Jaap Van Zweden Conductor Measha Brueggergosman Soprano John Luther Adams Dark Waves Mahler Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Home , Dark Waves (composition), Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Four Orchestral Songs, Ida Dehmel, Measha Brueggergosman, Yvonne Minton

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, October 28, 2010, at 8:00 Friday, October 29, 2010, at 8:00 Jaap van Zweden Conductor Measha Brueggergosman Soprano John Luther Adams Dark Waves First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances Mahler Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn Rheinlegendchen Verlorne Müh’! Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen Urlicht Measha Brueggergosman

Intermission Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 65 Adagio—Allegro non troppo—Adagio Allegretto Allegro non troppo— Largo— Allegretto

ComEd Classical Tapestry is sponsored by ComEd. This program is part of the citywide festival The Soviet Arts Experience.

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

John Luther Adams Born January 23, 1953, Meridian, Mississippi.

Dark Waves for orchestra and electronic sounds

n the 1980s, John Luther Adams, a Southern boy who moved IAdams played timpani in the to Alaska in 1978 at the age of Fairbanks Symphony, which twenty-five, has come to cherish. was led by composer-conductor He remembers flying out of Alaska Gordon Wright; they became close one morning and looking down friends, at one point living near over Mount Hayes, “and all at each other in the Alaskan wilder- once I was overcome by the intense ness. In February 2007, Wright love that I have for this place— was supposed to pick Adams up at an almost erotic feeling about the Anchorage airport; when he those mountains.” didn’t show, Adams called Wright’s Most of Adams’s works, from neighbors, who found his body the haunting Qilyaun for four bass lying under the birch tree outside drums played last March on a his cabin. A few days later, the MusicNOW concert—the thunder- Anchorage Symphony played the ous seismic waves of the drums premiere of Dark Waves, a powerful coming from the four corners of work for orchestra and electronics the concert hall—to the recent that Adams decided to dedicate Dark Waves, the work for orchestra to Wright. In its majesty, weight, and electronics performed this and raw simplicity, Dark Waves is a week, convey the powerful and vast twenty-first-century counterpart to landscape of Alaska. Nearly all his the music by Bruckner that Adams mature compositions, including The and Wright once listened to as they Place Where You Go to Listen, the drove into the Alaskan mountains. sound-and-light installation piece Like much of Adams’s work, it is he wrote after flying over the peaks also a portrait of a landscape that of the Alaska Range, are attempts

Composed Instrumentation drum, suspended cymbal, 2007 two piccolos, two oboes, two orchestra bells, vibraphones, These are the Chicago clarinets and bass clarinet, strings, electronics Symphony Orchestra’s first two bassoons and contra- performances of music by bassoon, two horns, two Approximate John Luther Adams trumpets, three trombones performance time and tuba, celesta, piano, bass 12 minutes

