PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTy-THIRD 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, April 17, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, April 18, 2014, at 1:30 Saturday, April 19, 2014, at 8:00 Tuesday, April 22, 2014, at 7:30 Leonard Slatkin Conductor Anne Akiko Meyers Violin Barber Overture to The School for Scandal Schuman Symphony No. 6 (In one movement) First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances INTERMISSION Bates Violin Concerto Archaeopteryx— Lakebed memories— The rise of birds ANNE AKIKO MEYERS First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances Gershwin An American in Paris Saturday’s concert is sponsored by S&C Electric Company. CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to 93XRT, RedEye, and Metromix for their generous support as media sponsors of the Classic Encounter 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 Samuel Barber Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania. Died January 23, 1981, New York City. Overture to The School for Scandal Samuel Barber was one of Symphony), who said he had no talent on the the lucky ones. His talent podium. Several of his student compositions, was discovered early and however, were the work of an advanced com- nourished by an unusually poser, and a few, including Dover Beach and the musical family. (His aunt Cello Sonata, have earned permanent places in was the distinguished the repertoire. His very fi rst orchestral score, Metropolitan Opera the Overture to Th e School for Scandal performed contralto Louise Homer.) to open this concert, was an immediate hit— He began playing piano and when the Philadelphia Orchestra gave at the age of six and the world premiere in 1933, Barber was just composing at seven. When, at nine, he informed twenty-three. his parents he intended to be a composer— Success followed success. In 1937, his words parents seldom greet with joy or sympathy— Symphony no. 1 was the fi rst music by an he was encouraged. “Dear Mother,” his American to be performed at the Salzburg confession begins, Festival. (Later, his Vanessa was the fi rst American opera to be staged there.) Barber’s I have written to tell you my worrying music was performed and championed by some secret. To begin with I was not meant of the most celebrated fi gures of his day— to be an athlet [sic]. I was meant to be a Vladimir Horowitz introduced the Piano Sonata; composer and will be I am sure. I’ll ask you Arturo Toscanini the First Essay for Orchestra one more thing—Don’t ask me to try and and the famous Adagio for Strings; Leontyne forget this unpleasant thing and go and Price regularly sang many of the songs; Barber play football. wrote Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for Eleanor Steber and his ballet Medea for Martha Graham. At the age of fourteen, Samuel became a Bruno Walter, the great Austrian conductor, charter student at the new Curtis Institute of fi rst heard Barber’s music courtesy of Toscanini, Music, with a triple major: piano, voice, and and he was so impressed that he commissioned composition. He studied conducting briefl y with Barber to write a Second Essay for Orchestra, as Fritz Reiner (later music director of the Chicago a companion to the one Toscanini had premiered. COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1931 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME November 12, 13, 14 & 17, 8 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE 1987, Orchestra Hall. Leonard August 30, 1933; Philadelphia, Slatkin conducting CSO RECORDING Pennsylvania 1966. Thomas Schippers conducting. July 15, 2012, ravinia Festival. James CSO (Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Conlon conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES The First 100 Years) March 7 & 8, 1940, Orchestra Hall. INSTRUMENTATION Frederick Stock conducting two fl utes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, strings 2 hile Barber was still a student, he intended decided to write this concert over- as part of a ture based on Sheridan’s comedy of staging of the manners,W The School for Scandal, while he was play—and vacationing on the shores of Lake Lugano in follows with northern Italy. The Curtis Institute accepted it the earliest as his graduation thesis, but made no effort to of his grand help Barber get it performed. After the overture lyrical orches- won Columbia University’s Bearns Prize, the tral themes. Philadelphia Orchestra surprised both Barber The overture and the music world by deciding to play it at a is cannily Robin Hood Dell concert—the first orchestral paced and score by an unknown composer premiered masterfully by one of the country’s leading orchestras. structured— The overture is so brilliant and assured that there is it is hard to remember that it is the work of a a quick, Fritz Reiner, Barber’s conducting twenty-one-year-old student. It was Barber’s dazzling teacher and later music director of idea to capture the wit and spirit of the coda to wrap the Chicago Symphony Orchestra eighteenth-century play rather than suggest the things up. It (1953–1963) narrative thrust of Sheridan’s comedy. After is a work of an introductory flourish, Barber begins with considerable promise, but more surprisingly, one delightfully animated music—it breathes the air that stands firmly on its own, even in the light of of the theater, even though this music was never all the music that was soon to follow. 3 William Schuman Born August 4, 1910, New York City. Died February 15, 1992, New York City. Symphony No. 6 William Schuman was chuman didn’t know anything about the fi rst composer to win classical music until he was dragged to one the Pulitzer Prize for of Toscanini’s New York Philharmonic Music. Th e award was Sconcerts, which included the Rhenish Symphony given to him in 1943—he by the “other” Schumann, Robert. He was was thirty-two at the nearly twenty years old at the time. Th e dance time—for a work that has band he had started in his New York City since largely been high school—Billy Schuman and his Alamo forgotten, A Free Song, Society Orchestra—hadn’t prepared him for and in the following years the experience of hearing a symphony orches- it honored many of the composers who, along tra. (He was particularly impressed that the with Schuman, defi ned American music in the strings all bowed in unison.) He had written early twentieth century—Howard Hanson, music at summer camp, and had even pub- Aaron Copland, Virgil Th omson, Walter Piston, lished a popular song, “In Love with You,” Chicago’s own Leo Sowerby. Schuman’s place as with lyrics by his friend Frank Loesser, who one of our country’s great musical fi gures would would become famous for Guys and Dolls, only strengthen in the years to come. but Schuman now realized he needed serious By the time of his death in 1992, his career training. He began to study harmony at the had lasted more than sixty years. He had taught Malkin School of Music ($1 per class and $3 at Sarah Lawrence College and served as editor for a private lesson), later earned degrees from in chief at G. Schirmer, the music publisher. He Columbia University Teachers College, and was president of the Juilliard School for nearly ended up working at Juilliard with Roy Harris— two decades, beginning in 1945—while there, among the fi rst of American music’s signature he helped found the Juilliard String Quartet— composers—who was a major infl uence on his and, in 1962, he became the fi rst president of early career. (He had sought Harris out after Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He was hearing a performance of his Symphony 1933.) awarded a second Pulitzer in 1985, both for his “I was so naïve when I started out as a com- work as a composer and as an educator. “I always poser,” he told Th e New York Times in 1990. “I had loved education and administration,” he once the idea that a composer wrote symphonies. So said. “Th e trick was to compose before I went to you started your career by writing symphonies, work.” Over the years, he received so many hon- no matter whether you had the equipment to orary doctorates that he had the hoods stitched do it. I eventually wrote ten of them.” Schuman together into a full-size quilt, permitting him, as had the equipment, and, from the beginning, he used to say, to take his naps by degrees. the symphony seemed like his ideal form. After COMPOSED INSTRUMENTATION APPROXIMATE 1948–49 three fl utes and piccolo, two oboes PERFORMANCE TIME and english horn, two clarinets and 27 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE bass clarinet, two bassoons and February 27, 1949; dallas, Texas contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES timpani, cymbals, snare drum, bass These are the Chicago Symphony drum, bells, strings Orchestra’s fi rst performances. 4 hearing his Second Symphony in 1938, Copland time when the quest to write the Great American said, “Schuman is, so far as I am concerned, the Symphony was at its peak. Schuman’s materials musical find of the year.” His Symphony no. 3, are tough, his language often knotty and unspar- composed in 1941—and premiered by Serge ing.