PROGRAM

Thursday, April 25, 2013, at 8:00Friday, April 26, 2013, at 8:00Saturday, April 27, 2013, at 8:00

Riccardo Muti ConductorMaurizio Pollini Piano

BeethovenConsecration of the House Overture, Op. 124

MozartPiano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467[Allegro maestoso]AndanteAllegro vivace assai

MAURIZIO POLLINI

INTERMISSION

MendelssohnCalm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture, Op. 27

SchumannSymphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 97 (Rhenish)LivelyScherzo: Very moderateNot fastSolemn—Lively

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SECOND 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

The CSO gratefully acknowledges Margot and Josef Lakonishok for their generous sponsor-ship of these concerts.

Support of the music director and related programs is made possible in part by a generous gift from the Zell Family Foundation.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

Consecration of the House Overture, Op. 124

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

In 1817, when a visitor asked Beethoven to name the great-

est composers of the past, he put George Frideric Handel at the top of the list. Anton Schindler, whose famous biography of Beethoven is notoriously inaccurate, claimed that Beethoven held a “long cherished idea of writing an overture specifi-cally in the style of Handel,” and, in this case, Schindler probably was right. Beethoven finally got his chance in 1822—he wrote his last piano sonata and worked on the Missa solemnis that year—when he was asked to write something for the dedication of the newly refurbished Josephstadt �eater in Vienna.

Beethoven had known Handel’s music since at least the 1790s, when

he composed twelve variations for cello and piano based on a theme from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus. We know that Beethoven loved the Messiah, that he hung Handel’s portrait on his wall, and that he once cried out, “I would uncover my head and kneel down at his tomb!” Sometime in 1820, when his hearing was nearly gone, he wrote in one of the conversation books he used to communicate with visitors that he wanted to write variations on the Dead March from Handel’s Saul. He still may have had that idea in mind when he began the Consecration of the House Overture for the Josephstadt �eater. Handel’s music also has a strong presence in the Missa solemnis that Beethoven interrupted to write the

COMPOSED1822

FIRST PERFORMANCEOctober 3, 1822; Vienna, Austria

FIRST CSO PERFORMANCESMay 2, 1893 (inaugural concert of World’s Columbian Exposition), Music Hall. Theodore Thomas conducting

April 5, 1897, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting

MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCEFebruary 11, 2006, Orchestra Hall. David Robertson conducting

INSTRUMENTATIONtwo flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings

APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME10 minutes

CSO RECORDINGA 1966 recording of Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture conducted by Jean Martinon was included on From the Archives, vol. 17.

3

overture—the mass is in the key of D major, which Beethoven associ-ated with the Hallelujah Chorus, and the theme of its great fugue on “Dona nobis pacem” echoes the famous phrase “And he shall reign for ever and ever” from that chorus.

Whatever his model or his intent, the Consecration of the

House Overture is Beethoven’s most strongly Handelian work. It opens slowly, in the style of the stately French overture that was popular in Handel’s day, and then moves

directly into an impressive double fugue—a kind of neo-baroque homage on a large scale. (�is is one of many astonishing fugues in what we now call late Beethoven, including those in the Ninth Symphony and the Grosse Fuge.) �ere is nothing derivative about this magnificent overture—it is merely one musical giant inspired by another—and, in the end, it sounds like no one but Beethoven. And, despite its Handelian roots, it is one of Beethoven’s most modern, even visionary, achievements.

4

Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467

Early in 1785, Leopold Mozart traveled to Vienna to check

up on his already famous son, newly married (against his father’s wishes) to Constanze Weber and at the peak of his popularity as a pianist and composer. Leopold reached Vienna on February 10, the same day Wolfgang entered a new piano concerto, in D minor, in his catalog, although when he arrived at one o’clock in the afternoon, as he wrote home to Wolfgang’s sister, Nannerl, “the copyist was still copying . . . and your brother did not even have time to play through the Rondo.” Wolfgang premiered the work at a concert that night. Leopold knew his son’s life was hectic, and that he was giving con-certs at a frantic pace—the previous March, Wolfgang had written of playing twenty-two concerts in thirty-eight days (“I don’t think

that in this way I can possibly get out of practice,” he quipped). But nothing had quite prepared him for the multitasking of nonstop social-izing, performing, and composing that he would witness during the next ten weeks.

