2011 Program Notes, Book 4 D27

GrantParkMusicFestivalSeventy-seventh Season

Grant Park Orchestra and ChorusCarlos Kalmar, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor

Christopher Bell, Chorus Director

The Book with Seven SealsFriday, August 12, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. Jay Pritzker PavilionGRANT PARK ORCHESTRA AND CHORUSCarlos Kalmar, ConductorWilliam G. Spaulding, Guest Chorus DirectorEdith Lienbacher, SopranoChrista Ratzenböck, Mezzo-SopranoRobert Künzli, TenorAlexander Kaimbacher, TenorAlbert Pesendorfer, Bass

SCHMIDT Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, from the Revelation of St. John the Divine, for Soloists, Chorus, Organ and Orchestra Robert Künzli, Tenor (St. John) Albert Pesendorfer, Bass (The Voice of the Lord) Edith Lienbacher, Soprano Christa Ratzenböck, Mezzo-Soprano Alexander Kaimbacher, Tenor

bauern-poLKa (“peasanT poLKa”), POLKA FRAnçAISe, OP. 276 (1863)Johann Strauss, Jr.The Bauern Polka is scored for pairs of woodwinds with piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani, percussion and strings. The performance time is three minutes. This is the first performance of this work by the Grant Park Orchestra.

Though Johann Strauss was in constant demand throughout Europe after he began touring in 1856, he was enticed to spend the summer seasons during the following decade performing at the fashionable Russian resort of Pavlovsk, south of St. Petersburg. For his residency at Pavlovsk in 1863, Strauss composed the rustically atmospheric Bauern-Polka (“Peasants’ Polka”). His Rus-sian devotees loved it. On August 31st, just two days after he first played the piece at Pavlovsk, he wrote to his Viennese publisher, Carl Haslinger, “People don’t just stamp their feet, they sing it too. I played it today for the third time, and the public already sings it as accurately as the musicians; this peasant music is so catchy that high and low in the audience stand right before the orchestra to enjoy it.” When Tsar Alexander II once appeared at a concert at Pavlovsk, declaring the Bauern-Polka to be his favorite piece and ordering its performance, Strauss reported that “it caused more applause than a movement of a symphony by Beethoven since even the members of the orchestra joined in the ovation.”

furioso, POLKA quASI GALOPP, OP. 260 (1861)Johann Strauss, Jr.The Furioso Polka is scored for pairs of woodwinds with piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, three trom-bones, timpani, percussion and strings. The performance time is three minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on August 13, 2002, with Carlos Kalmar conducting.

Strauss composed Furioso for his 1861 season at Pavlovsk. The work’s fiendish vivacity was cap-tured in the title page illustration of the first piano edition, which showed two demons stretching a rope across a dance floor to trip up the whirling couples.

Kaiser-WaLzer (“emperor WaLTzes”), OP. 437 (1888)Johann Strauss, Jr.The Emperor Waltzes is scored for pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tim-pani, percussion, harp and strings. The performance time is ten minutes. The work were first performed by the Grant Park Orchestra on August 6, 1935, with Leo Kopp conducting.

The Kaiser (“Emperor”) Waltzes, written in 1888 as part of the grand celebrations marking the fortieth anniversary of Emperor Franz Josef ’s coronation, is the last of the great works in the form composed by Johann Strauss, Jr., “the most beautiful flower that the incredible tree of Strauss music had produced in 75 years,” according to the French writer Guillaume Ritter. Conceived for the concert hall rather than for the ballroom, it opens with an introductory march, akin in spirit to the serenades of Mozart, which gives presentiments of the upcoming waltz. The body of the work comprises four separate waltzes in complimentary keys and moods. A wistful coda recalls the themes of the first and third waltzes. Of these closing pages, and of the complete Kaiser Waltzes, Joseph Wechsberg wrote, “The mood is nostalgic, a short, last reminiscence; there is a moment of sadness — life goes so fast, and with it everything that is beautiful — but in the very end there is that final expression of live-and-let-live.”

©2011 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Please note: tonight’s lyrics are available as a separate insert.

