PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, October 1, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, October 2, 2015, at 8:00 Saturday, October 3, 2015, at 8:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Leif Ove Andsnes Piano Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466 Allegro Romanza Rondo: Allegro assai LEIF OVE ANDSNES INTERMISSION Hindemith Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass, Op. 50 Part 1: Moderately fast and with power—Very broad but always flowing Part 2: Lively—Slow—Lively Prokofiev Scythian Suite, Op. 20 The Adoration of Veles and Ala The Enemy God and the Dance of the Black Spirits Night Lolly’s Glorious Departure and the Ceremonial Procession of the Sun This performance is generously sponsored by the Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Fund for the Canon. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent 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 Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria. Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b Of the four overtures no. 2), it does not avoid the dilemma of telling us Beethoven wrote for his everything about the opera, in music of unfor- opera Leonore—later gettable substance and power, before the curtain renamed Fidelio—only goes up. Beethoven ultimately understood the the one called Leonore situation well and wrote his fourth and final no. 3 has gained favor overture to Fidelio—less powerful music, but both in the concert hall, better stagecraft. (Leonore no. 1 was written in where it is much loved, 1807 for a production in Prague that never took and in the opera house, place; the score was discovered after Beethoven’s where it is often played, death, mistaken for his earliest effort, and inappropriately, just before the finale. That it is assigned the number one.) an intruder in the opera house, where it can too easily overshadow all but the greatest perfor- n the concert hall, where it has ultimately mances of Fidelio, is something Beethoven retired, the Leonore Overture no. 3 is a himself easily could have told us. miracle of dramatic music, as compelling The Leonore Overture no. 3 is as dramatic as Ias any symphonic poem in the literature. The any music Beethoven wrote, and that is part of overture tells, or at least distills, the essence of the problem. Placed before the curtain rises, it the story. Beethoven begins in the darkness of overshadows much of what follows. Playing it the prison cell where Florestan has been unjustly just before the final scene—a convention never sent. Florestan remembers brighter days, and sanctioned by Beethoven, but one loved by many the music, ignited by his hope, is filled with conductors, including Mahler and Toscanini—is fire and action. The distant trumpet call of the problematic because it first delays and then gives tower guard, announcing Florestan’s reprieve, away the ending. brings silence and then guarded optimism, but Despite its number, Leonore no. 3 is the trumpet sounds again, and freedom seems Beethoven’s second version of the overture. certain. At the news, the flute cannot contain its Although it is more concise and less symphonic rapture. Beethoven then treats us to a full-scale, than his first effort (the work we call Leonore symphonic, utterly heroic recapitulation. COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1804–1806 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME August 5, 2007, Ravinia Festival. James 13 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Conlon conducting November 20, 1805, Vienna (the CSO RECORDINGS January 10, 11, 12 & 15, 2013, Orchestra opera Leonore) 1961. Georg Szell conducting. VAI Hall. Edo de Waart conducting (video) March 29, 1806, Vienna (Leonore September 18, 2015, Pritzker Overture no. 3) 1972. Sir Georg Solti conducting. Pavilion, Millennium Park. Riccardo London Muti conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES 1988. Sir Georg Solti conducting. January 29 & 30, 1892, INSTRUMENTATION London Auditorium Theatre. Theodore two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, Thomas conducting two bassoons, four horns, two July 23, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Isaac trumpets, three trombones, timpani, Van Grove conducting strings, offstage trumpet 2 Wolfgang Mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466 This is the Mozart piano performance on March 31, 1795, no doubt impro- concerto that Beethoven vising that night the famous cadenza that he later admired above all others. wrote down. (Mozart’s own cadenzas haven’t sur- It’s the only one he played vived, although they are mentioned in one of his in public (and the only father’s letters; at these performances, Leif Ove one for which he wrote Andsnes