2 “to hear the unheard,” as Adams work.” Adams found that point, and puts it, “to somehow transpose the beginning in the 1990s, he started music that is just beyond the reach to assemble a catalog of unique and of our ears into audible vibrations.” unforgettable compositions. Adams John Luther Adams first came to has since become known as one of music as a drummer in rock bands. music’s few original thinkers and It was a line by visionary French- genuine experimentalists. born composer Edgard Varèse— In April, Adams was awarded “The present-day composer refuses the Nemmers Prize in Music to die!”—that he spotted on the Composition by the Henry and jacket of Frank Zappa’s album Freak Leigh Bienen School of Music at Out! that inspired him to delve Northwestern University—a highly deeper into a world of music he distinguished honor that previously didn’t know. After finding out who has gone to Kaija Saariaho, Oliver Varèse was (and how to pronounce Knussen, and, yes, the other John his name), he began to listen to a Adams. Unaccustomed to such variety of post-WWII composers, high-profile attention—although including György Ligeti and John his music has often been honored— Cage. In 1971, Adams moved to Adams at first couldn’t bring him- Los Angeles, where he studied at self to read the e-mail telling him CalArts with the composer James of the award. (Finally, he asked his Tenney. He was strongly attracted wife Cindy to read it.) “In the days to the outsiders and classic eccen- that followed, I struggled to absorb trics Harry Partch, who made the impact of this lightning bolt,” his own instruments from found Adams later wrote. “For most of my objects; Conlon Nancarrow, who musical life, I’ve worked in relative wrote oddball pieces for player isolation. And I’ve always thought piano; Lou Harrison, whose music of myself as a musical outsider. The evoked the Indonesian gamelan; Nemmers Prize is a heartening sign and Morton Feldman of the that my music seems to resonate unearthly quiet, glacial musical ‘out there’ in the larger world.” If landscapes. And finally, after a long such mainstream distinction under- fallow period—during which, ironi- mines Adams’s outsider status, cally, his friend, the California-born he knows he’s in good company: John (Nixon in China) Adams Nancarrow, Meredith Monk, and was becoming a household name, Ornette Coleman all have received leading to frequent and sometimes MacArthur grants, and Steve Reich amusing cases of mistaken iden- and David Lang have won Pulitzer tity—he discovered the music he prizes. “No matter where it comes alone was meant to write. “Richard from, no matter what it sounds like, Serra,” Adams says, speaking of when we make music and listen one of the visual artists he admires, with open ears,” Adams continues, “talks about the point at which all “we’re all insiders. Amid the vitality your influences are assimilated and and diversity of music today, maybe then your work can come out of the there are no more outsiders.”

3 he composer comments on They breathe. They play at different TDark Waves: speeds. They ride the waves. Together, the orchestra and the In recent years, I’ve composed electronics evoke a vast rolling sea. in mixed media, combining Waves of perfect fifths rise and fall electronic sounds with acoustic in tempo relationships of 3, 5, and instruments, both solos and small 7. At the central moment, these ensembles. But Dark Waves is the waves crest together in a tsunami first time I’ve mixed electronics of sound encompassing all twelve with the complex sonorities of the chromatic tones and the full range symphony orchestra. of the orchestra. I began with an impossible As I composed Dark Waves, I orchestra—large choirs of virtual pondered the ominous events of our instruments, with no musicians, no times: terrorism and war, intensify- articulation, and no breathing— ing storms and wildfires, the melt- sculpting layer upon layer into ing of the polar ice and the rising of expansive waves of sound. Then I the seas. Yet, even in the presence added the human element. of our deepening fears, we find The musicians of the real orches- ourselves immersed in the mysteri- tra impart depth and texture, shim- ous beauty of this world. Amid mer and substance to the electronic the turbulent waves, we may still sounds. They give the music life. find the light, the wisdom, and the Their instruments speak in different courage we need to pass through ways. They change bow directions. this darkness of our own making.

4 Gustav Mahler Born July 7, 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia. Died May 18, 1911, Vienna, Austria.

Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn

n 1806, the year Napoleon mouth to mouth,” and that they Icrushed the Prussian army at Jena, would be returned “to the people, two young poets in Heidelberg, in the course of time, glorified and Achim von Arnim and Clemens filled with new life.” von Brentano (close friends who It was not long before some of would soon become brothers-in- Germany’s greatest composers, law), published the first volume of including Carl Maria von Weber, Des Knaben Wunderhorn. A collec- Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert tion of old German folk poems (the Schumann, set several of these title, The Youth’s Magic Horn, comes poems to music, giving Des Knaben from the first poem in the book), Wunderhorn a new life beyond even Des Knaben Wunderhorn reminded what Goethe envisioned. It was the German people of their great Weber’s own worn copy of Des heritage at a time when the country Knaben Wunderhorn that Gustav desperately needed a strong sense Mahler discovered one day many of national identity. The collection, years later, in the Leipzig home of quickly followed by two more vol- the composer’s grandson Karl, with umes, was dedicated to Germany’s whose wife Marion Mahler had greatest living poet, Goethe, who been carrying on a passionate affair. correctly predicted that these Mahler had known Des Knaben simple texts would “gradually be Wunderhorn since childhood, but carried from ear to ear and from the chance encounter with it that

