Here - Chicago Symphony Orchestra

PROGRAM
ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOURTH SEASON
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director
Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus
Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant
Global Sponsor of the CSO
Thursday, May 21, 2015, at 8:00
Friday, May 22, 2015, at 1:30
Saturday, May 23, 2015, at 8:00
French
Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor
Samuel Coles Flute
Jean-Yves Thibaudet Piano
Valérie Hartmann-Claverie Ondes Martenot
Festival
&
Debussy
Syrinx
SAMUEL COLES
Ravel
Piano Concerto in G Major
Allegramente
Adagio assai
Presto
JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET
INTERMISSION
Messiaen
Turangalîla-symphonie
Introduction. Modéré, un peu vif
Chant d’amour 1. Modéré, lourd
Turangalîla 1. Presque lent, rêveur
Chant d’amour 2. Bien modéré
Joie du sang des étoiles. Vif, passionné, avec joie
Jardin du sommeil d’amour. Très modéré, très tendre
Turangalîla 2. Un peu vif
Développement d’amour. Bien modéré
Turangalîla 3. Bien modéré
Final. Modéré, presque vif, avec une grande joie
JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET
VALÉRIE HARTMANN-CLAVERIE
The CSO thanks Julie and Roger Baskes, lead sponsors of the Reveries & Passions Festival concert programming.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional sponsorship support for the Reveries & Passions Festival has been provided by: The Jacob and Rosaline
Cohn Foundation, Mr. & Mrs. Richard J. Franke, The Gilchrist Foundation, Jim and Kay Mabie, and Burton X. and
Sheli Rosenberg.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBEZ 91.5FM for its generous support as a media sponsor of the
French Reveries & Passions Festival.
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Huscher Roger Nichols
Claude Debussy
Born August 22, 1862, Saint Germain-en-Laye, France.
Died March 25, 1918, Paris, France.
Syrinx
In 1913, the year of two
big revolutionary works—
Stravinsky’s Sacre du
printemps and Debussy’s
final orchestral score,
Jeux—Debussy’s friend
Gabriel Mouray contacted
the composer about
providing incidental music
for his three-act dramatic
poem, Psyché. Mouray asked for a number of
pieces, including “the last music Pan plays before
his death,” which he wanted performed from the
wings of the stage. In Greek mythology, Syrinx is
the nymph pursued by the god Pan; she is
ultimately transformed into a water reed in order
to escape Pan’s amorous advances. Finally, at the
water’s edge, Pan cuts the reeds—making the
first pan pipe—and plays his dying lament. As it
turned out, Debussy wrote nothing for Mouray’s
play but Pan’s little solo, originally titled Flûte de
Pan and later published as Syrinx. Yet seldom
have three minutes of music had such
long-reaching influence.
Here are Mouray’s stage directions for the
opening of act 3:
The moon spreads over the countryside . . . . In the clearing, the nymphs
dance . . . adorned in white . . . . Some
collect flowers . . . some, stretched out at the
COMPOSED
1913
FIRST PERFORMANCE
December 1, 1913; Paris, France
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water’s edge, admire themselves. At intervals
they all pause, astonished, listening to the
syrinx of the invisible Pan, moved by the
song that escapes from the hollow reeds.
In a single thread of music—a little more
than two hundred notes—Debussy seems to
encompass an entire world. Deeply expressive,
volatile, and endlessly mysterious, Syrinx quickly
became one of the anchors of the flute repertoire
and was recognized as one of the landmarks of
twentieth-century music. Syrinx is the ultimate
descendant of the famous sinuous flute melodies
that open Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un
faune, composed two decades earlier, in which
“the flute of the faun brought new breath to the
art of music,” as Pierre Boulez wrote. But it also
set the stage for a long line of flute monologues
in the future, including Edgard Varèse’s seminal
Density 21.5.
Over the years, Syrinx has been analyzed,
debated, and discussed extensively, quite out
of proportion to its tiny size. Yet, like so much
of Debussy’s music, its true magic and power
continue to defy explanation. Perhaps no one
has captured the essence of the score better than
Mouray himself, who called it “a real jewel of
restrained emotion, of sadness, of plastic beauty,
of discreet tenderness and poetry.” INSTRUMENTATION
solo flute
Phillip Huscher
APPROXIMATE
PERFORMANCE TIME
3 minutes
Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France.
Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France.
