PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON

Chicago Symphony OrchestraRiccardo Muti Zell Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor EmeritusYo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant

This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to 93XRT, WBEZ 91.5FM, and RedEye for their generous support as media sponsors of the Classic Encounter series.This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, December 17, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, December 18, 2015, at 1:30Saturday, December 19, 2015, at 8:00

James Conlon ConductorAlexander Hanna Bass

MozartOverture to Lucio Silla, K. 135Molto allegro—Andante—Molto allegroFirst Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

VanhalDouble Bass Concerto in D MajorAllegro moderatoAdagioFinale: Allegro

ALEXANDER HANNA

First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

INTERMISSION

DvořákThe Wild Dove, Op. 110

DvořákThe Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109

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COMMENTS by Daniel Jaffé Phillip Huscher

Wolfgang A. MozartBorn January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria.Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria.

Overture to Lucio Silla, K. 135

It is only this past September that Mozart’s Lucio Silla, composed in 1772, received its Chicago premiere, in Chicago Opera Theater’s strikingly updated production. That an opera originally set in ancient Roman history should have enjoyed such

a critically acclaimed revival reflects Mozart’s keen interest in and ability to portray, even as a teenager, perennial human motivations and passions: political ambition, rivalry, and love, are, of course, recognizable motivations even today.

Mozart was fifteen in 1771 when he was commissioned to compose a new opera for the Teatro Regio Ducal in Milan. This followed the successful production of two of his works at that theater—the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto in 1770, and, in the following year, the serenata Ascanio in Alba, performed in honor of the wedding of Archduke Ferdinand, governor general of Lombardy, and Princess Maria Beatrice d’Este in October 1771. Yet it seems that it was entirely the success of these, rather than any political motivation, which spurred the director of the Regio Ducal to present an opera commission to such a very young non-Italian composer.

Mozart’s opera was to be performed during the carnival season, held from just after Christmas 1772 until the start of Lent in 1773—a tradi-tional time in Italy for new seria operas to be staged. As was customary, two new operas were to be presented during that season, and, as usual,

the more prestigious of the two operas would be produced after the company had been “warmed up” by one by a less celebrated composer. Mozart, being the relatively inexperienced youngster, took that first slot.

The Regio Ducal’s resident librettist, Giovanni de Gamerra, created the opera’s libretto espe-cially for Mozart (though it would subsequently be reused by, among others, J.C. Bach): the story concerns a historical figure much favored in eighteenth-century opera—Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Roman dictator who won the first civil war recorded in Roman history. Gamerra included in the libretto references to several other historical figures, including Sulla’s opponent, Gaius Marius, father in the opera of (the prob-ably fictitious) Giunia; she provides the opera’s love interest, who eventually persuades the title character to renounce his dictatorship and allow Giunia to be united with her beloved, announc-ing that it is better to rule by justice and mercy rather than by awe and fear.

O n November 4, 1772, Mozart, now aged sixteen, arrived in Milan with his father Leopold. Mozart had by then already

composed several of the opera’s recitatives in Salzburg, though he subsequently made several amendments to these. The rest of the opera had to be composed piecemeal as Mozart had to tailor the showy arias to the capabilities and strengths of the principal singers, some of whom—such as the prima donna due to sing the role of Giunia—were not due to arrive in Milan until early December. Indeed, just twenty-one days before

COMPOSED1772

FIRST PERFORMANCEDecember 26, 1772, Milan

FIRST CSO PERFORMANCESThese are the first Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances.

INSTRUMENTATIONtwo oboes, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings

APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME9 minutes

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the premiere, the original tenor was reported too ill to take part, and Mozart had to write two new arias for his replacement in a single day.

In a letter dated November 14, Leopold Mozart reported that his son had already composed the opera’s overture; therefore it was not, as is often said, the last part of the work to be written. In the form of a three-movement sinfonia, the overture is both a grand statement in itself, and yet as playful in character as the young prodigy

who had charmed the courts of Europe. A lively opening movement (Molto allegro) includes a pair of trumpets and timpani for ceremonial flavor—well-suited to the opening of the carnival season as well as the opera itself; then follows a soothing central Andante movement, scored for woodwind and strings alone; finally, Molto allegro, a lively brief rondo including trumpets and drums.

Daniel Jaffé

Johann Baptist VanhalBorn May 12, 1739, Nechanice, Hradec Králové District, Bohemia.Died August 20, 1813, Vienna, Austria.

Double Bass Concerto in D Major

COMPOSEDca. 1785

FIRST PERFORMANCEunknown

FIRST CSO PERFORMANCESThese are the first Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances.

