Chicago Symphony orchestra riccardo muti Music Director

Program
ONE HuNDrED TWENTy-fIrST SEaSON
Chicago Symphony orchestra
riccardo muti Music Director
Pierre Boulez Helen regenstein Conductor Emeritus
Yo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant
Thursday, June 14, 2012, at 8:00
Saturday, June 16, 2012, at 8:00
Global Sponsor of the CSO
Tuesday, June 19, 2012, at 7:30
riccardo muti Conductor
Ildar abdrazakov Bass
Prokofiev
The Meeting of the Volga and the Don, Op. 130
First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances
Shostakovich
Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Op. 145a
Truth
Morning
Love
Separation
Wrath
Dante
To the Exile
Creativity
Night
Death
Immortality
ILDar aBDrazakOV
First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances
IntermISSIon
Beethoven
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
allegro con brio
andante con moto
allegro—
allegro—Presto
Maestro Muti and the musicians of the CSO have graciously contributed their services for Saturday
evening’s Pension Benefit Concert.
CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines.
This program is partially supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
CommentS By PHILLIP HuSCHEr
Sergei Prokofiev
Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine.
Died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia.
The Meeting of the Volga and the Don, Festive
Poem, op. 130
T
he canal connecting the Volga
and the Don rivers opened on
June 1, 1952. The least known of
the world’s major waterways, it provides a strategic link between the
Volga—the longest river in Europe
and often called the national river
of Russia—which empties into the
Caspian Sea, and the Don, which
pours into the Sea of Azov, and
from there on into the Black Sea
and through the Turkish Straits
directly to the Mediterranean.
Ottoman Turks had wanted to
link the Volga and the Don as
early as 1569. Peter the Great had
similar plans in the late seventeenth
century, after capturing Azov, but
he gave up the idea in 1701 because
of its exorbitant cost.
The canal did not become reality
until the middle of the twentieth
century, and even then it had
to be put on hold until the end
ComPoSed
1951
FIrSt PerFormanCe
february 22, 1952, Moscow
These are the first
CSO performances
2
of World War II. Construction
began in 1948. The work force
was mostly prisoners from labor
camps. As the project neared
completion, more than 100,000
convicts were on the site each day.
The canal was designed by Sergei
Zhuk’s Hydroproject Institute
and intended as a monument to
the battles for Tsaritsyn during
the Russian Civil War and for
Stalingrad during World War II.
Prokofiev was a logical choice to
write music to celebrate the completion of the Volga–Don canal, as
he had proven before that he could
provide appropriately ceremonial
music that met with official Soviet
approval. It would be the last of his
works designed for a public occasion. In his later years, Prokofiev had
struck up a friendship with the poet
and novelist Boris Pasternak, who,
like Prokofiev, had chosen to stay in
InStrumentatIon
two flutes and piccolo, two
oboes and english horn, two
clarinets and bass clarinet,
two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three
trumpets, three trombones
and tuba, timpani, cymbals,
woodblock, bass drum,
snare drum, triangle,
celesta, harp, piano, strings
aPProxImate
PerFormanCe tIme
16 minutes
the Soviet Union. As a result, they
both had felt the heat of extreme
official political pressure and continually struggled with the idea of
making art for mass audiences that
was still honorable, substantive, and
innovative. Prokofiev would not live
to read Doctor Zhivago, the novel
Pasternak had slowly been writing
for many years.
This “festive poem” was
Prokofiev’s last score for orchestra.
(He had used the term five years
earlier for a composition celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the
1917 Bolshevik Revolution.) “As I
work,” Prokofiev said, in carefully
chosen words,
I remember the endless
expanse of our great rivers, I
remember the songs which our
people have sung about them,
and the lines by Russian classical and contemporary poets
devoted to them. I am striving
in this poem to write music
that is melodious, reflecting
the joy of construction that
now seizes our entire people.
The Meeting of the Volga and the
Don is a grand work for a monumental project. It is longer than
most occasional pieces, and its
scoring is more lavish than that of
many a symphony of the period.
Prokofiev apparently was aiming for
something between a concert overture and a tone poem. Despite its
initial stiff manner—it opens with
a ceremonial fanfare—the score is
filled with much fine, expressive
music that could just have easily
ended up in one of Prokofiev’s late
symphonies. The central Andante
section, in particular, boasts an
expansive melody launched by
the clarinet and handed off to the
violins that is characteristic of
Prokofiev at his most lyrical—the
kind of big, broad melody that distinguishes many of his late scores.
Even when writing the brilliantly
colored, exuberant, optimistic
music he knew was demanded by
Soviet state occasions—coming
close to boilerplate newsreel music
from time to time—Prokofiev is
still a master of color, pacing, and
the telling detail. Throughout this
score, there is an unexpected complexity, not just of compositional
dexterity and orchestral writing,
but of emotional content as well.
Even the final cadence, in a sudden
slow tempo, seems to cast a shadow
over the festivities.
The premiere was broadcast over
the radio on February 22, 1952.
Prokofiev had little time left to
him. He made his final public
appearance at the premiere of his
Seventh Symphony the following
October. After that, his health
deteriorated quickly. Even so, he
began two new pieces—a sixth
piano concerto and his tenth piano
sonata. He died on the evening of
March 5, 1953, after suffering a
stroke, and less than an hour before
Joseph Stalin. The news coverage
of Stalin’s death all but obliterated
the announcement that Prokofiev
had died. There were no flowers at
Prokofiev’s memorial—Stalin’s people had cleaned out all the florists
in Moscow for the state funeral.
