Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Peter Oundjian, conductor

Nobuyuki Tsujii, piano

Joan Tower: Suite from Concerto for Orchestra

Serge Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op. 18 Moderato Adagio sostenuto Allegro scherzando Nobuyuki Tsujii

–Intermission–

Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, op. 68 Un poco sostenuto—Allegro Andante sostenuto Un poco allegretto e grazioso Adagio—Allegro non troppo, ma con brio

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Joan Tower (b. 1938)

Scored for three flutes and two piccolos, two oboes and English horn, three B-flat clarinets, E-flat clarinet, and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones and bass trombone, tuba, timpani, Percussion I: glockenspiel, cymbals (high), temple blocks, wood blocks (4), and snare drum, Percussion II: xylophone, vibraphone, large tam-tam, tenor drum, tambourine, triangle, and sleigh bells, Percussion III: cymbals (high, medium, low), large bass drum, castanets, mounted castanets, snare drum, wind chimes, and tambourine, harp, piano, and strings

Celebrated composer and pianist Joan Tower ranks among the foremost American musicians of her generation. A native of New Rochelle, NY, Tower spent her formative years in South America. She received a bachelor’s degree from Bennington College in Vermont, then pursued master’s and doctoral courses at Columbia University, studying under Otto Luening, Ralph Shapey, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Charles Wuorinen. Tower was a founding member and pianist of the Da Capo Chamber Players (1969–84), a contemporary-music ensemble that received the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music in 1973.

After leaving Da Capo, Tower concentrated on teaching and composition. She has served on the music faculty of Bard College since 1972 and later was named Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts. During the 1970s, Tower’s compositional focus shifted from solo and chamber works to the broader tone-color resources of the orchestra. She was composer-in-residence with the Saint Louis Symphony as part of the Meet-the-Composer Orchestra Residency program between 1985 and 1988. Silver Ladders—a work composed for the Saint Louis Symphony and its music director, Leonard Slatkin—earned Tower the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Composition in 1990, making her the first American and first woman recipient of the prize. Another symphonic composition from the Saint Louis years initiated the widely performed series of six Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman.

For her extraordinary contributions as a composer, Tower has received the Delaware Symphony Orchestra’s Alfred I. DuPont Award for a Distinguished American Composer, the Lancaster (PA) Symphony Orchestra’s Annual Composer’s Award, and honorary doctorates from Illinois State University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Smith College. Tower has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Academy of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her orchestral composition Made in America—the first commission under the Ford Made in America program, a joint venture of the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet the Composer—was performed in all 50 states between 2005 and 2007. The recording of Made in America by conductor Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony won three Grammy Awards in 2008: Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance. The League of American Orchestras awarded Tower the Golden Baton in 2019. The following year, Musical America named her its 2020 Composer of the Year and Chamber Music America recognized Tower with the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award.

More recently, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and conductor Peter Oundjian premiered A New Day on July 25, 2021. Tower composed this piece while caring for her husband of 50 years, Jeff Litfin. “I realized that our long time together was getting shorter, becoming more and more precious with each new day.” Litfin passed away in 2022 at the age of 95. Tower expressed her love, vulnerability, and grief in the solo-piano composition Love Letter, which she later discussed and performed in the TEDx Talk “Working Through Grief: Friends, Composing, Piano, and a Jigsaw.” One theme from Love Letter inspired the recently premiered saxophone concerto Love Returns, given by soloist Steven Banks, the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and Oundjian on July 10, 2025.

Oundjian played a pivotal role in bringing another Joan Tower composition into existence: the Suite from Concerto for Orchestra, which the Yale Philharmonia, under Oundjian’s direction, premiered at Carnegie Hall on January 27, 2025. The Suite presents a highly concentrated version of the Concerto—reduced to approximately one-third its original length—while retaining the coloration, contrast, and virtuosity of the original. “It took a lot of courage for Peter to distill my Concerto for Orchestra into a suite,” Tower wrote admiringly. “I think he actually pulled it off—and I am totally in awe of how he did it.”