Lyrics are also available remotely at www.grantparkmusicfestival.com/2011-season/the-book-with-seven-seals

This program is partially underwritten by The Austrian Consulate General Chicago and Austrian Cultural Forum

2011 Program Notes, Book 4 D29

Friday, August 12 and Saturday, August 13, 2011 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

WILLIAM G. SPAuLDInG, born in Washington, D.C., is one of to-day’s leading operatic chorus masters. He has held positions in numer-ous major international opera houses, collaborating with such esteemed artists as Riccardo Muti, Donald Runnicles, Lawrence Foster, Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes and José Carreras. In his present position as Principal Chorus Master at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Mr. Spaulding has received “Chorus of the Year” honors three years in a row (2008-2010) from the German opera monthly Opernwelt. Mr. Spaulding be-gan his studies at the University of Maryland as a member of the piano class of Santiago Rodriguez. After receiving a Study Abroad exchange scholarship in his sophomore year, he completed his conducting degrees at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna. He began his career in provincial German opera houses, returning to Vienna in 1997 as Associate Chorus Master at the Volksoper Wien. The success of his preparation of Boris Godunov there earned him an invitation to the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, where he was Principal Chorus Master for five years. He has also served as Chorus Master at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Sardinia and the Mannheim Opera. William G. Spaulding is also known as an orchestral and opera conductor. After his Berlin debut in 2009 with Orff ’s Carmina Burana, he was engaged to conduct the Lion’s Club Benefit Concert at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in February 2011, as well as performances of Verdi’s Requiem in September 2011. In 2008 he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the New Year’s Concert at the Main-franken Theater Würzburg. He has also conducted at the Volksoper Wien, Nationaltheater Mannheim and numerous provincial orchestras and opera companies.

Soprano eDITh LIenBACheR, born in Carinthia, Austria, started her vocal studies at the Landeskonservatorium in Klagenfurt and completed her training at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna as a student of Hilde Rössel-Majdan. In 1984 Ms. Lienbacher became a member of the opera studio of the Wiener Staatsoper. She began appearing regularly as a soloist at the Wiener Volksoper the following year, and in 1989 joined the roster of the Wiener Staatsoper. Her international career began with Adele in Die Fledermaus in Amsterdam, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. She has since been a guest of such renowned festivals as Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence and Bregenz, and performed in the opera houses of Zurich, Barcelona,

Cologne, Venice, Israel, Lisbon and Milan. In 1999 Edith Lienbacher was appointed Austrian Kammersängerin. She has appeared in Japan and China with the Wiener Staatsoper and Wiener Volksoper, and sung in concert with the Wiener Symphoniker, Radio Symphony Orchestra Wien, Niederösterreichischen Tonkünstlern, Dresdner Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Austrian mezzo-soprano ChRISTA RATZenBÖCK began her career at the opera studio of Zürich Opera and subsequently made her debut at the Salzburg Festival. Other important debuts followed with the opera houses of Basel, Düsseldorf, Prague, Vienna (Theater-an-der-Wien) and Salzburg. From 2001 to 2007, Ms. Ratzenböck was an ensemble member of Austria’s Landestheater Linz, where she appeared in leading roles in Idomeneo, Così fan Tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro, Ariadne auf Naxos, Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage, Zeller’s Der Vogelhändler and Strauss’ Wiener Blut. Christa Ratzen-böck’s recent operatic engagements include Bilbao’s Teatro Arriaga, Lehár Festival Bad Ischl, Bruckner Festival Linz, Vienna’s Musikverein and the Austrian premiere of Elliott Carter’s What Next? with Neue Oper Wien. She has also appeared on concert stages in Vienna, Salzburg, Budapest, Berlin, Zagreb and elsewhere. Christa Ratzenböck, a native of Upper Austria, received her training at the Salzburg Mozarteum. She is a past prize winner of “Gradus ad Parnassum,” the Austrian competition for emerging artists, and was the 1999 winner of the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg.

2011 Program Notes, Book 4 D31

das buCh miT sieben siegeLn (“The booK WiTh seven seaLs”), FROM The ReVeLATIOn OF ST. JOhn The DIVIne, FOR SOLOISTS, ChORuS, ORGAn AnD ORCheSTRA (1935-1937)Franz Schmidt (1874-1939)The Book with Seven Seals is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, organ

and strings. The performance time is 110 minutes. This is the first performance of the work by the Grant Park Orchestra.

Among the many brilliant musicians based in Vienna during the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century, none was more gifted than Franz Schmidt — performer of virtuoso status on cello and piano, possessor of awesome musical knowledge and memory, highly respected teacher, skilled administrator, able conductor and a composer of distinctive personality. Schmidt was born on December 22, 1874 at Pressburg, then an Austrian border town looking across the frontier into Hungary and today Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. (Suk, Koussevitzky, Schoenberg, Holst and Ives were also born in that same year.) Schmidt’s father was an amateur instrumentalist and his mother a pianist, and it was from her that he received his earliest musical instruction; he learned organ from Felizian Moczik, organist at the local Franciscan abbey. In 1887, Helene von Bednarics, a wealthy music-loving spinster, heard young Franz play, and she was so impressed with his talent that she sent him to Vienna to study piano with the celebrated Theodor Leschetizky. The Schmidts followed their son to Vienna the next year, but the move so strained the family’s finances that Franz had to play piano for dance classes to help make ends meet. In 1890, he entered the Vienna Conservatory, where he took up cello as his principal instrument and studied composition with Anton Bruckner and theory with Robert Fuchs.