Even a long and brutal cold spell, with heavy snowfall and temperatures so low that several people froze to death, didn’t curtail Wolfgang’s performing schedule (Leopold watched in amazement as his son’s piano was carted out of the house to a concert nearly every other day). �eir calendar was so packed with social engagements that Wolfgang and Constanze, like heads of state, were forced to accept different invitations for the same night. Shortly after Leopold’s arrival, the Mozarts hosted an evening of chamber music, includ-ing performances of three of

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

COMPOSED1785, entered in catalog March 9

FIRST PERFORMANCEMarch 10, 1785; Vienna, Austria. The composer as soloist

FIRST CSO PERFORMANCEJanuary 28, 1932, Orchestra Hall. Walter Gieseking, piano; Eric DeLamarter conducting

MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCEFebruary 7, 2011, Orchestra Hall. Mitsuko Uchida con-ducting from the keyboard

INSTRUMENTATIONsolo piano, one flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings

CADENZASSalvatore Sciarrino

APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME29 minutes

5

Mozart’s new quartets dedicated to Haydn, attended by Haydn himself, who told Leopold that “your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name,” a tribute Leopold would proudly repeat verbatim in the months ahead. During the day, Wolfgang maintained his teaching schedule, with a steady stream of pupils showing up at the Mozarts’ lavish, though disorderly lodgings. (Leopold eventually warmed to Constanze, but he never thought she was a good housekeeper.)

Somehow, throughout this period, Mozart also managed to

compose, with astonishing fluency and brilliance, as if the distrac-tions of daily life stimulated rather than inconvenienced him. During Leopold’s first four weeks in Vienna, Wolfgang wrote this new piano concerto—in C major—hard on the heels of the D minor concerto. �ese two works, so close in time yet so different in substance and character, are among the glories of his output, and with them, Mozart seems to have created a new kind of concerto, more symphonic and closely argued than before. Leopold was in the audience for the premiere of this concerto, on March 10 (the day after Mozart entered it in his catalog), and, although it was well received, Leopold characteristically reported that Wolfgang took in 559 gulden, with little to say about the music itself.

�ere’s a density of material in the opening movement of the C major concerto that mirrors the round-the-clock frenzy of Mozart’s

life at the time, except that the music is perfectly poised and mas-terfully orga-nized. �e entire move-ment is very broadly con-ceived; more than any of Mozart’s earlier concer-tos, it has the majesty and vastness of his grandest symphonies. �e solo piano doesn’t enter boldly, with music the orchestra has already introduced, but hesitantly, ushered in by oboe, bassoon, and flute. �e piano writing throughout is unusually inventive, rich in fancy figuration and aggressive in its dialogue with the orchestra. �e development section focuses mostly on secondary material, because Mozart has already explored his main themes from so many differ-ent angles.

If the first movement is sym-phonic in scope, the second, in F major, is operatic, although there’s no single aria of Mozart’s that encompasses such an extraordinary range of emo-tions or explores so fearlessly the

Mozart’s Walter clavier, which now stands in the Geburtshaus, Salzburg. The instrument, built by the Viennese maker Anton Walter in 1780, was purchased by Mozart in 1784.

6

expressive world that lies beyond words. (It completely upstaged Bo Widerberg’s pretty art-house film, Elvira Madigan, in the 1960s, at the same time winning countless new admirers for Mozart—and tempting concert and record promoters to include the name of the movie’s heroine as if it were Mozart’s subtitle.) �is is one of Mozart’s most profound and endlessly revealing works. In one seemingly unbroken arc, the piano traces a melody that floats over a quiet, pulsating accompaniment—rising and circling, plummeting

just once, like a great soprano voice, from high C to low A. (Later, the accompaniment stops for a single breathtaking moment, as if, by its silence, to call attention to a modulation to A-flat major.)

