PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIXTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Friday, October 14, 2016, at 8:00 Tuesday, October 18, 2016, at 7:30 Riccardo Muti Conductor John Sharp Cello Dvořák Husitská Overture, Op. 67 Schumann Cello Concerto in A Minor, Op. 129 Not too fast— Slow— Very lively JOHN SHARP 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 Mussorgsky, orch. Ravel Pictures from an Exhibition Promenade 1. Gnomus Promenade— 2. The Old Castle Promenade— 3. Tuileries 4. Bydlo Promenade— 5. Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells 6. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle 7. The Market Place at Limoges 8. Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum— Promenade: Con mortuis in lingua mortua 9. The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba-Yaga)— 10. The Great Gate of Kiev This evening’s performance is generously sponsored by Margot and Josef Lakonishok. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBBM Newsradio 780 and 105.9 FM for their generous support as media sponsors of the Tuesday 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 Antonín Dvořák Born September 8, 1841; Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic) Died May 1, 1904; Prague, Bohemia Husitská Overture, Op. 67 This triumphant music located in the heart of what is today Pilsen, was closed the first concert later established in honor of his visit.) During ever given by the Chicago the exposition, Thomas arranged to send a string Orchestra, on October 16, quartet to the composer’s hotel to read through a 1891. It was handpicked new quartet, now known as the American, that he by the Orchestra’s founder, had just written in Spillville. The following year, Theodore Thomas, to Thomas and the Orchestra gave one of the first follow music by the men performances of the New World Symphony. he then considered the pillars of the repertoire, he Husitská Overture is one of Dvořák’s Beethoven and Wagner, as well as newer works— most rousing, yet least known, composi- Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, which had tions. “Great originality and an exquisite been premiered in Boston in 1876, and this giftT for choice musical combinations of tone color, overture—brand-new music, really, composed as well as rhythm, characterize all his works,” and premiered within the past decade. the Chicago Orchestra’s first program annotator, Dvořák was one of Thomas’s favorite compos- Adolph W. Dohn, wrote, when the Husitská ers. In 1867, when Thomas returned to Europe Overture was performed here. The overture was for the first time since his family had moved composed to reopen the National Theatre in to the United States from Germany more than Prague in 1883, two years after it was devastated two decades earlier, he sought out Dvořák, and by fire. The theater director stipulated the subject the two men met after attending the opera in of the Hussite wars, which erupted after John Berlin. Years later, shortly after the Chicago Huss, a religious reformer, was burned at the Orchestra was founded, Thomas sent a contin- stake, and his followers fought for their religious gent of powerful Chicagoans to Spillville, Iowa, liberty. “Dvořák has employed part of one of those where Dvořák was spending the summer of 1893, stirring war songs of the Hussites as the leading to convince him to join the Orchestra at the theme, which is worked up with great ingenuity,” World’s Columbian Exposition that August. He the Orchestra’s first program book said, “and at agreed, becoming the first of the great European the close of the overture appears under the trium- composers to visit Chicago. (Dvorak Park, phant escort of trumpets and trombones.” COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES CSO RECORDING August 9–September 9, 1883 October 16 & 17, 1891, 1991. Rafael Kubelík conducting. CSO Auditorium Theatre. Theodore (From the Archives, vol. 7: A Tribute to FIRST PERFORMANCE Thomas conducting Rafael Kubelík) November 18, 1883; Prague, Bohemia MOST RECENT INSTRUMENTATION CSO PERFORMANCES two flutes and piccolo, two oboes December 12, 13, 14 & 17, and english horn, two clarinets, two 2013, Orchestra Hall. Miguel bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, Harth-Bedoya conducting three trombones and tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings 2 Robert Schumann Born June 8, 1810; Zwickau, Saxony, Germany Died July 29, 1856; Endenich, near Bonn, Germany Cello Concerto in A Minor, Op. 129 Sometime in 1832, after 1854, Schumann attempted suicide by throwing injuring his right hand himself in the Rhine. Shortly afterwards, he was while practicing the piano committed to the private asylum in Endenich, with a contraption