Program

Thursday, February 13, 2014, at 8:00 Tuesday, February 18, 2014, at 7:30

Nicholas mcgegan ConductorVivica genaux Mezzo-sopranoHandelConcerto grosso in G Major, Op. 6, No. 1A tempo giusto—AllegroAdagioAllegroAllegro

Four ariasVivaldiAlma oppressa da sorte crudele from La fida ninfaPorporaOh volesser gli Dei . . . Dolci, freschi aurette from PolifemoPorporaOr la nube procellosaBroschiQual guerriero in campo armato from Idaspe

ViViCA GeNAux

iNtermissioN

J.C. BachSymphony in G Minor, Op. 6, No. 6AllegroAndante più tosto adagioAllegro molto

HaydnSymphony No. 100 in G Major (Military)Adagio—AllegroAllegrettoModeratoPresto

These are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first performances of all the works on this program except Haydn’s Military Symphony.

Global Sponsor of the CSO

ONe HuNDreD TweNTy-THirD SeASON

Chicago symphony orchestrariccardo muti Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen regenstein Conductor emeritusYo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant

CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to 93XRT, RedEye, and Metromix for their generous support as media sponsors of the Classic Encounter Series.This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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CommeNts by Phillip Huscher

george Frideric HandelBorn February 23, 1685, Halle, Saxony, Germany.Died April 14, 1759, London, England.

Concerto grosso in g major, op. 6, No. 1

ComPoseDOctober 1739

First PerFormaNCedate unknown

First Cso PerFormaNCesThese are the fi rst CSO performances.

iNstrumeNtatioNconcertino (two violins and cello); two oboes, strings, and continuo

aPProXimate PerFormaNCe time12 minutes

Unlike his contemporaries Bach (born just nineteen days later), Vivaldi, and Telemann, Handel has never gone out of fashion. His oratorio Messiah has helped to keep his name alive, of course. But other pieces, such as the majestic aria “Ombra mai

fu,” from the opera Serse (better known to amateur pianists and greatest-hits record produc-ers as Handel’s Largo), the lively set of pieces he wrote to accompany an evening of fi reworks, and his engaging suites of Water Music, also have been widely performed, even in times when baroque music was neither well known nor appreciated.

Handel was among the most popular compos-ers of his day, and, particularly after he visited London in 1710 and then moved there for good in 1712, he commanded a huge following and was in great demand both as a composer and a performer—he excelled on organ and harpsichord—for the rest of his life. (After he became a British subject in 1727, he started spelling his name George Frideric Handel rather than the Georg Friederich Händel which appears on his birth certifi cate.)

Raised in northern Germany, where he received a thorough music education (and became a friend of Telemann), and later trained in the operatic business in Italy, Handel arrived in London an unusually cosmopolitan composer. Determined to make a name for himself with London’s opera-going public, he succeeded with his fi rst attempt, Rinaldo, which not only included much dazzling music (some of it

borrowed from works he had written in Italy), but also real spectacle as well, including, in one aria, the release of a fl ock of sparrows that set the audience buzzing. Opera after opera, hit after hit followed. But by the late 1730s, Handel realized that the London public was losing interest in Italian opera. In 1738, he decided to conclude his career as an opera composer; Serse, with its hit Largo, was supposed to be his last opera. It wasn’t quite, as it turned out, but Handel had decisively shifted his attention to oratorio and instrumental music.

O n October 29, 1739, the London Daily Post advertised twelve “Grand Concertos” by Handel which would be printed on “good Paper” and delivered to subscribers in April. One hundred subscribers replied, enough to fund the undertaking, and the following spring, Handel’s op. 6 was released, quickly becoming one of his most popular works. Handel was not only prolifi c; he was fast. Apparently he composed the entire set—twelve concertos, each with four to six movements, for a combined total of sixty-two movements—in a single month. (And, despite Handel’s reputation as an avid recycler, who was particularly apt to reuse older material on a tight deadline, most of the music in this collection appears to be entirely new.) Th e set was consciously modeled on the op. 6 collection of concerti grossi by Arcangelo Corelli, which had become a hit with London audiences after its publication in 1714. Handel’s concertos are even scored for Corelli’s preferred solo ensemble (the concertino) of two violins and cello set against an orchestra entirely of strings. (Handel later added oboes to selected concertos,

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including the first one that is performed this week; they essentially double the orchestral violins.) Like Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, the set as a whole is not only a brilliant distillation of the various kinds of music of its day, but it shows its composer at the peak of his powers.