3
dmitri Shostakovich
Born September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Died August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia.
Suite on Verses of michelangelo Buonarroti,
op. 145a
D
mitri Shostakovich was
diagnosed with a serious heart
condition in 1966. Then, late in
1973, his doctors found a cancerous
growth in his left lung. The major
compositions of Shostakovich’s last
years are permeated with thoughts
of death—in particular the fourteenth and fifteenth symphonies,
the fifteenth string quartet, and
two works from his final year, a
viola sonata and these setting of
poems by Michelangelo, that were
written after the cancer diagnosis.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
(1475–1564) was the greatest artist
in an age of extraordinary artistic
creation. (Leonardo da Vinci was
Michelangelo’s elder by twentythree years.) E.H. Gombrich, in his
widely read The Story of Art, writes
that Michelangelo’s fame in his
own day “was something no artist
had ever enjoyed before.” He also
ComPoSed
1974
FIrSt PerFormanCeS
December 23, 1974,
Leningrad, version for bass
and piano
October 12, 1975,
Moscow, version for bass
and orchestra
These are the first
CSO performances
4
was the first important artist
to leave a large body of both visual
art and literature. “No outside
force, no one’s demands, and no
rivalry made him write poetry, yet
he wrote it all his life,” said the
Russian critic A.M. Efros, whose
translations of Michelangelo’s
poems Shostakovich used for
his settings. “For Michelangelo,
poetry was a matter of heart and
conscience.” The significance
of Michelangelo’s poetry was
recognized during his lifetime.
Giorgio Vasari, who revered
Michelangelo above all those he
covered in his landmark Lives
of the Artists, first published in
Florence in 1550—fourteen years
before Michelangelo’s death—
even included a quatrain from
Michelangelo’s poetry in his tribute
to the greatest architect, painter,
and sculptor of the age.
InStrumentatIon
solo bass voice, two flutes
and piccolo, two oboes, two
clarinets, two bassoons
and contrabassoon, four
horns, two trumpets, three
trombones and tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum,
slapstick, woodblock, drum,
tam-tam, bells, xylophone,
vibraphone, celesta, harp,
piano, strings
aPProxImate
PerFormanCe tIme
42 minutes
The earliest surviving poems by
Michelangelo are mere fragments
written in the first two years of
the sixteenth century, at the time
he was beginning to work on the
David. (Michelangelo was in his
mid-twenties.) From the next
twenty years, we have some twenty
poems, four of which Shostakovich
chose for his cycle (the ones he
titled Truth, Morning, Separation,
and Wrath). Starting in the 1520s,
the pace of Michelangelo’s poetic
writing picks up—at his peak he
was writing more than a dozen
poems each year. The poems
express personal thoughts that his
work as a visual artist could not,
and because of that they meant
a great deal to him—he revised
several of them six times or more,
and in his late sixties he undertook
a project of preparing 105 poems
for publication. Four hundred years
later, Shostakovich clearly identified with the way Michelangelo
used poetry to explore themes
that were too intimate to display in painting or sculpture.
No one understood better than
Shostakovich, working in the midtwentieth-century Soviet Union,
how carefully battle lines between
public art and an artist’s interior life
needed to be drawn.
Even in Michelangelo’s lifetime, one of his poems—one
Shostakovich picked, calling it
Separation—was set to music
(by the now nearly forgotten
Veronese composer Bartolomeo
Tromboncino) and published in
1518. Much closer to our time,
Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss,
and Benjamin Britten all set
Michelangelo’s poems to music.
But Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses
of Michelangelo Buonarroti is
the largest and most ambitious.
Originally conceived to honor the
fifth centenary of the artist’s birth,
it ended up as a highly personal
testament to concerns these two
men shared—love, morality, death,
and immortality—and an essay
on old age, human frailty, and the
imperishable nature of the greatest creations of the human spirit.
Shostakovich picked poems that
he liked, gave them titles, and
gathered them together in a cycle
of eleven movements. In its original
version, for bass and piano, the
suite
was
completed
at the
end of
July
1974.
“My
right
arm is
causing
me a
lot of
trouble.
I find
Portrait of Michelangelo Buonarroti
by Giulio Bonasone, 1546
it very
difficult to write,” Shostakovich said
that summer, no doubt recognizing
how few compositions he would
be able to complete in his remaining time.
Although he initially said he
did not intend to orchestrate
these songs—the composer Aram
Khachaturian asked him about it
5
the night the suite was performed
for a circle of friends and colleagues
at Shostakovich’s Moscow home,
in January 1975—he soon did so,
turning this song cycle into a great
symphonic work. It is, in effect,
his final symphony, and, in fact, at
the very end of his life, he told his
son Maxim that he considered the
suite to be his sixteenth symphony.
Although the orchestration is
remarkably spare, even gaunt, it
powerfully underlines the inherent
starkness of the music; the rage
of Wrath is more unsettling than
ever in the orchestral version, the
intimate tone of Morning more
confidential, the force of Creativity
more overwhelming.
For a composer whose symphonies had so often unleashed shattering barrages of orchestral sound,
here Shostakovich works with great
economy: every single note carries great weight; the color of each
strand of music is shrewdly chosen.
The vocal line itself, a subtle, everchanging mixture of declamation
and flowing arioso, owes much to
Mussorgsky—the death of Boris
Godunov or The Songs and Dances
of Death that Shostakovich loved.
But it is charged throughout with
a new directness and economy. The
power of simplicity in music has
rarely been more overwhelming.
It is as if Shostakovich wanted as
little as possible to stand between
him and the thoughts of the great
cinquecento artist.