Composed as soloist and Frederick and contrabassoon, four This week’s selections: 1892 Stock conducting horns, two trumpets, to 1898 percussion, harp, strings Most recent First performed CSO performance Approximate individually and in various Selections, October 5, performance time groups, under the com- 2006, with Matthias Goerne 17 minutes poser’s direction at different as soloist and Paavo times throughout his career Järvi conducting CSO recording Selections, 1970, with First CSO Instrumentation Yvonne Minton as soloist performance two flutes and two piccolos, and Georg Solti conducting Selections, January 11, two oboes and english horn, for London 1929, with Claire Dux two clarinets, two bassoons

5 day in 1887 seems to have taken symphonies and songs was inter- hold of him in a powerful way— woven in a way unprecedented in and suggested a new direction for music. In 1892, Mahler composed his still-young career as a composer. his first four orchestral songs on His love for Marion von Weber Wunderhorn texts. The following would soon fade, but, for the next year—when he established the dozen years or so, Mahler wrote routine of composing only during little that was not in some way his summer holiday—he wrote inspired by Des Knaben Wunderhorn. three more songs and began work Mahler began by setting nine on his Second Symphony (a score Wunderhorn texts for voice and that itself would ultimately include piano—a prelude, a kind of warm- one Wunderhorn song as its fourth up to the great outpouring of music movement and a scherzo based on that would soon follow. When he yet another). And so it went, year decided to set more Wunderhorn after year, as the trilogy of so-called texts early in 1892, he composed Wunderhorn symphonies—each of them in versions for both piano which included a song as one of its and orchestra, leading him into movements—and the collection of largely unexplored territory, for the orchestral Wunderhorn songs was orchestral song was a novelty at the gradually compiled. As Mahler time. In fact, Mahler recognized worked simultaneously on these that these works were so individual two oddly matched genres, each that he didn’t even know what to form benefited and learned from call them at first. the other—the songs took on a Mahler’s main output during nearly symphonic stature, while the his Wunderhorn years included symphonies borrowed ideas from three enormous, revolutionary neighboring songs. Mahler finished symphonies—his second, third, the last of the symphonies—the and fourth—each containing a Fourth, in G major—in 1900, single Wunderhorn song, and twelve and then wrote one final song, independent settings of poems “Der Tamboursg’sell,” the follow- from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Not ing summer, just three months even the briefest of the songs was before he met Alma Schindler. less important to Mahler than his By 1902, the year he and Alma grandest symphony. In fact, all of married and had their first child, these pieces—the songs and the the Wunderhorn chapter was closed various symphonic movements— for good—ending as abruptly as it were so inextricably linked in his had begun. mind at the time that they form one great magnum opus—a large, ahler clearly never thought extended family of relatives, some Mof these songs, written over close and others more distant. the span of a decade, as a cycle—a From 1892 to 1901—the most strictly ordered whole—despite concentrated period of Wunderhorn their close relationship. He invited composition—Mahler’s drafting of singers to pick and choose from

