Program

Saturday, May 5, 2012, at 8:00Sunday, May 6, 2012, at 3:00

Carlos miguel Prieto ConductorYo-Yo ma Cello

moncayoHuapango

BeethovenSymphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36Adagio molto—Allegro con brioLarghettoScherzo: AllegroAllegro molto

IntermIssIon

Dvo ̌rákCello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104AllegroAdagio ma non troppoFinale: Allegro moderato

YO-YO MA

ONe HuNDreD TweNTY-FirST SeASON

Chicago symphony orchestrariccardo muti Music DirectorPierre Boulez Helen regenstein Conductor emeritusYo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

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

2

Huapango

José Pablo moncayoBorn June 29, 1912, Guadalajara, Mexico.Died June 16, 1958, Mexico City, Mexico.

In 1941, the U.S. government sent Aaron Copland, a brand-

name composer as American as hot dogs and baseball, on a good will, fact-finding tour of Latin America. Even Copland, who had fallen in love with Mexico when he first visited there in 1932, wasn’t

prepared for the variety, dynamism, and sheer originality of the music he heard south of our border. In country after country, Copland discovered a thriv-ing community of composers unknown to the power brokers in the big-city per-forming arts orga-

nizations back home in the States. (Copland was ahead of his time

in debunking the simplistic view North Americans and Europeans held of Latin American musical cul-ture.) That August, in Mexico City, he met José Pablo Moncayo, a young Guadalajara native who would come to the U.S. to study with Copland at Tanglewood the next summer (his classmates there included Lukas Foss and the twenty-four-year-old Leonard Bernstein).

Moncayo had studied at the Mexico City Conservatory with Carlos Chávez, a composer comparable to Copland in the U.S. (It was Chávez who had persuaded Copland to travel to Mexico in 1932.) Moncayo composed Huapango the same year he met Copland, and at the very beginning of his short career.

Huapango was the direct result of a field trip to Alvarado, in

ComPoseD1941

FIrst PerFormanCeAugust 15, 1941, Mexico City. Carlos Chávez conducting

onlY PrevIous Cso suBsCrIPtIon ConCert PerFormanCesFebruary 15, 17, 20, 2001, Orchestra Hall. Daniel Barenboim conducting

InstrumentatIontwo flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets and e-flat clarinet, two

bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, güiro, maracas, side drum, indian drum, bass drum, claves, xylophone, harp, strings

aPProxImate PerFormanCe tIme9 minutes

Composer Carlos Chávez

3

Veracruz, where, as Moncayo later said, “folkloric music is preserved is its most pure form.” There Moncayo wrote down melodies and rhythms, and took notes on instrumentation. “The transcription of it was very difficult because the huapangueros [musicians] never sang the same melody twice in the same way.” Moncayo then went home to make the music he had heard into

something of his own. With its popular melodies and native folk dances, Huapango was a cornerstone of the new movement to reawaken the national spirit in Mexican music—in the mid-1930s, Moncayo and three of his fellow students had formed the Group of Four to spear-head this mission—and it quickly became so popular that it overshad-owed everything else he wrote.

The use of still or video cameras and recording devices is prohibited in Orchestra Hall.

Latecomers will be seated during designated program pauses. PLease nOTe: some programs do not allow for latecomers to be seated in the hall.

Please use perfume, cologne, and all other scented products sparingly, as many patrons are sensitive to fragrance.

Please turn off or silence all personal electronic devices (pagers, watches, telephones, digital assistants).

Please note that symphony Center is a smoke-free environment.

Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

Note: Fire exits are located on all levels and are for emergency use only. The lighted exit sign nearest your seat is the shortest route outdoors. Please walk—do not run—to your exit and do not use elevators for emergency exit.Volunteer ushers provided by The Saints—Volunteers for the Performing Arts (www.saintschicago.org)

Symphony Center Information

4

symphony no. 2 in D major, op. 36

A young man doesn’t expect to go deaf. And so Beethoven

was both surprised and frightened when he admitted to himself a musician’s worst nightmare—that he was having trouble hearing. We can’t be certain when he first acknowledged his cruel fate, but he apparently kept it a secret for a number of years. In June 1801, he finally confessed to his dear friend Franz Wegeler, who also happened to be a doctor: “For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf.”