Shostakovich loosely groups the
eleven movements into larger sections: a prologue (Truth), followed
by a lyrical trio of songs, and then,
at the heart of the piece, a triptych
of powerful dramatic statements.
The last movements form a more
interior, deeply personal final chapter with one song, Immortality,
as a kind of epilogue. Although
Shostakovich consciously avoided
calling the work a song cycle, the
whole is intercut with important
cyclic cross-references—the reprise
of the opening music to begin
Death is the most obvious example.
a Few wordS aBout IndIVIdual SongS:
Dante Alighieri,
attributed to Giotto,
Bargello Palace,
Florence
6
Michelangelo, who
admired Dante
above all writers
and was said to
know The Divine
Comedy by heart,
wrote two madrigals
in praise of Dante.
Shostakovich sets
them as a connected
pair—Dante and To
the Exile, a lament
over Dante’s unjust
exile from Florence.
As he does throughout the suite,
Shostakovich draws out powerful
parallels between his time and that
of the poet—the political subtext
of Michelangelo’s poetry becomes
Shostakovich’s as well. In the Soviet
Union in 1974, To the Exile could
not help but raise the image of
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had
been put on a plane and sent into
exile that February, or the forced
expulsion of musicians Mstislav
Rostropovich and his wife Galina
Vishnevskaya later that year.
Shostakovich told the pianist
Evgeny Shenderovich, who played
the first performance of these
songs, that as he was writing
Creativity he remembered reading
how Michelangelo possessed such
power and precision that he could
knock out the superfluous marble
in a boulder with his very first blow.
Shostakovich’s music is an explosion of hammer blows—of chiseling the music into shape, forcefully
and with razor-sharp accuracy, in a
matter of moments.
The first four lines of Night
were written by the Florentine
writer Giovanni Strozzi as
a tribute to Michelangelo’s
celebrated sculpture Night, begun
in 1524 and now housed in the
Medici Chapel in San Lorenzo in
Florence. The second quatrain is
Michelangelo’s response.
Immortality pairs two of the
forty-eight epitaphs Michelangelo
wrote for Cecchino Bracci, who
died in Rome in 1544 at the age of
fifteen. Shostakovich begins with
an innocent little piano piece he
himself wrote when he was nine
years old. He ends with simple,
repeated chords, like a beating
heart or the ticking of a clock.
Shostakovich died on August 9,
1975, before the orchestral version
of this suite could be premiered.
7
Texts for
ShoStakoVICh’S
SuIte on VerSeS oF mIChelangelo BuonarrotI,
oP. 145a
Shostakovich set Michelangelo’s poems in a Russian translation by A.M. Efros, who only had
access to a German edition of the poems when he made his translation. The texts printed
in this week’s program book include the original Italian poems by Michelangelo, a recent
English translation of those, and the Russian text that Shostakovich set to music.
Signor, se vero è alcun proverbio antico,
questo è ben quel, che chi può mai non vuole.
Tu hai creduto a favole e parole
e premiato chi è del ver nimico.
I’ sono e fui già tuo buon servo antico;
a te son dato come e’ raggi al sole,
e del mie tempo non ti incresce o dole,
e men ti piaccio se più m’affatico.
Già sperai ascender per la tua altezza,
e ’l giusto peso e la potente spada
fussi al bisogno, e non la voce d’eco.
Ma ’l cielo è quel c’ogni virtù disprezza
locarla al mondo, se vuol c’altri vada
a prender frutto d’un arbor ch’è secco.
8
Texts for
ShoStakoVICh’S
SuIte on VerSeS oF mIChelangelo BuonarrotI,
oP. 145a
truth / IStIna
My lord, if any ancient proverb is true,
it’s surely this one, that one who can
never wants to.
You have believed fantastic stories
and talk
and rewarded one who is truth’s enemy.
I am and long have been your
faithful servant,
I gave myself to you like rays to the sun;
but you don’t suffer or care about
my time,
and the more I exert myself, the less
you like me.
Once, I hoped to rise up through
your eminence,
and the just scales and the
powerful sword
were what was needed, and not an
echoing voice.
But heaven is the one that scorns
all virtue
if it puts it in the world, and then
wants us
to go and pluck fruit from a tree
that’s dry.
Est istiny v rechenyakh stariny,
I vot odna: kto mozhet, tot ne khochet.
Ty vnyal, Gospod’, tomu, chto
lozh’ strekochet,
I boltuny toboy nagrazhdeny;
Ya zh—tvoy sluga: moi trudy dany
Tebe, kak solntsu luch,—khot’
i porochit
Tvoy gnev vsyo to, chto pyl moy
sdelat’ prochit,
I vse moi staranya ne nuzhny.
Ya dumal, chto vozmyot tvoyo velichye
Menya k sebe ne ekhom dlya palat,
A lezviyem suda i girey gneva;
No est’ k zemnym zaslugam
bezrazlichye
Na nebesakh—i znat’ ot nikh nagrad,—
Chto ozhidat’ plodov s sukhovo dreva.
(Please turn the page quietly.)
9
Quanto si gode, lieta e ben contesta
di fior sopra’ crin d’or d’una, grillanda,
che l’altro inanzi l’uno all’altro manda,
come ch’il primo sia a baciar la testa!
Contenta è tutto il giorno quella vesta
che serra ’l petto e poi par che si spanda,
e quel c’oro filato si domanda
le guanci’ e ’l collo di toccar non resta.
Ma più lieto quel nastro par che goda,
dorato in punta, con sì fatte tempre
che preme e tocca il petto ch’egli allaccia.
