Andrew Patner: The View from Here

CSO MusicNOW Boulez @ 85 show -- oeuvres du maître et Borowski et Fujikura

Here is my Tuesday January 26 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review -- with cuts for space restored -- of the Sunday afternoon January 24, 2010, Chicago Symphony Orchestra MusicNOW "Pierre Boulez @ 85" concert at Orchestra Hall.

  

Composers Johannes Boris Borowksi and Dai Fujikura.
 
Monthlong Chicago Boulez celebration ends with a bang

85TH BIRTHDAY | Audience cheers composer, musicians

BY ANDREW PATNER

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra wound up its local musical celebrations of Pierre Boulez's 85th birthday with a rich program Sunday of chamber works by the pioneering composer-conductor and two protégés at Orchestra Hall.  The maestro speaks on modernism this evening at The Art Institute of Chicago at 6 p.m. and then leads CSO concerts in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and at New York's Carnegie Hall to round out the month.

Boulez burst onto the world scene 65 years ago in Paris as a 20-year-old music student with a set of 12 brief piano pieces he called "Notations."  Through force of will, untiring energy, rhetorical gifts as both a writer and a speaker, uncompromising standards, and -- in recent decades -- deep reserves of charm, he has played a central role in classical musical life for two-thirds of a century.

France's Pierre-Laurent Aimard has been playing Boulez's "Notations" since he himself was a teenager in Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain.  His authoritative and still-probing account gave the audience a chance to hear a basis for Boulez's experimentation and a motherlode to which the composer has returned many times over the years.

Boulez regularly chooses young composers to create new works that he might bring before a wider public.  German Johannes Boris Borowski, 30, showed exceptional gifts in scoring his six-player "Wandlung" ("Transformation"), a set of interlinked changes in texture and movement whose instruments came out sounding as if they were a different combination than when they began.  Pianist Amy Briggs demonstrated again why she is a MusicNOW mainstay.

Dai Fujikura, 32, of Japan, had the misfortune to offer a work for six cellos immediately following Boulez's own masterwork, "Messagesquisse" (1976) for seven -- not his choice or plan.  Although I’m not convinced that Fujikura’s piece goes as far as it could or should, his "Mirrors" deserves another hearing in a different musical setting.  Both cello works were executed brilliantly with principal John Sharp sailing through the tricky solos in the Boulez.  Cliff Colnot was the expert conductor of the two new pieces.

"Structures," Book II (1961), for two pianos shows Boulez at his most fiendish as the players must not only master his daunting scoring, they actually improvise the order and who takes which part of the second-half “chapter” of the work.  Aimard yielded the lead line with its two pile-driving cadenzas to his brilliant Serbian colleague Tamara Stefanovich.

CSO violinist Nathan Cole took up "Anthèmes 2" (1997) with electronic (some 16 speakers in the hall) and computer supervision by engineers from the Boulez-founded IRCAM center in Paris.  After Boulez spoke from the stage about the advances in electronics and computers since he started working in these fields, there was an amazing sonic explosion when Cole had played barely one line.  Following some rebooting by the IRCAM team (and a request for "some Bach" from an audience member), Cole gamely began again.  The work perhaps belongs more to history, so influential and widespread have its playback and real-time manipulation systems developed by Andrew Gerzso become.  Still, what a wonderful 3-D rendering of the ideas that go from Boulez's fertile mind to the score paper he fills with his invigorating notations.  The ovations for Boulez and the whole company were long and heartfelt.

Lyric Opera of Chicago's 'Elixir of Love' -- a jolly time, a terrific debut

Here is my Monday January 25 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Saturday January 23, 2010, opening night of Lyric Opera of Chicago's revival of Donizetti's The Elixir of Love. 

The ideal 'Elixir' ingredients

OPERA REVIEW | Lyric blends a charming tenor and just the right soprano

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Through February 5; new leads from February 7 to 22

Ardis Krainik, the late and much-esteemed general director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, once, over lunch, was running down some of the many innovative and challenging works and productions the company had been presenting under her charismatic leadership.

"But you know," she said, leaning closer, almost conspiratorially, after a brief pause. "I really do love the 'spaghetti and meatballs' operas so much!"

