CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA RICCARDO MUTISYMPHONY CENTER PRESENTS

may 2019

cso.org PHOTOS BY TODD ROSENBERG

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We are pleased to welcome you back for concerts featuring the great Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as esteemed guest artists on the Symphony Center Presents series.

We begin with two weeks of subscription concerts con-ducted by Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti. The first program includes such evocative works as Bizet’s Roma, Respighi’s Pines of Rome, and Berlioz’s The Death of Cleopatra with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. For Muti’s second May program, he and the Orchestra are joined by pianist Mitsuko Uchida in Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20. Also on the pro-gram are Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and Stravinsky’s Suite from The Firebird.

CSO subscription concerts continue with the anticipated return of violinist Hilary Hahn, performing Sibelius’s Violin Concerto on a program conducted by Mikko Franck that also includes Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony and A Requiem in Our Time, a work for symphonic brass by Rautavaara.

Next, conductor Giancarlo Guerrero makes his Orchestra Hall debut with compo-sitions by Ginastera, Chabrier, and Piazzolla in addition to Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, performed by guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas.

The Symphony Center Presents series offers a range of programs highlight-ing the artistry of distinguished musicians across genres. May begins with Itzhak Perlman and Evgeny Kissin in violin sonatas by Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven. Kissin returns for the SCP Piano series on May 12. The SCP Jazz series features pia-nist Jason Moran with his wife, mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran, in Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration, an SCP commission in honor of the Jazz series’ twenty-fifth anniversary season.

In addition to CSO and SCP performances, the Negaunee Music Institute presents Pictures from an Exhibition, conducted by Thomas Wilkins, on the CSO School Concerts and Family Matinee series. On May 12, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and conductor Ken-David Masur give the world premiere of Cerrone’s Meander, Spiral, Explode featuring Third Coast Percussion.

We thank you for your continued patronage of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and hope to see you often at this impressive array of concerts. We also encourage you not to delay in making your plans for the 2019–20 season. By subscribing, you can guarantee your best options to participate in what will be a season to remember.

Helen Zell Chair, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association Board of Trustees

Jeff Alexander President, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association

a note from the chair and the president

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a note from the director of programming

PHOTO BY TODD ROSENBERG

welcome to symphony centerThroughout the 2018–19 season, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Center Presents programs will explore themes of peace and reflec-tion. This fall we commemorated the centennial of the Armistice that ended World War I, a war that brought the United States into the international commu-nity. Given the global nature of our world today, we welcome artists from around the world to the stage of Symphony Center in hopes of amplifying music’s universal power to bring people together. This win-

ter and spring, Symphony Center will host outstanding artists from China, Israel, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Uzbekistan, Cuba, and Brazil, along with numerous amazing artists from the United States. Just as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra tours the globe, we proudly bring the world’s finest musicians to Chicago audiences at Symphony Center.

Our 2018–19 Symphony Center Presents season also marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of our Jazz series, which started as a four-concert series in 1994. Since that first concert on September 30, 1994, the jazz series has presented over 200 concerts featuring thousands of stellar musicians including numer-ous NEA Jazz Masters and future jazz legends. This anniversary season will again feature the amazing artistry and wide variety of jazz styles that have been presented throughout its long history.

During its inaugural season in 1997, Symphony Center was christened “The Musical Heart of Chicago,” and while the artists we present bring their amazing musicianship to our stage, it’s you the patrons who make Symphony Center’s musical heart come alive. Whether this is your first visit or you have been a subscriber for many years, thank you for your support of Symphony Center, and I hope you enjoy this concert.