INSTRUMENTATIONsolo bass, two oboes, two horns, strings

CADENZAJohannes Sperger, arr. Alexander Hanna

APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME22 minutes

Saint-Saëns’s caricature of the double bass as the Elephant in Carnival of the Animals is so widely known that it has precluded the perception for many that the instru-ment could sing with eloquence and grace. Yet the double bass has had

its champions—most famously in the last century, before he became a renowned conductor, Serge Koussevitzky—and we know of several double bass concertos dating from the late eighteenth century in the so-called classical era: no less than three by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739–1799), two by Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754–1812), and—performed at tonight’s concert—the sole but highly distinguished essay by Johann Baptist Vanhal.

Our knowledge of Vanhal (or Wanhal as his name is sometimes spelled, following the

composer’s own practice) and his career is based on relatively few sources. There is an irresistible anecdote by the Irish tenor Michael Kelly (who sang Don Basilio in the premiere of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro): in 1784, he witnessed a performance by a string quartet with Joseph Haydn on first violin, Dittersdorf on second, Mozart on viola, and Vanhal on cello. Then we have the not altogether consistent testimony of the contemporary English composer and music historian Charles Burney in his book Continental Travels 1770–1772; and the reminiscences by Vanhal’s Bohemian contemporary Gottfried Johann Dlabacž, who stayed with the composer for an appreciable time in Vienna in 1795. From these, and a very few secondary sources from the period, we know that Vanhal was born a serf to the family of Schaffgotsch in the Bohemian town of Nechanice. As a child, he was taught to play the organ and string and wind instruments, and was trained to sing. After a period as organist and choirmaster, he studied violin

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under Mathias Nowak, and himself became an outstanding virtuoso player; Nowak also taught Vanhal sufficient compositional technique to write concertos.

Sometime in 1760–61, Countess Schaffgotsch arranged for Vanhal to move to Vienna, where he was released from bondage to the Schaffgotsch family and established himself as a leading composer, writing at least thirty-four sympho-nies. He attracted the patronage of Baron Riesch of Dresden, who sponsored Vanhal to spend time studying in Italy in 1769. However, after just over a year traveling in that country, Vanhal rejected Riesch’s offer to become Kappelmeister at his Dresden estate for reasons unknown to us. There have been persistent rumors, based on a cryptic observation by Charles Burney, that Vanhal at this time lost his sanity and burned several of his compositions; however, the little hard evidence that remains rather suggests that Vanhal instead returned to Vienna and there, with the patronage of Count Ladislaus Erdödy, continued to live a more or less independent existence writing sym-phonies, chamber music, and music for liturgical use. From the late 1770s, Vanhal worked closely with the nascent Viennese music publishing industry, gaining considerable control over the wide propagation of his music.

Alas, Vanhal’s Double Bass Concerto was not one of those works so favored. Indeed, we know very little about the origin of this work: the only surviving manuscript, property of the double bass player Johann Matthias Sperger (1750–1812),

was written by an unidentified copyist with cadenzas written in Sperger’s own hand. At least one musicologist has speculated on this evidence that the concerto originally was composed for Sperger. However, other scholars and musi-cians have contested this, since the manuscript includes several problematic octave transposi-tions, apparently written by the original copyist, more than reasonably difficult to play or of ques-tionable aesthetic taste, making it dubious that the manuscript fully reflects Vanhal’s intentions. Despite this, such is the beauty of the concerto’s intrinsic music that it has been widely recognized as the greatest of all double bass concertos from the classical period.

V anhal’s Concerto is in the standard three movements of a classical concerto. First, an Allegro moderato, where after a brief

orchestral introduction the double bass soloist makes its entry; as is standard in a classical concerto, the soloist given an opportunity to shine in a solo cadenza towards the movement’s end. Then follows the slow movement, an Adagio whose lyrical beauty is one of the most striking in concerto literature, certainly justify-ing the reputation Vanhal’s concerto enjoys as the greatest classical work for the instrument. Finally, a playful finale, in which the bass soloist is able to demonstrate his instrument’s ability to join in a light-footed dance.

Daniel Jaffé

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association recalls with sorrow the recent passing of Orchestra and Chorus musicians.

JACQUES ISRAELIEVITCH (1948–2015)Violin, Assistant Concertmaster, 1972–1978

SUSAN TURNEY (1953–2015)Alto, 1973–2012

In Memoriam

CSO11_Dec15_in_memoriam_half-page_salute.indd 1 12/9/15 10:28 AM

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Antonín DvořákBorn September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic).Died May 1, 1904, Prague, Czechoslovakia.