E ach of Handel’s twelve concertos has its own form. The first one, in G major, centers on a dignified

adagio that is a kind of grand opera aria without words. The concerto begins with stately music that apparently was originally planned as the overture to the opera Imeneo. It is followed directly by a vigorous alle- gro characterized by the lively and often unpredictable interplay between concertino and full ensemble. After the central adagio, Handel places a rapid fugal movement and, to conclude, a brilliant dancelike finale.

Four arias

antonio VivaldiBorn March 4, 1678, Venice, Italy.Died July 28, 1741, Venice, Italy.

alma oppressa da sorte crudele from La fida ninfa

First PerFormaNCeJanuary 6, 1732; Verona, italy

Nicola PorporaBorn August 17, 1686, Naples, Italy.Died March 3, 1768, Naples, Italy.

oh volesser gli Dei . . . Dolci, freschi aurette from Polifemo

First PerFormaNCeFebruary 1, 1735; London, england

or la nube procellosa, added to Johann Hasse’s Artaserse

First PerFormaNCe1734, London

riccardo BroschiBorn ca. 1698, Naples, Italy.Died 1756, Madrid, Spain.

Qual guerriero in campo armato from Idaspe

First PerFormaNCe1730; Venice, italy

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T here have been several so-called golden ages of singing, but there has been no era to rival the early years of the eighteenth century. Th is was a time when singers developed astounding technical skills that have rarely been matched since, and composers vied to write their fi nest music to accommodate and challenge the great stars’ abilities. Th e public simply could not get enough of it. Th e most celebrated singers, like the legendary castrato Farinelli, were idolized in a way that has rarely been matched in later times—arguably only by Paganini, the virtuoso violinist, and Liszt, the titan of the keyboard—until such widespread popularity, audience pandemonium, and full-scale celebrity treatment became the province of pop superstars.

All four of the arias performed at this concert were composed around 1730—the very heart of this great virtuoso era. Of the many composers writing opera at the time, Antonio Vivaldi is the one whose music is still most highly regarded today. He was certainly the most original, popular, and infl uential Italian composer of his time. Today, Vivaldi’s fame rests mainly on his many concertos, especially Th e Four Seasons, but Vivaldi thought of himself primarily as an opera composer. He was one of the most prolifi c composers of opera in his time; his output is even larger than Handel’s. La fi da ninfa was written for the opening of Verona’s Teatro Filarmonico in January of 1732. Its remarkably fl orid aria, “Alma oppressa,” composed for the soprano Giovanna Gasparini, shows Vivaldi’s genius for placing an almost-instrumental kind of virtuoso vocal line—often propelled by long, unbroken strings of rapid-fi re sixteenth notes—completely at the service of dramatic expression.

T he greatest star of the day was Farinelli, among the earliest of music’s one-name sensations; the remaining three arias on this program were all identifi ed with him. Born Carlo Broschi in January 1705, in Andria, Apulia, he studied primarily with Nicola Porpora, in whose Angelica e Medoro he made his stage debut in Naples in 1720, in the small role of a shepherd. (He may have received some early training at home from his older brother, Riccardo Broschi, the composer of the fi nal aria on this program.) He took his stage name from a Neapolitan magistrate, Farina, who later was

his patron. He quickly became not only the most admired of all the Italian castrato singers—that long-ago abandoned tradition which, through the art of surgery on prepubescent boys, allows them to continue to sing easily and brilliantly in the female range as adult men—but the greatest opera sensation in Europe. Beginning in 1729, Farinelli turned down several off ers to appear in England—including one from Handel—but in 1734, he fi nally added that great music center to his list of conquests. Farinelli retired from the stage in 1737 and moved to Madrid, at the request of the queen, who hoped that his singing could cure the depression of Philip V. Every night until the king’s death in 1746, Farinelli sere-naded him with arias—three to nine, according to various accounts, and reputedly always including the same two arias by Johann Hasse. (Reports on the king’s improvement also vary.) Farinelli, who was himself used to being treated like royalty, was now a “royal servant” to the king, and he lived out his days in luxury.

J.J. Quantz, who was celebrated as the fi n-est fl ute player in Europe and was the author of an important performance treatise, fi rst heard Farinelli in the 1720s: “His intonation was pure, his trill beautiful, his breath control extraordinary, and his throat very agile, so that he performed even the widest intervals quickly and with the greatest ease and certainty.” Not only was his technique unparalleled—there was, apparently, no music too ornate for him to master—but his vocal range was huge: in the same opera he might sing one aria in the alto register and another as a high soprano.

