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, March 17, 2011, at 8:00 Saturday, March 19, 2011, at 8:00 Tuesday, March 22, 2011, at 7:30 Charles Dutoit Conductor John Sharp Cello Kenneth olsen Cello Katinka Kleijn Cello Berlioz Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 Penderecki Concerto grosso for Three Cellos and Orchestra Andante sostenuto Andante con moto Allegro con brio JOhn ShArp KenneTh OlSen KATinKA KleiJn First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances IntermISSIon (continued) elgar Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma), Op. 36 Theme (Andante) 1. C.A.e. (Andante) 2. h.d.S.-p. (Allegro) 3. r.B.T. (Allegretto) 4. w.M.B. (Allegro di molto) 5. r.p.A. (Moderato) 6. Ysobel (Andantino) 7. Troyte (presto) 8. w.n. (Allegretto) 9. nimrod (Adagio) 10. intermezzo (dorabella). (Allegretto) 11. G.r.S. (Allegro di molto) 12. B.G.n. (Andante) 13. *** romanza (Moderato) 14. Finale. e.d.u. (Allegro) The appearance of John Sharp is endowed in part by the John Ward Seabury Distinguished Soloist Fund. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. 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. 2 CommentS BY phillip huSCher Hector Berlioz Born December 11, 1803, Côte-Saint-André, France. Died March 8, 1869, Paris, France. Roman Carnival overture, op. 9 ike Beethoven’s Leonore over- exemplary precision and energy,” Ltures, this music is what Berlioz he later recalled. But even after the was able to save for the concert hall humiliation of failing at Europe’s from a troubled opera. But where most important opera house had Beethoven’s Fidelio has found a begun to fade, and the work itself secure place in the opera repertory, was virtually forgotten, Berlioz Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini is known didn’t give up on it. almost solely for its offspring. In the early 1840s, when his The Roman Carnival Overture is career as a conductor temporar- not literally the overture to Berlioz’s ily overtook that as a composer, opera; that music, too, has become Berlioz pulled some of the best an orchestral favorite, and to hear music from the opera and fashioned Berlioz’s own first-hand report, this Roman Carnival Overture it was the only music applauded to add to his concert programs. at the premiere of the opera on For Berlioz, it was only a small September 10, 1838, at the Paris souvenir of a major work, but Opera. “The rest was hissed with from the very first performance ComPoSeD moSt reCent aPProxImate 1843–44 CSo PerFormanCeS PerFormanCe tIme december 16, 2000, 9 minutes FIrSt PerFormanCe Orchestra hall. lorin Maazel February 3, 1844, paris. The conducting CSo reCorDIngS composer conducting July 10, 2005, ravinia A 1958 performance with Festival. itzhak perlman Fritz reiner conducting FIrSt CSo conducting is included on From the PerFormanCe Archives, vol. 3 February 9, 1894, Auditorium InStrumentatIon A 1961 performance with Theatre. Theodore Thomas two flutes and piccolo, two pierre Monteux conducting conducting oboes and english horn, two is included on Chicago clarinets, two bassoons, four Symphony Orchestra: The horns, two trumpets and two First 100 Years cornets, three trombones, timpani, cymbals, tambou- rines, triangle, strings 3 under his baton in 1844, it found enjoyed an untroubled and highly immense success with the public. successful career. The opera remained unknown and The original overture to little appreciated, despite Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini gave Berlioz the radical revision and an important pattern he would use for the Roman revival led by Franz Liszt at his Carnival and all subsequent over- prestigious Weimar opera house tures: a brief allegro introducing a in 1852. The failure of Benvenuto larger slow section, crowned by the Cellini continued to haunt and return of the allegro. Here the fast mystify Berlioz: “I have just re-read music comes from the Mardi gras my poor score carefully and with finale to act 1; the slow melody is the strictest impartiality,” he wrote Cellini’s tender and expansive aria, in his Memoirs, “and I cannot now sung by the english horn. The help recognizing that it contains contrast of love song with joyous a variety of ideas, an energy and dance music is highly effective, exuberance and a brilliance of the orchestration is brilliant even color such as I may perhaps never by Berlioz’s standards, and, like find again, and which deserved Beethoven’s Leonore overtures, it a better fate.” In the meantime, conveys a sense of drama the opera the Roman Carnival Overture itself rarely achieves. Symphony Center Information The use of still or video cameras please turn off or silence all and recording devices is prohibited personal electronic devices in Orchestra hall. (pagers, watches, telephones, digital assistants). latecomers will be seated during designated program pauses. please note that Symphony Center is a smoke-free environment. please use perfume, cologne, and