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
Thursday, December 6, 2012, at 8:00
Friday, December 7, 2012, at 8:00
Saturday, December 8, 2012, at 8:00
Sunday, December 9, 2012, at 3:00
Vasily Petrenko Conductor
Robert Chen Violin
Elgar
Cockaigne Overture, Op. 40 (In London Town)
Barber
Violin Concerto, Op. 14
Allegro
Andante
Presto in moto perpetuo
Robert Chen
Intermission
Shostakovich
Symphony No. 10 in E Minor, Op. 93
Moderato
Allegro
Allegretto
Andante—Allegro
This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Comments by Daniel
Phillip Huscher
Phillip Jaffé
Huscher
Edward Elgar
Born June 2, 1857, Broadheath, near Worcester, England.
Died February 23, 1934, Worcester, England.
Cockaigne Overture, Op. 40 (In London Town)
E
lgar had already composed two
of his greatest masterpieces,
the Enigma Variations and The
Dream of Gerontius, when, late in
1900, the London Philharmonic
Society wrote offering to perform a
new orchestral work. Despondent
after the disastrous premiere in
October that year of The Dream of
Gerontius, Elgar complained to his
steadfast friend August Jaeger (the
Nimrod of his Enigma Variations)
that the Philharmonic Society had
not offered a fee, and, after enumerating the expenses involved in
performing such a work, plaintively
asked: “Now what’s the good of it?”
Jaeger, as usual, bucked Elgar up
with encouragement. By November,
Elgar was able to write: “Don’t say
anything about the prospective
overture yet—I call it ‘Cockayne’ &
Composed
1900–1901
First performance
June 20, 1901, London,
England. The composer conducting
First CSO
performance
November 29,
1901, Auditorium
Theatre. Theodore
Thomas conducting
2
it’s cheerful and Londony—stout
and steaky’.”
While the connection between
Elgar’s eventual title, Cockaigne,
and London, the “land of
Cockneys,” is fairly obvious—and
was reinforced by the subtitle “In
London Town” which Elgar added
at the recommendation of a leading London music critic, Edward
Algernon Baughan—it is clear
from personal annotations Elgar
made on its literary definitions that
there were other associations in his
mind: “Cockaigne . . . ‘the land of all
delights’ . . . An imaginary country
of idleness & luxury . . . Usually
associated with Cockney—but the
connection, if real, is remote.”
Certainly, Elgar told the conductor Hans Richter that “Cockaigne
is the old, humorous (classical)
Most recent CSO
performances
October 5, 1945,
Orchestra Hall. Désiré
Defauw conducting
July 11, 1997, Ravinia
Festival. Donald
Runnicles conducting
Instrumentation
two flutes and piccolo, two
oboes, two clarinets, two
bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two
trumpets and two cornets,
three trombones and
tuba, timpani, percussion,
organ, strings
Approximate
performance time
15 minutes
name for London & from it we get
the term Cockney”—effectively
reinforcing the idea that the overture was a celebration of London’s
ordinary citizens rather than its
grandees; but one should beware of
assuming the overture is a faithful
portrait of London in Elgar’s time.
At the time of its composition,
Elgar and his wife Alice had only
spent one unhappy spell in the city
some ten years earlier, when they
had left their native Worcester
for West Kensington in Elgar’s
first unsuccessful bid to gain a
professional foothold in the capital.
Cockaigne is, rather, Elgar’s evocation of an idealized community, a
place of goodwill and high spirits
where everybody, whether high- or
low-born (something Elgar as the
son of a tradesman was highly
sensitive to), plays a vital role in its
culture and sense of identity.