Following his graduation in 1896, Schmidt beat out forty other applicants for a job in the cello section of the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra, where he worked for the next fourteen years, ten of them (1897-1907) during Gustav Mahler’s noteworthy but controversial regime as director of the company. Schmidt also taught cello at the Conservatory from 1901 to 1908, and began compos-ing seriously at that time; he conducted the successful premiere of his First Symphony in 1902. An operatic treatment of Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame was written during the following years. In 1908, Schmidt resigned from the Conservatory cello faculty, and three years later left the Court Opera Orchestra to devote more time to composition. His Second Symphony appeared in 1913, and the following year he returned to teaching as professor of piano at the Vienna State Academy. He added theory and composition instruction to his duties at the school in 1922, and served as its director from 1925 to 1927; he occupied a similar position at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik from 1927 to 1931. He finally retired from teaching only in 1937, when he was diagnosed with inoper-able cancer. Though troubled for much of his life by ill health and an unsettled home life (his wife was committed to a mental institution in 1922; he divorced and remarried the next year), Schmidt carried on with his creative work. His second opera, Fredigundis, was premiered in 1922, and his later years saw the composition of the Third and Fourth Symphonies (1928, 1933), Orchestral Variations on a Hussar’s Song (1931), Piano Concerto for Left Hand (1934, written for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I), two string quartets (1925, 1929), a piano quintet (1926), two quintets for clarinet, piano and strings (1932, 1938), and many substantial organ works. Schmidt’s compositional career culminated in The Book with Seven Seals (1937), a sweeping oratorio based on the Biblical book of Revelation. His lifetime achievement was recognized with an honorary doctorate from Vienna University and the Beethoven Prize of the Prussian Academy in Berlin. Franz Schmidt died in the Viennese suburb of Perchtoldsdorf on February 11, 1939.

* * *

The word “Apocalypse,” which comes from the Greek apokalupsis (“unveiling” or “revelation”), opens the Greek version of the last book of the New Testament, in which the visions “revealed” to

D30 2011 Program Notes, Book 4

Friday, August 12 and Saturday, August 13, 2011 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Friday, August 12 and Saturday, August 13, 2011

Tenor ROBeRT KÜnZLI, twice voted one of Germany, Austria and Switzerland’s “Singers of the Year” for his performances in Peter Grimes, Fidelio, From the House of the Dead and Rihm’s Dionysos, has appeared extensively across Europe in leading roles and recently returned to the Ca-nadian Opera Company for The Flying Dutchman. Mr. Künzli’s other op-eratic performances include those at the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Staatsoper Hannover, Teatro de la Maestranza, Staatsoper Hannover, Sem-peroper Dresden, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Komische Oper Berlin, Savonlinna Festival, Opéra Bastille, New York City Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Vienna State Opera. In 1997, he appeared in the title role in Schubert’s

Fierrabras at the opera’s New York premiere with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Künzli’s recordings include the title role in Carl Goldmark’s Merlin and DVDs of Das Rheingold and Die Zauberflöte. His upcoming engagements include Das Rheingold, Siegfried and Götterdäm-merung in Hannover and The Flying Dutchman with Pacific Opera Victoria, as well as performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in various European music centers. 

Austrian tenor ALeXAnDeR KAIMBACheR, who divides his career equally between opera and concert, was born in Villach and studied voice, acting, German philology, dramatics and musicology. He was a member of the Wiener Staatsoper from 2007 until 2010. His performances have also brought Mr. Kaimbacher to theaters and concert venues in Klagen-furt, Meiningen, Lucerne, Naples, Rome, Zurich, New York, Washington, West Palm Beach, Sarasota, Minneapolis, Vancouver and Victoria, as well as the Volksoper Wien, Theater-an-der-Wien, Opernhaus Graz, Teatro alla Scala, Gasteig Munich, Wiener Musikverein, Teatro Monumental Madrid, and festivals in Salzburg, Bregenz, Grafenegg, Vienna and Israel. Alexan-der Kaimbacher’s wide repertoire extends from Mozart to Wagner and Strauss, and also includes much contemporary music. Among his recent engagements are the European premiere of Daniel Catán’s Il Postino at the Theater-an-der-Wien and a recording of the complete songs of Gottfried von Einem.

