PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, December 3, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, December 4, 2015, at 1:30 Saturday, December 5, 2015, at 8:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Kirill Gerstein Piano Chicago Symphony Chorus Duain Wolfe Director Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25 (Classical) Allegro con brio Larghetto Gavotte: Non troppo allegro Finale: Molto vivace Scriabin Prometheus, The Poem of Fire, Op. 60 KIRILL GERSTEIN CHICAGO SYMPHONY CHORUS INTERMISSION Beethoven Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 Beethoven Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93 Allegro vivace con brio Allegretto scherzando Tempo di menuetto Allegro vivace This evening’s performance is generously sponsored by Margot and Josef Lakonishok. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. 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 Sergei Prokofi ev Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovska, Ukraine. Died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia. Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25 (Classical) Hector Berlioz was textures, textbook forms, and straightforward unusual among great harmonic procedures, made it easier to work composers because he without his familiar crutch. couldn’t play the piano Prokofi ev had studied Haydn’s music with and therefore didn’t Nikolai Tcherepnin, and he felt there was still compose at the keyboard. something left to be done in the style: Igor Stravinsky, on the other hand, said that It seemed to me that if Haydn had lived every single note he wrote to our day he would have retained his own was fi rst tested at the style of writing while absorbing something piano. During Stravinsky’s lifetime, music began of the new. Th at was the kind of symphony to explore sonic worlds that the piano couldn’t I wanted to write. And when I saw that it begin to suggest, and composers increasingly was beginning to jell, I called it Classical turned to the instrument only for occasional Symphony—fi rst because it was simpler, reference, like an old, out-of-print book. and second just for fun, “to tease the geese,” Sergei Prokofi ev composed this Classical and with the secret hope that eventually the Symphony to try his ability in writing away from symphony would become a classic. the keyboard. Like most composers who also are virtuoso pianists, Prokofi ev regularly worked rokofi ev begins with familiar materials. at the piano. When he decided to spend the In fact, the opening bars—scored for summer of 1917 in a small village near Petrograd pairs of winds, trumpets, and horns, (now Saint Petersburg), removed from the Pwith timpani and strings; launched fi rmly in advances of war, he intentionally rented a place D major; and marked allegro—could almost be with no piano, suspecting that “thematic material from Haydn’s own pen. But in measure seven, composed without a piano was often better.” the violins begin to play fi ve notes to the beat. Th e surprising decision to write a symphony And when, two bars later, a repetition of the in the style of Haydn was, perhaps, suggested opening phrase slips down into C major, we by the simple fact that Prokofi ev didn’t regularly are unmistakably jolted from the eighteenth play the piano works by Haydn or Mozart—their century to the twentieth. From that point on, music was, therefore, in his head, not in his Prokofi ev continues to throw in harmonic twists fi ngers. And the classical style, with its lucid and extra beats where we least expect them. COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1916–17 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME August 14, 1998, Ravinia Festival. 15 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Christoph Eschenbach conducting April 21, 1918; Leningrad, Russia. The CSO RECORDINGS May 6, 7 & 8, 2004, Orchestra Hall. composer conducting 1976. Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. Christoph von Dohnányi conducting Deutsche Grammophon FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1977. Sir Georg Solti conducting. December 16 & 17, 1921, Orchestra two fl utes, two oboes, two clarinets, C Major (video) Hall. The composer conducting two bassoons, two horns, two 1982. Sir Georg Solti. London July 7, 1938, Ravinia Festival. Artur trumpets, timpani, strings Rodzinski conducting 1992. James Levine conducting. Deutsche Grammophon 2 The Larghetto is a perfectly lovely slow move- the United States. He made his first appearance ment, with its melody born in the stratosphere, in this country in November 1918, playing a where many of Prokofiev’s (and none of Haydn’s) solo recital in New York City. The following themes dwell. The pointedly brief third move- month he came to Chicago to play his First ment is pure