Farinelli became a legend even during his life-time. Impresarios fought over him and compos-ers vied to write music for him to sing. Women

Antonio Vivaldi

Nicola Porpora

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craved his attention and men—aside from the novelist Henry Fielding, who called him “Fairbelly”—admired his popularity and envied his appeal. After he retired, his fame diminished, but it has never died. Right up to our own time, he has been the subject of books, novels, and even operas—many of them surprisingly loose with the facts, given how extraordinary and riv-eting the true tale of his life and career is. A 1994 film, Farinelli, recounted and further embellished his story (it won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1995). The trappings of celebrity apparently never went to Farinelli’s head. As the great historian Charles Burney wrote: “Of almost all other great singers, we hear of their intoxication by praise and prosperity, and of their caprice, insolence, and absurdities, at some time or other; but of Farinelli, superior to them all in talents, fame, and fortune, the records of folly among the spoilt children of Apollo furnish not one disgraceful anecdote.”

A s Farinelli’s main singing teacher, the composer Nicola Porpora was ideally suited to write music precisely tailored to his former student’s voice and rare technical abilities. In 1735, Farinelli created the role of the mythical shepherd Acis in Porpora’s Polifemo, an opera that suited the current rage for pastoral subjects. In his extended recitative and the aria “Dolci, freschi aurette,” Acis prays that these “sweet, fresh breezes” will calm him and bring his beloved Galatea back to his side.

In 1730, the German composer Johann Hasse had a huge success in Venice with his opera Artaserse, starring Farinelli as Arbace, who faces

unfounded accusations that he has murdered the king. For a performance in 1734 that introduced Farinelli to London audi-ences, Hasse’s opera was turned into a pastiche, with inserted arias by several composers, including “Or la nube procellosa” by Porpora, to give Farinelli an even bigger showcase. Porpora’s bright, dance-like aria was intended as the work’s finale, as the two young lovers look toward a cloudless future, after the turmoil they have survived.

Riccardo Broschi is best known as Farinelli’s brother and as a composer of music custom-made to showcase the family superstar. Like Artaserse, Broschi’s opera Idaspe was written for the 1730 Venice Carnevale. Farinelli starred as a prince who has gone undercover as a Persian general. His showstopper aria, “Qual guerriero in campo armato,” in which he depicts his love-torn heart as a warrior on the battlefield, is an Olympian display that was clearly designed to exhibit every technical feat in Farinelli’s arsenal—agility, breath control, range—and produce the kind of vocal fireworks that are a rarity in any era.

Farinelli

alma oPPressa Da sorte CruDele From LA fIdA nInfA

Alma oppressa da sorte crudelePensa invan mitigare il doloreCon amore, ch’è un altro dolor.Deh raccogli al pensiero le vele,E se folle non sei, ti dia penaLa catena del piè, e non del cor.

—Scipione Maffei

A soul weighed down by cruel fatein vain thinks of lessening its grief with love, which is another grief.Collect your thoughts, and if you are not foolish, then let your paincome from chains round your feet, not your heart.

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oH Volesser gli Dei . . . DolCi, FresCHi aurette From PoLIfemo

recitativeOh volesser gli Dei,al senno ed all’valor d’uomin’ sì fieri,dell’empio mostro destinar la morte.Ma già il carro del sol segue l’aurora,e sovra la conchiglia inargentatagalleggiar su la calmala bella Galatea non veggio ancora.Quella selvetta è l’amato suo soggiorno,e quel sasso muscoso,onde il ruscello il piè d’argento scioglie,spesso a fresco riposola bianca diva accoglie.Deh, seguimi o Fortuna,dov’ella vien per semplice diletto.Ahi lasso! e me trae disperato affetto.

Dolci freschi aurette grateInvitate sulla calmaIl bel Idol di quest’almaCh’io la torni a vagheggiar.Fronde tremule sussurantiOnde limpide mormorantiLa mia diva all’ombra amateAllettate a ritornar.

—Paolo Antonio Rolli

or la NuBe ProCellosa

Or la nube procellosaDi minaccie, e sdegni pienaDalla fronte tua serenaMio bel sole sparirà.I disastri più crudeliCompensato m’hanno i CieliCon la vaga tua beltà.

—Metastasio

Qual guerriero iN CamPo armato From IdAsPe

Qual guerriero in campo armatoPien di forza e di valoreNel mio core innamoratoSdgeno e amor fanno battaglia.Il timor del dubbio eventoIl dolore ed il cimentoL’alma mia confonde ed abbaglia.

—G.P. Candi and D. Lalli

Now the stormy cloudFull of angry menaceFrom your clear brow,My lovely sun, will vanish.For the most cruel of calamitiesThe heavens have compensated meWith your charming beauty.