6 the collection, to perform songs significance to be extracted from it, in keys that suited them, and in of concealed treasure.” whatever order they wished. “I ask at the very least that you determine ach of the Wunderhorn settings the sequence of the songs yourself,” Eis a symphonic miniature, more he wrote to the baritone Johannes closely related, in scope and scale, to Messchaert in 1906. Not all of the movements from symphonies than songs are suited to the same voice, to art songs. The orchestral writing and Mahler expected that some is sharp and graphic throughout—a would be sung by men, others by wondrously apt response to each line women. But the recent fashion of of text (even though Mahler later performing the “dialogue” songs admitted to Anton Webern that with two singers, each taking the he didn’t understand everything part of a different character, was in the poems). The orchestra that never sanctioned by the composer. Mahler calls for is never large—the Those Wunderhorn songs—includ- instrumentation varies from song ing “Verlorne Müh’!” performed on to song—and it is always used like this week’s concert—are part of the a chamber ensemble, each strand great ballad tradition (Schubert’s exposed and indispensable. (When “Erlkönig” is the most famous Mahler conducted the first perfor- example) where a single narrator mances, he intentionally chose small takes different roles. Moreover, halls and modest-sized ensembles.) for the most part, the Wunderhorn This week’s performances include “dialogues” are imaginary—they one Wunderhorn setting better take place only within the mind of known as a symphonic movement, the protagonist. the hymnlike “Urlicht,” although it The homespun Wunderhorn texts too was first conceived as an inde- seem to have unlocked Mahler’s pendent song and only later incor- imagination in ways that more porated into the Second Symphony complex, sophisticated poetry could as the prelude to its finale. not. As he told Ida Dehmel, the Whatever the subject, from the wife of the poet Richard Dehmel, seemingly trivial to life’s darkest these poems were not complete in sorrows, Mahler made something themselves, but blocks of marble deeply personal of each song, waiting to be perfected. In fact, elevating plain folk material to Mahler freely adapted the texts the realm of art—turning humble to suit his needs before he wrote vignettes into unsettling revelations. a note of music (much as Arnim In the end, Mahler brilliantly real- and Brentano had “improved” the ized Goethe’s own sense of wonder folk poetry they published). “With on first reading the Wunderhorn songs,” he once explained to Natalie poems, that “a limited situation Bauer-Lechner, “you can express so reveals a particular happening to be much more in the music than the part of an infinite whole, so that we words directly say. The text is actu- believe that in that small space, we ally a mere indication of the deeper are looking at the whole world.”

7 SONGS FROM DES KNABEN WUNDERHORN

Rheinlegendchen Rhine Legend

Bald gras’ ich am Neckar, Now I mow by the Neckar, bald gras’ ich am Rhein; now I mow by the Rhine; bald hab’ ich ein Schätzel, now I have a sweetheart, bald bin ich allein! now I’m alone! Was hilft mir das Grasen, What good is mowing wenn d’Sichel nicht schneid’t; if the sickle doesn’t cut; was hilft mir ein Schätzel, what good is a sweetheart, wenn’s bei mir nicht bleibt! if he doesn’t stay with me!

So soll ich denn grasen So should I then mow am Neckar, am Rhein; by the Neckar, by the Rhine; so werf’ ich mein goldenes then I will throw Ringlein hinein! my little gold ring in! Es fließet im Neckar It will float in the Neckar und fließet im Rhein, and float in the Rhine, soll schwimmen hinunter it shall swim right down in’s Meer tief hinein! into the deep sea!

Und schwimmt es, das Ringlein, And when it swims, the little ring, so frißt es ein Fisch! then a fish will eat it! Das Fischlein soll kommen The fish will land auf’s König’s sein Tisch! on the king’s table! Der König tät fragen, The king would ask, wem’s Ringlein sollt’ sein? whose ring can it be? Da tät mein Schatz sagen: Then my sweetheart would say: „Das Ringlein g’hört mein!” “The ring belongs to me!”

Mein Schätzlein tät springen My sweetheart would spring Berg auf und Berg ein, up hill and down hill, tät mir wied’rum bringen would bring back to me das Goldringlein fein! the fine little gold ring! Kannst grasen am Neckar, You can mow by the Neckar, kannst grasen am Rhein! you can mow by the Rhine! Wirf du mir nur immer You can always toss in dein Ringlein hinein! your little ring to me!