James M. Fahey Director of Programming, Symphony Center Presents

“ art has the immense power to regenerate the soul.”—Riccardo Muti

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Wednesday, May 1, 2019, at 8:00

Chamber Music Series

ITZHAK PERLMAN AND EVGENY KISSINItzhak Perlman ViolinEvgeny Kissin Piano

mozart Violin Sonata in D Major, K. 306Allegro con spiritoAndante cantabileAllegretto

brahms Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 100Allegro amabileAndante tranquilloAllegretto grazioso (Quasi andante)

intermission

beethoven Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 (Kreutzer)Adagio sostenuto—PrestoAndante con variazioniFinale: Presto

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Symphony Center Presents

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wolfgang mozartBorn January 27, 1756; Salzburg, AustriaDied December 5, 1791; Vienna, Austria

Violin Sonata in D Major, K. 306

composed1778

Mozart set out from Salzburg in the fall of 1777 in search of a job in one of the great music centers of Europe. Long frustrated with Salzburg’s provinciality

and the lack of opportunity in his native town, he headed for Mannheim—home of the finest orchestra of the day—with stops planned in the Bavarian capital of Munich and his father’s home-town of Augsburg. During his stay in Munich, he participated in a few concerts; met with musi-cians, noblemen, and civil servants to try and convince them (unsuccessfully) of his suitability for a position at the electoral court; and investi-gated the music the city had to offer. During that time, he posted a packet of scores to his sister with the following note: “I send herewith six duets for clavicembalo and violin by Schuster . . . . If I stay on, I shall write six myself in the same style, as they are very popular here.” What caught Mozart’s attention about Schuster’s pieces was their technique of balancing the musical respon-sibilities more evenly between the violin and the keyboard. Schuster’s music inspired Mozart to compose six duo sonatas at the beginning of the summer, and they were published in Paris as a set. Unfortunately, however, Mozart arrived home in

Salzburg in January of the following year with no brighter career prospects than when he left a year and four months before.

The Sonata in D major, K. 306 is the only one of the six so-called “Mannheim” sonatas written in a conventional fast–slow–fast arrangement; all the others eschew a slow middle movement in favor of a two-movement form. In addition to being the largest in scale of the set, K. 306 also is the most brilliant in manner—a sort of chamber-music pendant to Mozart’s violin concertos of 1775. “This composition,” wrote musicologist Alfred Einstein in his study of Mozart, “is a great concert sonata in which Mozart tries to forget that he is writing for amateurs: brilliant, sonorous, and rich in the first movement; concertante in the Andante and finale.” Though it was composed in Paris, the opening sonata-form movement was greatly influenced by stylistic traits then fashionable in Mannheim: a texture orchestral in breadth; quick, ascending arpeggios in the keyboard (a musical figure aptly nicknamed the “Mannheim rocket”); musical structure that calls for elaborations of previous themes in the central development section; and thematic orders that are reversed. The Andante cantabile, also in sonata form, displays a refined elegance, touching lyricism, and expressive sub-tlety that could not have been conceived by anyone other than Mozart. The finale is a hybrid rondo form that alternates a prim dance strain with a rol-licking opera buffa tune in a different meter.

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johannes brahmsBorn May 7, 1833; Hamburg, GermanyDied April 3, 1897; Vienna, Austria

Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 100

composed1886

For many years, Brahms followed the practice of abandoning the city when the weather grew hot. He spent several happy sum-mers in the hills and lakes of

the Salzkammergut (near Salzburg), but in 1886, his poet and librettist friend, Joseph Widmann, convinced Brahms to join him in the ancient Swiss town of Thun, located in the foothills of the Bernese Alps. Brahms rented a flower-laden villa in the nearby hamlet of Hofstetten and settled in for a long, comfortable summer. The periods away from Vienna were not merely times of relaxation for Brahms, however; they were working holi-days. He composed some of his greatest scores

at various summer retreats; the Second Violin Sonata was written in Hofstetten, and Brahms gave the work an informal reading at Widmann’s house before he returned to Vienna in the fall.

Brahms’s three violin sonatas are works that reflect his fullest maturity. He successfully wrote a scherzo for a collaborative sonata in 1853, but over the following twenty-seven years, began and abandoned four further attempts in the genre. Brahms was almost pathologically secretive about his sketches and unfinished works, virtually all of which he destroyed. His reasons for concentrating on this form at the time may have been personal as well as musical; as each of these works was finished, he sent it as a sort of peace offering to violinist Joseph Joachim, from whom he had been estranged for some time.