where he died two-and-a-half years later, after designed to strengthen being haunted by the voices of angels and visions his fingers, Robert of tigers and hyenas. Schumann took up the cello. It would never chumann began this cello concerto become his instrument— less than six weeks after he settled in even after his hand was Düsseldorf. It was finished in just fifteen so crippled that he had to give up the piano Sdays (seven to draft and eight more to orches- for good. He never studied the cello sufficiently trate), and it opened a new period of frenetic to perform in public, and he wrote very little creative energy. This was not a spurt of inspira- music for it. But the single cello concerto he tion devoted to one medium, like his celebrated composed in 1850 is among his finest and most year of song writing in 1840, or the symphonic idiomatic works. and chamber music years that immediately By 1850, Clara Schumann, a very accom- followed. But it was the last sustained productive plished pianist, had become Robert’s right hand stretch of his career—during the rest of 1850 and in more than one sense. Now that he had been the beginning of the next year he composed his forced to give up performing, she regularly Rhenish Symphony; revised the D minor sym- played her husband’s music in public, cam- phony that was later published as his fourth; and paigned to further his reputation, and continued wrote violin sonatas, a series of tragic overtures, to push him to try different genres and to move two cantatas, and several songs and other in new directions. small works. On September 1, 1850, Robert, Clara, On November 16, 1850, Clara mentioned the and their six children moved from Dresden new concerto in her diary: “It pleases me very to Düsseldorf, where Robert was to succeed much and seems to me to be written in true Ferdinand Hiller as conductor of the local violoncello style.” A year after it was completed, music society. At first, life seemed uncommonly the score still sat on Robert’s desk. In October pleasant—more “easygoing” than in Dresden, as 1851, Clara wrote: Clara put it, but this didn’t last. The members of the Düsseldorf orchestra found Schumann diffi- I have played Robert’s cello concerto through cult and quarrelsome, and he occasionally seemed again, thus giving myself a truly musical ill-prepared or forgetful on the podium. Within and happy hour. The romantic quality, the a few years, he was asked to resign. In February vivacity, the freshness and humor, also the COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES MOST RECENT October 1850 December 9 & 10, 1910, Orchestra CSO PERFORMANCES Hall. Paul Gruppe as soloist, Frederick August 3, 2001, Ravinia Festival. FIRST PERFORMANCE Stock conducting Claudio Bohórquez as soloist, Daniel June 9, 1860; Leipzig, Germany Barenboim conducting June 27, 1940, Ravinia Festival. Emanuel Feuermann as soloist, May 12, 13 & 14, 2011, Orchestra INSTRUMENTATION Eugene Ormandy conducting Hall. Yo-Yo Ma as soloist, Riccardo solo cello, two flutes, two oboes, two Muti conducting clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings 3 highly interesting interweaving of cello and solo turn in the spotlight. The three movements orchestra, are indeed wholly ravishing, and are closely related and carefully dovetailed, so what euphony and deep feeling one finds in that they are played without pause. The opening all the melodic passages! chords of the concerto return to haunt the slow movement, and the cello’s first theme becomes a Robert canceled plans for a performance in recitative linking that movement and the finale. 1852 and apparently shelved the score. But in February 1854, during one of his worst periods he cello establishes a voice of authority of depression, he got out of bed and fussed with with its opening line, a rich and lyrical this concerto to temporarily silence the “eternal run-on sentence that spans thirty mea- sound” of the demons and angels he constantly suresT and almost the entire range of the instru- heard. No further plans were made for a perfor- ment before pausing for breath. Without ever mance, and the concerto wasn’t premiered until lightening the virtuosic demands, Schumann four years after the composer’s death, at a concert proceeds to underplay his soloist’s leading role, in Leipzig marking the fiftieth anniversary of continually drawing the cello into conversation his birth. with the instruments of the orchestra. In the In his own catalog, Schumann listed this slow middle movement, he even engages the work as a concert piece for cello with orchestral soloist in a duet with the orchestra’s principal accompaniment. As Clara rightly noted, the cello, underlining the concept of musical com- forces are ingeniously interwoven.