Tower composed the Concerto for Orchestra in 1991 on a co-commission from the Saint Louis Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. The Saint Louis Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin gave the world premiere on May 16, 1991. “In every sense, Concerto for Orchestra is my biggest work to date. It’s the first piece purely for orchestra I’ve written since Silver Ladders in 1986, but it follows three solo concertos—for clarinet, flute, and violin—and reflects that experience, enabling me to take more risks between soloists and orchestra. Whereas Silver Ladders highlighted four solo instruments, here not only solos, but duos, trios, and other combinations of instruments form structural, timbral, and emotive elements of the piece. … Although technically demanding, the virtuoso sections are an integral part of the music, resulting from accumulated energy, rather than being designed purely as display elements. I thus resisted the title Concerto for Orchestra (with its connotations of Bartók, Lutosławski, and Husa), and named the work only after the composing was completed, and even then reluctantly.”

–Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan

Serge Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)

Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, strings, and solo piano

The 1897 premiere of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony was more than disastrous. It devastated the fledgling composer with near career-ending brutality. He immediately realized that this failure would irreversibly alter his life. “When the indescribable torture of the performance had at last come to an end, I was a different man.” Rachmaninoff soon discovered how ruinous that difference would be. For months, his soul seemed utterly stripped away, as a “paralyzing apathy” invaded his very being.

Several times, he began new compositions but lost momentum—or interest—before finishing the project. Numerous psychosomatic conditions afflicted the saturnine musician, such as migrating body pains and insomnia. Rachmaninoff completely lost his artistic conviction, though friends remained confident in his abilities. Professional opportunities and commissions continued to arise. Several orchestras expressed interest in a second piano concerto, and Rachmaninoff even promised one to the London press. The Russian operatic bass Feodor Chaliapin hired his friend as a rehearsal accompanist. In the summer of 1900, Rachmaninoff traveled to Italy for Chaliapin’s scheduled performances in Boito’s Mefistofele at La Scala.

Even these diversionary months did not satisfy the dejected composer, as he lamented to Mikhail Slonov, “I am not doing very much work but I am working regularly. I live restfully and quietly, and that’s pretty boring.” Nothing seemed to cure his melancholy. That is, until members of the Satin family, his relatives (Natalya Satina, Rachmaninoff’s future wife, was his first cousin) and longtime friends, suggested a visit to Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a neurologist with expertise in the new discipline of hypnosis therapy.

Daily sessions with Dahl produced immediate results. Rachmaninoff composed the final two movements of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor during the late summer and autumn of 1900: “The material grew in bulk, and new musical ideas began to stir within me—more than enough for my concerto.” Though still lacking an opening movement, Rachmaninoff introduced the new piece in December. The following October, the full work received its world premiere in Moscow. This time, critical response was overwhelmingly favorable. Dahl’s treatment had resurrected Rachmaninoff, the composer. In gratitude, he dedicated the concerto to the physician.

Rachmaninoff inaugurated his concerto with alternating massive piano chords and bass-register pitches. This opening passage impressed at least one other musician, Nikolai Medtner, as innately Russian: “From the first bell stroke, you feel the figure of Russia rising up to her full height.” The piano subsequently operates as a brilliant counterpoint to the orchestral theme. Conceiving the Moderato last permitted subtle motivic integration. The contrasting theme offers melodic fragments more completely realized in coming movements. There is no solo cadenza. Tin Pan Alley composer and arranger Ted Mossman transformed a melody from this movement into the song “Ever and Forever.”