D
edicated to the composer’s
“many friends, the members
of British orchestras,” the overture was first heard on June 20,
1901, at a Royal Philharmonic
Concert conducted by Elgar in
London’s Queen’s Hall. It was
an instant success. To many of
his contemporaries, including
the astute critic George Bernard
Shaw, the overture’s boisterous
and celebratory character instantly
recalled the overture to Wagner’s
Die Meistersinger. Indeed, there is
much in common between the two
works (despite Elgar’s disingenuous
protestations that he had learned
more from Delibes’s ballet Sylvia):
both celebrate a city’s mythical past,
interwoven with the individual
concerns of young lovers who, as
it were, represent the hope for that
city and its culture; that is not to
mention the resonant similarities
between certain of Wagner’s and
Elgar’s themes and their presentation, nor indeed the C major tonality shared by both overtures. Yet
there is greater
humanity
in Elgar’s
conception—
boisterous
and less
“correct” in its
deportment,
and with
an amused
acceptance of
human failings such as
the Salvation
Army band
which
constantly
Edward and Caroline
fails to start in Alice Elgar just after
their marriage
tune halfway
through Cockaigne.
Elgar’s overture starts not with a
grand statement as does Wagner’s,
but with a perky yet distinctive
theme played sotto voce, almost as
if it were overheard. Indeed, the
slight hold on a high note seems to
graphically suggest the intrigued
listener, perhaps Elgar himself, to
whom the theme has occurred, has
paused to listen out for its further
development. The theme then
continues, building into a boisterous, brass-capped full statement by
the orchestra. Then follows a more
wistful theme on the strings, full
of blissfully sighing chromaticisms,
3
which might have been identified
as that of the young lovers (similar
as it is in character to Wagner’s love
theme in Meistersinger); except this
is the theme Elgar himself identified as being inspired “one dark day
in the Guildhall: looking at the
memorials of the city’s great past &
knowing well the history of its
unending charity, I seemed to hear
far away in the dim roof a theme,
and echo of some noble melody.”
After a vigorous near-peroration
by the brass, the orchestra quietens
for a more wistful, reflective theme,
presented first by the strings, then
by the woodwinds. This now is the
theme which Elgar described as the
lovers’ theme—not yearning like
Wagner’s, but more assured, calm
and tenderly loving.
Rather than needing a blowby-blow commentary, the music
unfolds its own eloquent narrative from these principal themes.
But do listen for the solo clarinet,
which twice initiates a crescendo:
the first time with a perky theme
which is in fact a cheekily speeded
up version of the Guildhall theme,
described by the critic Ernest
Newman as a whistling tune of
“the perky, self-confident, unabashable London street boy . . . just
as Wagner obtained the theme of
his Nuremberg apprentices out of
the Master-singers.” The second
occasion, the clarinet plays another
perky theme, this time genuinely
4
new, which is built up—with perhaps a hint of a tolling bell by the
muted brass—into a grand march
by the full orchestra (after which,
in a calm interlude, we hear the
incompetent Salvation Army band).
In this way, Elgar seems to suggest that the greatness and spirit of
Cockaigne is not only nourished by
such institutions as the Guildhall,
but also from the grassroots
upwards. Indeed, Elgar explicitly
said that vulgarity “often goes with
inventiveness,” and such inventiveness “in the course of time may
be refined”—implicitly, one may
assume, in his own music! Indeed,
every major theme has its spotlight
in the overture’s kaleidoscopic
procession, whether in intimate
scoring, or in a grand tutti statement. There is no hierarchy as such
among those themes: the Salvation
Army band apart, nothing is “incidental,” but every musical theme
or character is essential in Elgar’s
vision of “the land of all delights.” —Daniel Jaffé
Daniel Jaffé is a regular contributor
to BBC Music Magazine and a specialist in English and Russian music.
He is the author of a biography of
Sergey Prokofiev (Phaidon) and the
Historical Dictionary of Russian Music
(Scarecrow Press).
Samuel Barber
Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Died January 23, 1981, New York City.
Violin Concerto, Op. 14
T
his is not the first violin
concerto to have been declared
unplayable by the person for whom
it was written. Tchaikovsky’s
now-popular concerto also was
rejected at first—although Leopold
Auer, Tchaikovsky’s chosen soloist
and a violinist of considerable
accomplishment, eventually had
the decency to admit his error
(and later taught the work to his
pupil Jascha Heifetz, who regularly
played it). Barber was not so lucky,
although time has proved the value
of his work.
