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CIVIC ORCHESTRA OF CHICAGO
Ken-David Masur Principal Conductor The Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Chair Monday, December 6, 2021, at 7:00 Fourth Presbyterian Church
Bach Marathon Finale j.s. bach
Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F Major, BWV 1046 [Allegro] Adagio Allegro Minuet
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050 Allegro Affettuoso Allegro
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048 [Allegro] Adagio Allegro intermission
Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat Major, BWV 1051 [Allegro] Adagio ma non tanto— Allegro
Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047 [Allegro] Andante— Allegro assai
Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major, BWV 1049 Allegro Andante Presto
The 2021–22 Civic Orchestra of Chicago season is generously sponsored by The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation. This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Part of 2021: Year of Chicago Music C SO.ORG/INSTITUTE 1
comments by phillip huscher johann sebastian bach
Born March 21, 1685; Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany Died July 28, 1750; Leipzig, Germany
The Brandenburg Concertos, BWV 1046–1051 Berlin is now only a short afternoon’s drive from the half-dozen towns in east central Germany where Bach lived and worked his entire life. (In sixty-five years, he never set foot outside Germany.) But in his day, the trip was much more arduous, and Bach didn’t travel that far unless he was sent on official business. He went to Berlin, apparently for the first time, in 1719, on an expense-account shopping trip, to buy a new, state-of-the-art harpsichord for his patron in Cöthen, a small, remote, rural town sometimes dismissively called “Cow Cöthen.” Bach wouldn’t recognize Berlin today, with its traffic jams and round-the-clock construction, but he was probably put off by its urban bustle even in 1719, for he had only a passing acquaintance with large towns such as Leipzig and Dresden. We don’t know exactly when Bach visited Berlin that year—on March 1, the Cöthen court treasury advanced him 130 thalers “for the harpsichord built in Berlin and travel expenses”—or how long he stayed. But he found time to make several useful contacts, none more beneficial to the future of music than the Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, who asked Bach to send him some of his compositions. At the time, Bach was preoccupied with inspecting the harpsichord that had been made to order by Michael Mietke, who was famous for the quality of his high-end, elaborately painted instruments, and with arranging to have it shipped back to Cöthen. But he didn’t forget the margrave’s request. It would be another two years before Bach handed Christian Ludwig the carefully written “presentation copy” of the six concertos
we now call the Brandenburgs, after the margrave’s province just to the south and west of Berlin (its capital was Potsdam). Bach’s life, in the meantime, had been busy and unsettled. He had watched three family members (his ten-month-old son, his wife Maria Barbara, and his brother) die—a sudden spate of funerals, even in an age when life was short. He had gone to Halle to compete for the job of organist (he later declined the offer), which suggests that he was growing restless in Cöthen, despite working for an enlightened patron, the twenty-something Prince Leopold, who “both loved and understood music.” (The prince’s sympathies would suddenly change in 1721 when he married a woman who “seemed to be alien to the muses.”) And, in addition to his daily workload at Cöthen, he was trying to finish some of his most important music, including the sonatas and suites for solo violin.