After such time-stopping music, the finale is, almost of necessity, a return to simpler, earthier plea-sures. Like an operatic finale, it summarily dismisses recent difficul-ties and revelations. But it spares nothing in the way of spirit and wit, and, in the end, it stands as an ideal counterpart to the brilliance and beauty of what had come before.

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

7

Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture, Op. 27

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Felix Mendelssohn met for

the first time in 1821. �e great poet was seventy-two and famous; the composer a precocious twelve-year-old. �ey walked together in Goethe’s garden in Weimar and then had dinner. Afterwards, Mendelssohn played Bach fugues and improvised at the piano. On another evening in Goethe’s house later in the week, the poet put Mendelssohn to the test, ask-ing him to improvise on favorite tunes, play the overture from Don Giovanni from memory, and sight-read from a nearly indecipherable Beethoven manuscript. Goethe told Carl Friedrich Zelter, who was his friend and also Mendelssohn’s teacher, “What your pupil already accomplishes bears the same rela-tion to the Mozart of that age that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a

child.” Mendelssohn continued to visit Goethe throughout the 1820s, as his fame grew nearly equal to his friend’s, the result of his astonish-ing early success—he wrote the brilliant Octet at sixteen and his first true masterpiece, the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, at seventeen.

As Mendelssohn would come to learn, Goethe’s taste in music was surprisingly old-fashioned. Despite the efforts of Berlioz, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn himself, Goethe said that Mozart was the only composer who could have set Faust to music. More than once during their encounters, when Mendelssohn would play the piano for Goethe, he tried to convert him to Beethoven’s cause, each time without success. Schubert sent Goethe some of his most impres-sive songs, all of them settings of Goethe’s poems, and he too was

Felix MendelssohnBorn February 3, 1809, Hamburg, Germany.Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig, Germany.

COMPOSED1828, revised 1834

FIRST PERFORMANCEDecember 1, 1832, Berlin. The composer conducting

FIRST CSO PERFORMANCENovember 11, 1892, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting

MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCESNovember 27, 1959, Orchestra Hall. Fritz Reiner conducting

May 17, 2000, Orchestra Hall (donor concert). William Eddins conducting

INSTRUMENTATIONtwo flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabas-soon, two horns, three trumpets, timpani, strings

APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME13 minutes

8

given the cold shoulder. (Oddly, when Mendelssohn once played through some of his sister Fanny’s songs, Goethe seemed pleased and wrote her a poem of thanks.)

In 1828, undeterred—or perhaps not yet defeated by Goethe’s

musical sensibilities—Mendelssohn wrote this concert overture, titled Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage and based on two of Goethe’s poems (the poems appear on page 39). He was all of nineteen at the time. Beethoven had picked the same poems in 1814—just two years after he met the poet—and set them as a magnificent, utterly unconventional choral piece. (When Beethoven sent a copy of the score to Goethe, the poet recorded in his diary that he received it, but never wrote to Beethoven to acknowledge it.) In 1828, a year after Beethoven’s death, Mendelssohn chose to treat the poems not as a vocal piece, but as descriptive instrumental music, perhaps thinking of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, a kind of land-scape painting unknown to music before, as a point of departure.

Like Beethoven, Mendelssohn never sailed—in 1828 he had seen the ocean just once—but he understood that the essence of Goethe’s sea journey was personal, not nautical. In Mendelssohn’s hands, Goethe’s subtext of sta-sis, crisis, and transformation

becomes a grand orchestral nar-rative. Mendelssohn perfectly captures the “deathly stillness” of the opening and the sudden surge as the winds (quite liter-ally, launched by flute arpeggios) pick up. Clearly Mendelssohn had studied Beethoven’s setting well; the two scores share many similari-ties, including the key of D major. But Mendelssohn’s brings us much closer to the highly descriptive tone poems of the future, and it is prob-ably no coincidence that he began to paint around the same time he composed this score. Mendelssohn’s ending is more triumphant than Goethe’s—the poem ends merely with the first sighting of land—with trumpet fanfares to celebrate a safe landing, but the last measures, diminishing from ff to a sudden pp, circle back to the opening, placing the entire journey in a different light.

Mendelssohn saw Goethe for the last time when he stopped off

for a visit in May 1830, just before he began the Italian journey the poet had recommended—the trip that inspired Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony. Around the time of the premiere of Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage in 1832, Felix and Fanny gave a private performance of the score as a piano duet at home, dimming the lights to create the proper mood.

9

The two poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe which inspired Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture.

MEERSTILLETiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser,ohne Regung ruht das Meer,und bekümmert sieht der Schifferglatte Fläche ringsumher.Keine Luft von keiner Seite!Todesstille fürchterlich!In der ungeheuren Weitereget keine Welle sich.

GLÜCKLICHE FAHRTDie Nebel zerreißen,der Himmel ist helle,und Aeolus lösetdas ängstliche Band.Es säuseln die Winde,es rührt sich der Schiffer.Geschwinde! Geschwinde!Es teilt sich die Welle,es naht sich die Ferne,schon seh’ ich das Land!

CALM SEACalm and silence rule the water,motionless the ocean lies,and the sailor’s anxious gazefinds glassy flatness far and wide.Not a breath of air is stirring!Fearful, deathless stillness reigns!On the infinite expansenot a single wavelet moves.

PROSPEROUS VOYAGE�e mists are rent,the heavens shine,and Aeolus loosensrestraining ties.�e winds now are whistling,the sailor bestirs himself.How swiftly; how swiftlythe waves part before us,the distance draws near;and now I see land!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

10

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 97 (Rhenish)

In his best-selling neurological case study, �e Man Who Mistook

His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks tells of Dr. P., an eminent musician and professor, who can no longer make sense of what he sees. He relies on Schumann’s music to keep his bearings, and every action in his daily life is linked to a musical theme. Sacks, a British neurolo-gist (best known for Awakenings, which was made into a motion picture starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams, and, among other popular books, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain and a new best-seller, Hallucinations, published late last year), explains: “�e real hero of Hat is surely music—the power of music to organize and integrate, to knit or reknit a shattered world into sense.”

�e year Robert Schumann was born, his father was attacked by a

nervous affliction that troubled him the rest of his life. Schumann’s own medical history is full of mysterious ailments and breakdowns, depres-sion, hallucinations, persistent trembling, a recurring fear of sharp metal objects, and—most pain-fully for a musician—tinnitus, a constant ringing in the ears. We now think that his mental instabil-ity first showed up when he was still in his teens. In 1844, at the age of thirty-four, when he suffered his worst breakdown, compos-ing was out of the question and he couldn’t even bear to listen to music, “which cuts into my nerves,” he complained, “as if with knives.” Certainly in his last years, when syphilis caused his decline, music didn’t have the power to reknit his shattered world, although he spoke of “wonderfully beautiful music” constantly playing in his head. In

Robert SchumannBorn June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Saxony, Germany.Died July 29, 1856, Endenich, near Bonn, Germany.

COMPOSEDNovember 2–December 9, 1850

FIRST PERFORMANCEFebruary 6, 1851; Düsseldorf, Germany. The composer conducting

FIRST CSO PERFORMANCEDecember 29, 1893, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting

MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCEMarch 8, 2008, Orchestra Hall. John Eliot Gardiner conducting

INSTRUMENTATIONtwo flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings

APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME31 minutes

CSO RECORDING1977. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Deutsche Grammophon

11

February 1854, just before he was institutionalized, he was haunted by devils and visited by angels who sang to him in E-flat; he finally ran out of the house and threw himself into the Rhine.

�e fishermen who saved him and took him home to his wife Clara didn’t recognize one of Düsseldorf ’s most distinguished citizens, the famous composer who, only four years earlier, had written his last symphony in loving tribute to the Rhine River. Even in 1850, when Schumann began this E-flat symphony, he wasn’t in the best of shape. He and Clara had recently moved to Düsseldorf—with some misgivings once he learned of the asylum there, for he didn’t like to be reminded of mental instability. At first, Schumann was unable to compose there because of the street noise. A visit to Cologne in late September 1850 greatly inspired him, and in October he began his cello concerto and, on November 2, a new symphony in E-flat. �e first movement was sketched in a week, and, despite taking time out for another trip to Cologne, the entire work was finished by December 9.

Although Schumann sometimes is criticized for being unsympa-

thetic to the symphonic language, the magnificent opening of this E-flat symphony argues otherwise. Here is a grand, striding theme that is both broad and powerful, obviously conceived in orchestral terms and ideal for symphonic treatment—Schumann writing for orchestra with the same command we find in his piano music.

Schumann originally called this music “a piece of life by the Rhine.” He had already captured the Rhine in song—the majestic “Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome” (In the Rhine, in the holy river) from Dichterliebe, for example—but now, working with the full orchestral palette, Schumann creates one of the great German romantic musical land-scapes. It’s a landscape by sugges-tion, for this isn’t a programmatic symphony; like Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, it’s “the expression of feelings rather than painting.” (Unlike Beethoven, Schumann doesn’t include bird calls or thun-derstorms to cloud the issue.)

If the Rhenish Symphony sug-gests Beethoven at all (and few musicians at the time saw the resemblance), it’s the Beethoven of the Eroica Symphony, also in E-flat. In the vast unfolding of his first movement, Schumann is work-ing on a Beethovenian scale, and with material worthy of the grand dimensions. It’s largely through the sheer power of his main theme that Schumann sustains such an impressive movement, for develop-ment of the classical sort was never his strength, and even here he relies on simple, sequential repeti-tion in place of thematic sleight of hand. �ere’s a splendid surge of energy—and a new melody, cleverly placed—just before the end.

�e next two movements are modest, taking their cue not from Beethoven’s Eroica, which reaf-firms the grandeur of its opening with each following movement, but from the “slow” movement of Beethoven’s Eighth, famous for

12

daring to be so unas-suming. Schumann first gives us a slow län-dler, with a lovely roll-ing theme in the low strings, as a gentle alterna-tive to the traditional scherzo. A tiny slow move-ment, as delicate in

dimension and scope as any of Schumann’s miniatures for solo piano, follows.

�e fourth movement is really part of the finale—a grand proces-sional leading to a triumphant conclusion—even though they’re written as two separate sections. �e inspiration for this majestic and solemn music came to Robert on the Schumanns’ second trip to Cologne, in November 1850, for the installation of the archbishop of Cologne as cardinal which was held in the magnificent cathedral there. Schumann immediately sets

the ceremonial tone with a simple chorale in E-flat minor for three trombones. �e music moves majes-tically, growing in strength and polyphonic complexity. And then, with the swift entrance of a striding new theme, Schumann launches his finale, an uncomplicated song of triumph in E-flat major. �e “cathedral music” returns near the end, transformed by its bright new surroundings; a passing reference to the symphony’s bold opening leads to a volley of E-flat chords.

Schumann conducted the first performance of the Rhenish

Symphony on February 6, 1851, in Düsseldorf. Just three years later, he was confined to a private asylum in nearby Endenich. Clara wasn’t allowed to see him for nearly two and a half years; when she finally visited him on July 27, 1856, Schumann (unlike Dr. P.) recog-nized his wife at once, but he was unable to speak intelligibly. When he died two days later, Clara and the young Johannes Brahms were at his side.

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

A portrait of Robert and Clara Schumann by Gustave Adolphe Mossa

© 2

013

Chi

cago

Sym

phon

y O

rche

stra