[Nemorino (Giuseppe Filianoti) relies on a potion to woo Adina (Nicole Cabell) in The Elixir of Love.  (Rich Hein/]

 

Surely Krainik would be happy with Lyric's second success in a row this month with a superb revival of a popular Italian work.  The second cast that is reinvigorating Puccini's Tosca at the Civic Opera House through this Friday is now joined by a highly appealing group of singing actors in Donizetti's The Elixir of Love through February 5, with two new leads taking over for five performances from February 7.

Donizetti's joyous and fast-moving 1832 telling of the tale of a simple peasant winning the hand of a beautiful young landowning woman with the help (so he thinks at least) of a phony elixir of love is an opera itself hard not to love, especially with a cast this vocally and physically attractive and a terrific Lyric debut by Italian tenor Giuseppe Filianoti.

As the simple but big-hearted peasant Nemorino, Filianoti, 35 and a native of Reggio Calabria, has the opera's money aria (technically a romanza), "Una furtiva lagrima" ("A furtive tear").  But he also has to follow the history of recorded opera, where Enrico Caruso and Beniamino Gigli have reined supreme in this number for a century, and Lyric's own history, which has included such greats as Léopold Simoneau, Alfredo Kraus, Luciano Pavarotti (twice!), and Carlo Bergonzi on its stage in the role.

Even before this Act II climax, Filianoti had won over the audience with his highly pleasing, characterful voice and his genuinely comic and heartfelt acting.  When it came time for him to prove himself, he practically stopped the show with one of the longest spontaneous ovations for a Lyric debut in many years.  It was not only that he nailed his notes, it was that he did so as his character: We saw a young man who has gained confidence in himself and, whether he has done so through magic or a simple bottle of good Bordeaux, we were all happy to cheer both part and singer.  It's no surprise that Filianoti studied with Kraus and is a great reader of literature.

American soprano Nicole Cabell more than held her own as Adina in this otherwise all-Italian cast (U.S. soprano Angela Mannino, giving fine support as village girl Giannetta, at least has an Italian name).  In fact, as the two-hour, two-act opera went along (there is also one 30-minute intermission), it seemed that Cabell, a noted Ryan Center alum, had found a part that suits her perfectly.  Her clear tone, easy coloratura runs, and inviting theatrical sincerity called to mind a young Beverly Sills.  (Interestingly Sills played the role only once, in Boston in 1964.)

Italian baritone Gabriele Viviani was an appropriately charming but non-threatening Belcore, the military rival to Nemorino, in his own company debut, and veteran Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli, a former Lyric Belcore, has certainly claimed the role of the snake oil salesman "Doctor" Dulcamara as his own.  There is plenty of buffa but no buffoonery here as Corbelli demonstrates authoritative Italian patter-singing and excellent physical comedy skills.  The singers all matched each other well and the various duets were thrilling.  Italian Bruno Campanella's conducting started off a bit cautious and serviceable but grew to match and fully support the singers.  American director Vincent Liotta fully re-animated the well-known Giulio Chazalettes/Ulisse Santicchi production and did so in a way that brought out the strengths of each performer.  Portraying the village populace, Donald Nally's chorus members were also witty actors as well as delightful singers. 

Earl Wild, lion of the piano -- 1915-2010

 

According to his official website, the great American virtuoso pianist, teacher, and raconteur, has died at 94.

"The great master pianist Earl Wild has died.

"As reported by his long-time companion of 38 years Michael Rolland Davis, he passed comfortably in his home in Palm Springs California after a long illness. Cause of death was congestive heart disease.

He had a wonderfully full life and was still coaching pianists up until the last week of his life.  He will be greatly missed. His memoirs are scheduled to be published in a few months by Carnegie Mellon Press."

It was a pleasure to grow up with his musicmaking and his fascination with the widest repertoire and an honor to interview and get to know him in his later years.  Condolences to his longtime partner, Michael Rolland Davis.  And more anon.

CSO and Boulez: 85th birthday commemoration reaches a crescendo this weekend

Here is my Saturday January 23 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday January 21, 2010, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with Pierre Boulez conducting, pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich, and percussionists Cynthia Yeh and Vadim Karpinos.

CSO celebration of Pierre Boulez reaches a crescendo

Orchestra features his own work and others by Bartók and Stravinsky and then a tour

Sunday promises a blow-out of Boulez works and world première by two young composers

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats Saturday night at 8 p.m.