By then, Beethoven was worried. He had already sought treatment from a number of doctors who

prescribed hot and cold baths, olive oil, pills, and infusions, to no avail—his ears continued to hum and buzz. Young Carl Czerny, on his first visit to Beethoven, probably in 1800, noticed “with the visual quickness peculiar to children,” as he later recalled, “that he had cotton, which seemed to have been steeped in a yellowish liquid, in his ears.” Czerny didn’t think of this again until he, like much of the music world, heard rumors that Beethoven was hard of hearing.

Beethoven found no relief until he turned to Dr. Johann Adam Schmidt, a professor of general pathology and therapy, who seemed full of sympathy and optimism. Apparently it was

ludwig van BeethovenBorn December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany.Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria.

ComPoseD1802

FIrst PerFormanCeApril 5, 1803, Vienna. The composer conducting

FIrst Cso PerFormanCeDecember 1, 1893, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting

most reCent Cso PerFormanCeJune 8, 2010, Orchestra Hall. Bernard Haitink conducting

InstrumentatIontwo flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings

aPProxImate PerFormanCe tIme34 minutes

Cso reCorDIngs1974. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London

1990. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London

A 1962 performance conducted by Leopold Stokowski is included on Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the Twentieth Century: Collector’s Choice, and a 1977 performance conducted by James Levine is included on From the Archives, vol. 18. A 1954 performance (for television) conducted by Fritz reiner was released by VAi.

5

Dr. Schmidt, who, among his other prescriptions, recommended that Beethoven abandon Vienna for rural Heiligenstadt. In late April of 1802, Beethoven left for the pastoral suburb that to this day is known for the document he wrote there some six months later. The Heiligenstadt Testament, as it has come to be called, was begun on October 6 and finished four days later. It’s addressed to the com-poser’s brothers, Carl and Johann. Although Beethoven’s hearing would deteriorate considerably in later years, 1802 marked the moment of crisis: the Heiligenstadt Testament includes Beethoven’s admission that his malady was permanent and incurable. He didn’t fail to see the horrible irony of “an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others.”

This, surprisingly, is the back-ground for Beethoven’s Second Symphony—one of his most energetic, cheerful, and outgoing works. Beethoven surely had begun the D major symphony before he packed for Heiligenstadt that spring. He finished it there some-time that autumn, in a setting very like the one he would later depict in the Pastoral Symphony. When his student Ferdinand Ries came to visit Beethoven, he

called his attention to a shepherd who was piping very agreeably in the woods on a flute made of a twig or elder. For half an hour Beethoven could hear nothing, and though I assured him that it

was the same with me (which was not the case), he became extremely quiet and morose.

The D major symphony, like other music written at the time, shows no signs of Beethoven’s obvious despair. It’s possible that Beethoven put the finishing touches on the confident, rollicking finale of his Second Symphony only days before he confessed thoughts of suicide in the letter to his brothers.

After Beethoven returned to Vienna, his hearing and his spirits both unimproved, he began to make plans for a major concert of his music to be held on April 5, 1803, which would include not only his new symphony, but also the pre-mieres of his Third Piano Concerto and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. That concert, conducted by the composer, achieved the combination (not unknown in our own time) of mixed reviews and a box office bonanza.

Although Beethoven and his audience considered Christ on the Mount of Olives the main attrac-tion, the Second Symphony would ultimately triumph. One reporter decided on the spot that “the first symphony is better than the later one,” although he did acknowl-edge that Beethoven seemed to be “striving for the new and surpris-ing.” Around this time, Beethoven said to a friend, “I am only a little satisfied with my previous works. From today I will take a new path.” That path was forged primar-ily by the daring venture of the Eroica Symphony, but the Second Symphony is already a sign of fresh

6

things to come, and it’s a great advance over the First. The influen-tial Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon calls it “both retrospective and prospective.”