In 1939, Barber accepted a
commission from Samuel Fels, a
Philadelphia businessman (and
the manufacturer of Fels Naphtha
soap) who wanted a violin concerto
for his adopted son, Iso Briselli, a
child prodigy. (Briselli was born in
Odessa, the birthplace of so many
violinists including David and Igor
Composed
1939–40
First performance
February 7, 1941,
Philadelphia
First CSO
performances
July 30, 1960, Ravinia
Festival. Jaime
Laredo, violin; Walter
Susskind conducting
Oistrakh and Nathan Milstein.)
Fels offered Barber $1,000—$500
up front, $500 on completion of the
score. For a composer at the beginning of his career, it was without
doubt a good deal. Or so it seemed
at the time.
Barber wrote the first two movements that summer in Switzerland,
but when Briselli saw them he
complained that the music was “too
simple and not brilliant enough for
a concerto.” There are conflicting
accounts of what happened next.
According to the “official” story,
dutifully repeated in program notes
for years, Barber wrote a dazzling
perpetuum mobile finale, which
Briselli declared too difficult; Fels
then asked for his money back,
and Barber set up a performance
to demonstrate that the movement
was indeed playable—and that
he needn’t repay the $500, which
April 9, 1981, Orchestra
Hall. Jaime Laredo, violin;
Leonard Slatkin conducting
Most recent CSO
performances
June 3, 2000, Orchestra
Hall. Itzhak Perlman, violin;
Charles Dutoit conducting
July 25, 2012, Ravinia
Festival. Joshua Bell, violin;
James Conlon conducting
Instrumentation
solo violin, two flutes and
piccolo, two oboes, two
clarinets, two bassoons,
two horns, two trumpets,
timpani, snare drum, piano,
strings
Approximate
performance time
25 minutes
5
was already long spent. But in
1982, Briselli, who had, no doubt
sensibly, given up the violin to run
the Fels business, told his version of
the story to Barbara Heyman, then
at work on her definitive Barber
biography. Briselli claimed that
he had merely informed Barber
that he feared the finale was “too
lightweight” compared to the first
two movements.
Nonetheless, a demonstration
was set up to convince Fels that his
money had been well spent. This
took place at the Curtis Institute
(where, not incidentally, Fels served
on the board of trustees) in the fall
of 1939,
before
Barber
had even
put the
finishing
touches
on the
concerto.
Herbert
Baumel,
a gifted
Curtis
student,
learned
the finale
from
Violinist Albert Spalding
Barber’s
manuscript in just two hours and
played it in the studio of Josef
Hofmann, the distinguished
Curtis director, before a “jury”
that included Mary Louise Curtis
Bok, the founder of the Curtis
Institute, along with Hofmann,
Barber, and Barber’s close friend
Gian Carlo Menotti. According to
Heyman, all parties immediately
6
agreed “that Barber was to be paid
the full commission and Briselli
had to relinquish his right to the
first performance.” (Briselli was
not present.)
Now Barber was free to find
a new soloist for Fels’s commission. (Barber took to calling it his
concerto da sapone, or soap concerto,
although it was becoming more of
a soap opera.) And so the honor
of introducing this now-beloved
concerto fell to Albert Spalding, a
little-known violinist whose name
has a secure place in the history
of American music as a result.
(Eugene Ormandy conducted the
premiere, with the Philadelphia
Orchestra, in 1941.)
W
hat regularly gets lost in the
story of this concerto’s difficult genesis is the music itself, as
direct and persuasive as anything
Barber wrote. The concerto opens
with one of Barber’s most inspired
ideas, a warm and expansive theme
stated at once by the solo violin.