The CSO's MusicNOW “Pierre Boulez @ 85” concert takes place at 3 p.m. Sunday at Orchestra Hall as well.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s monthlong tribute to the upcoming 85th birthday of its much-loved conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez is in its last days but is hardly winding down.

This weekend, Boulez is conducting a thrilling CSO program of two rarities and an evergreen at Orchestra Hall.  Then on Sunday afternoon he’ll share conducting duties with Cliff Colnot as the CSO’s MusicNOW series presents a blow-out program that includes two world première commissions from young composers, as well as virtuosic Boulez works for piano, violin, two pianos, and electronics.

Next week, the composer-conductor will talk about Modernism on Tuesday at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then he and the full orchestra and vocal and instrumental soloists head off for concerts first in Ann Arbor, Mich., and then at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

While such a blur of activity might tire most of us, Boulez himself has shown no signs of flagging during the past three weeks, which also included leading a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic in New York.  Thursday night at Orchestra Hall, he had a large audience cheering a program of his own “Livre pour cordes” (“Book for Strings”) in its 1989 version for string orchestra, Bartók’s much-too-infrequently performed Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra (itself a 1940 expansion of a chamber sonata for soloists only) and then the complete ballet version of Stravinsky’s 1909-10 The Firebird.

The audience seemed very much aware that these are Boulez’s last CSO concerts at Orchestra Hall until the 2011-12 season (he’s on a composition sabbatical next season), offering ovations to the applause-averse conductor when he first walked out onto the stage and throughout the evening.  In a program that required -- and received -- serious concentration from listeners, this combination of celebration and seriousness was most appropriate.

“Livre pour cordes” is an 11-minute work that grows out of a string quartet Boulez wrote in the late 1940s when he was still in his early 20s.  A first reworking for string orchestra had its U.S. première in 1969 when Boulez made his own CSO debut (along with a 26-year-old piano soloist named Daniel Barenboim).

This was the second performance here of the most recent revision.  As with so many Boulez works that start with a cell or an initial set of ideas and are then developed, teased out, expanded and remade by the composer over the decades, “Livre” fascinates harmonically, conceptually, and even physically as fragments and phrases are tossed about from section to section and even player to player.

Bartók’s two piano and percussion concerto takes this physicality to the nth degree.  Pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and his protegée Tamara Stefanovich faced each other at lidless Steinway concert grands while CSO principal percussionist Cynthia Yeh and assistant principal timpanist Vadim Karpinos had their batteries of instruments on either side of the pair.  Given by the CSO only twice before, with the legendary Gold and Fizdale duo in the ’60s and the Paratore brothers in 1986, the concerto is a 24-minute work of simultaneous excitement, virtuosity, and introspection.  Soloists excelled, and Boulez and the orchestra fulfilled their essentially supporting role.

The Firebird in its full 47-minute form has been a Boulez specialty here and elsewhere for much of his orchestral conducting career.  His trademark elegance, precision, and control were all at work here, allowing listeners to follow threads and lines, and to hear colors that they might miss in more high-octane interpretations or in the needlessly abbreviated Suite.  While the horn section has had many better nights, the wind soloists in particular led the orchestra in matching Boulez’s vision.

Civic Orchestra of Chicago -- somehow the audience forgot to storm out from all that Webern

Here, with cuts restored, is my Tuesday January 19 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Sunday afternoon January 17, 2010, Civic Orchestra of Chicago "Pierre Boulez @ 85" tribute concert conducted by David Robertson.  I also include links here to the three recent New York Times reviews that I refer to in this review.  Special Boulez tribute programs by both the full Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the CSO's MusicNOW series (on Sunday afternoon, January 24) continue through January.

 Above: Those two new and scary men, Berg and Webern

Civic audience 'gets' daring concert lineup

Rapt silence for pieces not usually heard

BY ANDREW PATNER

In the last three weeks, New York Times music critics have reported instances of tittering, grumbling and walkouts by literally dozens of people before performances in Manhattan by the New York and Vienna Philharmonics of brief works by the long-dead 20th century Viennese composers Anton Webern, Alban Berg, and Arnold Schoenberg.  ["Gilbert Braces His Listeners for Webern," "Poetry for Times of Calamity and War," and "Visitors from Vienna Bring Both the Pastoral and the Not So Pastoral."] 