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e don’t know when Bach wrote the six concertos he dedicated to the margrave of Brandenburg. Recent scholarship suggests that most of them were already finished when he met the margrave (two of them possibly dating from 1713) and that he simply took his time compiling a set of pieces, some old and some new, that he thought made a sufficiently varied and satisfying whole. The fifth concerto, for example, with its unprecedented star role for harpsichord, was surely written after Bach returned from Berlin, in order to inaugurate the new special-order instrument. The presentation score he gave the margrave is a “gift edition” of the set, almost entirely in Bach’s own meticulous handwriting, prefaced by an elaborate dedication page written in French and dated March 24, 1721. “As I had a couple of years ago the pleasure
abov e : Johann Sebastian Bach, oil portrait by Elias Gottlob Haussmann (1695–1774), ca. 1746
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of appearing before Your Royal Highness,” Bach wrote, recounting how the margrave had praised his talent at the time and asked for “some pieces of my composition.” Bach simply but provocatively describes the contents as “concerts avec plusieurs instruments”—that is, concertos for many different combinations of instruments, a modest way of expressing one of the set’s most innovative features. Since we have no record that the margrave ever arranged to have his concertos performed, he has often been unfairly portrayed as an unworthy patron who put the unopened score on his bookshelf and never thanked or paid Bach for his efforts. We probably will never know when or where these works were first played, but they were obviously not widely known during Bach’s life. (The obituary prepared by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel doesn’t even mention them.) Only the Fifth, with its remarkable harpsichord solo, was performed with any regularity in the years after the composer’s death; eventually, the whole set was forgotten. The earliest documented public performance of a Brandenburg Concerto dates from 1835, more than a century after they were written. Today they are arguably Bach’s most popular works. Like many of Bach’s sets, such as the Goldberg Variations or The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos form a kind of master anthology—a demonstration, really, of all the imaginable possibilities inherent in a certain musical form. Each of these six concertos calls for a different combination of soloists—every one unprecedented in its choice of instruments and still without parallel today. Perhaps they represent Bach’s ideal, for their instrumentation corresponds neither to the Cöthen ensemble he conducted nor to the margrave’s own resident group of musicians. Bach gives solo roles to members of all three orchestral families, and often groups them in unexpected combinations, such as the trumpet, flute, oboe, and violin ensemble of the second concerto. All the concertos demand and celebrate the performers’ virtuosity as much as they demonstrate Bach’s amazing skill. The union of joyful music making
and compositional brilliance combine to put the Brandenburgs among those rare works that delight connoisseurs and amateurs alike.
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he First Brandenburg is, at least in part, the oldest of the concertos. It’s also the most complex and stylistically varied, and the only one with four movements. The concerto is scored for a large and remarkably diverse ensemble of brass, wind, and string soloists, which, when joined by the orchestral strings and harpsichord, creates a rich eleven-part counterpoint. The violin is the primary solo instrument, but it shares a lovely duet with one of the oboes in the Adagio, and there are passages of great difficulty and prominence for the other instruments as well. Three of the four movements were originally composed, in a somewhat simpler form, as the introduction to Bach’s Hunting Cantata in 1713. Transforming that music into this Brandenburg Concerto was a major reconstruction and redecorating project, involving the addition of an extra movement (the third); a polonaise-like trio in the minuet; and an entirely new, virtuoso solo violin role; in addition to countless luxury details. Like many a renovation, the result is something of a mishmash stylistically, but Bach’s technical skill is so great, his care for detail so refined, and his command of style so persuasive that the result is nothing less than a complete triumph.
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he Fifth Concerto stands out, even among the Brandenburgs, for Bach seems to be on the verge of inventing a new form— the keyboard concerto—that would soon be a favorite of virtually every composer from Mozart through the nineteenth century. In this piece, for the first time Bach elevated the harpsichord from its rank-and-file role as a member of the continuo group (the back-up ensemble that provided the harmonic support in nearly all music written in Bach’s day) to a featured part. Joined by two other soloists, the flute and the violin, the keyboard here enjoys its first great starring role, not only sharing the spotlight, but even dominating the action at times. It’s likely that the C SO.ORG/INSTITUTE 3
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fancy two-manual harpsichord Bach picked up in Berlin gave him the idea of showing it off in an unusual way, but he cannot have known how the gesture would influence music after his death. The opening Allegro is the longest of all the Brandenburg movements. In this complex music, Bach merges tradition (the alternation of a ritornello for all the musicians and episodes for the soloists) with a very modern concern for organic growth and continuity. Just before the last statement of the ritornello, Bach writes an extraordinary sixty-five-measure keyboard cadenza (he didn’t use the term, but that’s unmistakably what it is) that wouldn’t be surpassed in length or imagination until Mozart and Beethoven began to write down the cadenzas they improvised for their own concertos. (Apparently Bach didn’t intend to get so carried away—in a first draft, the cadenza is just eighteen measures.) Despite its difficulty and showy brilliance, this isn’t a virtuoso indulgence, but an integral part of the piece—notice how the keyboard gradually begins to assert itself before the other instruments drop out—developing the main theme and then revving up, in a most extraordinary fashion, to lead into the final ritornello. The slow middle movement—one of only a handful in Bach’s output marked affettuoso (affectionate, tender)—is a lovely air scored for just the three soloists. The way Bach ingeniously divides the material among the three, sometimes pairing flute and violin, sometimes the keyboard with one of the other instruments, gives this music such endless variety that we scarcely notice that the orchestra itself is silent. The finale, reuniting all the players, is a kind of da capo aria, with the entire beginning section repeated at the end. The keyboard quietly steals the spotlight again in the middle, and, even though the flute and the violin quickly regain their rightful places as fellow soloists, the concerto form itself would never be the same again.
