Program ONe HuNdred TWeNTY-SeCONd 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 Wednesday, April 3, 2013, at 6:30 (Afterwork Masterworks, performed with no intermission) Sakari oramo Conductor Yuja Wang Piano ProkofievPiano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26 Nielsen Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 Thursday, April 4, 2013, at 8:00 Friday, April 5, 2013, at 1:30 Saturday, April 6, 2013, at 8:00 Sakari oramo Conductor Yuja Wang Piano Dean Ampitheatre First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26 Andante—Allegro Andantino Allegro ma non troppo YujA WANg INtermISSIoN Nielsen Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 Tempo giusto—Adagio non troppo Allegro—Presto—Andante un poco tranquillo—Allegro The appearance of Yuja Wang is endowed in part by the John Ward Seabury Distinguished Soloist Fund. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBBM Newsradio 780 and 105.9 FM for its generous support as media sponsor of the Afterwork Masterwork 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 Brett Dean Born October 23, 1941, Brisbane, Australia. Ampitheatre, Scene for orchestra ike many composers, Brett live improv clubs in Berlin in the LDean is a highly accomplished late 1980s that formed his identity performer—on viola, a particular as a composer—an immersion in favorite of composers over time— the Western canon balanced by an but few have spent such a large openness to new sonic worlds. “The portion of their career playing in orchestral years taught me about one of the world’s great orchestras. shape, breath, gesture, energy,” he In 1985, soon after completing his once said, “whereas improvising studies in his native Australia—he and playing around with embryonic graduated from the Queensland ideas in a studio allowed me to Conservatorium of Music in 1982, discover my own way of handling then moved to Germany to study musical material.” with Wolfram Christ—Dean In the 1990s, Dean began to became a member of the Berlin make his name as a composer, Philharmonic Orchestra. particularly through worldwide Dean began to compose in performances of the ballet One of 1988, initially working on radio a Kind (a work for the Nederlands projects and largely improvised Dans Theater, choreographed by film music. He later said that it was the legendary Jiří Kylián) and the the combination of his “day job” clarinet concerto Ariel’s Music, in the Berlin Philharmonic viola which won an award from the section and his early apprenticeship UNESCO International Rostrum in electronic music studios and of Composers. Dean is attracted ComPoSeD INStrumeNtatIoN aPProxImate 2000 two flutes, two piccolos PerFormaNCe tIme and alto flute, two oboes 11 minutes FIrSt PerFormaNCe and hecklephone, clarinet, june 16, 2000; Brisbane, two bass clarinets and Australia contrabass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabas- These are the Chicago soon, four horns, four Symphony Orchestra’s first trumpets, three trombones performances of music by and tuba, timpani, percus- Brett dean. sion, harp, strings 2 to a wide range of subjects: Australian outlaw Ned Kelly) and Carlo, for strings, sampler, and the recipients. tape, was inspired by the music of Renaissance composer Carlo ean’s Ampitheatre, commis- Gesualdo; his Pastoral Symphony, Dsioned by Symphony Australia, a successor of sorts to Beethoven’s, is a dramatic scene for large orches- provides a contemporary take on tra. Dean comments: the relationship between man-made music and the sounds of nature. A new work, The Last Days of Socrates, will be premiered later this month by his old orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic (with bass John Tomlinson and the Rundfunkchor Berlin), under Sir Simon Rattle. Although Dean left the Berlin Philharmonic in 1999, after fifteen years, that experience has continued to shape the music he writes. He recently said that playing Elektra in the pit with the Berlin orchestra was a life-changing moment for him as a composer, and that the way Strauss made the orchestra the chief protagonist in the drama strongly influenced his own opera Bliss, based on the novel by Peter Carey, which premiered in 2010 in Sydney. In 2009, Dean was awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition—joining the company of Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, and Witold Lutosławski— for his violin concerto, The Lost The cover for Michael Ende’s 1973 novel, Momo Art of Letter Writing. Dean says he found inspiration in the fact that It is in one (essentially slow) e-mail and text messaging have movement, and takes its title left the traditional hand-written from the opening of German letter behind. Each movement of author Michael Ende’s mes- the score is based on an excerpt merizing children’s book from a letter written in the nine- Momo, in which he describes teenth century, with the solo violin the ruins of an ancient Roman playing the role of both the letter amphitheatre situated on the writers (Johannes Brahms, Vincent outskirts of a big, modern van Gogh, Hugo Wolf, and city. Amphitheatres came in 3 all shapes and sizes; magnifi- of the same object, as if taking a cent ones in major cities were walk around its circumference. fitted out with lavish golden carpets and sunshades, massive The other motivic group that columns, and statues. Simple takes on more significance as theatres in smaller towns the piece progresses consists made do with straw roofing of distant, heralding trumpet and modest decorations. They fanfares, reminiscences of past were a reflection of the people glories that took place in the and communities that built old stone walls, momentarily them—the main thing was replacing the stillness of time that everyone had somewhere frozen. Like the tiered seat- to gather in order to experience ing of these ancient arenas, theatre, to satisfy their hunger radiating outwards from center for stories and spectacles, to be stage, the layers of sound and part of their culture. textures unfold and expand. In this process, the fanfares The other unifying factor become increasingly larger amongst most of these round than life and eventually almost or oval structures, whether grotesque in their directness. large or small, was that they were made of massive blocks of However, as quickly as these stone. The initial musical idea phantasies have erupted, so too in this orchestral amphitheatre, do they dissipate, becoming an oscillating chord change once again little more than first heard in the brass, becomes distant echoes of a bygone the stone blocks upon which age. As Ende describes it, the this piece’s structure is built. day-dreaming tourist returns Through a change of colors, to his senses, takes a photo, from the low brass to winds, and departs from the scene. strings, and then back to brass, “Then stillness is reinstated to we take in different perspectives the stony roundness.” 4 Sergei Prokofiev Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine. Died March 5, 1953, Moscow. Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, op. 26 his is the piano concerto McCormick wrote to Stock at TProkofiev introduced to the world once, saying that Prokofiev “would on this stage in 1921. Prokofiev’s ties be glad to come to Chicago and to Chicago go back to the summer of bring some of his symphonies if his 1917, when local businessman Cyrus expenses were paid. But not know- McCormick, Jr., the farm machine ing myself the value of his music, I magnate, met the twenty-six-year-old did not feel justified in taking the composer Sergei Prokofiev while on a risk of bringing him here.” After business trip to Russia. Prokofiev was Stock received Prokofiev’s scores, he unknown to McCormick, but the replied to McCormick: “There is no composer recognized the distin- question in my mind as to the talent guished American’s name at once, of young Serge.” Although Stock because the estate his father had at first doubted that it was feasible managed owned several impressive to bring the Russian composer to International Harvester machines. the U.S. right away, Prokofiev (or McCormick expressed an interest Prokofieff, as the U.S. press spelled in the composer’s new music, and his name at the time) made his he eventually agreed to pay for the debut with the Chicago Symphony printing of his unpublished Scythian the following season, playing his Suite. He also encouraged Prokofiev First Piano Concerto under Stock’s to come to the United States, and baton and conducting the orchestra asked him to send some of his scores himself in the American premiere of to Chicago Symphony music director his Scythian Suite in Orchestra Hall Frederick Stock. in December 1918. ComPoSeD moSt reCeNt CSo trombones, timpani, bass 1927–1931 PerFormaNCeS drum, castanets, tambou- May 18, 1991, Orchestra Hall. rine, cymbals, strings FIrSt PerFormaNCe Olli Mustonen, piano; daniel October 16, 1921, Chicago. Barenboim conducting aPProxImate The composer as soloist; PerFormaNCe tIme july 26, 2009, ravinia Frederick Stock conducting 28 minutes Festival. Lang Lang, piano; Christoph other CSo CSo reCorDINg eschenbach conducting PerFormaNCeS 1960. Van Cliburn, piano; WIth the ComPoSer Walter Hendl conducting. INStrumeNtatIoN aS SoloISt rCA solo piano, two flutes and january 21 & 22, 1937, piccolo, two oboes, two Orchestra Hall. Hans clarinets, two bassoons, four Lange conducting horns, two trumpets, three 5 “The appearance here of the young to produce an operatic version of Russian, Sergei Prokofieff, at the The Love for Three Oranges, based on Chicago Symphony Orchestra con- the Russian adaptation of Venetian cert was the most startling and, in a playwright Carlo Gozzi’s commedia sense, important musical event that dell’arte fairy tale, to be premiered has happened in this town for a long in Chicago.