I was at one of the New York Phil concerts earlier this month where music director Alan Gilbert found it necessary to have no fewer than three speakers talk to the audience for ten minutes before playing a nine minute work by Webern. Sitting in Avery Fisher Hall for these often apologetic remarks felt as if one were at a sex education class with a bunch of ten year olds.

How refreshing then to attend Sunday afternoon's Civic Orchestra of Chicago concert of three Webern works and a too-rarely performed Mahler work at Orchestra Hall under David Robertson's assured conducting, one more entry into a monthlong tribute for composer-conductor Pierre Boulez as he approaches 85 this March. An audience of 2,500 sat in rapt silence as Robertson and the young players gave readings both stunning and defined of the three Webern works.

[David Robertson continued this month's Boulez tribute with old, yet innovative work. (Sun-Times file)]

Written between 1908 and 1913, the Op. 1 Passacaglia, the Op. 10 Five Pieces for Orchestra, and the Op. 6 Six Pieces are simultaneously experiments and fulfillments of sound, taking as starting points classical structures, miniaturization and romanticism. Nothing happens and everything happens in brief passages, some of only a few notes, and yet we get a sense of music that came before and the many musical worlds that would come after.

You could argue that a Civic audience comes to a concert hungry for new experiences and without prejudices. Such an argument begs the question as to why orchestral subscription audiences in New York think of 100-year-old music as new and scary and why they are so incurious. The Civic is of course the training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and we can perhaps forget here that CSO audiences have two very long periods in the orchestra's history where both new music and music of the Second Viennese School have been regular agenda items. During Frederick Stock’s 37-year tenure, ending with his death in 1942, new works were a frequent order of the day.  And then for the past 60 years, from Rafael Kubelik to Daniel Barenboim, Boulez and Bernard Haitink, we have had music directors who saw the revolutionary music of Vienna as a part of the standard repertoire.

Did or does every subscriber or ticket-buyer love this music? Of course not -- though more might if they could hear performances such as the Civic's on Sunday. But they accept that it is a part of the history, and while they might shy away from certain concerts, they don't get up en masse and walk out before a 5- or 20-minute piece. With Boulez having departed from the Philharmonic in 1977 and his eclectic successor Zubin Mehta leaving in 1991, a large part of the New York audience has had 18 years of truncated musical history and "safe" programming choices. That's a lot to overcome.

The Civic audience also "got" the idea of closing Sunday's program with the 1910-11 25-minute Adagio movement from Mahler's uncompleted Tenth Symphony. Here was music that anticipated much of the experimentation of Schoenberg and his circle, even if it was not heard by them -- or anyone -- until 1924.. It sounded in some ways as a benediction to his successors, urging them to follow their own spirits.

U of C Contempo show -- Rands piece swings, jazz players use their heads

Here is my Monday January 18 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Saturday January 16 2010 University of Chicago Contempo annual contemporary music/jazz "Double-Bill" program, presented this year at the Harris Theater downtown, and featuring eighth blackbird, Susanne Mentzer, Cliff Colnot, Kenny Werner, and Chris Potter.

Jazz meets contemporary classical at UC show

Rands Chicago premiere and Werner/Potter duo reunion are highlights

BY ANDREW PATNER

Contemporary "classical" music fans and jazz-heads have a lot in common but they rarely intersect.  Both groups are demanding, curious, knowledgeable, and focused listeners.  But often the contemporary crew doesn't "get" improvisation and the jazz crowd can find contemporary art music too academic or restricted.

The University of Chicago's Contempo Contemporary Chamber Players have been trying for several years to bring these musics and their audiences together and at least get the dialogue going.  Though each of these annual concerts have featured great performers with terrific presentations, Saturday night's was the most successful pairing to date.  The types of works and the spirit of the players fit together and even made a kind of serendipitous whole.

[Bernard Rands, left]

Central to the new music half was the Chicago première of the 2006  'now again' -- fragments from Sappho by American composer Bernard Rands. Rands, who turns 76 in a few weeks, has made Chicago his home in recent years and might also be the composer with the closest relationship with Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director designate Riccardo Muti, having been Muti’s composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra for three years and speaking fluent Italian.  All of this is great news for Chicago, and Rands already has a new orchestral work coming for Muti’s first CSO season.

