CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 8:00 PM

“sweep, intensity, and incisiveness”—Chicago Tribune

“I have become lost to the world” is one of five Friedrich Rückert poems that Mahler set to music in Rückert Lieder, which captures the intense and ineffable yearning of 1901 Vienna. Composed in the same spirit as Mahler, Webern’s Summer Wind is a lushly romantic orchestral tone poem written well before the composer’s more famous modernist works.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, Principal Conductor
Christianne Stotijn, Mezzo-Soprano

WEBERN Im Sommerwind
MAHLER Rückert Lieder
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 9, "Great"

Program Notes:

ANTON WEBERN (1883–1945)
In Sommerwind

In the years immediately following Anton Webern’s death, he became something of a cult figure, revered as the composer of 31 short, little-known pieces unparalleled in their modernist rigor and austerity. (His entire catalog can be performed in less than four hours.) Then, 16 years after his death, music Webern never expected us to hear suddenly surfaced—music he had written before his Op. 1, the 1908 Passacaglia for orchestra that is the first work he was willing to acknowledge. In 1961, the composer’s daughter turned over several unknown early works to the scholar Hans Moldenhauer, including the score of Im Sommerwind, an expansive paragraph of romantic painting for large orchestra composed in 1904. Although Webern had never attempted to suppress the piece—in fact, he often showed it to his students to demonstrate his evolution as a composer—he never considered publishing it, and he never heard it performed.

Im Sommerwind is not a student work, but a final essay, confident and beautifully polished, in the language Webern was raised on. Webern was born the year Wagner died. He and his boyhood friend Ernst Diez shared an enthusiasm for all things Wagnerian and went to Graz to see Tristan und Isolde in 1901. When Webern graduated from the Gymnasium in Klagenfurt in 1902, his father gave him a trip to Bayreuth as a present. Webern was overwhelmed by Parsifal: “In the face of such magnificence, one can only sink to one’s knees and pray in silent devotion,” he said. Among Webern’s earliest surviving works are several songs on texts by Wagner’s nephew Ferdinand Avenarius. In 1903, he wrote a ballad for voice and orchestra titled Siegfried’s Sword. Im Sommerwind, which followed the next year, is the last, and largest, of Webern’s early Wagner-influenced works—the pieces the mature Webern would turn against, without, however, ever denying their value either as music or as an invaluable document of his past.

Webern composed Im Sommerwind during the late summer of 1904 at his family’s large country estate in Carinthia. He was not yet 21 years old. “We stayed there very happily during our summer vacations,” Webern’s sister later wrote of their beloved childhood haunt. “We spent the whole day in the meadows, fields, and forest … My brother had as much fun at this as the other children who often came visiting.” Like his contemporary Mahler, who also got ideas for music when he was absorbed in nature, Webern began to sketch a new piece during the summer of 1904. Webern’s score, an idyll in D major for large romantic orchestra, reaffirms his early devotion to Wagner. It also suggests how deeply attracted he was to the new music by Arnold Schoenberg, whose Transfigured Night he had recently heard for the first time.

Webern finished the first draft of Im Sommerwind on August 5; the full score was completed on September 16. In October, he and another young composer named Alban Berg began studying with Schoenberg, who had decided to take on pupils. A new chapter in music history had been opened. And with that, Webern quietly shut the door on his musical past.


GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911)
Rückert Lieder

On June 5, 1901, Mahler moved into his new house at Maiernigg, where he would spend the next seven summers. He began to write songs almost the day he arrived—the first sketch of “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft” is dated June 9—and, although he eventually threw himself into the composition of a new symphony (his fifth), he was preoccupied with songs all summer long.

Of all Mahler’s summer holidays, none was as productive as this—he finished two movements of his Fifth Symphony and seven of his greatest songs, including four settings of texts by the German romantic poet Friedrich Rückert. He had hoped to take a few days off before returning to Vienna, but he was suddenly drawn to one more Rückert poem that he had wanted to set all summer. On August 16 he finished “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” one of his most deeply personal works.

Mahler’s time back in Vienna proved to be unexpectedly happy. At a dinner party in November, Mahler met 22-year-old Alma Schindler, the daughter of the popular Austrian landscape painter Emil Jacob Schindler. Their relationship quickly grew more intimate, and within four months they were married. The next August, back in Maiernigg with his new wife, Mahler set one last Rückert poem as a love song for Alma: “Liebst du um Schönheit.”