E la schietta cintura che s’annoda
mi par dir seco: qui vo’ stringer sempre.
Or che farebbon dunche le mie braccia?
10
mornIng / utro
How joyful is the garland on her
golden locks,
so happy and well fashioned out
of flowers
each one of which thrusts forward past
the others
that it might be the first to kiss
her head.
Throughout the day, that dress
is gratified
which locks her breast and then seems
to stream down;
and what they call a spun-gold thread
never ceases to touch her cheeks
and neck.
But even more delighted seems
that ribbon,
gilded at the tips, and made in such
a way
that it presses and touches the breast it
laces up.
And her simple belt that’s tied up in
a knot
seems to say to itself, “Here would I
clasp forever!”
What, then, would my arms do?
Net radostney vesyolovo zanyatya:
Po zlatu kos, tsvetam napereboy
Soprikasatsa s miloy golovoy
I l’nut lobzanyem vsyudu bez izyatya!
I skol’ko naslazhdeniya dlya platya
Szhimat’ yei stan i nispadat’ volnoy.
I kak otradno setke zolotoy
Yeyo lanity zakluchat’ v obyatya!
Yeshcho nezhney naryadnoy lenty vyaz’,
Blestya uzornoy vyshivkoy svoyeyu,
Smykayetsa vkrug persey molodykh.
A chisty poyas, laskovo viyas’,
Kak budto shepchet: “Ne rasstanus’ s
neyu . . . ”
O, skol’ko dela zdes dlya ruk moikh!
(Please turn the page quietly.)
11
Dimmi di grazia, Amor, se gli occhi mei
veggono ’l ver della beltà c’aspiro
o s’io l’ho dentro allor che, dov’io miro,
veggio scolpito el viso di costei.
Tu ’l de’ saper, po’ che tu vien con lei
a torm’ogni mie pace, ond’io m’adiro;
né vorre’ manco un minimo sospiro,
né men ardente foco chiederei.
—La beltà che tu vedi è ben da quella;
ma cresce poi c’a miglior loco sale,
se per gli occhi mortali all’alma corre.
Quivi si fa divina, onesta e bella,
com’a sé simil vuol cosa immortale:
questa e non quella agli occhi tuo precorre.—
12
loVe / lYuBoV
Kindly tell me, Love, whether my eyes
really see the beauty that I long for,
or if it’s just in me when,
looking around,
I see that woman’s face
carved everywhere.
You must know, since you come along
with her
to rob me of all peace, which makes
me angry;
yet I wouldn’t want to lose even the
smallest sigh,
nor would I ask for a less burning fire.
“The beauty that you see does come
from her,
but it grows when it rises to a
better place,
if through the mortal eyes it reaches
the heart.
There it is made divine and pure
and beautiful,
since what’s immortal wants things to
be like itself:
it’s this, not that, that first leaps to
your eyes.”
—Skazhi, Lyubov’, voistinu li vzoru
Zhelannaya predstala krasota,
Il to moya tvoryashchaya mechta
Sluchayny lik vzyala sebe v oporu?
Tebe l’ ne znat? Ved s nym po ugovoru
Ty sna menya lishila. Pust’! Usta
Leleyut kazhdy vzdokh, i zalita
Dusha ognyom, ne
znayushchim otporu.
—Ty istinnuyu vidish’ krasotu,
No blesk eyo gorit, vsyo razrastayas’,
Kogda skvoz’ zvor k dushe
voskhodit on;
Tam obretayet bozhyu chistotu,
Bessmertnomu tvortsu upodoblyayas’,—
Vot pochemu tvoy vzglyad zavorozhon.
(Please turn the page quietly.)
13
Com’arò dunche ardire
senza vo’ ma’, mio ben, tenermi ’n vita,
s’io non posso al partir chiedervi aita?
Que’ singulti e que’ pianti e que’ sospiri
che ’l miser core voi accompagnorno,
madonna, duramente dimostrorno
la mia propinqua morte e’ miei martiri.
Ma se ver è che per assenzia mai
mia fedel servitù vadia in oblio,
il cor lasso con voi, che non è mio.
Qua si fa elmi di calici e spade
e ’l sangue di Cristo si vend’a giumelle,
e croce e spine son lance e rotelle,
e pur da Cristo pazïenzia cade.
Ma non ci arrivi più ’n queste contrade,
ché n’andre’ ’l sangue suo ’nsin alle stelle,
poscia c’a Roma gli vendon la pelle,
e ècci d’ogni ben chiuso le strade.
S’i’ ebbi ma’ voglia a perder tesauro,
per ciò che qua opra da me è partita,
può quel nel manto che Medusa in Mauro;
ma se alto in cielo è povertà gradita,
qual fia di nostro stato il gran restauro,
s’un altro segno ammorza l’altra vita?
14
SeParatIon / razlu-ka
How will I ever have the nerve
without you, my beloved, to stay alive,
if I dare not ask your help when
leaving you?
Those sobs and those tears and
those sighs
that came to you with my
unhappy heart,
my lady, testified distressingly
Derznu l’, sokrovishche moyo,
Sushchestvovat’ bez vas, sebe na muku,
Raz glukhi vy k mol’bam
smyakhchit razluku?
Unylym serdtsem bol’she nye tayu
Ni vozglasov, ni vzdokhov, ni rydaniy.
Chto vam yavit’, madonna,
gnyot stradaniy
I smert’ uzh nedalyokuyu moyu;
to my impending death and to
my torments.