The entire Allegro is like a grand,
reflective aria (even in much of his
instrumental music, Barber is often
a “vocal” composer) with intermittent dramatic episodes, but one
in which unabashedly romantic,
tonal melody reigns. The Andante,
in the elegiac vein of the Adagio
for Strings, opens with a poignant
oboe solo, which the violin ultimately cannot resist. (In 1948,
Barber changed the tempo marking
of the first movement from Allegro
molto moderato to a less relaxed
Allegro, so that the concerto would
not appear to open with two slow
movements.) The controversial
finale is neither lightweight nor
unplayable, although its brilliance is
not of the more predictably heroic,
fireworks variety.
A
few footnotes. Herbert Baumel,
the young Curtis student whose
playing “testified” on Barber’s
behalf, substituted for Spalding at
the first rehearsal for the premiere
and so impressed Ormandy that he
was offered a permanent position in
the Philadelphia Orchestra.
When Mary Louise Curtis Bok
commissioned Barber to write a
work for the dedication of the new
organ at the Philadelphia Academy
of Music in 1960, he refused to
accept the fee (reportedly $2,000),
because of his longtime gratitude
to her, and his admiration for her
motto: “for quality of the work
rather than quick, showy results.”
And finally, Barber eventually
did get the remaining $500 Fels
owed him. Symphony Center Information
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7
Dmitri Shostakovich
Born September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia.
Symphony No. 10 in E Minor, Op. 93
W
e’re told that a recording of
Mozart’s Piano Concerto
no. 23 was still on the record
player when Joseph Stalin died
on March 5, 1953. It was the last
music he listened to, and it is
hard to know what this merciless
leader heard in some of the most
sublime and civilized music ever
written. Perhaps there’s a clue
in Shostakovich’s own words, as
recorded in Testimony:
Music illuminates a person
through and through, and it
is also his last hope and final
refuge. And even half-mad
Stalin, a beast and a butcher,
instinctively sensed that about
music. That’s why he feared
and hated it.
Composed
1953
First performance
December 17, 1953,
Leningrad, Russia
First CSO
performance
April 5, 1962, Orchestra Hall.
Erich Leinsdorf conducting
8
Shostakovich, the composer
Stalin hated most, had learned,
through personal grief and public
humiliation, of this fear. Twice
since Stalin had assumed power
in the twenties, Shostakovich felt
the brutal power of Stalin’s attacks,
and twice his artistic impulses had
been devastated in ways scarcely
equaled in any other time or place.
Stalin’s first attack, prompted by
an impromptu visit to the Bolshoi
Theater performance of the opera
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, plunged
Shostakovich into a crisis of conscience, changed his career forever,
and, at the same time, altered the
course of Soviet music.
The popularity of his written
response to Stalin’s criticism—
the Fifth Symphony—and his
Most recent CSO
performance
October 7, 2006, Orchestra
Hall. Paavo Järvi conducting
Instrumentation
two flutes, alto flute and
piccolo, three oboes and
english horn, three clarinets
and E-flat clarinet, three
bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three
trumpets, three trombones
and tuba, timpani, bass
drum, cymbals, military
drum, snare drum, tam-tam,
triangle, xylophone, strings
Approximate
performance time
57 minutes
CSO recordings
1990. Sir Georg Solti
conducting. London
A 1966 recording with
Leopold Stokowski conducting was released on The First
100 Years.
increasing fame around the world
only made Shostakovich the inevitable prime target of the intensified attack of February 10, 1948.
This time, the official language of
reprimand was stronger still, the
accusations very specific, and the
pressure to conform impossible to
ignore. In response, Shostakovich
not only withheld his First Violin
Concerto, but he decided to write
no more symphonies during Stalin’s
lifetime. (One of the major projects he did undertake was a set of
twenty-four preludes and fugues
for piano, inspired by a composer
with no suspect political leanings
and a spotless reputation—Johann
Sebastian Bach.)
In March 1953, Shostakovich
awoke to the news that Stalin was
dead. His first professional act
was to release the works he had
withheld from performance; that
summer he cleared his desk and
began a new symphony, which he
wrote at lightning speed. (Tatyana
Nikolayevna, who gave the premiere of the preludes and fugues,
claims that the symphony was
actually begun in 1951, while he
was writing the piano cycle; even
so, it seems clear that he worked
extensively and urgently on the
symphony only after Stalin’s death.)