The Wild Dove, Op. 110Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective

The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective

The Wild Dove, Op. 110COMPOSEDOctober–November 1896

FIRST PERFORMANCEMarch 20, 1898, Brno

FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES U.S. premiere October 20 & 21, 1899, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting

INSTRUMENTATIONtwo flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons,

four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings

APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME19 minutes

Antonín Dvořák wasn’t the first composer to reject the family business for a life in music. Robert Schumann was the only one of four brothers to abandon his father’s book publishing company for another career. František Dvořák, a butcher in a

village just north of Prague, also expected his son to continue in the trade. František played the zither and even wrote a few tunes for the local band, but he didn’t think of composing as an occupation. He was irate when his thirteen-year- old son dropped out of his apprenticeship as a butcher and moved to nearby Zlonice to study music.

Antonín Dvořák learned to play the violin as a small boy, and he composed marches and waltzes for the village band. In Zlonice, he studied piano, organ, and viola, eventually becoming a decent enough violist to earn a living as an orchestra musician when he couldn’t make any money from his compositions. After he moved to Prague in 1857, he became principal viola in the orchestra for the new Provisional Theater (later the National Theater). For the rest of his life,

he treasured the memory of playing a concert there in 1863 under his idol, Richard Wagner, which included the overture to Tannhäuser, the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, and excerpts from Die Meistersinger and Die Walküre. In 1871, Dvořák left the orchestra to devote more time to composition, but he soon realized that he would have to teach to get by. For many years, his father doubted the wisdom of his son’s choice of music over the life of a butcher.

Then in 1873, Dvořák’s works began to attract attention. The successful premiere of his patriotic cantata Heirs of the White Mountain on March 9 launched his fame in his homeland. Later that year, he married Anna Cermáková, the sister of the Prague actress Josefina, who had, nearly a decade before, rebuffed his advances. (Like Mozart and Haydn, he married not his first love, but her sister.) In 1874, Dvořák took stock of his situation: he had begun to taste success; his wife was pregnant with their first child; and he looked forward to the pleasures, comforts, and traditions of family life. But he craved recognition and he needed money. In July, he entered fifteen of his newest works in a competition for the Austrian State Music Prize, a government award designed to assist struggling young artists. The judges included Johannes Brahms, the biggest name in

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Viennese music. Dvořák won the first prize of four hundred gulden, and he felt a kind of encour-agement and validation that money can’t buy.

Over the next few years, several of Dvořák’s works were published, first in Prague and then more widely, and his music quickly became well known throughout Europe and in the United States. By the time he accepted Jeannette Thurber’s invitation to take up temporary resi-dence in the United States, beginning in 1892, he was enjoying extraordinary critical and popular success. Dvořák’s American years cemented his reputation in this country, and also inspired some of his best-loved music, including the American String Quartet and his last symphony—the ninth, known as From the New World. After he returned home in April 1895, Dvořák composed two last string quartets that were his final essays in abstract music, cleared his head, and then unexpectedly turned his attention to the symphonic poem.

This late-in-life career move was inspired by the rediscovery of The Garland, a collection of ballads by the nationalist poet Karel Jaromír Erben—poetry that Dvořák had loved for years,

but that spoke to him even more forcefully now that he was back in his homeland. In 1896, Dvořák composed four symphonic poems based on tales drawn from Erben’s anthology—The Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, The Golden Spinning Wheel, and The Wild Dove. A fifth, not based on Erben, followed the next year. They were his last orchestral works.

Dvořák began the first three Erban pieces in the early days of January, and worked on them at the same time for several weeks. In late February, after he had finished the first two and was still writing The Golden Spinning Wheel, Dvořák vis-ited Brahms, who urged him to move his family to Vienna—an invitation that Dvořák couldn’t seriously consider, since he now felt more attached than ever to his native land. Dvořák finished The Golden Spinning Wheel at the end of April. Then, in October, he began work on his final symphonic poem inspired by Erban, The Wild Dove. He completed it in less than a month. We don’t know if Dvořák ever told Brahms, the great symphonist—and, pointedly, the composer of no symphonic poems—of the new direction his music had taken. In March of 1897, when he learned of Brahms’s failing health, he went back to Vienna to visit him; he returned the very next month for Brahms’s funeral. And then, after writing one final symphonic poem, A Hero’s Song, which he began that August, he turned away from the form as quickly as he had embraced it. In his last years, Dvořák wrote nothing but operas, arguing that this was the way to reach more people. Yet it is Dvořák’s orchestral music—the symphonies and these symphonic poems—that keeps his name alive.