But if it is true that through my absence No daby rok potom moyo sluzhenye
my faithful servitude may be forgotten,
Izgnat’ iz vashey pamyati ne mog,—
I leave with you my heart, which is
Ya ostavlyayu serdtse vam v zalog.
not mine.
wrath / gneV
Here they make helmets and swords
from chalices
and by the handful sell the blood
of Christ;
his cross and thorns are made into
lances and shields;
yet even so Christ’s patience still
rains down.
But let him come no more into
these parts:
his blood would rise up as far as
the stars,
since now in Rome his flesh is
being sold,
and every road to virtue here is closed.
If ever I wished to shed my
worldly treasures,
since no work is left me here, the man
in the cope
can do as Medusa did in Mauretania.
But even if poverty’s welcomed up
in heaven,
how can we earn the great reward of
our state
if another banner weakens that
other life?
Zdes’ delayut iz chash mechi i shlemy
I krov’ Khristovu prodayut na ves;
Na shchit zdes’ tyorn, na kopyakh
krest izchez—
Usta zh Khristovy terpelivo nemy.
Pust’ on ne skhodit v nashi vifleyemy
Il snova bryznet krovyu do nebes,
Zatem, chto dushegubam Rim—
chto les,
I miloserdye derzhim na zamke my.
Mne ne grozyat roskoshestva obuzy,
Ved dlya menya davno uzh net zdes’ del;
Ya mantii strashus’, kak Mavr–Meduzy;
No esli bednost’ slavoy Bog odel,
Kakiye zh nam togda gotovit uzy
Pod znamenem inym inoy udel?
(Please turn the page quietly.)
15
Dal ciel discesce, e col mortal suo, poi
che visto ebbe l’inferno giusto e ’l pio,
ritornò vivo a contemplare Dio,
per dar di tutto il vero lume a noi.
Lucente stella, che co’ raggi suoi
fe’ chiaro a torto el nido ove nacqu’io,
né sare’ ’l premio tutto ’l mondo rio;
tu sol, che la creasti, esser quel puoi.
Di Dante dico, che mal conosciute
fur l’opre suo da quel popolo ingrato
che solo a’ iusti manca di salute.
Fuss’io pur lui! c’a tal fortuna nato,
per l’aspro esilio suo, co’ la virtute,
dare’ del mondo il più felice stato.
16
dante
He came down from heaven, and once
he had seen
the just hell and the merciful one,
he went
back up, with his body alive, to
contemplate God,
in order to give us the true light of it all.
For such a shining star, who with
his rays
undeservedly brightened the nest where
I was born,
the whole wicked world would not be
enough reward;
only you, who created him, could ever
be that.
I speak of Dante, for his deeds
were poorly
appreciated by that ungrateful people
who fail to welcome only
righteous men.
If only I were he! To be born to such
good fortune,
to have his harsh exile along with
his virtue,
I would give up that happiest state in
the world.
Spustivshis’ s neba v tlennoy ploti, on
Uvidel ad, obitel’ iskuplenya,
I zhiv predstal dlya Bozhya litsezrenya,
I nam povedal vsyo, chem umudryon.
Luchistaya zvezda, chim ozaryon
Siyanyem kray, mne danny
dlya rozhdenya,—
Yei ne ot mira zhdat’ voznagrazhdenya,
No ot tebya, kem mir byl sotvoryon.
Ya govoryu o Dante, o Dante:
ne nuzhny
Ozloblennoy tolpe yevo sozdanya,—
Ved’ dlya neyo i vysshi geni mal.
Bud’ ya kak on! O, bud’ mne suzhdeny
Yevo dela i skorb’ yevo izgnany,—
Ya b luchshey doli v mire ne zhelal!
(Please turn the page quietly.)
17
Quante dirne si de’ non si può dire,
ché troppo agli orbi il suo splendor s’accese;
biasmar si può più ’l popol che l’offese,
c’al suo men pregio ogni maggior salire.
Questo discese a’ merti del fallire
per l’util nostro, e poi a Dio ascese;
e le porte, che ’l ciel non gli contese,
la patria chiuse al suo guisto desire.
Ingrata, dico, e della suo fortuna
a suo danno nutrice; ond’è ben segno
c’a’ più perfetti abonda di più guai.
Fra mille altre ragion sol ha quest’una:
se par non ebbe il suo exilio indegnio,
simil uom né maggior non nacque mai.
18
to the exIle / IzgannIku
All that should be said of him cannot
be said,
for his splendor flamed too brightly for
our eyes;
it’s easier to blame the people who
hurt him
than for all our greatest to rise to his
least virtue.
This man descended to the just deserts
of error
for our benefit, and then ascended
to God;
and the gates that heaven did not block
for him
his homeland shut to his
righteous desire.
I call her ungrateful, and nurse of
her fortune
to her own detriment, which is a
clear sign
that she lavishes the most woes on the
most perfect.
Among a thousand proofs this
one suffices:
no exile was ever as undeserved as his,
and no man equal or greater was
ever born.
Kak budto chtim, a vsyo zhe chest’
mala.
Yevo velichye vzor nash oslepilo.
Chto chern’ korit na nizkoye merilo,
Kogda pusta i nasha pokhvala!
On radi nas soshol v obitel’ zla;
Gospodne tsarstvo lik yemu yavilo;
No dver, chto dazhe nebo ne zakrylo,
Pred Dante otchizna zlobno zaperla.
Neblagodarnaya! Sebe na gore
Ty dlila muki syna svoyevo;
Tak sovershenstvu nizost’ mstit ot veka.
Odin primer iz tekh, kotorykh more!
Kak net podley izgnaniya yevo,
Tak mir ne znal i vyshe cheloveka!
(Please turn the page quietly.)