Prokofiev (for one thing, Haydn Piano Concerto with Frederick Stock and the wrote minuets, not gavottes), with its entire Chicago Symphony and to lead the Orchestra in middle section grounded over one unchang- the first American performances of his Scythian ing harmony. Haydn surely would have loved Suite (which Riccardo Muti and the Orchestra Prokofiev’s finale, with its high spirits and good played here in October). His success encouraged humor. (The way the recapitulation arrives out of the directors of the Chicago Opera to offer to the blue is one of Haydn’s oldest tricks.) produce his new Love for Three Oranges, which he had begun on the boat while crossing the rokofiev’s first symphony was consider- Atlantic. Two weeks before the world premiere of ably successful, and, as time proved, he the opera, in December 1921 at the Auditorium had created a classic. A month after the Theatre, Prokofiev returned to Orchestra first performance of the Classical Symphony, Hall to conduct the Chicago Symphony’s first P Prokofiev was granted permission to come to performances of his Classical Symphony. Composers in Chicago Sergei Prokofiev appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra numerous times between 1918 and 1937, both as piano soloist and guest conductor. He was soloist in the U.S. premiere of his First Piano Concerto in 1918 as well as the world premiere of his Third Piano Concerto in 1921, and he also appeared in his Second and Fifth concertos. As conductor, Prokofiev led the Orchestra in the U.S. premieres of his Scythian Suite (1918), Divertimento (1930), and the first suite from the ballet Romeo and Juliet (1937). He also conducted his First Symphony (Classical), and suites from his ballets Le pas d’acier and Chout and his opera The Gambler. Frank Villella is the director of Program biography for Sergei Prokofiev’s debut appearances with the the Rosenthal Archives. For more Chicago Symphony Orchestra in December 1918 information regarding the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s anniversary season, please visit cso.org/125moments. 3 Alexander Scriabin Born December 25, 1871, Moscow, Russia. Died April 27, 1915, Moscow, Russia. Prometheus, The Poem of Fire, Op. 60 Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective From his youth, when he After Scriabin left the conservatory, he began interpreted the signifi- a career as a concert pianist. While his recital cance of his birth on programs often included music by Schumann and Christmas Day as a sign Liszt, two composers who also started out as pia- that he should do great nists, Scriabin’s particular favorite was Chopin. things, Scriabin believed That influence is reflected not only in his reper- he would play a decisive toire, but in the titles and nature of the music he role in the history of wrote at the time—sets of preludes, impromptus, music. But his early death etudes, and even Polish mazurkas. To study the at the age of forty-three first nineteen opus numbers in Scriabin’s catalog, cut short his career just as he was venturing into all pieces for piano solo, one would never predict pioneer territory with works such as Prometheus the important orchestral music that would and the unfinished Mysterium. Like many quickly follow. composers of a less revolutionary bent, Scriabin The move away from writing solo piano started his musical life as a pianist and his music was a tough and decisive step for all the composing career writing only piano pieces. In pianist-composers of the nineteenth century, 1884, he began to study piano with Nicolai but Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms Zverev, who had already accepted Sergei were already mature artists with individual and Rachmaninov as a pupil. The two students recognizable styles when they stopped composing became good friends—Scriabin was older by just exclusively for the piano. But when Scriabin one year—though they were sometimes later wrote a piano concerto in 1896—the first of portrayed as rivals once their musical ambitions his works to call for orchestra—he had not yet ventured in different directions. At the time they discovered the voice that would ultimately make met, both Scriabin and Rachmaninov were his music unique. The Chopinesque concerto beginning to compose piano pieces for them- scarcely hints at the direction Scriabin’s career selves to play. In 1888, Scriabin entered the would take. Then, three years later, he began Moscow Conservatory, where he excelled equally his first symphony, and a new world of complex as a pianist and composer. When he graduated in sounds and philosophical ideas open up before 1892, he was awarded the second gold medal in him. He was now on the path to becoming, as composition (Rachmaninov took first place, for the novelist Boris Pasternak later said of him, his opera Aleko).