The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109COMPOSEDJanuary–April 1896

FIRST PERFORMANCESJune 3, 1896, Prague (private)

October 26, London (public)

FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES U.S. premiere January 1 & 2, 1897, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting

July 20, 1971, Ravinia Festival. István Kertész conducting

MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCESNovember 28, 29, 30 & December 1, 2012, Orchestra Hall. Sir Mark Elder conducting

INSTRUMENTATIONtwo flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, harp, strings

APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME27 minutes

Jeannette Thurber (1852–1940), founder of the National Conservatory of Music, New York

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“Bohemia ruled the World’s Columbian Exposition yesterday. It was the special date set apart for that nationality, and its citizens invaded the White City at every entrance by the thousands,” wrote the reviewer in the Chicago Daily Tribune.

On August 12, 1893, 8,000 people packed into the fair’s Festival Hall to hear the Exposition Orchestra—the Chicago Orchestra expanded to 114 players—under the batons of Vojtěch I. Hlaváč, professor of music at the Imperial University in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Antonín Dvořák, the director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music in America.

The Tribune reviewer continued: “As Dvořák walked out upon the stage a storm of applause greeted him. For nearly two minutes the old composer [age fifty-one!] stood beside the music rack, baton in hand, bowing his acknowl-edgements. The players dropped their instruments to join in the welcome. Symphony no. 4 in G major [now known as no. 8], considered a severe test of technical writing as well as playing, was interpreted brilliantly. The Orchestra caught the spirit and magnetism of the distinguished leader. The audience sat as if spell-bound. Tremendous outbursts of applause were given.” On the second

half of the program, Dvořák conducted selections from his Slavonic Dances and closed the program with his overture My Country.

Frank Villella is the director of the Rosenthal Archives. For more information regarding the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s anniversary season, please visit cso.org/125moments.

Composers in Chicago

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T aking a cue from Liszt’s pioneering tone poems, Dvořák assigns a musical theme to each central character in the action of

his symphonic poems, allowing it to be trans-formed by the events in the unfolding drama. (This also was the model for the series of new orchestral works begun by Richard Strauss in the preceding decade; he was composing Also sprach Zarathustra at the time Dvořák was working on the Erben scores.) Although the shape of Erben’s narrative largely determined the forms of The Wild Dove and The Golden Spinning Wheel, the

influence of his language had a more profound and subtle impact on Dvořák’s music. Throughout these scores, the rise and fall of his melodic lines suggest the declamation of Erben’s verses (certain passages of the poems could almost be sung to

Dvořák’s corresponding themes). This is sim-ilar to the “speech-melody” that Janáček was developing in his operatic writing at this time.

T he Wild Dove (sometimes translated as The Wood Dove) tells the story of a woman who has poisoned her husband;

although she later remarries, she is haunted by the cooing of a dove sitting in the tree over her first husband’s grave. She eventually is driven to kill herself. Dvořák himself outlined the action in the preface to his score. A funeral march, launched by muted brass and timpani, introduces the woman’s theme as she follows the coffin of her dead husband. In a spirited Allegro section (that eventually slows to an Andante), a handsome young man meets the widow, comforts her, and persuades her to forget her grief and marry him. The happy wedding

day is depicted in frenetic, joyous music that opens into a broad lyrical melody. Then, “from the branches of a fresh green oak, which over-shadows the grave of her first husband, whom she had poisoned, the mournful cooing of the wild dove is heard. The melancholy sounds pierce to the heart of the criminal woman, who, tormented by pangs of conscience, becomes insane and drowns herself.” In the epilogue, we are left with the haunting last calls of the dove.

T he Golden Spinning Wheel tells the tale of a young king, out hunting on horseback, who stops at a cottage to ask for a drink

of water, and, immediately falling in love with Dornička, the young girl at the spinning wheel, becomes caught in an ill-fated romance. When the king later returns to pursue Dornička, he encounters her stepmother, who has a young, unmarried daughter of her own. In a turn of events that in our time would surely dominate the media for weeks, the stepmother takes the two girls into the woods, murders and dismem-bers Dornička, and sends her own daughter off to marry the king. (Dornička’s feet, hands, and eyes are later sent along to the king’s castle.) After the wedding—celebrated by a wonderfully Dvořákian polka—the king goes off to war. In the meantime, an old man, wandering in the woods, discovers the remains of Dornička’s body and is determined to bring her back to life, a makeover process that ultimately involves exchanging a golden spinning wheel for her feet, a golden distaff for her hands, and a golden spindle for her eyes. When the king returns from his triumphant wartime action, the spinning wheel begins to play a song describing the crimes committed by the stepmother and her daughter. The king races to the forest, where he finds Dornička alive and even well, and he takes her back to his castle. Although Erben has the two murderers torn apart by wolves, Dvořák’s ending is uncomplicated and unequivocally happy.

Phillip Huscher

Daniel Jaffé, author of a biography of Sergey Prokofiev (Phaidon) and the Historical Dictionary of Russian Music (Scarecrow Press), currently is researching a biography of Gustav Holst.

Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.

Karel Jaromír Erben

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