8 Verlorne Müh’! Labor Lost

Sie: She: Büble, wir— Laddie, we . . . Büble, wir wollen auße gehe! Laddie, we want to go out! Wollen wir? Shall we? Unsere Lämmer besehe? Look at our lambs? Komm’, lieb’s Büberle, Come, dear laddie! komm’, ich bitt’! Come, I beg you! Er: He: Närrisches Dinterle, Silly lassie, ich geh dir holt nit! I won’t go with you at all! Sie: She: Willst vielleicht? You want perhaps? Willst vielleicht ä bissel nasche? You want perhaps a little bit to nibble? Hol’ dir was aus meiner Tasch’! Fetch yourself something out of my bag! Hol’, lieb’s Büberle, Fetch it, dear laddie! hol’, ich bitt’! Fetch it, I beg you! Er: He: Närrisches Dinterle, Silly lassie, ich nasch’ dir holt nit! I’ll nibble nothing of yours at all! Sie: She: Gelt, ich soll— You mean, I should . . . gelt, ich soll mein Herz dir schenke!? You mean, I should give you my heart!? Immer willst an mich gedenke!? Always will you want to think on me!? Immer!? Always!? Nimm’s! Lieb’s Büberle! Take it! Dear laddie! Nimm’s, ich bitt’! Take it, I beg you! Er: He: Närrisches Dinterle, Silly lassie, ich mag es holt nit! I don’t care for it at all! Nit! Nothing!

9 Wo die schönen Where the Fair Trompeten blasen Trumpets Sound

Wer ist denn draußen und wer Who then is outside and who klopfet an, is knocking, der mich so leise wecken kann? that can so softly awaken me?

Das ist der Herzallerliebste dein, It is your dearest darling, steh’ auf und laß mich zu dir ein! get up and let me come to you! Was soll ich hier nun länger steh’n? Why should I go on standing here? Ich seh’ die Morgenröt’ aufgeh’n, I see the red of morn arise, die Morgenröt’, zwei helle Stern’. the red of morn, two bright stars. Bei meinem Schatz da wär ich gern’! I long to be with my sweetheart! Bei meinem Herzallerlieble! With my dearest darling!

Das Mädchen stand auf und ließ The maiden got up and let him in, ihn ein, sie heißt ihn auch willkommen sein. she bade him welcome, too. Willkommen trauter Knabe mein! Welcome, my fine lad! So lang hast du gestanden! You have been standing so long! Sie reicht’ ihm auch die schneeweiße She offered him too her snow- Hand. white hand.

Von Ferne sang die Nachtigall, From far away the nightingale sang, da fängt sie auch zu weinen an! then began she, too, to weep! Ach weine nicht, du Liebste mein! Ah, do not weep, beloved mine! Auf’s Jahr sollst du mein Eigen sein. After a year you will be my own. Mein Eigen sollst du werden gewiß, My own you shall certainly become, wie’s Keine sonst auf Erden ist! as is no other on earth! O Lieb’ auf grüner Erden. O love on the green earth.

Ich zieh’ in Krieg auf grüne Haid; I’m off to war, on the green heath; die grüne Haide, die ist so weit! the green heath is so far away! Allwo dort die schönen Trompeten Where there the fair trumpets sound, blasen, da ist mein Haus, there is my home, mein Haus von grünem Rasen! my house of green grass!

10 Urlicht Original Light

O Röschen rot! O little red rose! Der Mensch liegt in größter Not! Man lies in greatest need! Der Mensch liegt in größter Pein! Man lies in greatest pain! Je lieber möcht’ ich im Himmel sein! Even more would I rather be in heaven!

Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg; There I came upon a broad path; da kam ein Engelein und wollt’ there came an angel and wanted to turn mich abweisen. me away. Ach nein, ich ließ mich nicht abweisen! Ah no, I would not be turned away! Ich bin von Gott, und will wieder I am from God and want to return zu Gott! to God! Der liebe Gott wird mir ein The loving God will give me a little of Lichtchen geben, the light, wird leuchten mir bis an das ewig will illuminate me to the eternal selig’ Leben! blessed life!