This is music of a new beginning, at once summing up all that
Shostakovich had to say in the form
of a symphony, releasing everything
that the years of Stalin’s oppression
had buried, and anticipating a fresh
and enlightened era ahead. The
Tenth Symphony was performed in
Leningrad in December 1953, to
a mixed response. In March 1954,
the Moscow branch of the Union
of Soviet Composers even called
a special three-day conference to
debate this important symphony,
already recognized as a pivotal
work in the history of Soviet music.
Many didn’t know how to place
it within the context of Social
Realism that had governed Soviet
composers since 1932. Some were
put off by its apparent pessimism.
Finally, in the elaborately ambiguous language that often springs
from political gatherings, a young
composer, Andrei Volkonsky,
pronounced the Tenth Symphony
an “optimistic tragedy.”
Soviet musicians quickly noticed,
in the beginning of the symphony,
a strong resemblance to the opening of Liszt’s Faust Symphony.
Shostakovich’s musical monogram
In several compositions,
beginning with the First
Violin Concerto of 1948,
Shostakovich spells out
his initials
in musical
notation.
This fournote motive
is derived
from the
German
transliteration of the
composer’s own name,
D. SCHostakowitsch. In
German notation, E-flat is
called “es” and B-natural
is H. Thus, DSCH is D, E-flat,
C, B. The tradition for this
kind of musical signature
dates back at least to the
time of Bach.
9
© 2012 Chicago Symphony Orchestra
10
Shostakovich’s friend and biographer Dmitri Rabinovich insisted
the reference was intentional.
(Early in his career Shostakovich
loved Liszt’s music; he later
cooled—“too many notes.”) From
those first strands of sound, sunken
and mysterious, the music rises step
by step toward a massive climax
(some two-thirds of the way into
a twenty-five-minute movement)
and then retreats. The massive arch
form, unerringly paced, is one of
his finest accomplishments, and it
achieves the kind of epic stature
that eludes so many symphonies
written in the twentieth century.
At the conference held by the
Union of Soviet Composers,
Shostakovich admitted that this
movement didn’t realize his dream
of a “real symphonic allegro.”
We don’t know what music
Shostakovich measured his own
against, but the sense of a drama
unfolding, of music developing
before our eyes and ears, recalls the
landmarks of the classical period—
the works that defined “symphonic
allegro” forever.
The scherzo that follows is
concentrated fury—brief and to the
point. Like much of Shostakovich’s
angriest music, it’s set against
a relentless moto perpetuo, with
screaming woodwinds, flaring
brass, and abundant percussion.
The ensuing Allegretto begins as
a dialogue between two kinds of
music—one introspective, the other
more assertive and proudly bearing
the composer’s musical monogram
(see sidebar on page 43). Stalin’s
death freed Shostakovich to write
music so personal it bears his very
signature in the notes on the page.
This dialogue is interrupted twelve
times by the gentle calling of the
horn, a mysterious five-note summons waiting for a reply. Although
it has a resemblance to the horn
theme from Mahler’s Song of the
Earth, we now know that it’s really
another musical signature—that of
Elmira Nazirova, an Azerbaijani
pianist and composer who had
studied with Shostakovich at the
Moscow Conservatory, and with
whom he corresponded frequently
during the summer of 1953. (The
notes E, A, E, D, A correspond to
E, L[a], Mi, R[e], A.)
When there is no answer, the
finale begins, cautiously at first
and then picking up speed and
courage. This movement has
often puzzled listeners because it
answers the severe and despairing tone of the early movements
with unexpected cheerfulness. It’s
this music that makes the Tenth
Symphony an “optimistic tragedy.”
But even the affirmative final
pages, where the DSCH motto is
finally pounded out by the timpani,
can never entirely sweep aside all
the questions and fears that have
been raised before. Shostakovich’s
personal triumph, however, is
unequivocal, for this is the first of
his symphonies that Stalin would
never hear. Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.