—Charles Johnston

Like an armed warrior on the battlefieldFull of strength and courage,In my love-stricken heartDisdain and love do battle.Fear of the doubtful outcome,Grief and hazardous trial,Confuse and delude my soul.

—Charles Johnston

recitativeAh, would only the godswho proudly look at human sense and valor,decree the godless monster’s death.But already the sun is following dawn, and yet I cannot see in silvery shellfair Galatea floatacross the placid waves.This grove is her beloved resting place,and here, this mossy boulder,where the stream gets on its way with silver foot,often receives the white goddessfor cool repose.Oh, Fortune, follow me,where she enjoys her simple leisure.Alas! I’m drawn along by desperate passion.

Sweet, cool, pleasant breezes, Invite to calmThe lovely idol of my soul,That I may gaze upon her fondly once more.Whispering aspen leaves,Clear murmuring waters,Entice my goddess to return To the beloved shade.

—Charles Johnston

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Johann Christian BachBorn September 5, 1735, Leipzig, Germany.Died January 1, 1782, London, England.

symphony in g minor, op. 6, No. 6

ComPoseDbefore 1769

First PerFormaNCedate unknown

First Cso PerFormaNCesThese are the fi rst CSO performances.

iNstrumeNtatioNtwo oboes, two horns, strings, and continuo

aPProXimate PerFormaNCe time16 minutes

Th e Bach family was the most astonishing musical dynasty we have ever known. For three centu-ries, men named Bach (and sometimes Baach) were village fi ddlers, town musicians, court organ-ists, and kapellmeisters. From Veit Bach, a

sixteenth-century baker who was the fi rst member of the family to show musical talent, to Johann Philipp Bach, an organist who died in 1846, one can trace the lives of eighty-some musicians on the family tree. Th e family’s achievement peaked in the eighteenth century with the music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach and his sons.

J ohann Christian was the eleventh of thirteen children born to Johann Sebastian Bach and his second wife, Anna Magdalena. He was their youngest son. At the age of eight or nine, Johann Christian began to study music with his celebrated father; he was only fourteen when his father died in 1750 (he inherited a sizeable portion of the estate, including three harpsichords). He then went to Berlin to live with his half-brother Carl Philipp Emanuel and to study composition and keyboard play-ing with him. Four years later, he set off for Italy, where he studied with the renowned Padre Giambattista Martini, whose pupils included Gluck and Mozart. In 1760, Bach was named organist at the Milan Cathedral.

In 1762, Bach went to London to write operas and ended up staying for the rest of his life. When the Mozart family passed through London in 1764, Bach met the eight-year-old Wolfgang

and they became friends. Years later, after Mozart’s death, his sister Nannerl recalled how “Herr Johann Christian Bach, music master of the queen, took Wolfgang between his knees. He would play a few measures; then Wolfgang would continue. In this manner they played entire sona-tas. Unless you saw it with your own eyes, you would swear that just one person was playing.” When the two composers met again in Paris in 1778, Mozart, now a mature composer himself, wrote home to his father praising Bach’s music. Johann Christian Bach and his compositions were highly regarded in London, and in the mid-1770s, Bach sat for his friend and master painter Th omas Gainsborough, who preserved the face of London society on canvas for posterity (Gainsborough’s portrait of J.C. Bach appears left).

Th e last years of Bach’s life were unhappy. His housekeeper absconded with most of his money, and for the fi rst time, he found himself in fi nan-cial diffi culty. His health began to decline and his music dwindled in popularity. After his death in 1782, London was more interested in the newer scores by Haydn and Mozart. In the words of a certain Mrs. Papendiek, Johann Christian Bach “was forgotten almost before he was called to the doom of us all, and every recollection of him seems buried in oblivion.” Queen Charlotte Sophia, the wife of George III, paid for his funeral and guaranteed his widow a pension. Mozart saw in the death of the “English Bach,” as he called him, “a loss to the musical world.”

A lthough Johann Christian Bach excelled at writing operas—unlike his famous father—he also was the composer of works for keyboard, church music and oratorios, and music for orchestra. During Bach’s lifetime, the distinction between opera overtures and

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orchestral symphonies was ambiguous; both were in three movements (fast-slow-fast) and both contained music of significance. His set of six short symphonies later published as op. 6 dates from his early years in London. The last symphony in the set, in G minor—it is Bach’s only symphony in a minor key—is one of the most remarkable works in his output. For a composer who almost always wrote music in a major key, this symphony is exceptional in

that all three of its movements are in the minor mode. Its centerpiece is an unusually expansive, graceful, and expressive slow movement. The two brisk outer movements are full of high drama. Bach’s symphony is one of the first important pieces in G minor that has come down to us, soon followed, perhaps not coincidentally, by Mozart’s so-called Little G minor symphony, K. 183, composed in 1773 and often considered a turning point in his own development.

