PROGRAM
ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIXTH SEASON
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director
Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant
Friday, March 3, 2017, at 8:00
Edwin Outwater Conductor
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
Wynton Marsalis Trumpet
Glinka
Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila
Ellington
Selections from The River
Spring
Meander
Giggling Rapids
Mussorgsky
Pictures from an Exhibition
Promenade (CSO)
1.Gnomus (CSO)
Promenade (CSO)
2.The Old Castle (JLCO)
Promenade (JLCO)
3.Tuileries (CSO)—Tuileries Swing (JLCO)
4.Bydlo (CSO)
Promenade (CSO)—
5.Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells (CSO)
6.Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle (JLCO)
7.Limoges, the Market Place (CSO)
8.Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum (CSO)—
Promenade: Cum mortius in lingua mortua (CSO)
9.The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba-Yaga) (JLCO)—
10.The Great Gate of Kiev (CSO and JLCO)
Marsalis
All-American Pep from Swing Symphony
There will be no intermission.
This performance is generously sponsored by Patricia Hyde and the Komarek-Hyde-McQueen Foundation.
Funding for educational programs during the 2016–17 Symphony Center Presents Jazz season has been
generously provided by Dan J. Epstein, Judy Guitelman, and the Dan J. Epstein Family Foundation.
Symphony Center Presents and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association are grateful to WDCB 90.9 FM
for its generous support as media sponsor for this performance.
COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Huscher David Kopplin Luke Howard
Mikhail Glinka
Born June 1, 1804; Novospasskoye, Russia
Died February 15, 1857; Berlin, Germany
Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila
Unlike Mussorgsky’s
Boris Godunov and
Tchaikovsky’s Eugene
Onegin, Mikhail Glinka’s
Ruslan and Ludmila was
planned with the cooperation of its famous poet,
Alexander Pushkin, who
agreed to help in the
elusive task of turning
literature into opera. But Pushkin died at the age
of thirty-seven, the victim of a senseless duel
over his wife’s honor, just as he was beginning to
work on the libretto. (Pushkin’s long narrative
poem had been recommended to Glinka shortly
after the success of his first opera, A Life for the
Tsar, in 1836.) After Pushkin’s death, Glinka
began composing without a libretto—an unconventional procedure that didn’t, at first, appear to
hamper him; he eventually called on his friends
to help with the text. (One, a particularly
enthusiastic amateur dramatist, drew up a
complete scenario, “in a quarter of an hour while
drunk,” according to the composer.)
Set in pagan Russia, the opera revolves around
Ruslan’s attempt to rescue the abducted Ludmila
and thus win her hand in marriage. The plot
hinges on elements that figure in several operas
better known to us in this country—an evil
dwarf, a sleeping potion, and both a magic
sword and a magic ring. Although the libretto
captures little of the depth and richness of
Pushkin’s text, the score is recognized as a
landmark of Russian opera, and it was decisive
in earning Glinka the textbook title of Father
of Russian Music. (Stravinsky later said,
“All music in Russia stems from him.”)
Ruslan and Ludmila was only a moderate
success at the first performance in December
1842 (it was badly cast and under-rehearsed)
and established itself in the repertory only after
Glinka’s death. The opera was played 285 times
in Saint Petersburg in 1892, the year of its
fiftieth anniversary.
T he Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila is the
only music by Glinka regularly played
outside Russia today (the Overture to
A Life for the Tsar pops up occasionally). The
music is largely drawn from the last act of the
opera, when Ruslan and Ludmila wed; Ruslan’s
act 2 aria provides lyrical contrast. The dwarf
Chernomor makes a fleeting appearance accompanied by the whole-tone scale—a historical
curiosity that has earned the score a spot in music
history books. —Phillip Huscher
Above: Watercolor of Glinka by Y.F. Yanenko, 1840s
COMPOSED
1837–42
FIRST PERFORMANCE
December 9, 1842; Saint Petersburg,
Russia
2
INSTRUMENTATION
two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets,
two bassoons and contrabassoon,
four horns, two trumpets, three
trombones, timpani, strings
APPROXIMATE
PERFORMANCE TIME
5 minutes
Duke Ellington
Born April 29, 1899; Washington, D.C.