19
Se ’l mie rozzo martello i duri sassi
forma d’uman aspetto or questo or quello,
dal ministro che ’l guida, iscorge e tiello,
prendendo il moto, va con gli altrui passi.
Ma quel divin che in cielo alberga e stassi,
altri, e sé più, col propio andar fa bello;
e se nessun martel senza martello
si può far, da quel vivo ogni altro fassi.
E perché ’l colpo è di valor più pieno
quant’alza più se stesso alla fucina,
sopra ’l mie questo al ciel n’è gito a volo.
Onde a me non finito verrà meno,
s’or non gli dà la fabbrica divina
aiuto a farlo, c’al mondo era solo.
20
CreatIVItY / tVorCheStVo
If my crude hammer shapes the
hard stones
into one human appearance or another,
deriving its motion from the master
who guides it,
watches and holds it, it moves at
another’s pace.
But that divine one, which lodges and
dwells in heaven,
beautifies self and others by its
own action;
and if no hammer can be made without
a hammer,
by that living one every other one
is made.
And since a blow becomes
more powerful
the higher it’s raised up over the forge,
that one’s flown up to heaven above
my own.
So now my own will fail to
be completed
unless the divine smithy, to help
make it,
gives it that aid which was unique
on earth.
Kogda skalu moy zhostki molotok
V oblichiya lyudey preobrazhayet—
Bez mastera, kotory napravlyayet
Yevo udar, on delu b ne pomog.
No Bozhi molot iz sebya izvlyok
Razmakh, chto miru prelest’
so-obshchayet;
Vse moloty tot molot predveshchayet,
I v nyom odnom—im vsem
zhivoy urok.
Chem vyshe vzmakh ruki nad
nakoval’ney,
Tem tyazheley udar: tak zanesyon
I nado mnoy on k
vysyam podnebesnym;
Mne glyboyu kosnet’ pervonachalnoy,
Poka kuznets gospoden’,—tol’ko on!—
Ne posobit udarom polnovesnym.
(Please turn the page quietly.)
21
La Notte, che tu vedi in sì dolci atti
dormir, fu da un angelo scolpita
in questo sasso, e perchè dorme ha vita:
Destala, se nol credi, e parleratti.
—Giovanni di Carlo Strozzi
Caro m’è ’l sonno, e più l’esser di sasso,
mentre che ’l danno e la vergogna dura;
non veder, non sentir m’è gran ventura;
però non mi destar, deh, parla basso.
Di morte certo, ma non già dell’ora,
la vita è breve e poco me n’avanza;
diletta al senso, è non però la stanza
a l’alma, che mi prega pur ch’i’ mora.
Il mondo è cieco e ’l tristo esempro ancora
vince e sommerge ogni prefetta usanza;
spent’è la luce e seco ogni baldanza,
trionfa il falso e ’l ver non surge fora.
Deh, quando fie, Signor, quel che s’aspetta
per chi ti crede? c’ogni troppo indugio
tronca la speme e l’alma fa mortale.
Che val che tanto lume altrui prometta,
s’anzi vien morte, e senza alcun refugio
ferma per sempre in che stato altri assale?
22
nIght / noCh
The Night that you see sleeping in
such a
graceful attitude, was sculpted by
an Angel
in this stone, and since she sleeps, she
must have life;
wake her, if you don’t believe it, and
she’ll speak to you.
—Vot eta Noch’, chto tak spokoino spit
Sleep is dear to me, and being of stone
is dearer,
as long as injury and shame endure;
not to see or hear is a great boon to me;
—Mne sladko spat’, a pushche—
kamnem byt’,
Kogda krugom pozor i prestuplenye:
Ne chuvstvovat, ne videt’—
oblyekhchenye,
Umolkni zh, drug, k chemu
menya budit’?
Pered toboyu, angela sozdanye.
Ona iz kamnya, no v ney est dykhanye:
Lish razbudi,—ona zagovorit.
—Giovanni di Carlo Strozzi
therefore, do not wake me—pray,
speak softly.
—Giovanni di Carlo Strozzi
death / Smert’
Certain of death, though not yet of
its hour,
life is short and little of it is left for me;
it delights my senses, but is no fit home
for my soul, which is begging me to die.
The world is blind, and bad example
goes on
overcoming and drowning even the best
of habits.
The light is extinguished, and with it
all valor;
error triumphs, and truth cannot
sally forth.
Lord, when will come what is awaited
by those
who believe in you? For every
excess delay
shortens hope and puts the soul in
mortal danger.
What good is your promise of great
light to all,
if death attacks first, and fixes
them forever
in the state he finds them in, with
no escape?
Uzh chuya smert’, khot’ i ne
znaya sroka,
Ya vizhu: zhizn’ vsyo ubystryayet shag,
No telu y-eshcho zhalko plotskikh blag,
Dushe zhe smert’ zhelanyeye poroka.
Mir v slepote: postydnovo uroka
Iz vlasti zla ne izvlekayet zrak,
Nadezhdy net, i vsyo obyemlet mrak,
I lozh’ tsarit, i pravda pryachet oko.
Kogda zh, Gospod’, nastupit to, chevo
Zhdut verniye tebe? Oslabevayet
V otsrochkakh vera, dushu davit gnyot;
Na chto nam svet spasenya tvoyevo,
Raz smert’ bystrey i navsegda yavlyayet
Nas v sramote, v kotoroy zastayot?
(Please turn the page quietly.)
23
Qui vuol mie sorte c’anzi tempo i’ dorma,
né son già morto; e ben c’albergo cangi,
resto in te vivo, c’or mi vedi e piangi,
se l’un nell’altro amante si trasforma.