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he Third Concerto, thought to be among the earliest of the six, is scored for a nine-fold group of strings—three each of violin, viola, and cello. Its inherent homogeneity
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of sound challenged Bach to create remarkably diverse sonorities and continuously changing textures. Bach spins the contents of each movement from just one or two simple themes, handed off from one group of players to another, eventually involving the instruments in what seems to be all possible permutations. There’s no clear-cut, consistent designation of soloists; the assignments change from page to page. The standard black-and-white contrast of the typical concerto grosso—the entire ensemble alternating with the solo group—is blurred here by the music’s ever-evolving nature and by Bach’s fascination with endlessly varied shades of gray. Both fast outer movements travel the wide spectrum from assertive unison passages to intricate polyphony, and from full orchestral splendor to the conversational intimacy of chamber music. One curiosity, still unsolved: in place of a conventional middle slow movement, Bach writes just two chords—those that would normally provide the movement’s final cadence—leaving musicians, possibly beginning with the margrave’s own, to wonder what the great master himself might have wanted.
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cored exclusively for low strings, the Sixth Brandenburg has the most unusual sonority of all these concertos. What is most remarkable, however, is that Bach has managed to write music that is never somber, despite the unremittingly dark sound of his ensemble. Like the Third (the other all-string Brandenburg, which at least benefits from the brilliance of high violins), this concerto is a marvel of endless variety, in color and texture, within a monochromatic world. The first movement, especially, is very densely woven and insistently repetitive, but in Bach’s hands it comes out lively and transparent. It is as if Bach had set himself the task of achieving the maximum contrast— both in the overall design of two full-ensemble movements surrounding an intimate viola duet, and within the shaping of the movements themselves—using a completely homogenous cast of instruments.
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n the Second Brandenburg, Bach writes for his most unconventional solo group of all, an unprecedented quartet of flute, oboe, violin, and trumpet (the brilliant, high-flying clarino trumpet that is one of the most extraordinary sounds in baroque music). The concerto is an ongoing negotiation (on Bach’s part) between the different sonorities of these instruments, and he has a gift for writing brilliant and idiomatic music for what is essentially an oddly matched quartet. (He also includes unusually detailed dynamic markings to help make everything audible.) In the Andante, Bach leaves out the trumpet altogether and simply composes chamber music for the three other players, accompanied only by continuo. The outer movements reveal Bach’s knack for balancing textures and his ingenuity for finding common ground instead of emphasizing differences. Despite Bach’s diplomacy, however, the final Allegro unmistakably belongs to the trumpet.