The range of these five songs is extraordinary. Several reveal a fragile and highly personal lyricism that had begun to run through Mahler’s music at the time. “Blicke mir night in die Lieder” was the first of Rückert’s poems that Mahler set. With its perpetual-motion accompaniment, buzzing like the bees in the poem’s second stanza, and lilting melody, it’s all unassuming charm.

“Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft” calls for only a few instruments, and Mahler uses them sparingly and with great restraint; the vocal line is yet another thread in his cool and transparent counterpoint. Mahler told a friend that the song captured “the way one feels in the presence of a beloved being of whom one is completely sure without a single word needing to be spoken.”

In “Um Mitternacht,” Mahler dispenses with the strings entirely, using the winds and brass with astonishing economy, poetry, and, ultimately, power. (The plaintive oboe d’amore, so rarely called for, is like a cry from the heart.) This is one of Mahler’s grandest and most theatrical songs, with a climax of almost operatic splendor.

“Liebst du um Schönheit” is the most conventional in its melodic outline and hymnlike accompaniment, since it was intended as no more than a little love song for Alma. Mahler sketched it for voice and piano and saw no reason to orchestrate it. Later, at the publisher’s request, Max Puttman rendered its relatively straightforward accompaniment in orchestral colors.

“Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” with its hushed harmonies and hesitant arpeggios, is like no other work in Mahler’s output. Mahler was overwhelmingly drawn to the image of man’s withdrawal from the hubbub of the world, and Rückert’s poem inspired some of his most restrained and profound music. This was one of the first things Mahler wrote in the composing hut at Maiernigg. Loneliness and contentment, love and longing all seem to coexist unforgettably in a few fragile lines of music. “It is I myself,” Mahler said of the song.


FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)
Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944, “Great”

When Franz Schubert died at the age of 31, the legal inventory of his property listed articles of clothing and bed linens. “Apart from some old music besides,” the report concluded, “no belongings of the deceased are to be found.” Some old music, as it turned out, referred to a few used music books and not to his manuscripts. Those were with his dear friend Franz von Schober, who later entrusted them to Schubert’s brother Ferdinand.

On New Year’s Day 1837, Robert Schumann found himself in Vienna and thought to go to the Währing Cemetery to visit the graves of Beethoven and Schubert. On his way home, he remembered that Ferdinand still lived in Vienna and decided to pay him a visit, where he “allowed me to see those treasured compositions of Schubert’s which he still possesses.”

There, among the piles, lay a heavy volume of 130 pages, dated March 1828 at the top of the first sheet. The manuscript, including the date and a number of corrections, is entirely in Schubert’s hand, which often appears to have been flying as fast as his pen could go. The work, a symphony in C, Schubert’s last and greatest, had never been performed.

Robert Schumann was a thoughtful, perceptive man, and an unusually astute judge of music. He knew a work of genius when he saw one, and he quickly sent it off to the director of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig, where Mendelssohn conducted the first performance on March 21, 1839.

Many earlier writers, including Schumann and Donald Tovey, have written eloquently and at considerable length of this symphony’s greatness. Today the music more easily speaks for itself. Schubert’s broad canvas is no longer thought oversized, and his peerless, ineffable way with a melody can carry the new listener through many difficulties.

The first movement begins with an Andante of such weight and nobility that it is inadequately described as an introduction. That bold—yet quiet—opening horn call has a marked influence on many of the allegro themes to come, and then returns, at the movement’s end, loudly proclaiming its success. The entire Allegro reveals a sweeping rhythmic vitality unparalleled in Schubert’s work.

The slow movement sings of tragedy, which later raised its voice in Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise and surfaces again and again in the music of his last years. Seldom has Schubert’s fondness for shifting from the major to the minor mode carried such weight; here each hopeful thought is ultimately contradicted, gently but decisively. There is a sublime moment when the horn, as if from the distance, quietly calls everything into question with the repeated tolling of a single note. And then later, Schubert builds inexorably to a climax so wrenching that everything stops before sputtering back to life.