The A major violin sonata is one of Brahms’s most limpidly beautiful creations. It has been

nicknamed “Thun” after the place of its composition and “Meistersinger” because of the resemblance of its open-ing motive to the “Prize Song” in Wagner’s opera, but writer Robert Haven Schauffler suggested the most appro-priate appellation: “Song.” Schauffler’s sobriquet notes the score’s richly lyrical nature and recognizes Brahms’s use of several of his own songs as thematic material for the work: the first movement quotes “Komm bald!” (Come soon!) and “Wie Melodien zieht es” (It flows like melo-dies), while the finale recalls

aboveThun, Switzerland, where Brahms visited Joseph Widmann in 1886

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bits of “Auf dem Kirchhofe” (In the church-yard), “Meine Lieder” (My songs), and “Meine Liebe ist Grün” (My love is evergreen). So taken was Brahms’s friend Widmann with the sunlit tenderness of this work that he was inspired to write a ballad, which begins,

There, where the Aar [the river running past Thun] glides softly from the lake down to the little town which it washes, where many a noble tree spreads its shadow, I rolled deep in the long grass and slept, and dreamed through the bright summer day, dreams so delicious that I could hardly describe them . . .

The opening movement is a full sonata struc-ture (the piano initiates both the principal and subsidiary themes), though it contains little of the drama often found in that form. This is music of comforting tranquility and warm sentiment, and is as immediately accessible as any works from Brahms’s later years. With episodes in alternating tempos, the Andante combines the functions of a slow movement and scherzo, a structural modifi-cation Brahms experimented with in other cham-ber music works. The finale confirms the perva-sive lyricism of the entire work to such a degree that the composer’s correspondent, Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, was moved to say, “The whole sonata is one caress.”

ludwig van beethovenBorn December 16, 1770; Bonn, GermanyDied March 26, 1827; Vienna, Austria

Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 (Kreutzer)

composed1803

In May 1803, Beethoven met twenty-three-year-old Polish violin prodigy George Bridgetower in Vienna, and the two got along splendidly from the start. The composer

praised him as “a very capable virtuoso who has a complete command of his instrument.” Beethoven proposed to write a new piece for Bridgetower’s debut in the city and to accompany him at the piano, and he set to work immediately on a sonata that would properly display both executants’ skills. The premiere was a success, and Bridgetower remained in Vienna until July, played to consid-erable acclaim, and spent many evenings with his new buddy, Ludwig van Beethoven.

By all rights, this work, published as Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, should be called the Bridgetower Sonata. According to an interview of Bridgetower,

such was the composer’s original intention, but he added that the two had a quarrel “over a girl,” and Beethoven denied him the dedication in recompense. Instead, the composer inscribed the score to well-known French violinist and com-poser Rodolphe Kreutzer. Beethoven maintained an infrequent correspondence with Kreutzer thereafter, but regarded him as a friend nonethe-less. His dedication seems to have been as much an attempt to insinuate his music with the leading violinist of France as a reward for any musical or personal empathy. Indeed, Kreutzer apparently had little liking for Beethoven’s then avant-garde creations, and refused to play the sonata in pub-lic. For Beethoven, who was shrewd about using dedications for his own professional and social advantage, Kreutzer’s rejection must have induced in him an almost wild frustration.

The Violin Sonata no. 9 in A major was the ninth in a flurry of works Beethoven produced in just a half-dozen years; he did not return to the genre again for a decade. Of the ten-sonata set,

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this is the most brilliant and overtly virtuosic, written, according to the composer, “almost like a concerto.” Beethoven’s sentiment did not mean that the piano was a sort of abbreviated instru-mental ensemble accompanying the solo violin, but rather, that the two play as equals. The key-board writing is inventive and rich in its sonority, while the treatment of the violin passes well beyond the sweetness and elegance of the waning classical manner to adopt an aggressive, fiery, and declamatory style that characterizes Beethoven’s most advanced and audacious works (the Eroica Symphony also dates from 1803). So strongly did this spirit of intense emotional display affect Leo Tolstoy, that he wrote his novel, The Kreutzer Sonata, under its spell.