The 17-minute Sappho piece shows Rands’s welcome marriage of precise technique and sensuous lyricism and scoring.  Former Chicago mezzo Susanne Mentzer sang fragments (in Paul Roche’s English translations) from the great ancient Greek celebrator of the love between women with a cool but darkly meditative consistency.  Fine local singers Amy Conn and Nina Heebink were equal part Greek and alternative theater choruses.  Five members of Chicago’s own eighth blackbird joined by three other players offered the ravishing score impeccably under Cliff Colnot’s direction.

U. of C. doctoral student Shawn Brogan Allison’s 2009 Towards the Flame opened the concert with its playful and inventive movements inspire by, of all things, the lives of moths played by four blackbirders. Blackbird percussionist Matthew Duvall was the superb one-man band we are used to in Yu-Hui Chang’s 10-minute 2007 Binge Delirium, although what the rather obvious-sounding piece itself contributed was lost on me.

Pianist Kenny Werner, 58, and tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, 39, are revered by other jazz musicians, and no wonder.  These are technically accomplished wizards with tremendous musical vocabularies that range across genres, methods, and continents.  Werner was once Potter’s teacher at the Manhattan School of Music, yet their communication is that of colleagues and mutual mind readers, not mentor and protégé. Their joint approach -- an intellectual understanding of music that leads to a free, atmospheric, and playful performance style -- was a perfect complement to the goals of the program’s first half.

Offering six original works, each half-charted, half-improvised, the two men both entertained and challenged the large audience at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park.  One piece, transcribed by Potter from an Indian raga, seemed to wrap Olivier Messiaen’s mystical “classical” explorations, Lester Young’s smooth tone, and Art Tatum’s keyboard mastery into one amazing three-part whole.  And when was the last time you saw a jazz pianist bopping so happily at his instrument while wearing a beret?

David Robertson's CSO Boulez tribute concert -- Messiaen, Berg, and 'The Rite of Spring' -- out of the park

Here is my Friday January 15 suntimes.com and Saturday January 16 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday January 14, 2010, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with conductor David Robertson and violinist Kyoko Takezawa.

Robertson brings 'jaw-dropping beauty' to CSO Boulez fête

Violinist Kyoko Takezawa makes deeply moving downtown debut

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday January 19 at 7:30 p.m.

David Robertson will also lead the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO's professional training orchestra, in a free concert of Webern and Mahler on Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m.  Pierre Boulez will join him for onstage commentary.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s monthlong commemoration of the 85th birthday of conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez has assured four weeks of fascinating, challenging, and rewarding programs.  Thus far, the concerts have also shown the CSO and soloists playing these 20th and 21st century works at the highest level before rapt audiences.

That Boulez achieves these results has to do with the tremendous respect and affection the legendary composer-conductor has earned in his two decades as a regular leader of the CSO as well as his own unique abilities.  That this week’s concerts started out Thursday night with the same success is also a tribute to Boulez, although this time as talent scout, mentor, and example.

[Conductor David Robertson]

American conductor David Robertson, this week’s guest on the podium, was just 32 when he took over musical direction of Boulez’s Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris, and for 10 years he stretched and strengthened the group, and was stretched and strengthened by it. 

Now, at 51, he is in his fifth season as music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra where he has had excellent results locally, on tour, and with recordings.  He has done so as his own man, programming both works of Boulez and other High Modernists, as well as those of John Adams and the American populists.

Robertson made his CSO debut exactly 11 years ago with a program that very neatly parallels this week’s concert: a French work, a modern violin concerto, and a Stravinsky ballet score.  In the intervening time, his work has only deepened, and on Thursday night at least, the once often kinetic conductor seemed to have found a calm both in the works played and in his style on the podium.

Surely some of this emanated from Les offrandes oubliées (“The forgotten offerings”), the concert-opening work by Boulez’s teacher Olivier Messiaen.  Written in 1930 when the mystical composer was just 21 and before he had fully developed his unique and eccentric musical language, this 13-minute “symphonic meditation” captures one’s attention literally from its first chord and holds it for its three-part continuous spiritual journey.  Jaw-droppingly beautiful.