all other scented products Your cooperation is greatly sparingly, as many patrons are appreciated. sensitive to fragrance. note: Fire exits are located on all levels and are for emergency use only. The lighted exit sign nearest your seat is the shortest route outdoors. please walk—do not run—to your exit and do not use elevators for emergency exit. Volunteer ushers provided by The Saints—Volunteers for the Performing Arts (www.saintschicago.org) 4 Krzysztof Penderecki Born November 23, 1933, Dębica, Poland. Concerto grosso for three Cellos and orchestra hen Penderecki burst on Music in the mid-fifties, Poland Wthe new-music scene with was awaking from a deep, paralyz- his searing, noisy Threnody for the ing cultural isolation. Penderecki Victims of Hiroshima in 1960, he didn’t even hear Stravinsky’s didn’t seem like a composer who seminal The Rite of Spring of 1913 would one day write a concerto until sometime around 1956, grosso, a form in vogue more than when he was in his early twenties. three hundred years earlier. But the That year, a group of composers last decades of the twentieth cen- founded the Warsaw Autumn tury were a time of stylistic variety Festival and programmed “new” and liberation (as well as confu- music by the founding fathers of sion), and many a composer ended modernism, including Stravinsky, up miles from where his career Schoenberg, and Webern, as well began. In any event, Penderecki’s as contemporary works by Luigi gear-shifting wasn’t an outright Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen. reversal—a Jackson Pollock sud- (Nono himself came to Poland, denly painting like Renoir—as armed with scores of recent music.) much as a serious attempt to find Penderecki was suddenly exposed a synthesis between new and old, not only to twentieth-century clas- and to discover “a sort of universal sics, but also to the new serialism of language,” as he once said. Pierre Boulez and the chance music Penderecki’s entire career has of John Cage. been colored by his understanding Penderecki made headlines of and acceptance of the “new” in his own in 1960 with his Threnody music. When he studied composi- for the Victims of Hiroshima, a tion at the Kraków Academy of ten-minute, densely layered work ComPoSeD InStrumentatIon cymbal, cymbals, tubular 2000 two flutes and piccolo, two bells, tam-tams, tambou- oboes and english horn, two rine, tenor drum, military FIrSt PerFormanCe clarinets, e-flat clarinet and drum, bass drum, glocken- June 22, 2001, Tokyo, Japan. bass clarinet, two bassoons spiel, marimbaphone), harp, Charles dutoit conducting and contrabassoon, four celesta, strings These are the first CSO horns, two trumpets, performances three trombones and tuba, aPProxImate timpani, percussion (triangle PerFormanCe tIme tree, bell tree, suspended 35 minutes 5 scored for fifty-two strings that completed in 1965, Penderecki boldly announced the arrival of returned to a traditional form rarely a new pioneer. Throughout the used since the time of Bach and sixties, Penderecki was regarded relied on triads to anchor important as one of the most brilliant and points in the score. adventuresome figures in music. In the mid-seventies, Penderecki But he quickly tired of the avant- fell under the spell of romanticism, garde, sensing that it was prevent- and his output began to reveal the ing him from writing the music he depth of that influence. By the late really wanted to compose. In the seventies, in works such as Paradise seventies, when he began a second Lost, commissioned by the Lyric career as a conductor (Penderecki Opera of Chicago (and premiered conducted the Chicago Symphony here in 1978), Penderecki had in Schubert’s Fifth Symphony and comfortably settled into his most his own Seven Gates of Jerusalem romantic phase. He was not the in March 2000), the experience first composer to undergo a com- of performing Bruckner, Sibelius, positional crisis that led him to a and Tchaikovsky pointed the way more conservative language. But his out of this creative impasse and interest in old-fashioned sensibilities began to influence his own music in and big, time-honored forms such profound ways. This gradual retreat as the symphony and concerto— toward more traditional tonal which, to progressive composers, procedures, a full decade before reached the end of the line with so-called neoromanticism became Prokofiev and Shostakovich—was popular, was viewed by some of unexpected and puzzling. “This his colleagues as the worst kind of continuation is something very cowardice—as an act of betrayal. important to me,” he said at the “The solution to my dilemma was time, “and all I’m doing now is try- not to go forward,” he later admit- ing to carry on a tradition.” ted, “and perhaps destroy the whole In writing this concerto grosso, spirit of music as a result, but to Penderecki looks all the way back gain inspiration from the past and to the tradition of his baroque look back on my heritage.” predecessors.