11 Dmitri Shostakovich Born September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg (now Leningrad), Russia. Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia.

Symphony No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 65

usic and war were linked in Requiem and Sir Michael Tippett’s MShostakovich’s mind from A Child of Our Time. But it’s the early childhood. At an age when wartime symphonies by Dmitri other precocious composers were Shostakovich that most powerfully cutting their teeth writing piano tell of individual anguish amid pieces, Shostakovich wrote a mass devastation—that reveal revolutionary symphony and the personal grief and the victories Funeral March in Memoriam of the soul against the big, messy to the Fallen Heroes of the backdrop of combat. Perhaps, in Revolution. Shostakovich was Shostakovich’s case, we know so only eleven when the czar was much about his own personal polit- overthrown; ten years later, when ical battles that we read too gener- he had a deeper understanding of ously between the lines, placing an both political unrest and music’s unnecessary burden on the music. incalculable power, he dedicated But in the Seventh (Leningrad) and his Second Symphony to the Eighth symphonies—both writ- October Revolution. ten at the height of World War II The triumph and tragedy of and in a tremendous, emotional war have inspired a number of white heat—the notes on the page musical works through the ages, carry a heavy weight. Both works including Haydn’s dramatic Mass were designed as public statements, in Time of War, the noisy heroics intended to address big issues, of Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, and they’re overwhelming in their and, more recently, Britten’s War sheer size and emotional range. Yet

Composed Most recent three trombones and tuba, 1943 CSO performance timpani, xylophone, snare November 11, 2004, Semyon drum, cymbals, bass drum, First performance Bychkov conducting tam-tam, strings November 4, 1943, Moscow Instrumentation Approximate First CSO four flutes and two piccolos, performance time performance two oboes and english horn, 62 minutes October 5, 1972, Carlo Maria two clarinets, E-flat clarinet Giulini conducting and bass clarinet, three bas- CSO recording soons and contrabassoon, 1989, Sir Georg Solti four horns, three trumpets, for London

12 despite their monumental scale, it’s we’re left with the music. In his a solitary voice that lingers in the introduction to Testimony, Volkov ear after the sounds of trumpets quotes Ilya Ehrenberg, who said, and drums have receded. when confronted with the Eighth The conflict between public Symphony, “Music has a great speech and private thought is the advantage: without mentioning province of the modern Soviet art- anything, it can say everything.” ist. Certainly Shostakovich became its most famous victim and his hostakovich himself always Fifth Symphony the most aston- Smaintained a curious silence ishing apology ever written in the regarding his Eighth Symphony, form of music. Throughout his life, even though he had often spoken the symphony was Shostakovich’s out about its predecessor and fellow public forum. Despite—and often war symphony, the Leningrad. because of—political tension, the These two works, for all their composer maintained his public similarities, could hardly be more pose in these big works, leaving different. Unlike the Seventh the darker, more personal thoughts Symphony, the Eighth has no title for his string quartets. But even and it isn’t about anything as con- the symphonies betray him. For crete as the siege of Leningrad. The many listeners, the end of the circumstances that inspired it are Fifth Symphony, with its heroic less sensational—the original score cadences, sounds oddly hollow, as says only: “The composer worked if Shostakovich could play the part on the symphony at the Ivanovo no longer. Home for Composers’ Creative Shostakovich obviously under- Work in the summer of 1943”—and stood the curious power of music, the music less specific in its evoca- strangely tangible yet inexplicit— tion. But, if anything, the Eighth is somewhere beyond words. Often more deeply motivated. While the this was, for him, its saving grace. Seventh chronicles the horrors of “Words are not my genre,” he once war, the Eighth seeks understand- told Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose ing. And, where the Seventh limits words he did set, in the Thirteenth its scope to the triumph of vic- Symphony, Babi Yar. “I never lie in tory, the Eighth looks beyond the music,” Shostakovich said. (And horizon, to true peace. it was Yevtushenko’s outspoken Shostakovich casts the work in an text, not Shostakovich’s music, that irregular arrangement of five move- caused trouble and had to be revised ments, the last three linked in one after the premiere.) Certainly powerful, unbroken sequence that’s Shostakovich’s own words raise unparalleled in the symphonic many questions, even today. The literature. That span of music, last- authenticity of Testimony, the ing a full half hour, is balanced by “Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich a single movement, nearly as long as related to and edited by Solomon and heavy with anger and sadness, Volkov” is still disputed. And so at the start. A quick and savage