The Scherzo and its lovely trio midsection, with their wealth of dance tunes, remind us that Schubert would gladly improvise dance music for others, while he, with his lousy eyesight and unfortunate height (barely five feet) sat safely at the piano all night.

Schubert launches his finale with the kind of energetic, fearless music that appears to charge onward with only an occasional push from the composer. But Schubert, like Mozart, is a master of deceptive simplicity, luring unsuspecting performers into countless pitfalls and allowing generations of listeners to cherish the image of the brilliant composer—all inspiration and no sweat.

—Phillip Huscher

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Adapted from comments written for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, Principal Conductor
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s distinguished 118-year history began in 1891 when Theodore Thomas, then the leading conductor in America and a recognized music pioneer, was invited by Charles Norman Fay to establish a symphony orchestra in Chicago. Thomas served as music director for 13 years until his death in 1905—just three weeks after the dedication of Orchestra Hall, the Chicago Orchestra’s permanent home.

Thomas’s successor was Frederick Stock, who began his career in the viola section in 1895 and became assistant conductor four years later. His tenure at the Orchestra’s helm lasted 37 years, from 1905 to 1942. Three distinguished conductors headed the Orchestra during the following decade: Désiré Defauw was music director from 1943 to 1947; Artur Rodzinski assumed the post in 1947–1948; and Rafael Kubelík led the Orchestra for three seasons from 1950 to 1953.

The next 10 years belonged to Fritz Reiner, whose recordings with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are still considered performance hallmarks. For the five seasons from 1963 to 1968, Jean Martinon held the position of music director.

Sir Georg Solti, the Orchestra’s eighth music director, served from 1969 until 1991. He held the title of music director laureate and returned to conduct the Orchestra for several weeks each season until his death in September 1997.

In January 1989, the CSO began a new collaboration with Daniel Barenboim as he was named music director designate. Mr. Barenboim assumed leadership as the Orchestra’s ninth music director in September 1991, a position he held until June 2006.

On May 5, 2008, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association announced the appointment of Riccardo Muti as its tenth Music Director. Muti became Music Director Designate in January 2009, and he begins a five-year contract as Music Director in September 2010.

Two of the world’s most celebrated conductors assumed titled positions with the Chicago Symphony beginning with the 2006–2007 season. Eminent Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink became the Orchestra’s new principal conductor, and French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez—the CSO’s Helen Regenstein Principal Guest Conductor since 1995—became the Orchestra’s Conductor Emeritus.

Christianne Stotijn, Mezzo-Soprano
Christianne Stotijn received a solo diploma for violin from the Amsterdam Conservatory in 2000. She pursued vocal studies in Metz, London, and Amsterdam, where, under the supervision of Udo Reinemann, she graduated in 2003 with the highest distinction. Since then, her vocal coaches have included Noelle Barker, Udo Reinemann, and Jard van Nes. She currently is being coached by Dame Janet Baker.

Ms. Stotijn has worked with such celebrated conductors as René Jacobs, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Andrew Davis, Jaap van Zweden, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Philippe Herreweghe, Hartmut Haenchen, Frans Brüggen, Marc Minkowski, and Mark Wigglesworth. She has performed with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik, the Orchestre des Champs- Élysées, Orchestre National de France, Concerto Köln, Sinfonietta Amsterdam, Teatro alla Scala, Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, the Residentie Orchestra, and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition, she has appeared at several international festivals including the Delft Chamber Music Festival, Gergiev Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron, and the Festival d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence, as well as at the London Proms.

Ms. Stotijn is an ardent performer of songs, working, within the chamber music context, with her regular duo partners Joseph Breinl and Julius Drake. With them, she has appeared in the world’s premier concert halls ranging from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, and the Vienna Musikverein to Carnegie Hall, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Mozarteum Salzburg, and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels.

In opera, Ms. Stotijn has appeared at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, La Monnaie, the Netherlands Opera, and the Paris Opera. Her current and upcoming engagements include appearances at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden; La Monnaie; Bilbao Opera; and at the Teatro Municipal de Santiago in Chile.

Among her awards are the 2005–2006 ECHO Rising Stars Award, the 2005 Borletti Buitoni Award, and the 2008 Dutch Music Prize. She also is a BBC New Generation Artist.