Japanese-born violinist Kyoko Takezawa made concerto appearances at Ravinia in the mid-1990s but only makes her belated downtown CSO debut now in another work of exquisite beauty and moving seriousness, the 1935 Berg Violin Concerto.  One of the three pillars of the Second Viennese School along with his teacher Schoenberg and his contemporary Webern, Berg in his final completed work created something of such intricacy that one could easily spend a year or more analyzing it.  Yet especially with such an analysis -- as Robertson and Takezawa have clearly given the work -- it creates a mournful and hypnotic atmosphere in performance.  Takezawa, the 1986 gold medalist at the Indianapolis International Violin Competition, understood throughout the deeply inward and personal nature of the piece.  She should come back soon.

How many times does one need to hear Stravinsky’s 1911-12 Rite of Spring, a work that long ago moved from revolutionary shocker to repertory staple?  As played by Robertson and the CSO, the answer would have to be many more.  It’s not often that a performance of a well-known work hits the reset button in our minds and unfolds as an absolutely fascinating adventure for its entire 35 minutes.  From David McGill’s opening high themes on the bassoon (can anyone, anywhere play this part better? Call for reward if so) to the full ensemble of 103 players breathing together through every challenging rhythm to the way the chilling explosions of sound emerged right out of the score itself with no frenetic telegraphing from the podium, this was an experience both educational and thrilling.  What better tribute to Pierre Boulez could there be?

Lyric Opera of Chicago's 'Tosca' -- second time's the charm

Here is my Tuesday January 12 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Sunday afternoon January 10, 2009, opening performance of the second cast of Tosca at Lyric Opera of Chicago.  There are five more performances through January 29.

Violeta Urmana and Marco Berti star in the new cast of Puccini's Tosca at Lyric Opera of Chicago.  

'Tosca' an old-fashioned treat

Second cast, conductor have the charm

BY ANDREW PATNER

RECOMMENDED

There are so many ways to get an opera wrong these days.  A European opera director can shift the story and place of a work to a time and locale that makes no sense and where everyone mimes sexual acts for no particular reason.  A theatre director can miss the point of a melodramatic opera and try to make it into a psychological study that it isn't at all.  A company can cast the wrong performers or a diva can demand -- and get -- a role that isn't right for her.  A conductor can make a score too heavy, too fast, or just incoherent.

So it's refreshing -- even for fans of operatic experimentation done well -- to see an old-fashioned opera done in an old-fashioned way and done just right.  That's what's happening with the second cast that reopened Lyric Opera of Chicago's revival of Puccini's Tosca on Sunday afternoon at the Civic Opera House.  Lyric's initial season-opening cast, led by Deborah Voigt, and the opera's music direction drew mixed responses in the fall.

Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana, making a much-belated Lyric debut in the title role, is a Tosca as the fictional Roman character -- a much-beloved singing actress of 1800 -- would have played herself: passionate yet human, jealous but courageous, a woman of the stage who finds her backbone in real-life romantic and political conflict. There are no diva games going on here -- no posing, no milking of the audience's expectations: Urmana simply is Floria Tosca.  And her arias -- none more so than the signature "Vissi d'arte" ("I lived for art, I lived for love") -- arise organically from plot and character.

Although Italian tenor Marco Berti, also making a debut here, might at first appear to fall into the park-and-bark mode of hefty singers of another era,  he quickly emerges as a Cavaradossi who matches Urmana's Tosca perfectly.  His voice is strong, but blends easily with hers, and his acting chops slowly surprise us in a positive way.  This is a Cavaradossi who appears aware of just what is going on in the intrigues taking place all around him.

Italian baritone Lucio Gallo seems to know that his voice is a bit light for the part of the reactionary and lecherous Bourbon police chief Baron Scarpia.  Yet he consistently finds both effective vocal solutions and displays such a believable internally-driven performance of a character both evil and twisted that he, too, wins us over.

Credit must surely also go to stage director Garnett Bruce and the associate director for this cast, Paula Suozzi, for reanimating the classic 1964 (!) Franco Zeffirelli-Renzo Mongiardino-Marcel Escoffier production in such a way as to allow for the individual choices and strengths of their three leads.

American conductor Stephen Lord, music director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, is yet another debutant here; he brings a touch both careful -- in the good sense -- and easy, one that emphasizes Puccini's lyricism and humanity, never over-presses, and allows the Lyric Orchestra to shine.

American bass-baritones Craig Irvin, a second-year Ryan Center member, and Dale Travis, a company veteran who also is a hilarious Petrovinian ambassador in Lyric's current The Merry Widow, return admirably to their roles as the revolutionary Angelotti and the church sacristan, as does Ryan Center soprano Angela Mannino who really does sound like a shepherd boy in her crucial Act 3 offstage role.  And comprimario tenor David Cangelosi does his customary turn as Scarpia's henchman Spoletta for this January cast.