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he relationship between soloists is different in each of the Brandenburgs; in the Fourth Concerto, they switch roles as the work progresses. The violin dominates the opening Allegro (although at first it sounds as if the two flutes will have more to play). Then in the slow middle movement, it’s the flutes who share the spotlight, while the violin, except for one measure, is relegated to doubling the orchestral violins or simply playing the bass line. The violin
takes the lead once again in the finale, although the real marvel of that movement is the way everyone, soloists and orchestra players alike, joins as equals in one contrapuntal web. The Allegro is one of the longest movements in any of Bach’s concertos, partly because the opening paragraph—the traditional ritornello that introduces the main themes—is unusually spacious, with at least five different motifs to be developed. Bach then builds a very large structure, with six statements of the ritornello alternating with free and highly inventive episodes to create a monumental movement of surprising lightness. The Adagio is the only Brandenburg slow movement that doesn’t switch to a smaller cast of characters, instead calling for the entire ensemble (although, by reversing the solo roles, Bach subtly changes the complexion). The spirited finale isn’t dance music, as was the norm, but something more substantial and meaty. With its grand proportions and unusually serious fugal writing, this movement is one of the few finales in eighteenth-century music to carry as much weight as its opening movement counterpart— here, as in so many areas, Bach anticipating the accomplishments of Mozart and Beethoven.
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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profiles Ken-David Masur Principal Conductor The Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Chair Ken-David Masur is principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. This season, Masur makes his subscription debuts with the San Francisco Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra. He also leads performances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, and Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, and a range of programs with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, which celebrated its first performances in its new hall, the Bradley Symphony Center in downtown Milwaukee. Masur has conducted distinguished orchestras around the world, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, L’Orchestre National de France, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Tokyo, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the National Philharmonic of Russia, the Chicago and Detroit symphonies, and orchestras throughout the United States, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, and Scandinavia. In addition to regular appearances at Ravinia, Tanglewood, and the Hollywood Bowl, Masur has conducted internationally at festivals such as the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, the Festival of Colmar in France, Denis Matsuev’s White Lilac Festival in Russia, the Tongyeong Festival in South Korea, and the TV Asahi Festival in Tokyo, Japan. Previously Masur was associate conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he led numerous concerts, at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, of new and standard works featuring guest artists such as Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson,
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Joshua Bell, Louis Lortie, Kirill Gerstein, Nikolaj Lugansky, and others. For eight years, Masur served as principal guest conductor of the Munich Symphony and has also served as associate conductor of the San Diego Symphony and as resident conductor of the San Antonio Symphony. Masur is passionate about the growth, encouragement and application of contemporary music and has conducted and commissioned dozens of new works, many of which have premiered at the Chelsea Music Festival, an annual summer music festival in New York City founded and directed by Masur and his wife, pianist Melinda Lee Masur. The festival seeks to engage curious audiences with its ground-breaking collaborations between the performing, visual, and culinary arts. In Chicago, Ken-David Masur is the principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the professional training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Negaunee Music Institute. Music education and working with the next generation of young artists being of major importance to him, he has led orchestras and masterclasses at the New England Conservatory, Boston University, Boston Conservatory, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and at leading universities and conservatories in Asia, Europe, and South America. Ken-David Masur has recently made recordings with the English Chamber Orchestra and violinist Fanny Clamagirand, and with the Stavanger Symphony. As founding music director of the Bach Society Orchestra and Chorus at Columbia University, he toured Germany and released a critically acclaimed album of symphonies and cantatas by W.F., C.P.E., and J.S. Bach. WQXR named Masur’s recording with the Stavanger Symphony of Gisle Kverndokk’s Symphonic Dances one of “The Best New Classical Releases of July 2018.” Masur received a Grammy Award nomination from the Latin Recording Academy in the category Best Classical Album of the Year for his work as a producer of the album Salon Buenos Aires.