The first movement of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata is a formal curiosity, beginning with a slow introduction in the home key of A major as a preface to a large sonata structure in the parallel

minor mode. The main theme, given by the violin as part of a transition to a quicker tempo, is a dashing staccato phrase with a vaguely Turkish tint. The chorale-like subsidiary motive pro-vides only a brief respite from the music’s driving impetuosity. There is considerable developmental dialogue between the instruments before the ear-lier themes return. The Andante is a spacious set of variations on a long theme presented in alter-nation by the piano and violin. The flamboyant, tarantella-rhythm finale provides a suitably bril-liant ending to one of the greatest of Beethoven’s instrumental duets.

Richard E. Rodda, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.

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Itzhak Perlman Violin

Undeniably the reigning virtuoso of the violin, Itzhak Perlman enjoys superstar status rarely afforded a classical musician. Beloved for his charm and humanity as well as his talent, he is treasured by audiences throughout the world who

respond not only to his remarkable artistry, but also to his irrepressible joy for music making. In addition to performing with every major orches-tra and at concert halls around the globe, Perlman was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian honor—by President Obama in 2015, a Kennedy Center Honor in 2003, a National Medal of Arts from President Clinton in 2000, and a Medal of Liberty bestowed by President Reagan in 1986. He also has received sixteen Grammy awards, four Emmy awards, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Genesis Prize.

The 2018–19 season marks the sixtieth anni-versary of Perlman’s U.S. debut and appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, which took place in November 1958. He celebrated this milestone with a return to the Ed Sullivan Theater in November 2018 for a special guest appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Perlman made

season-opening gala appearances with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas and the Indianapolis Symphony with Krzysztof Urbánski, and also performed Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Gustavo Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl. Spring concerts include his first performances of duo recitals with Evgeny Kissin in Boston, Washington (D.C.), and New York. Throughout the season, he also makes appearances with longtime collaborator Rohan De Silva in recit-als across North America. This month, Perlman debuts a new program entitled “An Evening with Itzhak Perlman” which captures highlights of his career with the help of narrative and multimedia elements intertwined with performance.

In addition to his engagements as a violinist and conductor, Perlman is increasingly mak-ing more appearances as a speaker. In the fall of 2018, he joined celebrated actor Alan Alda for a conversation at New York’s 92nd Street Y. Itzhak, a recent award-winning documentary on Perlman, premiered in 2017 as the opening film of the twenty-fifth annual Hamptons International Film Festival. It also was shown in over a hundred the-aters nationwide and internationally. Directed by Alison Chernick, the enchanting film details the virtuoso’s own struggles as a polio survivor and Jewish émigré, and is a reminder of why art is vital to life.

itzhakthefilm.com

PHOTO BY LISA MARIE MAZZUCCO

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Evgeny Kissin Piano

Evgeny Kissin’s musicality and extraordinary virtuosity have marked him as one of the most gifted classical pianists of his generation and, arguably, generations past. In demand the world over, he has appeared with many of the world’s great

conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, and Seiji Ozawa, as well as all the great orchestras of the world. Kissin was born in Moscow and began to play by ear and improvise on the piano at the age of two. At six, he entered the Moscow Gnessin School of Music, a special school for gifted children, where he was a student of Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who remains his only teacher. At the age of ten, he made his concerto debut and gave his first solo recital in Moscow one year later. In 1984, he came to international attention when, at twelve years old, he performed Chopin’s piano concertos nos. 1 and 2 at the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow State Philharmonic. Kissin’s first appearances outside Russia were in Eastern Europe in 1985, and he made his first tour of Japan in 1986. Four years later, he made both his first appearance at the BBC Promenade Concerts in London and his North American debut with the New York Philharmonic. The recipient of many international awards and tributes, Kissin has won Osaka Symphony Hall’s Crystal Prize for Best Performance of the Year; the Musician of the Year Prize from the Chigiana Academy of Music in Siena, Italy; the Shostakovich Award, one of Russia’s highest musical honors; and was Musical America’s