Tosca had its world première in Rome on January 14, 1900, which made it one of the first operas of its century, if not the very first.  There are times, even 110 years later, when it's good to see a production and performances of the kind that made you fall in love with opera in the first place.

Boulez CSO month begins -- Ravel's colors, Dufour's homecoming solo, Bartók's spooky one-act

Here is my Saturday January 9 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday January 7, 2010, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert of Ravel, Dalbavie, and Bartók with conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez, principal flute Mathieu Dufour, and singers Michelle DeYoung and Falk Struckmann.

CSO perfectly settled in already

Boulez, singers, soloist make opera at home on stage

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday, January 12 at 7:30 p.m.

There are many places where one could start discussing this week’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concerts.  They are the first of the new calendar year and the first in a month's time.  They launch a one-month salute to the 85th birthday year of conductor emeritus and composer-legend Pierre Boulez.  They mark the return of principal flute Mathieu Dufour after a leave spent as principal of the Los Angles Philharmonic -- and as soloist in a Chicago première to boot.  And they feature a performance of one of the great one-act operas, a 20th century landmark, with two of its major current vocal interpreters.

So rather than picking a news angle, why not start with the music?  After all, that's why the CSO presents concerts and that's why we attend them.

[French conductor Pierre Boulez, left, is fêted for his upcoming 85th birthday by the CSO.] 

It's not unusual, even in the hands of a Boulez, a Muti, a Haitink, or a Barenboim for a first concert in a series to give off a sense of settling in.  Not Thursday night at Orchestra Hall.  From Ravel's 1919 orchestration of his 1914-1917 neo-classical suite,  Le tombeau de Couperin to Marc-André Dalbavie's 2006 Flute Concerto to Béla Bartók's expansive and spooky 1911 Bluebeard's Castle, every piece was a total whole; together they made up an evening-long essay in composers' use of orchestral color and how a great orchestra brings those colors to life.

Musical color, the way that different combinations of instruments and harmonies can create different moods, feelings, and even an aural sense of the visual, has fascinated Boulez since his own student days with Olivier Messiaen in Paris in the 1940s.  Having worked so closely with the CSO since former music director Daniel Barenboim brought him back here almost 20 years ago, he knows the orchestra collectively and the members individually, and they know him and his goals.  The characteristic French sound, both in Ravel's own writing and the Baroque period he was reflecting on, were given perfect balances; principal oboe Eugene Izotov played like a dream.

Dalbavie was a student of Boulez and also of the so-called Spectralist school that broke down sounds into microscopic parts and reassembled them.  Boulez has championed his younger French colleague, now 48, for some time, leading his music here first with the Concertate il suono in 2001.  Dalbavie's concerto was written for Dufour's longtime friend and colleague, Emmanuel Pahud, principal in Berlin.  Surely these two remarkable musicians are among the few who could play this work with such seeming effortlessness.  For 16 minutes, soloist and orchestra engage in a series of swirling lines with the soloist presenting cascades of notes that must flow as logically and smoothly as a country brook.  The work is unusually gentle for Dalbavie, but Dufour's virtuosic performance illuminated underlying references and tensions as well.  Audience and colleagues gave the returning musician vigorous ovations.

Bluebeard's Castle has been a CSO staple since Regina Resnik and George London performed the bride Judith and the self-tortured duke here in 1952.  Both Sir Georg Solti and Boulez have led multiple performances of it and other large-scale Bartók works.  Thursday seemed a summation of all of these with mezzo Michelle DeYoung capturing Judith's full, risky urgency, and German bass-baritone Falk Struckmann both resigned and fierce as the serial husband who can love only through death.

As strong and fine as both singers were, this was above all a reminder of how this hourlong work is told by its large and expressive orchestra, which controls all the moods and narrates the opening and contents of each of the castle's seven locked doors.  As a friend put it, it made you want to hear every opera out of the theatres and played on a stage by the CSO.  The clever placement of the offstage brass gave key climactic moments an additional, enveloping effect.  What a privilege to have all of these great artists working together in such a serious and hugely satisfying program -- the best celebration possible when it comes to music and music-makers.