The oldest musical material in the concerto evolved into the exquisite Adagio sostenuto. Rachmaninoff revived a piano figuration from his Romance for six-hands piano, written in 1890 for the three Skalon sisters. The clarinet melody, eventually appropriated by the piano, is among the composer’s most familiar. In recent decades, this tune has made its way twice to the pop charts. Eric Carmen, a pianist trained at the Cleveland Institute of Music, inserted a few Rachmaninoff phrases in his hit single “All by Myself,” from his 1975 eponymous album. The French-Canadian singer Celine Dion released her immensely popular cover of Carmen’s song in 1996 on her Falling into You disc.

One important motive in the Allegro scherzando originated in, of all places, the sacred “concerto” Oh, Mother of God Perpetually Praying for unaccompanied chorus (1893). This oddly misplaced idea emerges in the staccato keyboard theme. According to an unauthenticated statement in Serov’s biography of the composer, Nikita Morozov gave the contrasting theme to Rachmaninoff; this is the same melody anticipated in previous movements. Again, Ted Mossman worked his pop-music magic by arranging portions of this melody as the Frank Sinatra hit “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” Various cadenza-like flourishes perhaps capture the composer’s spirits again taking flight.

–Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings

Never has a first symphony suffered the oppressive anticipation and extremes of revulsion and admiration that confronted Brahms’s initial effort. Robert Schumann raised symphonic expectations in his article “New Paths” (1853). As a young pianist, wrote Schumann, Brahms drew listeners into “wondrous regions” and his sonatas were likened to “veiled symphonies.” The essay closed with a benediction: “Later, if he will wave with his magic wand to where massed forces, in the chorus and orchestra, lend their strength, there lie before us still more glimpses into the secrets of the spirit world.”

Brahms did not lightly venture into the symphonic realm dominated by Beethoven’s nine monuments. Two serenades, a piano concerto, and the Variations on a Theme by Haydn provided exercise in orchestral writing. To his friend Hermann Levi, Brahms confessed a respectful awe of Beethoven: “You don’t know what it is like always to hear that giant marching along behind me.” For 21 years (1855–76) the cautious composer shaped thematic ideas for his Symphony No. 1. Tinkering continued until days before the first performance, with revisions and abridgements to the middle movements. The orchestra of the Grand Duke of Baden and conductor Felix Otto Dessoff gave the first performance in Karlsruhe on November 4, 1876.

The controversy surrounding Brahms’s first symphony intensified when Hans von Bülow dubbed it “the Tenth,” the heir to Beethoven’s legacy. (Bülow later formulated the “three Bs of German music,” placing Brahms alongside Bach and Beethoven.) Many musicians rankled at this declaration, including Richard Wagner, whose works Bülow formerly championed. On first hearing the Symphony No. 1, critics noted similarities with the symphonies of Beethoven—the key of C minor is shared with Beethoven’s Fifth. A theme in the final movement bears some resemblance to the “Ode to Joy.” Brahms decried the “asses” who made this observation, but the monumental, Beethovenian proportions of his finale cannot be denied.

Additionally, there are concealed recollections of Clara Schumann in the Symphony No. 1. After an unusual falling-out, Brahms sent birthday greetings to Clara on September 12, 1868. His note contained a hunting theme underlain with the text “High on the mountain, deep in the valley, I send a thousand greetings.” This melody surfaces in the slow introduction to Brahms’s finale, lusciously scored for solo horn.

Brahms announced himself to the symphonic world with a steadily rising chromatic line in the violins buttressed by an insistent timpani beat. According to Clara, Brahms contrived his introduction long after the movement’s immense fast portion. In this sonata form, unrelieved tension results from the scherzo-like 6/8 rhythm, taut instrumental textures and syncopated melodies. The Andante sostenuto surveys wondrous subtleties of instrumentation, especially remarkable considering the traditional makeup of the orchestra. Winds highlight rich string writing, and violas accompany a woodwind choir. Melodic fragments occasionally pass between the two groups. The solo violin passage, doubled by oboe and clarinet, is a masterstroke.