Piano Concerto in G Major
Ravel wrote home from
his first tour of the United
States in 1928, “I am
seeing magnificent cities,
enchanting country, but
the triumphs are exhausting.” In Chicago, at the
matinee concert of the
Chicago Symphony that
he conducted on
January 20, Ravel accepted thunderous applause
throughout the afternoon, a standing ovation at
the end of the program, and a fanfare from the
orchestra itself. But Ravel hated the subzero
temperatures here and throughout the Heartland
(he shivered in Minneapolis, Omaha, and
Denver, too) and was happy to move on to Los
Angeles, where he had lunch with Douglas
Fairbanks (who spoke French) and declined
breakfast with Charlie Chaplin (who did not).
The greatest thrill of his “crazy” American tour
was meeting George Gershwin, who wanted to
study with him. Ravel turned him down flat.
“You would only lose the spontaneous quality of
your melody and end up by writing bad Ravel,”
he said.
Ravel returned home to France weary and
famished—he found American food virtually
inedible—but assured that his fame was truly
international. Later, in 1928, Oxford University
gave him an honorary doctorate, calling him “the
COMPOSED
1929–November 14, 1931
FIRST PERFORMANCE
January 14, 1932; Paris, France. The
composer conducting
FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES
July 6, 1944, Ravinia Festival.
Leonard Bernstein conducting from
the keyboard
glory and delight of his beloved country, a man
mighty with talent both lively and tender, who
persuades the learned that Pan is not dead.” But
Ravel would only live to compose three more
major works—a ballet, Boléro, which quickly
became so popular it embarrassed him, and two
piano concertos.
T he concertos, one for the left hand,
and this one in G major, were written
simultaneously. The left-hand concerto
was commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul
Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during
the first weeks of the war. Ravel originally
intended to play the other concerto himself, but
by the time he put the final touches on the score,
he realized that his health was rapidly declining
and he would never perform it. (He was soon
diagnosed with the brain tumor that ultimately
made it impossible for him even to sign his
name.) For years, Ravel had contemplated
writing a concerto for Marguerite Long, who
had studied with him (as well as with Debussy),
and it was she who played the first performance
in Paris, with the composer conducting. The premiere was a triumph (although Ravel’s conducting lacked “clarity and elasticity,” in the words
of one critic). Ravel subsequently ignored his
doctor’s orders and went on a four-month tour
with Long to introduce the concerto throughout Europe. (They also recorded it together.)
MOST RECENT
CSO PERFORMANCES
November 29, 30, December 1 & 4,
2007, Orchestra Hall. Yundi Li as
soloist, Semyon Bychkov conducting
August 7, 2012, Ravinia Festival.
Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist, James
Conlon conducting
INSTRUMENTATION
flute and piccolo, oboe and english
horn, B-flat clarinet and E-flat clarinet,
two bassoons, two horns, trumpet,
trombone, timpani, triangle, snare
drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam,
woodblock, whip, harp, strings
APPROXIMATE
PERFORMANCE TIME
23 minutes
January 18, 19 & 23, 1951, Orchestra
Hall. Leonard Bernstein conducting
from the keyboard
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Ravel described the work as “a concerto in the
truest sense of the word: I mean that it is written
very much
in the same
spirit as those
of Mozart and
Saint-Saëns.”
(He had originally thought
of calling
the work a
divertissement,
to emphasize
its lighter
qualities.)
The concerto
makes use of
longdiscarded
material for
a “Basque
fantasy”
Ravel and Marguerite Long
Ravel had
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begun around 1914. It opens with an allegro that
suggests a Spanish fiesta spiked with American
jazz. Occasional blue notes and trombone smears
confirm how carefully Ravel had listened when
he and Gershwin visited Harlem jazz spots
together. A frequently repeated melodic tag
recalls the opening tune of Gershwin’s own
Rhapsody in Blue. The velvety slow movement,
for all its lush harmonies and French sonorities,
is deeply indebted to Mozart; in fact, Ravel told
Marguerite Long that he wrote it slowly and
painstakingly, “two measures at a time, with
frequent reference to Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet.”
The opening, uninterrupted melody is much longer than any phrase in Mozart—an unadorned
piano solo that unfolds slowly, twisting and turning in unexpected ways, all in one huge breath.
The third movement was an afterthought—an
exhilarating, saucy finale composed shortly
before the premiere and designed to leave the
audience in high spirits. Phillip Huscher
Olivier Messiaen
Born December 10, 1908, Avignon, France.
Died April 27, 1992, Clichy, France.
Turangalîla-symphonie for Piano, Ondes Martenot, and Orchestra
This symphony, written
between July 1946 and
November 1948—that is,
in Messiaen’s late
thirties—was one of his
earliest commissioned
works. It was also one of
the most satisfactory from
his point of view, since
Serge Koussevitzky, in
asking him to write something for the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, allowed him total freedom
as to the kind of work, its length, the forces
involved, and—ultimate generosity—gave him as
much time as he wanted to write it. Messiaen
took him at his word over the first three clauses,
but two years and a bit was hardly over the odds
for composing such an enormous score. Not that
he was in general a particularly fast composer,
but the ideas behind this symphony were already
gestating, and one gets the feeling that maybe
the relaxed terms of the commission removed any
inhibitions there might have been. Leonard
Bernstein conducted the Boston Symphony
Orchestra in the first performance on
December 2, 1949.
T he title is made up of two Sanskrit
words: turanga signifies “time,” in the
sense of time passing, rhythm, movement; lîla means “play,” and includes in this
the notions of opposition, resistance, creation,
COMPOSED
July 1946–November 1948
FIRST PERFORMANCE
December 2, 1949, Boston
FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES
January 20, 21 & 22, 1977, Orchestra
Hall. Pierre-Laurent Aimard and
Jeanne Loriod as soloists, André
Previn conducting
destruction, and love. Where turanga urges
ever onward, lîla holds up or at least articulates the flow of time with dramatic incident.
Each depends on the other for its significance,
as death gives meaning to life, or as an ocean
is defined by its surrounding continents.
The symphony stands as the second part of
what Messiaen called his Tristan trilogy, between
the song cycle Harawi and the Cinq rechants for
mixed chorus, and the opposition of love and
death is central to all three, although, as already
explained, opposition here includes justification.
Messiaen claimed not to be concerned with the
“eternal triangle” aspect of the Tristan story and
responded forcefully, and, without any doubt,
truthfully, when an interviewer tried to make
a connection between the myth and the composer’s own situation, tending a very sick wife
at the same time the young Yvonne Loriod had
appeared as the ideal interpreter of his piano
music. What drew him to the story was the
portrayal of a love that was willing to sacrifice
everything, “a love that is stronger than death”:
he regarded the Tristan story as the legend
that came nearest to depicting the love of God
even if, as he said, it would be blasphemous to
see it as any more than the palest reflection of
such love. So, although the score itself gives
only the vaguest intimation that this is not a
purely secular work, it is questionable whether
it can be fully understood apart from Messiaen’s
religious belief.
MOST RECENT
CSO PERFORMANCES
November 23, 25 & 27, 1988, Orchestra
Hall. Pierre-Laurent Aimard and
Jeanne Loriod as soloists, Zubin
Mehta conducting
July 19, 1998, Ravinia Festival.
Marc-André Hamelin and Jean
Laurendeau as soloists, Christoph
Eschenbach conducting
INSTRUMENTATION
solo piano and ondes martenot, two
flutes and piccolo, two oboes and
english horn, two clarinets and bass
clarinet, three bassoons, four horns,
three trumpets, piccolo trumpet
and cornet, three trombones, tuba,
percussion, celesta, strings
APPROXIMATE
PERFORMANCE TIME
78 minutes
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M essiaen was born to a Roman Catholic
father and a nonbelieving mother, the
poet Cécile Sauvage. If this mixed
inheritance caused him problems, there was no
sign of it, and throughout his life he would claim
to have been “born a believer.” The majority of
his works are commentaries on the Scriptures
and on his wide reading of religious writers of
his own time and earlier. Just as this fact marked
him out as distinct from such predecessors as
Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel (all
atheists or agnostics), so the sounds and procedures of his music have nothing in common
with the cozy ecclesiasticism of a Gounod;
he thus managed to outrage nonbelievers and
believers alike by, respectively, his very attachment to Roman Catholicism and his willingness
to incorporate into religious music what had
hitherto been regarded as mundane, even vulgar
elements. The result, in the words of British
scholar Richard D.E. Burton, could be heard as
“a non-Catholic work by a believing, practicing
Catholic that offends against every principle of
Catholic apologetics and ethics in its unabashed
exaltation of sensation, sensuality, and sentiment.