Died May 24, 1974, New York City
Selections from The River
Though Edward Kennedy
“Duke” Ellington began
his career performing the
popular music of his day,
he is now widely recognized among the greats of
American music of any
genre and era. Born in
Washington (D.C.),
Ellington began piano
lessons at the age of seven, and just short of
graduating high school, dropped out to pursue
music. Though he was establishing himself in
D.C. as a pianist and bandleader, his friend,
drummer Sonny Greer, convinced Ellington to
move to New York City. By the late 1920s,
Ellington had become a proven performer and
bandleader with over half a dozen hit records to
his credit. A long-term gig at Harlem’s famed
Cotton Club, which was featured on a weekly
radio show, brought Ellington and his band to
national, and eventually international attention.
By the end of the 1940s, he and his band had
charted hit records over seventy times, many his
own compositions.
Jazz historian Gunther Schuller noted that
“[Ellington’s] musical vision went way beyond the
standard view of jazz.” Ellington also understood
the dramatic possibilities of his music, collaborating with theatrical revues as early as 1925 in
Harlem, even writing an unproduced opera (Boola)
in 1939, not to mention musicals, incidental music
for the theater, and film scores—most notably
for Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959).
Late in his career, Ellington had been pondering
writing a ballet, and Lucia Chase, director of
the American Ballet Theatre (ABT), helped
make that happen, commissioning Ellington and
dancer/choreographer Alvin Ailey to create a work
for her company’s thirtieth anniversary in 1970.
Ellington’s methods were unorthodox. From
the 1940s until the end of his career, he maintained a grueling tour schedule; consequently,
his composing started after his gigs, sometimes
continuing into the late morning. Indeed, Ailey
and Ellington began work on The River at
1:30 a.m., after Ellington’s gig in Vancouver.
As night turned to day, Ellington showed Ailey
his concept of a work using a river as a metaphor
for the passage from birth to death. By their
next meeting a few months later, Ellington had
immersed himself in music about water, from
Handel’s Water Music to Debussy’s La mer; plus,
he had his own themes to play for Ailey. Then
weeks passed, as did deadlines.
With Ellington’s schedule, both Ailey and
Chase began to worry about getting a score in
time. About a month before its scheduled premiere, Ellington came to New York with a completed recording of the score, though by then,
Ailey wasn’t able to choreograph all of the scenes
in time. Seven Dances from a Work in Progress
Entitled The River was premiered on June 25,
1970, at Lincoln Center, with Ellington’s
friend and collaborator Ron Collier creating
orchestral arrangements for that performance.
Ailey added other choreography later, and
The River became a staple of the ABT.
T he work begins with “Spring.” Ellington
described this movement as “a newborn baby in his crib . . . wiggling,
gurgling, squirming, squealing . . .” Note the
opening horn solo, the english horn that follows, and an extended drone that gives way to
a dramatic climax.
Above: Ellington publicity photo, 1940s
COMPOSED
1970
FIRST PERFORMANCE
June 25, 1970, New York City
INSTRUMENTATION
piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two
clarinets, two bassoons, four horns,
three trumpets, three trombones,
tuba, timpani, percussion, harp,
piano, strings
APPROXIMATE
PERFORMANCE TIME
19 minutes
3
“Meander” grows out of a bluesy opening riff.
An extended flute solo follows. This music does
indeed meander, moving next to a 12/8 feel,
then into a waltz, returning to a persistent take
on the bluesy opening, and finally to flute again.
Ellington described this movement as a “baby
finding an open door to the outside world.”
The baby explores that world in “Giggling
Rapids.” A piano introduction gives way to an
up-tempo jazz waltz, with a chirpy melody
set against bebop lines in brass, then strings.