youngest-ever Instrumentalist of the Year. He was a special guest at the 1992 Grammy Awards ceremony, which was broadcast live to an esti-mated audience of over a billion viewers. In 1997, Kissin was the youngest-ever recipient of Russia’s prestigious Triumph Award, for his outstanding contribution to Russian culture, one of the highest honors to be awarded in the Russian Republic. He also has received an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music; an honorary mem-bership in the Royal Academy of Music in London; and most recently, an honorary doctorate of letters from Hong Kong University.

Kissin’s newest album release features sonatas by Beethoven (Deutsche Grammophon). His pre-vious recordings have received numerous awards and accolades, and Kissin was named ECHO KLASSIK Soloist of the Year in 2002. His record-ing of works by Scriabin, Medtner, and Stravinsky (RCA Red Seal) won him a 2006 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist, and he received another Grammy in 2010 for his recording of Prokofiev’s piano concertos nos. 2 and 3 with the Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI Classics). Kissin’s extraordinary talent inspired Christopher Nupen’s documentary film, Evgeny Kissin: The Gift of Music (2000, RCA Red Seal). During the 2018–19 season, Kissin gives solo recitals in Vancouver and San Francisco before embarking on an extensive tour of Asia, which includes recitals in Taipei, Hong Kong, Seoul, Yokohama, Tokyo, and Osaka, as well as a tour of Japan with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons and an appearance with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. In Europe, he performs with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Czech and Berlin phil-harmonics, and several other ensembles. Kissin also tours major European and North American cities with a solo recital program of music by Chopin, Schumann, Debussy, and Scriabin.

PHOTO BY SASHA GUSOV

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May CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA RICCARDO MUTI Zell Music Director

SYMPHONY CENTER PRESENTS

CSO: May 2–7Muti Conducts Respighi Pines of Rome & Berlioz The Death of CleopatraRiccardo Muti conductorJoyce DiDonato mezzo-soprano

CSO Chamber Music: May 5the art institute of chicago Celebrating Latin American ArtWinter Quartet Gina DiBello violinSo Young Bae violinDanny Lai violaKatinka Kleijn celloWorks by Ginastera, Piazzolla & more

CSO: May 9–11Muti, Uchida & MozartRiccardo Muti conductorMitsuko Uchida piano

Family: May 11Once Upon a Symphony®:The Boy and the Violin,a Brazilian FolktaleMembers of theChicago Symphony Orchestra

Piano: May 12Evgeny KissinWorks by Chopin, Schumann, Debussy & more

Civic Orchestra: May 12Strauss and CerroneKen-David Masur conductorThird Coast Percussion soloists

CSO: May 16–21 Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2 & Hahn Plays Sibelius Violin ConcertoMikko Franck conductorHilary Hahn violin

Family: May 18Pictures from an ExhibitionMembers of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Thomas Wilkins conductor

MusicNOW: May 20harris theater for music and danceBreak AwayWorks by Eastman, Monk & Montgomery

CSO: May 23–26Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez & Piazzolla Sinfonía Buenos AiresGiancarlo Guerrero conductorPablo Sáinz Villegas guitar

Jazz: May 24Two Wings: The Music of Black America in MigrationJason Moran pianoAlicia Hall Moran mezzo-sopranoPastor Smokie Norful piano and vocalsImani Winds Kenwood Academy Jazz Band Joseph Joubert music director

CSO: May 30–June 1Stravinsky & The Joffrey BalletMatthias Pintscher conductorThe Joffrey Ballet Works by Stravinsky, Rossini & Ravel

evgeny kissin hilary hahn thomas wilkinsriccardo muti

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