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Civic Orchestra of Chicago Founded in 1919 by Frederick Stock, second music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), the Civic Orchestra of Chicago prepares emerging professional musicians for lives in music. Civic members participate in rigorous orchestral training, September through June each season, with the Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Chair Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur, musicians of the CSO, and some of today’s most luminary conductors including the CSO’s Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti. The importance of the Civic Orchestra’s role in Greater Chicago is underscored by its commitment to present concerts of the highest quality at no charge to the public. In addition to the critically acclaimed live concerts at Symphony Center, Civic Orchestra performances can be heard locally on WFMT (98.7 FM). Civic musicians also expand their creative, professional, and artistic boundaries and reach diverse audiences through educational performances at Chicago Public Schools and a series of chamber concerts at various locations throughout the city including Chicago Park District field houses and the National Museum of Mexican Art. To further expand its musician training, the Civic Orchestra launched the Civic Fellowship
program in the 2013–14 season. Each year ten to fifteen Civic members are designated as Civic Fellows and participate in intensive leadership training that is designed to build and diversity their creative and professional skills. From 2010 to 2019, Yo-Yo Ma was a leading mentor to Civic musicians and staff in his role as CSO Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant, and the programs and initiatives he established are integral to the Civic Orchestra curriculum today. Civic Orchestra musicians develop as exceptional orchestral players and engaged artists, cultivating their ability to succeed in the rapidly evolving world of music in the twenty-first century. The Civic Orchestra’s long history of presenting full orchestra performances free to the public includes annual concerts at the South Shore Cultural Center (in partnership with the South Shore Advisory Council) as well as numerous Chicago Public Schools. The Civic Orchestra is a signature program of the Negaunee Music Institute at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which offers a wide range of education and community programs that engage more than 200,000 people of diverse ages, incomes, and backgrounds each year, in Chicago and around the world. For more on the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and its Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur, please visit cso.org.
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Civic Orchestra of Chicago
Ken-David Masur Principal Conductor The Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Chair violins Joshua Burca Hsuan Chen Joe DeAngelo Diego Diaz Shinhye Dong Dylan Marshall Feldpausch* John Heffernan Robert Herbst Yu-Kun Hsiang Kyoko Inagawa Christopher Sungjoo Kang Hee Yeon Kim* Kenichi Kiyama Luke Lentini* Liya Ma Nelson Mendoza* Emily Nardo Kina Ono Crystal Qi Rannveig Marta Sarc Laura Schafer Subin Shin Holly Wagner Grace Walker Matthew Weinberg Diane Yang
viol as Ye Jin Goo Amanda Kellman Larissa Mapua Pedro Mendez Sofia Nikas Bethany Pereboom* Teddy Schenkman Taisiya Sokolova Josephine Stockwell Seth Van Embden Benjamin Wagner cellos Philip Bergman Miles Link Francisco Lopez Malespin* Shannon Merciel Abigail Monroe Haley Slaugh Lindsey Sharpe* Hana Takemoto Charlotte Ullman basses Nicholas Daniel DeLaurentis Nate Beaver Caleb Edwards Ben Foerster Andrew French Olivia Reyes
oboes James Jihyun Kim Amelia Merriman* Sam Waring+ Laura Yawney+ bassoon Edin Agamenoni horns Abby Black* Jacob Medina Scott Sanders Michael Stevens Nelson Ricardo Yovera Perez trumpets Ismael Cañizares Ortega Michael Leavens John Wagner harpsichord Pei-yeh Tsai+ soloist for Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 librarian Anna Thompson
flutes Katarina Ignatovich Min Ha Kim Eric Leise+ Alyssa Primeau* * Civic Fellow + Civic Alumni
The Civic Orchestra of Chicago empowers its members to realize their potential as creative artists who use music to make connections and build community. Over a century in the making, the Civic Orchestra continues to grow and thrive alongside the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This rare alliance, propelled by an expansive vision, has enabled the program to prepare generations of musicians for professional lives in music while presenting free concerts to thousands of people at Symphony Center and across Greater Chicago. The Civic Orchestra and its concerts are made possible thanks to generous donations from friends of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association. Please make a gift today to ensure that Civic Orchestra programs can continue to impact young musicians and our community for many years to come. To make your gift:
Go online to cso.org/makeagift
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