It ends with a boisterous shout chorus.
—David Kopplin
Modest Mussorgsky
Born March 21, 1839; Karevo, Russia
Died March 28, 1881; Saint Petersburg, Russia
Pictures from an Exhibition
Of the five mostly
amateur Russian
composers regarded as
“The Mighty Handful”—
Balakirev, Borodin, Cui,
Mussorgsky, and RimskyKorsakov—it was
Mussorgsky who had the
least amount of formal
musical training. Yet it
was Mussorgsky’s music that became widely
known internationally, including some of the
most famous compositions to emerge from
nineteenth-century Russia: A Night on Bald
Mountain, Pictures from an Exhibition, and the
operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina.
Mussorgsky’s desire to formulate a distinctly
Russian style in music led him to the artworks
of nationalist painter Victor Hartmann. An 1874
retrospective exhibition of Hartmann’s works
inspired Mussorgsky to compose a suite for
piano in memory of his artist friend. Working
at a feverish pace, he reportedly wrote the entire
suite, Pictures from an Exhibition, in the first
three weeks of June 1874, but it wasn’t published
until after his death.
This suite has since been orchestrated at
least a dozen times, most famously in 1922
by Ravel. Even though Mussorgsky wrote
it for piano, he seems to have been thinking
orchestrally. The thick chords and complicated
passagework, unidiomatic for the piano, lend
themselves to performance by a larger ensemble. This evening’s performance includes the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Jazz at
Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) alternating
Above: Mussorgsky, ca. 1865
V. Hartmann. Canary Chicks in
Their Shells; a costume sketch for
Gerber’s ballet Trilbi. Watercolor
4
V. Hartmann. A Rich Jew in a Fur
Hat. Pencil, sepia, lacquer
V. Hartmann. A Poor Jew. Pencil,
watercolor
V. Hartmann. Paris Catacombs. Watercolor
V. Hartmann. Baba-Yaga’s
Hut on Hen’s Legs. Sketch for
a clock in Russian style, pencil
between movements from Ravel’s orchestration
and orchestrations written by current JLCO
members. These jazz arrangements were commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Association for this performance.
T he suite opens with a Russian-sounding
promenade (marked explicitly “nel modo
russico” in the score) that recurs periodically as a transition from one image to the next.
Gnomus is based on Hartmann’s design for a
deformed toy nutcracker, represented by leaping
melodies of awkward intervals. In the Old Castle
(arranged by Victor Goines), a medieval troubadour sings a Russian melody in an Italian siciliano
rhythm. This is followed by a jazz orchestration
of the promenade by Marcus Printup. Tuileries
(in arrangements by Ravel and Vincent Gardner)
depicts the famous gardens in Paris, with
children scampering and shouting playfully. The
heavy burdens of a Polish ox cart are symbolized
by the plodding chords of Bydlo. The Ballet of
the Chicks in Their Shells was one of Hartmann’s
designs for a charming scene in Julius Gerber’s
ballet Trilbi, in which child dancers wear egg
costumes, with their heads and limbs poking out.
The second half of the suite begins with Samuel
Goldenberg and Schmuyle, a double portrait that
COMPOSED
1874
INSTRUMENTATION
three flutes and two piccolos, three
oboes and english horn, two clarinets
and bass clarinet, two bassoons and
V. Hartmann. Design for Kiev
City Gate: Main façade. Pencil,
watercolor
shows a fashionable Jewish man alongside a poor
Jew who has kept his Yiddish name rather than
Germanize it, in an arrangement by Ted Nash.
The Market Place at Limoges depicts two French
women gossiping energetically. Catacombs follows immediately, its slow tempo and low chords
imitating the distant sound of a church organ.
The caption for the portrait Con mortuis
in lingua mortua (With the dead, in a dead
language) reads, “The creative spirit of the
departed Hartmann leads me to the skulls and
invokes them: the skulls begin to glow faintly.”