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Joseph HaydnBorn March 31, 1732, Rohrau, Lower Austria.Died May 31, 1809, Vienna.

symphony No. 100 in g major (military)

ComPoseD1794

First PerFormaNCeMarch 31, 1794; London, england

First Cso PerFormaNCesNovember 23 & 24, 1939, Orchestra Hall. Hans Lange conducting

most reCeNt Cso PerFormaNCesJune 7, 8 & 9, 1990, Orchestra Hall. Klaus Tennstedt conducting

iNstrumeNtatioNtwo fl utes, two oboes, two clarinets [in the second movement only], two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets,

timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, strings

aPProXimate PerFormaNCe time22 minutes

London knew Haydn’s music as early as 1765, when some of his string quartets were advertised under the name “Haydri.” By the time he visited England for the fi rst time in 1791, not only had the printers got his name right, but the public knew

him as the greatest of composers. Th at visit, which introduced six brilliant new symphonies—the fi rst half of the set we now call the London Symphonies—was a huge, though not unex-pected, success. Th e concerts were the talk of London, and Haydn, who had spent the last thirty years in private practice, writing to satisfy the demands of the Esterházy family, now enjoyed great public acclaim. A second visit was inevitable.

Eighteen months separate Haydn’s two London sojourns. Back in Vienna, where, like so many important composers in history, he was treated with indiff erence, he began to write the symphonies with which he would reconquer London, perhaps even surpassing his fi rst success. Few external events in his life had stimulated him like the stay in London. He was full of fresh, new ideas. And he now knew that the audience there was as sophisticated as any in the musical world.

H aydn arrived back in London on February 4, 1794, with his full-time copyist, Johann Elssler; abundant baggage; the completed score of Symphony

no. 99; and parts of nos. 100 and 101. Symphony no. 99 was played just fi ve days after he arrived; Haydn quickly set to work preparing the other two. No. 101 was ready fi rst and performed on March 3; Symphony no. 100 was given at Hanover Square on March 31, Haydn’s sixty-second birthday, and it off ered Haydn a birthday present no money could buy: the great-est single success of his whole life. Th e second movement, a “slow” movement interrupted by the terrifying sounds of battle, gave the entire sym-phony its Military nickname and sent the crowds into pandemonium. Even the critic at the April 7 repeat performance could not contain himself:

Another new Symphony, by Haydn, was performed for the second time; and the middle movement was again received with absolute shouts of applause. Encore! encore! encore! resounded from every seat: the ladies themselves could not forbear. It is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded, and what may well be called the hellish roar of war increase to a climax of horrid sublimity! which, if others can conceive, he alone can execute; at least he alone hitherto has eff ected these wonders.

We have heard a lot of music inspired by war since then, but this movement still packs a punch. One can only imagine the surprise of the 1794 audiences who did not expect to fi nd noisy military music—scored for the so-called Turkish ensemble of triangle, cymbals, and bass

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drum, and joined by trumpets and timpani—in the middle of a new work by their beloved Haydn. The trumpet plays an actual army call, known at the time as the Austrian General Salute and reportedly in use as recently as the 1930s. There also is a grand, ominous timpani roll. The music which Haydn interrupts with these sounds of battle is adapted from the slow movement of a concerto for lira organizzata (a kind of hurdy-gurdy) he wrote in 1786 for the king of Naples.

The other movements are less sensational, but no less admirable. Haydn begins with a slow introduction, by now the rule in all his major-key symphonies. The first theme of the Allegro proper is scored for flute and oboes alone, an arresting effect and further proof that, even after writing some one hundred symphonies, Haydn had not run out of new and catchy ideas.

The minuet—the first movement Haydn wrote, while still back in Vienna—is remarkably slow,

precisely because the preceding movement, the symphony’s official “slow” movement, is not. The finale, which eventually became as popular as the military movement, includes a number of surprises no less notable than the famous one that gave its name to Symphony no. 94. But even to those who are well versed in the classical style, Haydn always is the master of the unexpected, the composer who never ran out of ways to breathe new life into familiar forms.

For at least a decade, this remained the most popular symphony ever written. And, as the late Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon suggested, it is the last symphonic masterpiece in G major until Dvořák’s Eighth, first performed in London nearly a hundred years later.

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

© 2014 Chicago Symphony Orchestra