Austrian bass ALBeRT PeSenDORFeR began his music studies as a flutist before training as a singer in Linz and Vienna. He also participated in master classes with Brigitte Fassbaender, Gundula Janowitz, Walter Ber-ry and Kurt Widmer. In 2002 Mr. Pesendorfer became a member of Oper Erfurt and three years later joined the Tiroler Landestheater in Innsbruck. He is currently principal bass of Staatsoper Hannover. As a guest artist, Mr. Pesendorfer regularly performs with Staatsoper Stuttgart, Volksoper Wien, Oper Leipzig, Oper Graz, Oper Bonn, Staatstheater Darmstadt, Wiener Festspiele, Bregenzer Festspielen and Opernfestspielen St. Margarethen. His repertory of more than sixty roles ranges from the German characters

of Hans Sachs, Hunding, Fafner, Hagen, Baron Ochs and Sarastro to the Italians Filippo II, Grand Inquisitor, Sparafucile and Timur. He sang the role of Lucas Cranach in the world premiere of Peter Aderhold’s Luther in Türingen in 2003. As a recitalist and concert singer, Albert Pesendorfer appears in leading concert halls in Vienna, Berlin, Linz, the United States, Japan and other music centers.

2011 Program Notes, Book 4 D33

Friday, August 12 and Saturday, August 13, 2011 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

St. John of Patmos in the first century A.D. prophesy the ultimate destruction of the temporal world — The Apocalypse. Franz Schmidt, who described himself as “a deeply religious man” but was not a regularly practicing Catholic, first sketched ideas for a large-scale oratorio based on the Book of Revelation in the mid-1920s, but the project took on a special urgency for him a decade later, when the death of his only daughter led to his own emotional and physical breakdown and the political situ-ation in neighboring Germany was becoming increasingly worrisome. Schmidt began Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (“The Book with Seven Seals”) during the summer of 1935 and completed the Prologue in October and Part I the following July, but then had to stop work because of his deteriorating health and a painful hand condition that required hospitalization. He began Part II in the fall and finished the densely packed, 400-page score in February 1937. The premiere was given on June 15, 1938 by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Vienna Singverein under the direction of the composer’s former pupil Oswald Kabasta as part of the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the city’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (“Society of the Friends of Music”).

The premiere was a triumph for Schmidt, and it offered the National Socialists, who had effective-ly made Austria a province of Germany with the Anschluss three months before, the chance to exploit his prominence (and his political sympathies) to promote their agenda — his music was programmed prominently on concerts in Vienna through 1945 and he was commissioned to compose a cantata titled Die Deutsche Auferstehung (“The German Resurrection”) celebrating the unification of the Ger-man lands. He did not live to complete the work but a student of his did, and its performances under his name discredited him outside Germany and Austria and contributed to the general dismissal of his music after World War II. The American premiere of The Book with Seven Seals, led in Cincinnati in 1954 by Joseph Krips (who had been driven from Vienna by the Nazis and forced to survive as a factory worker in the Balkans), and a performance of the oratorio under Dimitri Mitropoulos at the Salzburg Festival five years later began the rehabilitation of Schmidt’s reputation that now allows his work to be judged on its own unique and significant merits. “The coincidence of art and politics can-not be brushed aside,” wrote the adventurous conductor Leon Botstein in a note titled A “Politically Incorrect” Masterpiece for the performance of The Book with Seven Seals he gave with the American Symphony Orchestra in New York in 1996. “But at the same time, it cannot give us the right to turn away from the musical achievement of Franz Schmidt. Unlike [the composer Hans] Pfitzner, Schmidt was not a [Nazi] collaborator, but merely a fallible human being with his share of relatively commonplace but dangerous prejudices. He was also, however, a composer of remarkable gifts. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln is unquestionably his magnum opus…. This work qualifies as few others do as a neglected masterpiece. It should lead the listener on a spiritual journey that illustrates and magni-fies the mysteries, metaphors and images of the Apocalypse. It stands in the greatest tradition of the sacred oratorio.”

* * *

Schmidt wrote of the creative process and the dramatic and musical intentions of The Book with Seven Seals in a note for the work’s premiere: “Certain parts of the Apocalypse which are especially suitable for setting to music have often been used by composers, but as far as I know mine is the first attempt at a comprehensive setting. As I approached this gigantic task, it became evident that it was necessary to contract the vast dimensions of the text to a size that could be grasped by the average human brain; and to do so without impairing the essence of the work and if possible without alter-ing the text. The whole construction had to be left intact both in its general plan and in its internal coherence. I only deviated from the original in that I combined the letters of St. John to the Seven Churches into an initial address. Otherwise I kept entirely to the original: the calling of John by the Lord, his appearance before the Throne, the ceremony of homage, the Book in the hand of the Lord, the vision of the Lamb, the acceptance of the Book by the Lamb — all this is taken almost verbally from the original. The short service of thanks completes this ‘Prologue in Heaven.’