The Hut on Hen’s Legs (arranged by Chris
Crenshaw) is based on the legendary Russian
witch, Baba-Yaga, whose hut is shaped like a
clock but is perched on chicken legs for mobility.
Mussorgsky’s music depicts Baba-Yaga riding
through the air on her pestle, which she uses to
grind children’s bones in her oversized mortar.
The final movement, the Great Gate of Kiev,
was inspired by Hartmann’s plans for a massive
gate that was never built. Mussorgsky includes
Russian Orthodox chant and pealing bells in this
movement, with a final reference to the promenade theme, alternating between Ravel and
Marcus Printup’s orchestrations. contrabassoon, alto saxophone,
four horns, three trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, bells, triangle, tam-tam,
rattle, whip, cymbals, side drum,
bass drum, xylophone, celesta, two
harps, strings; jazz orchestra
—Luke Howard
APPROXIMATE
PERFORMANCE TIME
42 minutes
5
Wynton Marsalis
Born October 18, 1961; New Orleans, Louisiana
All-American Pep from Swing Symphony
PHOTO BY JOE MARTINEZ
Wynton Marsalis was,
and is, a “jazz composer.” Steeped in the
jazz tradition, a New
Orleans native, and son
of a jazz pianist and
educator, he is an
improviser, through
and through. This
distinguishes his music
from that of the others on this program:
Marsalis’s works include sections for jazz soloing
and improvisation, and his music is also infused
with that ineffable quality of jazz: swing.
In the book How Jazz Can Change Your Life,
Marsalis noted that
On the jazz bandstand, swing is the single
objective, the core that makes us all want
to work together. Jazz—the music—is the
collective aspirations of a group of musicians,
shaped, given logic, and organized under the
extreme pressure of time. When we all work
together, the music swings, and when we
don’t, it doesn’t.
Marsalis describes his Symphony no. 3, the
Swing Symphony, as a “symphonic meditation”
on the evolution of swing, with the symphony
orchestra and jazz orchestra as equal partners. It
is also a celebration of jazz history.
COMPOSED
2010
FIRST PERFORMANCE
June 10, 2010; Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra. Sir Simon Rattle conducting
6
T he second movement starts with what
Marsalis calls “American pep.” It is the
1920s dance, the Charleston, reimagined, though here it is more rough-hewn and
zany, complete with car horns, sirens, and police
whistles. Alto saxophone improvises a solo midway through, followed by the symphony orchestra having its way with the popular dance. A slow
section follows, with baritone saxophone taking
the lead. Marsalis calls this a “tango ballad, with
a sweet romantic mood.” The next section is
peppy and joyful, “an upbeat kind of . . . ‘happy
days are here again’—Broadway show [music],”
notes Marsalis. Improvisation in the jazz trombone section is also featured, adding yet another
textural layer to this nuanced movement. —Dave Kopplin
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Dave Kopplin is an associate professor of music at
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal
Poly Pomona), director of the Cal Poly Jazz Band, and
a writer for performing arts organizations across
the country.
An associate professor of music at Brigham Young
University, Luke Howard is a program annotator for the
Aspen Music Festival, the 92nd Street Y, the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
INSTRUMENTATION
three flutes and piccolo, three oboes
and english horn, three clarinets and
bass clarinet, three bassoons and
contrabassoon, four horns, three
trumpets, three trombones, tuba,
timpani, percussion (bass drum,
bongo bell, bongos, brake drum, car
horn, chimes, claves, congas, cowbells,
cymbals, drum set, ethnic hand
drum, glockenspiel, güiro, marimba,
police whistle, roto-toms, siren, snare
drum, stomping board, tambourine,
timbales with bell, tom-toms, triangle,
vibes, washboard, whip, woodblocks,
xylophone), strings, jazz band
APPROXIMATE
PERFORMANCE TIME
11 minutes
© 2017 Chicago Symphony Orchestra