Qui son morto creduto; e per conforto
del mondo vissi, e con mille alme in seno
di veri amanti; adunche a venir meno,
per tormen’ una sola non son morto.
24
ImmortalItY / BeSSmertIYe
Here my fate wills that I should sleep
too early,
but I’m not really dead; though I’ve
changed homes,
I live on in you, who see and mourn
me now,
since one lover is transformed into
the other.
Here I am, believed dead; but I lived for
the comfort
of the world, with the souls of a
thousand true lovers.
Although I have been deprived of my
own soul,
I still live on in the souls of all those
who loved and remember me.
Zdes’ rok poslal bezvremenny mne son,
No ya ne myortv, khot’ i opushchen
v zemlyu:
Ya zhiv v tebe, chim
setovanyam vnemlyu,
Zatem chto v druge drug otobrazhon.
Ya slovno b myortv, no miru
v uteshenye
Ya tysyachami dush zhivu v serdtsakh
Vsekh lyubyashchikh, i, znachit, ya
ne prakh,
I smertnoye menya ne tronet tlenye.
English translation from The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation, James M.
Saslow. Yale University Press, 1991, 1993. © 1991 by Yale University. Reprinted by permission.
25
ludwig van Beethoven
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany.
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria.
Symphony no. 5 in C minor, op. 67
T
his is the symphony that, along
with an image of Beethoven,
looking agitated and disheveled,
has come to represent greatness in
music. In fact, many people know
only the very opening seconds, just
as they may remember vividly and
accurately no more than the Mona
Lisa’s smile, or the first ten words
of Hamlet’s soliloquy. It’s hard to
know how so few notes, so plainly
strung together, could become so
popular. There are certainly those
who would argue that this isn’t even
Beethoven’s greatest symphony, just
as the Mona Lisa isn’t Leonardo’s
finest painting—Beethoven himself
preferred his Eroica to the Fifth
Symphony. And yet, it’s hardly
famous beyond its merits, for one
ComPoSed
1804–1808
FIrSt PerFormanCe
December 22, 1808, Vienna,
austria
FIrSt CSo
PerFormanCe
October 16, 1891, auditorium
Theatre (the Orchestra’s
inaugural concert). Theodore
Thomas conducting
moSt reCent
CSo PerFormanCe
June 3, 2010, Orchestra Hall.
Bernard Haitink conducting
26
can’t easily think of another single
composition that in its expressive
range and structural power better
represents what music is all about.
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
has spoken forcefully and directly
to many listeners—trained and
untrained—over the years; we
each listen and understand in our
own way. We can probably find
ourselves somewhere here, among
the characters of E.M. Forster’s
Howard’s End:
Whether you are like
Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come—
of course not so as to disturb
the others; or like Helen, who
can see heroes and shipwrecks
InStrumentatIon
two flutes and piccolo, two
oboes, two clarinets, two
bassoons and contrabassoon, two horns, two
trumpets, three trombones,
timpani, strings
aPProxImate
PerFormanCe tIme
36 minutes
CSo reCordIngS
1959. fritz reiner
conducting. rCa
1968. Seiji Ozawa
conducting. rCa
1973. Sir Georg Solti
conducting. London
1986. Sir Georg Solti
conducting. London
a 1944 performance under
Désiré Defauw is included
on From the Archives, vol. 17,
and a 1961 performance
(for television) conducted by
George Szell was released
by VaI. Excerpts from the
first movement conducted by
James Levine were included
in the soundtrack for
Disney’s Fantasia 2000.
in the music’s flood; or like
Margaret, who can only see
the music; or like Tibby,
who is profoundly versed in
counterpoint, and holds the
full score open on his knee;
or like their cousin, Fräulein
Mosebach, who remembers
all the time that Beethoven is
“echt Deutsch”; or like Fräulein
Mosebach’s young man, who
can remember nothing but
Fräulein Mosebach: in any
case, the passion of your life
becomes more vivid, and you
are bound to admit that such a
noise is cheap at two shillings.
That is why we still go to concerts, and, whether we see shipwrecks or hear dominant sevenths,
we may well agree, when caught up
in a captivating performance, “that
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the
most sublime noise that has ever
penetrated into the ear of man.”
For a while, this piece was
somewhat overshadowed by the
Ninth Symphony, which seemed
to point the way to the rest of the
nineteenth century and emboldened
generations of composers to think
differently of the symphony, or of
music in general. But the Fifth has
never really lost its appeal. Robert
Schumann, whose musical predictions have often come true, wrote
that “this symphony invariably
wields its power over men of every
age like those great phenomena of
nature . . . . This symphony, too, will
be heard in future centuries, nay, as
long as music and the world exist.”
It is surely no coincidence that
Theodore Thomas, the first music
director of the Chicago Symphony,
picked this symphony to conclude
the Orchestra’s inaugural concert
in 1891, as well as the concert given
in 1904 to dedicate Orchestra Hall.
“I care not from what the station
in life come the thousands who
sit before me,” Thomas once told a
reporter. “Beethoven will teach each
according to his needs.”
A familiarity earned by only a
handful of pieces in any century has
largely blunted much of the work’s
wild power for our ears today. And,
knowing the many works that
couldn’t have been written without
this as their example has blinded
us to the novelty of Beethoven’s
boldest strokes: the cross-reference
between the famous opening and
the fortissimo horn call in the
scherzo, the way the scherzo passes
directly—and dramatically—into
the finale, and the memory of the
scherzo that appears unexpectedly
in the finale—all forging the four
movements of the symphony into
one unified design. The idea of a
symphony tracing the journey from
strife to victory is commonplace
today, but Beethoven’s Fifth was an
entirely new kind of symphony in
his day.
There’s no way to know what
the first audience thought. For
one thing, that concert, given
at the Theater an der Wien on
December 22, 1808, was so inordinately long (even by nineteenthcentury standards), and jammed
with so much important new music,
that no one could truly have taken
it all in. J. F. Reichardt, who shared
a box with Prince Lobkowitz, later
wrote: “There we sat from 6:30
27
till 10:30 in the most bitter cold,
and found by experience that one
might have too much even of a
good thing.”
Reichardt and Lobkowitz stayed
till the end, their patience frequently tried not by the music—to
which these two brought more
understanding than most—but
by the performance, which was
rough and unsympathetic. Surely
some in the audience that night
were bowled over by what they
heard, though many may well have
fidgeted and daydreamed, uncomprehending, or perhaps even bored.
Beethoven’s was not yet the most
popular music ever written, and
even as great a figure as Goethe
would outlive Beethoven without
coming to terms with the one
composer who was clearly his equal.
As late as 1830, Mendelssohn tried
one last time to interest the aging
poet in Beethoven’s music, enthusiastically playing the first movement
of the Fifth Symphony at the piano.
“But that does not move one,”
Goethe responded, “it is merely
astounding, grandiose.”
Take the celebrated opening, which Beethoven once, in a
moment he surely regretted, likened
to Fate knocking at the door. It
is bold and simple, and like many
of the mottoes of our civilization,
susceptible to all manner of popular
treatments, none of which can
diminish the power of the original.
Beethoven writes eight notes, four
plus four—the first ta-ta-ta-TUM
falling from G down to E-flat, the
second from F to D. For all the
force of those hammer strokes, we
may be surprised that only strings
28
and clarinets play them. Hearing
those eight notes and no more, we
can’t yet say for certain whether this
is E-flat major or C minor. As soon
as Beethoven continues, we hear
that urgent knocking as part of a
grim and driven music in C minor.
But when the exposition is repeated,
and we start over from the top with
E-flat major chords still ringing in
our ears, those same ta-ta-ta-TUM
patterns sound like they belong
to E-flat major. That ambiguity
and tension are at the heart of this
furious music—just as the struggle
to break from C minor, where this
movement settles, into the brilliance of C major—and will carry
us to the end of the symphony.
If one understands and remembers those four measures, much
of what happens during the next
thirty-odd minutes will seem both
familiar and logical. We can hear
Fate knocking at the door of nearly
every measure in the first movement. The forceful horn call that
introduces the second theme, for
example, mimics both the rhythm
and the shape of the symphony’s
opening. (We also can notice the
similarity to the beginning of the
Fourth Piano Concerto—and, in
fact, ideas for both works can be
found in the same sketchbooks,
those rich hunting grounds where
brilliance often emerges in flashes
from a disarray matched by the
notorious condition of the composer’s lodgings.)
Although the first movement
is launched with the energy and
urgency of those first notes, its
progress is stalled periodically by
echoes of the two long-held notes
famous passages in music—slowly
building in tension and drama,
over the ominous, quiet pounding
of the timpani—to an explosion of
brilliant C major. Composers have
struggled ever since to match the
effect, not just of binding movements together—that much has
been successfully copied—but of
emerging so dramatically from
darkness to light. The sketchbooks
tell us that these fifty measures cost
Beethoven considerable effort, and,
most surprisingly, that they weren’t
even part of the original plan.
Berlioz thought this transition so
stunning that it would be impossible to surpass it in what follows.
Beethoven, perfectly understanding
the challenge—and also that of sustaining the victory of C major once
it has been achieved—adds trombones (used in symphonic music
for the first time), the piccolo, and
the contrabassoon to the first burst
of C major and moves forward
towards his final stroke of genius.
That moment comes amidst general rejoicing, when the ghost of the
scherzo quietly appears, at once disrupting C major with unexpected
memories of C minor and leaving
everyone temporarily hushed and
shaken. Beethoven quickly restores
order, and the music begins again
as if nothing has happened. But
Beethoven still finds it necessary to
end with fifty-four measures of the
purest C major to remind us of the
conquest, not the struggle.
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
© 2012 Chicago Symphony Orchestra
in the first bars; in the recapitulation a tiny, but enormously expressive oboe cadenza serves the same
purpose. The extensive coda is
particularly satisfying not because it
effectively concludes a dramatic and
powerful movement, but because it
uncovers still new depths of drama
and power at a point when that
seems unthinkable.
The Andante con moto is a
distant relative of the theme and
variations that often turn up as slow
movements in classical symphonies.
But unlike the conventional type, it
presents two different themes, varies
them separately, and then trails
off into a free improvisation that
covers a wide range of thoughts,
each springing almost spontaneously from the last. The sequence of
events is so unpredictable, and the
meditative tone so seductive, that, in
the least assertive movement of the
symphony, Beethoven commands
our attention to the final sentence.
Beethoven was the first to notice
his scherzo’s resemblance to the
opening of the finale of Mozart’s
great G minor symphony—he
even wrote out Mozart’s first
measures on a page of sketches for
this music—but while the effect
there is decisive and triumphant,
here it is clouded with half-uttered
questions. Beethoven begins with
furtive music, inching forward in
the low strings, then stumbling on
the horns, who let loose with their
own rendition of Fate at the door.
At some point, when Beethoven
realized that the scherzo was part
of a bigger scheme, he decided
to leave it unfinished and move
directly, through one of the most
29

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