It’s still Haydn’s orchestra—pairs of winds, with horns, trumpets, timpani, and strings—and the lay-out of his last twelve symphonies—four movements, with a slow introduction and a rondo finale—that serve as Beethoven’s starting point. This is music that Haydn would have understood but couldn’t have written. Beethoven’s slow introduction is a full thirty-three measures of powerful, expansive music, rich in the kind of dramatic gesture he would later exploit so famously. The ensuing Allegro con brio crackles with a nervous energy and maintains an all-business edge unprecedented in symphonic music.

The Larghetto, on the other hand, moves at a gracious and easy pace that’s rare for this composer. Leisure wasn’t to Beethoven’s

taste; several years later, when he devised the misguided notion of arranging this symphony for piano trio, he added “quasi andante” to the larghetto marking to keep things moving.

Instead of the minuet-and-trio combination third movement of the Haydn model (it served Beethoven well in his own First Symphony), Beethoven now writes scherzo, forever changing the complexion of the standard symphonic design. Beethoven’s scherzo, more compact than many of Haydn’s minuets, is wildly playful, with just enough weight to suggest the drama that’s always present in Beethoven, even when he’s playing games. The explosive finale is what we now call pure Beethoven, although audi-ences in 1803 didn’t yet know what that meant, and no doubt found it shocking and unpredictable, with its coltish movement and energy, and its uninhibited, nose-thumbing sense of humor.

7

Cello Concerto in B minor, op. 104

It was Victor Herbert, the com-poser of Babes in Toyland and

Naughty Marietta, who inspired Dvořák to write the most beloved cello concerto in the repertoire. We owe this historical curiosity, along with some of Dvořák’s most popular music, to Jeannette M. Thurber, the wife of a New York wholesale grocer, who exhausted her husband’s millions establish-ing an English-language opera company that folded and a National Conservatory of Music that flourished long enough to entice Dvořák to settle temporarily in the New World. The composer agreed to serve as director of her school for $15,000, and when he arrived in 1892, Victor Herbert was the head of the cello department. Herbert, who had come to the United States

from Vienna only six years before, was highly regarded as a cellist, conductor, and composer, though he hadn’t yet written the first of the forty operettas that would make him enormously popular.

In 1892, Dvořák was as famous as any composer alive. Taking on an administrative title and a heavy teaching schedule was probably an unfortunate waste of his time and talents, although the music Dvořák wrote in this country includes some of his best: a string quartet and a string quintet (both titled American) composed in Spillville, Iowa; the New World Symphony; and this cello concerto.

For several years, Dvořák had been unmoved by a request from his friend Hanuš Wihan, the cellist of the Bohemian Quartet, to write

antonín Dvo ̌rákBorn September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Bohemia.Died May 1, 1904, Prague, Bohemia.

ComPoseDNovember 8, 1894–February 9, 1895; revised June 1895

FIrst PerFormanCeMarch 19, 1896, London. The composer conducting

FIrst Cso PerFormanCeJanuary 29, 1897, Auditorium Theatre. Leo Stern, cello; Theodore Thomas conducting

most reCent Cso PerFormanCesJune 11, 2009, Orchestra Hall. Alisa weilerstein, cello; Sir Mark elder conducting

August 14, 2009, ravinia Festival. Yo-Yo Ma, cello; James Colon conducting

InstrumentatIontwo flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, triangle, strings

aPProxImate PerFormanCe tIme40 minutes

Cso reCorDIngs1970. Jacqueline du Pré, cello; Daniel Barenboim conducting. Angel.

A 1941 performance with emanuel Feuermann, cello, and Hans Lange conducting is included on From the Archives, vol. 10.