13 scherzo, marked simply allegretto, onto the great vistas of the final stands between. Allegretto. This progression is cal- A solitary strand of music, played culated with a keen sense of drama by the cellos and basses, begins and a master’s command of the big the symphony, adagio and fortis- picture. The Allegro non troppo is simo. Shostakovich moves soberly a terrifying piece of music, not only through slowly shifting music— because of its menacing tone and dirgelike and contemplative, then dangerous pace, but also because it angry, even explosive. A barely sounds inhuman, like the workings contained outburst gives way to a of a giant and sinister machine. long passage of quiet reflection. It begins with rapid, even quar- Midway, the music slowly rises to ter notes that march relentlessly its greatest climax and then breaks through every measure, starting in to reveal the mad galloping of the the violas and eventually invading Allegro non troppo, capped by wild the entire orchestra. Page after page horn calls and a beating drum. brings no relief, only the occasional Movement is halted, finally, by shrill cries of the winds or a crazed an explosion signaled by terrify- bugle call. ing drum rolls—leaving us with Suddenly, with a drum roll and a the sound of an english horn, the couple of grand, ceremonial chords lone survivor, and a nearly deafen- from the full orchestra, a powerful ing silence. Shostakovich makes unison theme is announced. And little of the shift from C minor only then, when the music pulls to C major—the latter has rarely back quickly from fff to a thread of sounded so bleak—even though sound, do we understand that the this is our first glimpse of our desti- machine has stopped and that this nation, still half an hour away. noble new theme has swept us into Next comes the full force of the serene expanses of the Largo. the Allegretto—tremendous and That theme is the foundation for irregular marching music charac- an expansive set of variations and terized by the swagger of the brass it’s repeated twelve times—always band, striding tunes, high-flying in the low strings—while ever- piccolo squeals, and a banging new ideas circle above it, includ- drum. It’s a harrowing vision of the ing several rhapsodic solos. This military march. The music eventu- solemn threnody, restrained and ally disintegrates—at one point quiet (many pages don’t rise above there’s little left but the flute on top a pianissimo), is the calm after the and the contrabassoon five octaves storm, but while there’s calm, there’s below—and then rears up for one not yet peace. That comes in a last crash. moment of extraordinary stillness— The last three movements are at the same time one of the quietest conceived as one: the climax of the and most important moments in Allegro non troppo becomes the the score—when the three clarinets beginning of the Largo; the crux lead the music up into the pure of that movement, in turn, opens radiance of a C major triad.

14 The final Allegretto, opened up reconcile these few rays of sunlight by the discovery of C major, has an falling on so much desolation, unexpected air of innocence. The called it “an optimistic tragedy.” music is simple and even playful— But optimistic is too unambiguous listen to the opening diatonic a word for the serene and dreamy, bassoon melody or to the jubilant emotionally complex final pages. piping of the piccolo a few bars Shostakovich leaves it to each of us later—and the scene is fresh and to hear this music, as inward and pastoral. Even though there are personal as anything in his sym- reminders of more troubled music phonic output, in our own way. midway through—the opening of the symphony breaks in at the climax—it’s a bold and provocative ending for a dark, tragic symphony. It also has proven controversial. Critics found the finale anticlimac- Phillip Huscher is the program annota- tic; the Soviet authorities, unable to tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. © 2010 Chicago Symphony Orchestra © 2010 Chicago