Program Book - Mahler Chamber Orchestra & Mitsuko Uchida

NINETY-THIRD SEASON

Tuesday, March 26, 2024, at 7:30

Chamber Music Series

MAHLER CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

MITSUKO UCHIDA Piano and Director

José Maria Blumenschein Concertmaster and Leader

MOZART Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453

Allegro

Andante

Allegretto

MITSUKO UCHIDA

WIDMANN Chorale Quartet

INTERMISSION

MOZART Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482

Allegro

Andante

Rondo: Allegro

MITSUKO UCHIDA

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.

COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher and Janet E. Bedell

WOLFGANG MOZART

Born January 27, 1756; Salzburg, Austria

Died December 5, 1791; Vienna, Austria

Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453

COMPOSED 1784

CADENZAS Mozart

According to Mozart’s expense book, on May 27, 1784, he purchased, for 34 Kreutzer, a pet starling that learned to whistle the first five measures of the finale of this concerto. Biographers sometimes confuse which came first, the bird or the tune, although since Mozart had already entered the concerto in his catalog on April 12, it seems clear that the music was finished by then and that it was Mozart who taught the tune to the starling and not the other way around.

Mozart’s pet was a member of the Sturnus vulgaris, the European starling that now thrives in this country as well. The starling is a virtuoso mimic, and it has an uncanny ear for musical patterns. Mozart and his starling agreed on the seventeen-note theme for this concerto finale, except that the bird always sang one note sharp and held another too long.

Mozart’s popularity with the Viennese concert public can be gauged from the

number of piano concertos he wrote each year; 1784 was the peak year, with six new concertos. Those are the first works that Mozart entered in the catalog he started that February—a detailed listing, complete with date, instrumentation, and the opening bars of each new piece of music. The first entry, a piano concerto in E-flat (K. 449), and this G major concerto, the fifth item, were written not for Mozart’s own use but for one of his most gifted students, Barbara Ployer, often called Babette. Mozart said she paid him handsomely for it, though its value to musicians through the years can’t be rendered in common currency.

Barbara Ployer gave the first performance on June 13 at her family’s summer home in the Viennese suburb of Döbling, accompanied by an orchestra her father hired for the occasion. Mozart brought along as his guest the celebrated Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello, whose newest hit, The Barber of Seville, had already made Figaro an operatic sensation before either Mozart or Rossini got the chance. Mozart himself took the keyboard part in his Quintet in E-flat for piano and winds—the work that directly precedes

above: Wolfgang Mozart, detail from the Mozart family portrait by Johann Nepomuk della Croce (1736–1819), 1780

the concerto in his catalog—and, as an added attraction, joined Miss Ployer in his two-piano sonata, K. 448. The evening was an upscale entertainment heightened by great music. In the way that Mozart managed better than nearly any composer at any time, this music touches both connoisseur and dilettante alike—it is music of surpassing technical brilliance, but also, in Mozart’s own words, “written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why.”

The concerto is one of Mozart’s finest, evidence that even at the peak of his career as a virtuoso performer, he was as generous when writing for others as for himself. It was well received by the Ployers’ guests, and its success quickly spread beyond the suburban enclave of Döbling. It is one of only six of Mozart’s piano concertos published during his lifetime. Beethoven may well have picked up the unusual idea of a second theme that travels rapidly through several keys from the first movement of this concerto since he does the same in his own piano concerto in this key. The entire opening Allegro, a particularly graceful rendering of the military march, is delicate in detail and bold in outline, with surprising dips into E-flat at important junctures.

Harmonic drama plays an even more influential role in the C major slow movement, where several powerful modulations and extensive chromaticism give weight to music of great transparency. This is music infinitely

more complicated, more troubled than it at first seems. Even the opening statement from the piano swerves from major to minor and from simple declamation to passionate outburst.

The finale is a set of variations on the tune the starling sang. The variations grow in complexity and ingenuity until the fourth, which plunges headlong into the minor mode, laden with chromaticism. The final variation, almost a cadenza, leads straight to a comic-opera finale, the official coda. Surely Paisiello, whose talent seldom ventured beyond the opera house, marveled that Mozart could afford to waste on the piano concerto a ready-made opera finale more brilliant than anything yet written for the stage. Mozart, of course, realized that the forms weren’t mutually exclusive—the merger of the symphonic and the operatic styles is one of his greatest achievements—and that his well was far from dry—he was merely warming up for his own Figaro that, in just two years, would wipe Paisiello’s from the stage.

Apostscript about the starling. The bird lived with his master for three years (moving with the Mozarts first to the spacious apartment behind Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, where The Marriage of Figaro was composed, and later to cheaper quarters in the Landstrasse), witnessing the birth of Carl Thomas, the couple’s second son; Wolfgang’s bout with a severe kidney infection; the historic night Haydn came to listen to string quartets dedicated to him; the birth, and death just a month later, of a third son; and observing, day

and night, the greatest composer of the time working at top form. The starling died on June 4, 1787, inspiring in Mozart an elegy that begins, “A little fool lies here / Whom I held dear . . . .” Mozart

JÖRG WIDMANN

Born June 19, 1973; Munich, Germany

Chorale Quartet

Jörg Widmann is a fine example of a musical polymath. He began his studies with the clarinet and remains today a sought-after orchestral soloist and chamber music partner. But he is also an accomplished pianist— particularly glorying in the music of Robert Schumann—as well as a conductor. As an academic, he has pursued an esteemed career as a professor of both clarinet and composition at the Freiburg University of Music and its New Music Institute. And, of course, he is a composer who has been lauded with many prestigious awards, including the Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, Elise L. Stoeger, and Ernst von Siemens music prizes.

Though he has now written many works for large forces—notably the oratorio ARCHE, which had its world premiere in 2017 at the opening of

then bought a canary that he kept in his room until a few hours before his own death.

—Phillip Huscher

the spectacular Elbphilharmonie Hamburg—Widmann stresses that his deepest love is for chamber music. Devoting much of his attention to that category, he has composed eight string quartets, each very different from the others.

The work we hear tonight began life in 2003 as Widmann’s Second String Quartet, the Chorale Quartet, inspired by Haydn’s late quartet masterpiece, The Seven Last Words of Christ. But now we encounter it as a work for chamber orchestra (flute, oboe, bassoon, celesta, and string orchestra), co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Konzerthaus Dortmund, and KölnMusik in Germany. This version received its world premiere on January 31, 2020, by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Mitsuko Uchida’s leadership in Pamplona, Spain.

Though Widmann’s music sounds as contemporary as tomorrow, he says it all emerges from his reverence and total engagement with the great classics of the Austro-German tradition.

above: Jörg Widmann, photo by Marco Borggreve

But as he’s also commented in a recent interview, “Sound itself is so important to me, even before structure. When I begin composing, there is so much of an outburst of emotion, colors, imagination.” The form only follows later. In the beginning of the Chorale Quartet, we hear fragments of tonal melody and harmonic progressions, but we soon encounter patches of silence, interspersed with unpitched noise produced by extended instrumental techniques. This work is an adventure in sound—both traditional musical sounds and non-traditional—and how it emerges and retreats into silence. And it is a work of harrowing emotions. Widmann says:

My Second String Quartet consists of a single slow movement. Although the work makes no concrete reference to Joseph Haydn’s Seven Last Words, it would be inconceivable without prior knowledge of this composition. Haydn’s sequence of movements, which (with the exception of the

concluding earthquake) are all in slow tempi, still provokes a feeling of shocking urgency in our time. For me, even more disturbing is the calm, composed, and serene acceptance of death in Haydn’s work. . . .

In my examination of crucifixion themes, the “path” and the “final journey” were . . . the essential expressions. My work begins at the end of the path. These are all final tones, phrases from the past, which originated from nowhere and do not lead anywhere. The horrifying friction and abrasion of skin on wood forms a central theme and is associated through silence with tonal choral elements. I am interested in investigating how, through the course of the work, sound effects no longer represent desolation and tonal elements no longer represent confidence.

—Janet E. Bedell

© 2024 Carnegie Hall. Reprinted with permission.

WOLFGANG

MOZART

Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482

COMPOSED 1785

CADENZAS

Mitsuko Uchida

Mozart wrote three piano concertos while he worked on The Marriage of Figaro during the winter of 1785–86. This was the most productive period in his life, and the only reasonable way to explain the enormous and varied output of these six months is to assume that the intense work on the complicated musical and dramatic structures of the opera set his mind racing with more ideas than a single fouract opera could contain. Neither the challenge of the purely mechanical task of writing it all down nor the infinitely greater one of conceiving so much glorious music appears to have inconvenienced Mozart in the least. Throughout the winter, he kept to his regular routine of teaching and performing while also maintaining a full social calendar. The only activity that seems to have suffered was his correspondence, and so we have only a sketchy account of his daily life at the time.

Mozart’s piano concertos were his main performing vehicles—as well as

his primary source of income. From 1782, the year after he moved to Vienna, until 1786, Mozart wrote fifteen piano concertos—an incredible outpouring of important music that corresponds, not coincidentally, to his heyday as a performer. When Leopold Mozart visited Wolfgang in Vienna early in 1785, he saw that his son’s life was a whirlwind of public appearances, complicated immeasurably by the convention of hauling one’s own instrument along to each performance. “Since my arrival,” he wrote to Nannerl, “your brother’s fortepiano has been taken at least a dozen times from the house to the theater or to some other house.”

There are passages for the piano in the E-flat major concerto he wrote that hectic Figaro winter that are not fully written out because Mozart was then, more than ever, short of time. (Besides, he composed the concerto expressly for his own use.) Those fragmentary measures speak not of carelessness but merely impatience; they also remind us that Mozart regularly improvised and ornamented certain phrases as he played.

The three concertos of the Figaro winter are Mozart’s first to include clarinets, his favorite wind instrument,

this page: Wolfgang Mozart, portrait by Joseph Lange (1751–1831), 1782, brother-in-law of the composer. Mozart Museum Salzburg | opposite page: The Kohlmarkt in Vienna, a drawing of a portion of the city center by Carl Schütz (1745–1800), 1786

and they dominate the E-flat work as they do no other piano concerto. In fact, the E-flat concerto is saturated with the sound of woodwinds; even the bassoon often catches the ear with ripe melodic interjections.

The first movement benefits from the exceptional richness and variety of Mozart’s scoring, for its primary material is little more than boilerplate ceremonial music, decked out with fanfares and trumpet-and-drums heroics. Yet, at every turn, Mozart invests anonymous gestures with personality and interest. Listen, for example, to the opening six measures, with its horn duet answered by bassoons; Mozart then repeats the passage, giving the duet to clarinets and the response

not to another of the winds but to the violins. The entire movement is enlivened by that kind of careful, imaginative detail. As always in Mozart’s concertos, the interplay between instruments, and between piano and orchestra, suggests the intimacy of chamber music; here, the effect is heightened in particular by the number of wind solos.

The first Viennese audience applauded the C minor Andante so insistently that Mozart played it again. It is one of his finest slow movements, launched by a simple yet indescribably poignant theme. Mozart writes three increasingly elaborate variations on the opening theme, the first two for the piano with only the most discreet accompaniment. Around the second variation, Mozart wraps two episodes,

one for winds alone, the other a duet for flute and bassoon. The final variation is expansive and dramatic, surprising in its details—listen for the glint of C major in a C minor world—and endlessly complicated in its emotional progress.

The finale begins as genial hunting music, only to have the hunt frozen in place by the interjection of a courtly minuet, with its wistful echoes of the Andante and still more glorious writing

for the winds. This mixture of ballroom and sunny outdoors, of high spirits and quiet introspection, is typically Mozartean, and it gives the finale an unexpected depth.

—Phillip Huscher

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

PROFILES

Mahler Chamber Orchestra

Since its creation in 1997, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) has been shaping its distinct sound, independent artistic identity, and agile and democratic structure. To this day, the MCO is still governed by its musicians in collaboration with its managing office.

Claudio Abbado, the founding mentor of the orchestra, inspired the ensemble to develop a philosophy called “The Sound of Listening,” based on the power of listening and communication—both as a structure and musically. Through the transformative power of listening, the MCO goes beyond the conventional expectations of what an orchestra can do, pushing the boundaries of its artistry and exploring new realms of musical expression.

This synergetic approach to musicmaking is enriched by engaging with artistic partners, creating multiyear projects that explore diverse artistic themes. Pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Yuja Wang, violinist Pekka Kuusisto, Conductor Laureate Daniel Harding, Artistic Advisor Daniele Gatti, and Artistic Partner for Immersive Experiences Henrik Oppermann/

Schallgeber inspire and give shape to the orchestra. Further close collaborations are undertaken with prominent musicians, including George Benjamin, Andris Nelsons, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

The orchestra brings together twentyseven nationalities and has reached live audiences across forty countries on five continents. It connects with a global community through residencies at New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Southbank Centre, Lucerne Festival, Salzburg’s Mozartwoche, and Festival de Saint-Denis. The MCO is a frequent guest at Philharmonie Berlin, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Musikverein Vienna, and Beethovenfest Bonn, and regularly tours Iberian and Asian regions.

In the field of outreach and education, the MCO’s flagship projects include MCO Academy, where members share their passion and expertise with the next generation of orchestral musicians in collaboration with Orchesterzentrum|NRW and undertake concert residencies at Konzerthaus Dortmund, Kölner Philharmonie, and the Philharmonie Essen; Feel the Music, which opens the world of music to deaf and hard-of-hearing children, encouraging a whole-body sensory experience; and Welcome Home!, a festival about finding the place where you belong, in which school groups are invited on a multicultural journey, fostering introspection and contemplation on the theme of belonging. These endeavors highlight the MCO’s commitment to enriching lives through music and promoting inclusivity.

PHOTO BY MOLINA VISUALS

In collaboration with Artistic Partner for Immersive Experiences Henrik Oppermann/Schallgeber, the MCO has introduced three virtual reality concert experiences. These immersive installations transport listeners into the heart of diverse musical styles and orchestral arrangements, creating an intimate connection with the music. Starting in the 2023–24 season, these installations will venture out on independent journeys, making appearances at Beethovenfest Bonn, Museumsnacht Dortmund, Fratopia Frankfurt, and Princeton University.

Each summer, the MCO forms the core group of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Collaborations with Conductor Laureate Daniel Harding and Artistic Advisor Daniele Gatti bring the MCO to numerous prestigious festivals and concert halls in Europe. This season, the partnership with Mitsuko Uchida spans three continents and includes a residency at the Ojai Music Festival in California. The first project with the MCO’s newest artistic partner, Yuja Wang, took place in January. In 2024 the orchestra will fulfill its inaugural year as artistic director of Musikwoche Hitzacker in the company of violinist Alina Ibragimova.

Mitsuko Uchida Piano and Director

One of the most revered artists of our time, Mitsuko Uchida is known as a peerless interpreter of the works of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven, as well for being a devotee of the piano music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and György Kurtág. She is music director of the 2024 Ojai Music Festival and a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist through 2025.

Mitsuko Uchida has enjoyed close relationships over many years with the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Cleveland Orchestra, with which she recently celebrated her hundredth performance at Severance Hall. She has worked closely with conductors Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, Riccardo Muti, EsaPekka Salonen, Vladimir Jurowski, Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Dudamel, and Mariss Jansons.

Since 2016, Mitsuko Uchida has been an artistic partner of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with which she is currently engaged on a multi-season touring project in Europe, Japan, and North America. She also appears regularly in recital in Vienna, Berlin,

Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York, and Tokyo, and is a frequent guest at the Salzburg Mozartwoche and Salzburg Festival.

Mitsuko Uchida records exclusively for Decca, and her multiaward-winning discography includes Mozart’s and Schubert’s complete piano sonatas. She is the recipient of two Grammy awards—for concertos by Mozart with the Cleveland Orchestra and an album of lieder with soprano Dorothea Röschmann. Her recording of Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto with Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra won the Gramophone Award for Best Concerto, and her latest solo recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, released to critical acclaim in 2022, was nominated for a Grammy Award and won the 2022 Gramophone Piano Award.

A founding member of the BorlettiBuitoni Trust and director of the Marlboro Music Festival, Mitsuko Uchida is a recipient of the Golden Mozart Medal from the Salzburg Mozarteum and the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association. Other recognitions include Musical America’s Artist of the Year in 2022, Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, Wigmore Hall Medal, and honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 2009 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

José Maria Blumenschein Concertmaster and Leader

Born to Brazilian parents in Freiburg, Germany, José Maria Blumenschein currently serves as first concertmaster of the WDR Radio Symphony Orchestra in Cologne after serving as associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra for three seasons. During his tenure with WDR he took two seasons off to perform as first concertmaster of the Vienna State Opera and Philharmonic.

A passionate leader, he regularly performs with many orchestras and ensembles such as the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, London Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian and Dresden symphony orchestras, NDR Radio Symphony Orchestra, and many more.

Blumenschein is a founding member of Kammermusik Köln, a chamber music series in Cologne founded by members of WDR Radio, Gürzenich Orchestra, and Cologne Conservatory.

Born in 1985, Blumenschein received his first violin lesson at the age of four in Freiburg at the Pflüger Institute for Highly Gifted Children. In 1990 he began studies with Vera Kramarowa in Mannheim. In 2001 he was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Joseph Silverstein.

PHOTO BY JOSE FRANCH-BALLESTER

PROFILES

Mahler Chamber Orchestra

FLUTE

Joshua Smith (USA)

OBOES

Andrey Godik (Russia)

Emma Schied (Great Britain)

CLARINETS

Vicente Alberola (Spain)

Daniel González Penas (Spain)

BASSOONS

Andrea Cellacchi (Italy)

Chiara Santi (Italy)

HORNS

José Vicente Castelló (Spain)

Monica Berenguer Caro (Spain)

TRUMPETS

Christopher Dicken (Great Britain)

Florian Kirner (Germany)

TIMPANI

AND PERCUSSION

Martin Piechotta (Germany)

VIOLINS 1

José Maria Blumenschein* (Germany)

May Kunstovny (Austria)

Hildegard Niebuhr (Germany)

Alexandra Preucil (USA)

Timothy Summers (USA)

Nicola Bruzzo (Italy)

Hwa-Won Rimmer Pyun (Germany)

Geoffroy Schied (France)

VIOLINS 2

Johannes Lörstad** (Sweden)

Christian Heubes (Germany)

Paulien Holthuis (Netherlands)

Nanni Malm (Austria)

Fjodor Selzer (Germany)

Michiel Commandeur (Netherlands)

Stephanie Baubin (Austria)

VIOLAS

Béatrice Muthelet** (France)

Yannick Dondelinger (Great Britain)

Benjamin Newton (Great Britain)

Justin Caulley (USA)

Frida Siegrist Oliver (Norway / Switzerland)

CELLOS

Frank-Michael Guthmann** (Germany)

Stefan Faludi (Germany)

Moritz Weigert (Germany)

Jonathan Weigle (Germany)

BASSES

Rodrigo Moro Martín** (Spain)

Naomi Shaham (Israel)

Johane Gonzalez Seijas (Spain)