Allergies have knocked me about this last week, so catching up with posts of reviews, etc., Here is my Saturday June 13 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday June 11, 2009, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with guest conductor Sir Mark Elder and 'cellist Alisa Weilerstein.
Dvořák Festival programs continue today, Tuesday June 16, with the Emerson String Quartet
in a free performance at The Art Institute of Chicago's Fullerton Hall of Cypresses and the American String Quartet, Op. 96. The Emerson opens tonight's CSO concert at 7:30 p.m. with the E-Flat Major Slavonic Quartet, Op. 51, followed on the orchestral portion of the program by a repeat of the late tone poem, The Midday Witch, and the early E-Flat Major Symphony No. 3. See my review of these works from the Saturday June 13 performance above.
Thursday June 18 and Saturday June 20 bring both a wide array of vocal selections and the Romance or Violin and Orchestra with Rachel Barton Pine among other works. Friday June 19 holds a repeat of the Cello Concerto, the Ninth Symphony, From the New World, and the popular Carnival Overture.
Dvořák expert Michael Beckerman of New York University speaks an hour before each remaining CSO concert as well as in a special additional free lecture at 3 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
New CSO soloist finds Dvořák insights
Cellist Weilerstein takes daring approach
BY ANDREW PATNER
The goal of a composer-themed festival is to dig deep and try to find lessons, patterns, and connections through immersion in a single creative voice that might not be apparent in the occasional performance or listening.
When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced a festival of the works of Antonín Dvořák, there were probably many who thought that this might be pushing the festival concept a bit much.
But under conductor Sir Mark Elder's passionate leadership, with Chicago debuts of two extraordinary string soloists, and with key chamber music and vocal components still to come, the Dvořák Festival already has more than made its case for the Czech composer as an artist of depth and range as well as popularity and nationalism.
Thursday night at Orchestra Hal, the CSO began with a once staple and now mostly unplayed overture, In Nature's Realm, Op. 91, written in 1891 just before Dvořák moved to the United States. In it, he's heard working on the evocations of Bohemian forests and spirits that he would perfect several years later in his great operas.
One would think that the B minor Cello Concerto, Op. 104, would, in contrast, be wholly familiar, so popular has the work been almost since its composition in New York in 1895. But so daring was the playing of soloist Alisa Weilerstein (above) and so committed the partnership of Elder and the CSO that Dvořák's genius for complex creation as well as spinning out winning melodies was almost palpable.
With a huge, almost athletic sound, Weilerstein, 27, somehow combines intense physicality with a deep intellectualism. Old and much loved tunes seemed to be being written on the spot and there was real excitement in the air.
In rehearsing the Civic Orchestra earlier this week, Elder suggested that Dvořák's much-played From the New World Symphony No. 9 would "sound better if you played it as if you had never heard it before." Surely the same concept was at work with the CSO and the preceding 1889 G Major Symphony No. 8, Op. 88, which closed the program Thursday. Without losing any of its infectious and buoyant spirit, we could also hear dark moves in directions that would be extended later by Sibelius. Principal flute Mathieu Dufour led all winds in tremendous parts and solos.
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