8

a cello concerto. During his second year at the National Conservatory,

Dvořák attended the premiere of Victor Herbert’s Second Cello Concerto, given by the New York Philharmonic on March 9, 1894. It is dif-ficult today to know why this long-forgotten score made

such a deep impression on him, for Herbert was hardly an over-whelming or influential talent. But Dvořák enthusiastically applauded Herbert’s concerto, and he heard something in it that made him think, for the first time, that there was important music to be written for solo cello and orchestra. This concerto would prove to be the last major symphonic work of his career.

On April 28, 1894, Dvořák signed a new two-year contract with the conservatory. After spending the summer holiday in Bohemia, he returned to New York on November 1; a week later he began this concerto. While he was writing the second movement, he received word that his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová (with whom he had once been in love), was seriously ill. As a tribute to her, he quoted at length one of her favorite melodies, “Kéž duch můj sám” (Leave me alone), the first of his Four Songs, op. 82. He completed

the concerto on February 9 (his son Otakar’s tenth birthday), at 11:30 in the morning.

After the premiere of the New World Symphony in 1893, Dvořák said, “I know that if I had not seen America I never would have written my new symphony.” The cello concerto shows no such outward signs of the composer’s American experience—it doesn’t imitate the rhythms and melodies of the native music he heard in the United States—and has often been accepted as an early warn-ing sign of his homesickness. In fact, once Dvořák returned to Bohemia for the summer of 1895, with his new concerto in his bags, he realized that he couldn’t leave his homeland again; in August, he wrote to Mrs. Thurber asking to be released from his contract. Since he had already contributed so much to American music, including a symphony as popular as any ever written, she could not refuse. The unveiling of the cello concerto, the last of Dvořák’s American prod-ucts, belongs to the final chapter of his life: the premiere was given in London in March 1896, with the composer conducting. (The first American performance was not given until December.)

The literature for solo cello and orchestra isn’t extensive. At

best, Dvořák can’t have known more than the single concertos by Haydn (a second was discov-ered in 1961) and Schumann, the first of Saint-Saëns’s two, and Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra. (He also knew

Cellist, conductor, and composer Victor Herbert

9

the Triple Concerto by Beethoven and the Double Concerto by Brahms.) Dvořák had written one long-winded cello concerto in his youth and later said he thought little of the cello as a solo instru-ment (“High up it sounds nasal, and low down it growls”). Now, with little previous inclination and few useful models, Dvořák gave the form its finest example. Brahms is reported to have said, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one could write a cello concerto like this? Had I known, I would have written one long ago.”

The first movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is as impres-

sive as anything in the composer’s output. The music is long and expansive. The orchestral exposition commits the textbook sin of travel-ing to a foreign key for the second subject—a luxury traditionally saved for the soloist—but Dvořák’s theme is so magnificent (Donald Tovey called it “one of the most beautiful passages ever written for the horn”) that it can justify the risk. Dvořák later admitted the melody meant a great deal to him. Once the soloist enters, the music

grows richer and more fanciful. The development section dissolves into simple lyricism. By the recapitula-tion, Dvořák is writing his own rules: he bypasses his first theme and goes straight for the big horn melody, as if he couldn’t wait to hear it again. The movement is all the stronger for its daring and unconventional architecture.

Dvořák’s progress on the slow movement was sidetracked by the memory of Josefina, and, as a result, the music he wrote is interrupted midway by the poignant song she loved. The depth of his feeling for her, often debated and some-times denied, is painfully clear. Josefina died soon after Dvořák permanently returned to Bohemia, and, hearing the news, he took this jaunty rondo finale down from the shelf and added a long, contemplative coda as a memorial. The concerto still ends in high spirits, but it’s no longer the same piece Dvořák took home from the New World.

Phillip Huscher is the program annota-tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. ©

201

2 C

hica

go S

ymph

ony

Orc

hest

ra