An explosion of sound such as had not been
heard since Le sacre du printemps, saccharine
and sleazy one minute, ethereal the next . . . .”
M essiaen’s approach to composition
was also “catholic” with a small “c,”
and this tendency toward inclusivity
could only have been encouraged by his profession as organist, with the access that gives
to extremes of sound. In answer to a question
posed in the 1980s as to whether he had been
through the hallowed Beethovenian “three
periods,” he said, “No, I have a very rich,
well-supplied ensemble of materials which is
growing all the time, but without renouncing
what has been in the past or ignoring what will
be in the future.” This ensemble in Turangalîla
includes not only diatonic chords, but systematically derived chromatic modes and rhythms
taken from ancient Indian music, while the
orchestra includes a piano, ondes martenot, and
a large percussion section. The piano, pitched
percussion, and metal percussion—triangle,
cymbals, tam-tam, and bells—form a small
orchestra within the whole, its sound being
modeled on that of the Balinese gamelan.
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The composer uses four cyclic themes. The
first, the “statue” theme, is heavy and brutal,
heard nearly always,
as in the first minute,
on trombones. For
Messiaen, it recalls
one of those implacable Mexican heads
carved in volcanic
rock, and no doubt
also partakes of
that negative, even
threatening quality
that rocks and stones
always seem to have
had for the composer
as he sat composing
Serge Koussevitzky
in the mountains
of the Dauphiné.
The second, “flower” theme is of three phrases,
gently unfolding on two clarinets. Together they
represent one of the few traditionally symphonic
attributes of the work: the contrast (if one is
allowed to write this nowadays) of “masculine”
and “feminine” themes. The third, the “love”
theme, is not heard until the sixth movement;
it is developed from the first two, symbolizing
the spiritual union of the two lovers. The fourth
“theme” is not a melody, but a series of four
seven-note chords that serve a purely musical
rather than symbolic function. The following
outline of the ten movements may be helpful.
1. Introduction. Two sections linked by a piano
cadenza. In the first section, we hear the first
two cyclic themes. The second section is built on
superimposed rhythmic patterns.
2. Song of Love 1. Sharp contrasts between
passionate outbursts on trumpets and slow,
tender passages on ondes martenot and strings.
The “love” movements all have even numbers: 2,
4, 6 & 8.
3. Turangalîla 1. Six sections, with lîla promoting many complex rhythmic games, mainly
among unpitched percussion. The “turangalîla”
movements all have odd numbers—3, 7 & 9—
and, through their dissonance and intensity,
symbolize the obstacles that both impede and
nourish true love.
4. Song of Love 2. Scherzo with two slow trios.
The central section is one of the most complex in
the whole work, combining the scherzo, birdsong, both trios, and, finally, the “statue” theme.
A piano cadenza leads to a very slow coda ending
in a simple A major chord.
5. Joy of the Blood of the Stars. The composer
wrote: “In order to understand the extravagance
of this piece, it must be understood that the
union of true lovers is for them a transformation,
and a transformation on a cosmic scale.”
6. Garden of the Sleep of Love. The two lovers
are themselves the garden, full of light, shade,
and birdsong. “The lovers are outside time,”
wrote Messiaen, “let us not wake them.” It is
surely relevant here to think of Tristan and Isolde
on their “bank of flowers.”
7. Turangalîla 2. By some way the shortest of
the ten movements, it makes up in intensity
what it lacks in length. Messiaen refers to Poe’s
story “The Pit and the Pendulum,” in which a
prisoner is threatened by a huge pendulum with
a tip “as keen as a razor” descending towards his
breast. Ondes martenot and trombones enact this
contraction of space, then expansion (relief for
the prisoner?), then finally contraction again.
© 2015 Chicago Symphony Orchestra
8. Development of Love. Musical development
also, involving all the cyclic themes, especially
the third.
9. Turangalîla 3. Theme and variations of
increasing density. Finally the piano breaks
through with a long crescendo.
10. Finale. Messiaen marks this movement to
be played “avec une grande joie.” After so many
rhythmic complexities provoked by lîla, an
extended celebration of triple time and the free
flow of turanga. Towards the end, the theme of
movement six returns in leisurely, untrammeled
splendor, before energy and triple time are
restored in a brief coda. Roger Nichols
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra.
Roger Nichols is a freelance lecturer, pianist, translator,
and reviewer, specializing in French music from Berlioz
up to the present day. © 2015 Roger Nichols
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