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 10, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, April 11, 2014, at 8:00 Saturday, April 12, 2014, at 8:00 Sunday, April 13, 2014, at 3:00 Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Christian Tetzlaff Violin Janáček Overture to From the House of the Dead First Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concert performances Dvořák Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 53 Allegro, ma non troppo Adagio, ma non troppo Finale: Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF INTERMISSION Salonen Nyx First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances Janáček Sinfonietta Allegretto Andante—Allegretto Moderato Allegretto Allegro The appearance of Christian Tetzlaff is made possible with generous gifts from Daniel R. Murray and the John Ward Seabury Distinguished Soloist Fund. 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 Leoš Janáček Born July 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia. Died August 12, 1928, Moravská Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. Overture to From the House of the Dead “Th at black opera of mine memoir of his four years in a Siberian prison is giving me plenty of camp, in 1860. (When Dostoyevsky entered work,” Janáček wrote to prison in 1850, at the age of twenty-eight, he was his muse Kamila already a published novelist. Forbidden to write Stösslová in November in prison, he started making notes, the source 1927. He was of the novel itself, during a stay in the prison seventy-four; From the hospital.) Like the opera Janáček made from House of the Dead would its pages, Th e House of the Dead is populated by be his last opera. “It scores of characters, some of whom step forward seems to me as if in it I only once and are not heard from again. Janáček am gradually descending lower and lower, right was particularly attracted to the idea of creating to the depths of the most wretched people of an opera without traditional leading roles. humanity. And it is hard going.” Th e overture to the opera was written last, Janáček began sketching the opera in February although much of its material comes from a 1927. Act 3 was on his desk when he died in violin concerto Janáček began in 1926 and August 1928, awaiting nothing more than the eventually left unfi nished in order to compose occasional touch-up. Instead of a libretto, he the Glagolitic Mass. Janáček originally titled referred to lists of characters and incidents, with the concerto Soul and then later Th e Pilgrimage page references to Dostoyevsky’s Th e House of the of a Little Soul. (It was reconstructed and fi rst Dead, on which the new piece was based. (He performed in 1988.) Th e overture itself is linked translated from Russian into Czech as he went.) thematically to the opera—the powerful opening It was an unconventional way of working on an theme recurs in act 1, for example—but also opera, but then, From the House of the Dead is a betrays its origins with its extensive music for highly unconventional opera—totally freed from solo violin. Like the opera it introduces, the the traditions of the form, it is essentially a work overture inhabits a strange, haunting world all that creates its own kind of music theater. its own, with little regard for convention—from Tolstoy regarded Th e House of the Dead as moment to moment, it suggests bits and pieces of Dostoyevsky’s fi nest work. “I do not know a a concerto, a tone poem, a fanfare—or traditional book better than this in all our literature, not picturesque scene setting. At the head of the even excepting Pushkin,” he wrote in 1880. score, Janáček quotes Dostoyevsky: “In every Dostoyevsky wrote his novel, a fi ctionalized creature a spark of God.” COMPOSED These are the fi rst Chicago APPROXIMATE 1927–28 Symphony Orchestra subscription PERFORMANCE TIME concert performances. 6 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE April 12, 1930; Brno, Czechoslovakia INSTRUMENTATION four fl utes and two piccolos, two FIRST CSO PERFORMANCE oboes and english horn, three clarinets July 9, 1993, Ravinia Festival. Libor and bass clarinet, three bassoons Pešek conducting and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets and bass trumpet, three trombones, tenor tuba and bass tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings 2 Antonín Dvořák Born September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic). Died May 1, 1904, Prague. Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 53 Th e year the Chicago of the composer’s three concertos, following one Symphony was founded, for piano written in 1876 and preceding the great the Orchestra gave the cello concerto by some fi fteen years. American premiere of an important new work vořák had learned to play the violin during its third week of as a small boy, and he also composed concerts. Th e program marches and waltzes for the village book for October 30, Dband. In Zlonice, he studied piano, organ, and 1891 (exactly fourteen viola, eventually becoming a decent enough days after the Orchestra’s violist to earn a living as an orchestra musician inaugural concert), lists Dvořák’s Violin when he couldn’t make any money from his Concerto as “new,” and the program annotator, compositions. After he moved to Prague in 1857, like anyone writing about contemporary music, he became principal viola in the orchestra for hedged his bets on Dvořák’s future reputation. the new Provisional Th eater (later the National Of the Bohemian composer’s recent decision to Th eater). For the rest of his life, he treasured relocate to the United States, a new world he the memory of playing a concert there in 1863 would later famously depict in a symphony, he under his idol, Richard Wagner, that included said only, “it remains to be seen to what extent the overture to Tannhäuser, the prelude to Tristan the infl uences of another civilization may aff ect and Isolde, and excerpts from Die Meistersinger his musical expression.” and Die Walküre. In 1871, Dvořák left the Dvořák was hardly unknown at the time, even orchestra to devote more time to composition, if he hadn’t yet written some of the works on but he soon realized that he would have to teach which his reputation rests today, including the to get by. For many years, his father doubted New World Symphony and the Cello Concerto. In the wisdom of his son’s choice of music over fact, Th eodore Th omas, the Chicago Symphony’s the life of a butcher, the family business. founder and fi rst music director, picked Dvořák’s Th en in 1873, Dvořák’s works began to attract Husitská Overture as the fi nal work on the attention. Th e successful premiere of his patriotic Orchestra’s very fi rst concert. And later that cantata Heirs of the White Mountain on March 9 season, Th omas programmed more Dvořák: launched his fame in his homeland. Later that the Scherzo capriccioso, one of the Slavonic year, he married Anna Cermáková, the sister Rhapsodies, and the D major symphony (no. 6, of the Prague actress Josefi na, who had, nearly but then known as no. 1) that was composed the a decade before, rebuff ed his advances. (Like same year as the violin concerto. Dvořák’s Violin Mozart and Haydn, he married not his fi rst love, Concerto, little more than a decade old when the but her sister.) In 1874, Dvořák took stock of his Chicago Symphony introduced it, is the second situation: he had begun to taste success; his wife COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1879, revised 1880 October 30 & 31, 1891, Auditorium solo violin, two fl utes, two oboes, two Theatre. Max Bendix as soloist, clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, FIRST PERFORMANCE Theodore Thomas conducting two trumpets, timpani, strings October 14, 1883 (U.S. premiere) APPROXIMATE MOST RECENT PERFORMANCE TIME CSO PERFORMANCES 31 minutes June 4, 5 & 6, 2009, Orchestra Hall. Janine Jansen as soloist, Sir Mark Elder conducting 3 was pregnant with their first child; and he looked mailed back pages of suggested improvements, forward to the pleasures, comforts, and traditions and by May 9, 1880, Dvořák told his pub- of family life. But he craved recognition and he lisher that he had redone the entire concerto needed money. In July, he entered fifteen of his accordingly, “without missing a single mea- newest works in a competition for the Austrian sure.” Joachim made still further changes to State Music Prize, a government award designed his solo part—“Although the work proves that to assist struggling young artists. The judges were you know the violin well,” he wrote, “certain Johann Herbeck, the director of the Imperial details make it clear that you have not played Opera in it yourself for some time”—and then arranged Vienna; for a run-through in Berlin in November 1882. Eduard But he never played the concerto in public; the Hanslick, premiere was given nearly a year later in Prague a man of by František Ondříček. (Plans for Joachim to famous, often perform it in London in 1884 fell through.) caustic, opin- ions and one t’s clear from the powerhouse opening of of the most this work that Dvořák knew and admired influential Brahms’s new violin concerto. (Brahms later critics of the Ireturned the compliment: after hearing Dvořák’s nineteenth Cello Concerto, he is reported to have said, century; and, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one could sitting on the write a cello concerto like this? Had I known, panel for the I would have written one long ago.”) The entire first time, first movement is serious and dramatic, and, for Johannes all its richness of color and harmony, it’s still Brahms, the classical in formal outline.