“The first part of the work, which follows, deals with the breaking of the first six seals by the Lamb; this is preceded by the story of mankind. After the blessed and hopeful spreading of the Chris-tian message of Salvation by the White Horseman (Jesus Christ) and his Heavenly Hosts, mankind falls prey to darkness and chaos. The Blood-Red Horseman and his hellish army cover the earth and

precipitate mankind into war, one man killing the other. The third (black) and the fourth (pale) Horsemen of the Apocalypse lead on the results of war — famine and pestilence. The greater part of mankind sinks into despair and perishes; only a small number still remains faithful. At the breaking of the fifth seal the souls of the martyrs appear with other victims of men’s crimes. They call for justice and punishment. The Lord bids them have patience and promises that they shall have justice at the Last Judgment. Since the greater part of mankind is still living in sin and obduracy, the Lord calls forth earthquakes and floods and fire over the face of the earth; so with the breaking of the sixth seal He destroys sinful man.

“With this the first part closes. The natural break here gave me my sole opportunity to create a form suitable for music out of a mass of material as unbounded as the ocean. From here St. John continues with ever-greater power, by the use of countless variations and repetitions of metaphors and similes, the story of his fight against Babylon, the sink of iniquity (representing Rome), up to its complete annihilation, in order to stress and glorify the final victory of Christianity in the vision of the New Jerusalem.

“The second part opens with the great silence that fills Heaven at the opening of the seventh seal. During this silence St. John tells us, in parentheses as it were, the story of the true Faith and of its Church, beginning at the birth of the Savior, continuing with its fight against the worshippers of the devil and their false teaching, and concluding with its final victory.

“After the great silence in Heaven, which one assumes to last to the end of the world, seven angels prepare to sound the terrible summons to the Last Judgment. As in the original, St. John only de-scribes the Last Judgment briefly, but announces vividly that the Millennium has arrived and that an immortal race now lives on a new earth and under a new sky. Then the Lord speaks to the purified and tells them that He will dwell with them and be their father. After the purified have given Him thanks and homage with an Alleluia, St. John concludes his Revelation with a short explanation and farewell.

“I have kept faithfully to the original text. My approach to the work has always been that of a deeply religious man and of an artist. This may account for a certain freedom in the conception; for instance, that I have conceived St. John as a young man and given him music suitable for a young man [the score calls for a ‘heroic tenor’], though he was in fact extremely old when he wrote his ‘Revela-tions.’ As to the music itself, I shall confine myself to some remarks about the form.

“Since it is the function of the text to provide the skeleton of the composition, not only to form the outer contours of the work but to exercise a proportionate influence on the construction of all its parts, the vocal section appears to me to have the greatest importance in the general development. Nevertheless I endeavored to achieve an even distribution of artistic tasks amongst all the contributing forces. A result of this is that the orchestra is never subservient or dominating. Throughout it accom-panies in a highly dramatic style, and sometimes it paints a musical picture. On the other hand it has no independent movements, preludes or intermezzi. The latter are left to the organ, which is treated not as part of the orchestra but as an independent entity.

“The disposition of vocal sections is roughly as follows: St. John, who presents his Revelation between the musically identical addresses (the Greeting and the Farewell), is supported by the four soloists and by the chorus, who contribute both as characters taking part and in assisting the narrator. Of the solo parts, the Voice of the Lord (bass) is the most prominent. It is heard three times: at the very beginning when it summons St. John, then in the first part where it quells the uproar in Heaven, and lastly in the second part to announce the message of salvation and mercy. Apart from various movements for quartet and ensemble representing angels and the like, the soloists have two scenes for duet in the first part. They are that of the mother and daughter (soprano and mezzo-soprano) and that of the two survivors on the field of carnage (tenor and bass). The chorus, distributed over the whole work in various tasks, has the following independent movements of importance: in the Prologue, the Vision of the Lamb (with tenor solo); in Part I, ‘King of kings,’ the war, the uproar in Heaven, the end of the world; in Part II, the summons to the Last Judgment (a quadruple fugue) and finally the Alleluia.”

©2011 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Friday, August 12 and Saturday, August 13, 2011 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

2011 Program Notes, Book 4 D35