plays Beethoven’s cadenza in the first cadenzas). Throughout movement and Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s in the nineteenth century, it the finale.) It’s the only time Beethoven is known was the sole concerto by to have played one of Mozart’s concertos in public, Mozart that was regularly although he was certainly well acquainted with performed—its demonic power and dark beauty others and particularly liked the one in C minor. spoke to musicians who had been raised on Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. When it was t’s easy to understand what attracted fashionable to dismiss Mozart as an outdated Beethoven—as well as later nineteenth- composer with fussy manners and empty charm, century musicians—to this concerto. It this score brought people to their senses. It’s Ibelongs to a handful of works by Mozart that surely one of the most celebrated pieces ever suggested he was the earliest great romantic com- written—“almost as much myth as work of art,” poser. This is his first concerto in a minor key— as Charles Rosen put it. in itself an unusual, forward-looking choice. Like Mozart and Beethoven met for the first time in the terrifying chords that open Don Giovanni 1787, two years after this concerto was premiered (and return when Don Juan is dragged down to in Vienna. Beethoven wanted to study with hell), or the Lacrimosa from the Requiem (the Mozart—he may even have had a few lessons with last music Mozart wrote), the concerto estab- him at the time. But it wasn’t until 1792, the year lished D minor as the darkest of keys and seemed after Mozart’s death, that Beethoven settled in at first almost to exhaust its tragic potential. Vienna, and so he ended up studying with Haydn The opening, with its syncopated, throbbing instead, finding little comfort—or truth—in D minor chords, is not about theme or harmony Count Waldstein’s famous prophecy that he would so much as gesture and tension. Like much truly “receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” As a dramatic music, it’s ominously quiet. The piano, favor to Mozart’s widow Constanze, and as tribute surprisingly, doesn’t repeat this music when it to the composer he most admired, Beethoven enters, but begins with its own highly individual played Mozart’s D minor concerto between phrases—in fact, the soloist traverses the entire the acts of La clemenza di Tito at a memorial movement without once playing these signature COMPOSED July 6, 1961, Ravinia Festival. INSTRUMENTATION February 10, 1785, entered in catalog John Browning as soloist, Josef solo piano, one flute, two oboes, two Krips conducting bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, FIRST PERFORMANCE timpani, strings February 11, 1785; Vienna, Austria. The MOST RECENT composer as soloist CSO PERFORMANCES CADENZA July 8, 2007, Ravinia Festival. First movment: Ludwig van Beethoven FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Jonathan Biss as soloist, James Third movement: Johann January 14 & 15, 1916, Orchestra Conlon conducting Nepomuk Hummel Hall. Ossip Gabrilowitsch as soloist, May 30, 31, June 1 & 4, 2013, Orchestra Frederick Stock conducting Hall. David Fray as soloist, Jaap van APPROXIMATE Zweden conducting PERFORMANCE TIME 30 minutes 3 chords. In the same way, the piano’s opening “so strikingly and openly related.” Mozart’s care lines—as pure and unadorned as recitative—are and wisdom are evident everywhere. Once again, not imitated by the orchestra. The relationship it’s the between soloist and orchestra had never before unaccom- been so tense or complex. (When Haydn turned panied pages at a performance some time after Mozart’s piano that death, Leopold Mozart boasted that this allowed launches him to appreciate “the artful composition and the argu- interweaving, as well as the difficulty of the ment, this concerto.”) Their uneasy interplay—sometimes time with accommodating, occasionally unyielding—is unusual what carries this music into the realm of high urgency. drama. This is the first concerto with which This isn’t Mozart so openly reveals not only the form’s a conven- symphonic qualities, but its affinity with the tionally world of opera as well. cheerful The piano alone begins the second movement, rondo, but a serene romance that brings relief without com- a highly pletely banishing the tragic mood. In particular, charged, an explosive G minor interlude—“the noisy forceful part with the fast triplets,” as Leopold called conclusion Mozart’s Walter clavier, which now it—recalls the unrest that came before—and will to a tragic stands in the Geburtshaus, Salzburg. soon return. work. (In The instrument, built by the Viennese When Leopold Mozart arrived in Vienna on its dark- maker Anton Walter in 1780, was purchased by Mozart in 1784.