Program Notes

Prelude und Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde

Richard Wagner (1813–1883)    18 minutes (1859)

On January 25, 1860, in Paris, Richard Wagner conducted a concert of his own music, including the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, for an audience that contained Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Gounod, and the poet Baudelaire.

Baudelaire was captivated by Wagner’s music that evening and wrote to the composer “of being engulfed, overcome, [with] a really voluptuous sensual pleasure, like rising into the air or being rocked on the sea.” The press, on the other hand, had a field day ­ridiculing music that was obviously well beyond their understanding, and even Berlioz, whose perception and brilliance as a critic nearly rivaled his vision and genius as a ­composer, had to admit that he could make no sense whatever of the prelude.

The performance history of the prelude to Tristan and Isolde in concert is older than the opera itself. The prelude was first performed in Prague in March 1859—more than six years before the premiere of the opera—under the baton of Hans von Bülow. 

Never before, and arguably not since, have so few pages of music had such impact. As a measure of their force, consider that even a fellow pioneer like Berlioz, whose own Symphonie fantastique had unsettled the musical world thirty years earlier, could not come to terms with this daring and unconventional work. Berlioz wrote of “…a slow piece, beginning pianissimo, rising gradually to fortissimo, and then subsiding into the quiet of the opening, with no other theme than a sort of chromatic moan, but full 
of dissonances.”

His words are as unfeeling, cautious, and noncommittal as those of many a critic writing today about tough and unusual new music. In 1860, Tristan and Isolde, of course, was tough and unusual new music, and, although it has lost its shock appeal in the past 156 years, it still carries an emotional force virtually unmatched in music. Berlioz was right to point out the chromaticism and dissonance, for Wagner’s treatment of both was startlingly new. The now-famous “Tristan chord”—the first harmony in the prelude—with its heart-­rending unresolved dissonance, instantly opened new harmonic horizons for composers, not as an isolated event but in the way it unlocks a web of harmonic tensions that will not be resolved until the final cadences of the Liebestod. That music—sung in the opera by Isolde, but often played in the concert hall without a soprano—picks up and completes the interrupted Liebesnacht, or “night of love” from the second act of the opera; now Tristan lies dead in Isolde’s arms. The Liebestod brings not only resolution but, in Wagner’s words, transfiguration. 

— Program note by Phillip Huscher, program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Reprinted with permission ©2025 Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association

Piano Concerto No. 5 in E Flat Major, OP 73 “Emporer”

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)    38 Minutes (1809)

HEROIC BEETHOVEN. The origin of the title “Emperor” is unknown; but the title ­definitely was not Beethoven’s. However, the concerto is definitely in Beethoven’s “heroic” mode of composition. The key of E-Flat has typified heroism since his Symphony No. 3, the “Eroica” of 1804, and this key would have been appropriate in 1809 Vienna, which was under fire from the forces of the Emperor Napoleon (which is why Beethoven would never have given that title to his largest piano concerto).

I.  Allegro. The imposing beginning features the immediate entrance of the solo piano with a virtuosic cadenza accompanied by three widely spaced chords in the orchestra. The principal theme follows with major usage of the horns and the timpani. The second theme is first heard  on the woodwinds but later becomes a march on the strings. This movement, at 20 minutes, occupies over half of the concerto’s total playing time.

II.  Adagio un poco moto. The slow movement (B Major) presents a wide contrast to the preceding heroics with a chorale type theme on the muted strings, to which the piano responds with a quiet espressivo. The feeling of quiet awe continues until the key changes and the piano presents a preview of the final movement.

III.  Rondo. Allegro. The solo piano continues without a pause, now in E Flat and fortissimo, presenting the main theme of the finale. The structure of the movement is that of a rondo, with three contrasting themes in the order ABACABA. The end features a dialogue between the piano and timpani before a final statement of the principal theme.

— Program note by David Ellis

Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 120

Robert Schumann (1810–1865)    35 Minutes (1841)

After the surprising success of his First Symphony, composed and premiered within the span of just two months early in 1841, Schumann wasted no time in pursuing his newfound enthusiasm, promising to make 1841 a year devoted to orchestral music.

But for Schumann, the excitement with which 1841 began was spoiled by the lukewarm reception given the D minor symphony on December 6 in Leipzig. He quickly gave up on a new symphony in C minor that was already in progress and put the D minor symphony back on the shelf, Finally, in 1851, Schumann returned to the D minor symphony, a full decade after its Leipzig premiere; revised its orchestration; reworked two significant ­transition passages; and introduced it for a second time, now as his Fourth Symphony. This time it was a success.

The idea of writing a different kind of symphony was clearly on Schumann’s mind when he made his first sketches in 1841. He begins with a pensive, slowly unfolding theme that will develop and change, chameleon-like, depending on its surroundings. It first blossoms into the lively melody that dominates the first movement. A related major-key version is the “second” theme, and in the development section it grows into a march. The process is one of evolution, organic and natural. Schumann weaves a drama of transformation so complete that we can’t distinguish between old and new. At the moment when sonata form demands something reassuringly familiar (the return of the first theme), Schumann confounds us with a tender, radiant theme that is, in fact, new. The entire movement continually admits fresh air into a tradition-bound form.

The two inner movements are character pieces. The first is a lovely romance—an old-fashioned serenade, really (and in the original version, it was accompanied by a guitar—sixty-some years before Mahler put a guitar in his Seventh Symphony). The symphony’s somber opening makes an appearance, decorated by a solo violin. Next comes a rather stern scherzo (the theme is a relative of the opening material, turned upside down), with a charming, relaxed trio. The transition to the last movement grows perceptibly out of the scherzo, reinventing the symphony’s opening in the process. Schumann’s finale takes up the march theme from the first movement and makes it the subject of an exuberant victory music. With the coda, which bumps up the tempo twice, Schumann’s most troubled ­symphony achieves an unequivocal happy ending.

— Program note by Phillip Huscher, program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Reprinted with permission ©2025 Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association