A refreshing, open-air quality saturates the concise Un poco allegretto e grazioso, an orchestral intermezzo. For this reason Levi considered the middle movements “more suitable for a serenade or suite than for a symphony on this scale.” However, Brahms intentionally buoyed spirits in order to shift dramatic weight to the finale. In the final movement, Brahms again constructed an extended slow opening. The first passage is a fantasy in C minor that prepares for Clara’s C-major hunting theme and an understated brass and wind chorale. With the change to Allegro non troppo, ma con brio, Brahms introduces the heroic C-major theme (reminiscent of Beethoven) low in the violins. A second theme gently meanders in the strings. Clara’s melody returns between the main themes. The coda, with its majestic chorale setting, brings a resplendent conclusion.

–Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan

Recognized as a dynamic presence in music, Peter Oundjian has developed a multifaceted portfolio as a conductor, violinist, professor, and artistic advisor. Strengthening his ties to Colorado, Oundjian is rising to the music director’s chair of the Colorado Symphony this fall, having held the title of principal conductor since 2022 after decades of collaborations, including his 2003–6 appointment as principal guest conductor. He has also been serving the Colorado Music Festival as music director since 2019. Now carrying the title Conductor Emeritus, Oundjian distinguished his 14-year tenure as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra by reimagining the ensemble’s programming, international stature, audience development, and touring, as well as spearheading a number of acclaimed recordings, garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018 and a Juno Award for a collection of Vaughan Williams’s orchestral works in 2019. From 2012 to 2018 Oundjian also served as music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, leading the ensemble on several international tours, including to North America and China, as well as a European festival tour with performances at Bregenz, Dresden, Innsbruck, Bergamo, and Ljubljana, among others. His final appearance as RSNO music director was at the 2018 BBC Proms, where he conducted the orchestra in Britten’s War Requiem. Highlights of past seasons include appearances with the Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, San Francisco, and Seattle Symphonies, as well as the Sarasota Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, several of which he returned to this season. Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981, and in 2013 was awarded the school’s Sanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Music. A dedicated educator, he regularly conducts the Yale, Juilliard, Curtis, and New World Symphony Orchestras. Peter Oundjian appeared on 20 concerts as first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet at Ravinia between 1985 and 1994, including a six-day marathon of Beethoven’s quartets in 1987. He first returned as a conductor in 2002 and is making his fifth appearance on the podium.

Japanese pianist Nobuyuki (Nobu) Tsujii, who has been blind from birth, won the joint Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009 and has gone on to earn an international reputation for the passion and excitement he brings to his live performances. Tsujii began this concert season with an extensive concert tour of Japan alongside Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Philharmonia Orchestra, followed by recitals in Japan and South Korea. In the fall, he performed with the Malaysian Philharmonic and toured Australia as a concerto soloist with the Sydney, Queensland, and Tasmanian Symphonies, also giving solo concerts at Melbourne Recital Centre and UKARIA Adelaide. He returned to the United States in spring for recitals at Carnegie Hall and La Jolla Music Society, as well as an appearance with the Seattle Symphony. On to Europe, Tsujii featured with the Bilbao Symphony, Bucharest’s George Enescu Philharmonic, Gran Canaria Philharmonic, and Israel Philharmonic. Highlights of recent seasons have included concerts with such ensembles as the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, Seattle and Baltimore Symphonies, Munich Philharmonic, Tonkünstler at Vienna’s Musikverein, Filarmonica della Scala, NHK Symphony, Milan’s Giuseppe Verdi Symphony, and Hong Kong Philharmonic. Tsujii maintains a close relationship with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, in 2023 selling out a concert at Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. In recital, Tsujii has been featured on the stages of Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall, Berlin’s Philharmonie, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Singapore Esplanade, among many others. His debut album on Deutsche Grammophon was released last November, featuring Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” and Liszt’s transcription of the composer’s An die ferne Geliebte, and he has several recital and concerto recordings on Avex Classics. Nobuyuki Tsujii made his Ravinia debut with a solo recital in 2010 and is making his first return to the festival for his Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut.