performances, in and Weimar (in 1893 and 1894), Mahler drew up a descriptive program, he first movement begins “like a sound gave titles to the movements, and called the whole of nature,” with fanfares and bird calls piece “Titan, a tone poem in symphonic form,” sounding from the distance over the after the popular novel by . For Berlin in gentleT hum of the universe, tuned to A-natural 1896, Mahler again changed his mind, dropped and scattered over seven octaves. The method is the titles and the programmatic explanation, one learned by every composer since Beethoven, omitted the second movement (Blumine), and whose Ninth Symphony opens with bits and

5 pieces that gradually become music. It took several times before he triumphs. The first stop Mahler a long time to get the opening to sound allows us to savor some lovely pastoral music the way he wanted it; every effect is precisely we would recognize if Mahler hadn’t ultimately calculated, with consideration given not only to chosen to omit his original second movement, the most delicate shades of dynamics, but to the Blumine. Later we return to the fields of the first placement of the players on and off the stage. movement, but we’re no longer setting off on our A cuckoo—unlike Beethoven’s cuckoo in journey—we’re headed straight for the triumph the Pastoral Symphony, it sings the interval of a that Mahler’s wayfarer couldn’t achieve. This fourth instead of a third—eventually pushes the time success is swift and unequivocal, and when sounds of nature into a lovely, rolling melody. the horns are asked to play out—“even over the That tune, beginning with the cuckoo’s descend- trumpets”—victory is won. ing fourth, comes from the second Wayfarer song, “Ging heut’ Morgen übers Feld” (I went through note on performance tradition. At the fields this morning), and its proud walking these performances, the famous “Frère music takes Mahler a long way. Mahler reinvents Jacques” tune that opens the third the song as he goes, reshuffling phrases and movementA is played by muted solo , motives so that even someone who knows the as has long been the convention. However, recent song finds this music continually fresh. Chicago Symphony performances have followed Next comes a brief scherzo set in motion by the critical edition of the symphony, prepared by the foot-stomping dances and yodeling that Sander Wilkens and published in 1992, which Mahler heard and had already put to good use overturns tradition and dictates that the melody in one of his first songs, “Hans und Grete,” in should be played by the entire section, muted, 1880. “Dance around, around!” the song goes. claiming that this was Mahler’s original inten- “Let whoever is happy weave in and out! Let tion. Over time, Wilkens’s argument has proven whoever has cares find his way home.” There is a controversial, and many Mahler authorities have wistful trio, music Mahler might have heard in flatly rejected his interpretation of the passage. a Viennese café, more full of cares than joy, and In making his decision for these concerts, then the ländler resumes. Riccardo Muti studied the score used by Mahler The third movement used to upset audiences, for the first performance and even today it’s puzzling to those hearing it in November 1900, which clearly indicates the for the first time. What are we to make of this use of solo double bass. He also considered other odd assortment: a sad and distorted version of important historical documents, including the “Frère Jacques” (Mahler knew it as “Bruder review of that concert, written by Brahms’s Martin”); a lumbering funeral march; some friend Max Kalbeck, which says that the third cheap dance-band music remembered by pairs movement opened with a double bass solo, and of oboes and trumpets over the beat of the bass the score belonging to , drum; and the ethereal closing pages of the who supervised Mahler’s performance with the Wayfarer songs—heaven and earth all rolled into in 1903, which also one? No wonder people didn’t know whether to stipulates solo, not the full section of double laugh or cry. Mahler’s only clue is “The Hunter’s basses. There is further persuasive evidence in Funeral Procession”—a woodcut made earlier in the fact the , the conductor most the century by , a friend of closely associated with the composer—he became Schubert—which he claimed was the inspiration Mahler’s assistant at the Vienna Court in for this music. About the vulgar band music 1901 and later led the premieres of Das von Mahler leaves no doubt: “With parody” he writes der Erde and the Ninth Symphony—used a solo at the top of the page, just as the drum and double bass in all seven of the recordings of the cymbal join in. symphony he made between 1939 (the first-ever The finale begins with a “flash of lightning recording of Symphony no. 1) and 1961. from a dark cloud,” Mahler tells us. “It is simply the cry of a wounded heart.” This is music in Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago search of victory, and Mahler retreats from battle Symphony Orchestra. © 2014 Chicago Symphony Orchestra 6