Exclusive: Mathieu Dufour -- "the CSO is my home," ends LA Phil trial

Here is my exclusive story at  suntimes.com, Tuesday night January 5, 2010, and for the Wednesday January 6, 2010, Chicago Sun-Times on top flutist Mathieu Dufour's decision to stay with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  Back on September 14, 2009, I reported from Lucerne, in the Sun-Times and here,  that reports out of the Los Angeles Philharmonic that Dufour was leaving Chicago were, um, greatly exaggerated.

Mathieu Dufour staying with Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Much coveted French-born flutist ends trial period in Los Angeles mid-season

BY ANDREW PATNER

When Chicago Symphony Orchestra principal flute Mathieu Dufour takes the stage Thursday night as a soloist for the first of a month of CSO concerts saluting the upcoming 85th birthday of conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez, there should be even more than the usual cheers for the popular musician.

Just before a CSO rehearsal Tuesday morning, the internationally acclaimed Dufour, 37, who has been on leave playing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic the last several months, told his CSO colleagues and Boulez that he would be remaining in Chicago.

[Chicago Symphony Orchestra principal flute Mathieu Dufour, left, has been on leave playing with the Los Angeles] Philharmonic for the past several months. 

"I missed Chicago -- the players and the audience and the city itself -- really a lot," he told the Sun-Times on Tuesday.  "I’m glad that I tried something else.  But by doing so I realized even more what we have here.

“There are fine musicians in Los Angeles, but we have achieved a very strong common purpose and set of aims in Chicago that they do not have or do not yet have there.   They have no tradition there -- no tradition of sound and no tradition of working together as a dedicated ensemble.  Maybe they will have that someday in the future.”

In an e-mail Tuesday to CSO trustees, CSO Association President Deborah F. Rutter wrote, "When this news was shared with the orchestra this morning, there was a sustained warm and enthusiastic response (yes, cheering, stomping of feet, etc!). . . . This is great news for all of us at the CSO!"

With the exception of some attention-hungry opera divas, the world of classical music is usually fairly civil, collegial, and lacking in surprises.  A contract is a contract.  There’s little news until formal announcements are made.  Players and singers from rival groups are courted, but never poached.

But in September, the L.A. Phil issued an unprecedented press release announcing that Dufour was leaving Chicago after 10 years to take up the first flute chair at Walt Disney Concert Hall under the Philharmonic’s new music director, the charismatic young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel.  The Philharmonic even posted a biography of Dufour on its Web site, claiming he had been appointed as principal back in 2008 by the orchestra’s former music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen.

There were a few problems with the Philharmonic’s statements, though.  In the first place, they weren’t true.

“Everyone in the music business knows that these things are trial periods at first,” Dufour told the Sun-Times in Lucerne, Switzerland, in September while the CSO was on a five-city, nine-concert European tour with its principal conductor Bernard Haitink.

CSO officials were barely given a courtesy heads-up from their Los Angeles colleagues before the press release went out, and they learned of it only as the CSO was taking the stage in Berlin for its first concert of the fall European tour.

"We can’t speak for another orchestra," said CSO vice president for public relations Raechel Alexander in September.  "But we don’t announce new appointments until a player’s existing ones elsewhere have been resolved.  And Mathieu is the principal flute of the CSO and of no other orchestra, as far as we are aware."

Without bothering to speak to Dufour himself, other news organizations in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago reported that he was moving out West.

Dufour played last season with the Philharmonic and Salonen on a lengthy Asian tour and at its Frank Gehry-designed Disney Hall.  He took an unpaid leave for a part of this season to try things out with Dudamel.

But he also played the CSO’s full Europe tour and Chicago dates with Haitink this fall, is playing three weeks of programs with Boulez (including a tour this month to New York’s Carnegie Hall), and is still committed to the CSO’s all-Beethoven Festival, also with Haitink, in June.  All of this is a much heavier schedule than usual for a departing musician.

The L.A. musicians, Dufour said,  "will have some exciting concerts there for sure as they go along.  But in every rehearsal I missed what makes up the Chicago sound: the sense that every member of the CSO knows that you cannot ever go halfway and that every subtle detail is important."

As it is, Dufour will not be returning to Los Angeles at all this season, using the time from February through May for shoulder surgery and recuperation.

"Mathieu has resigned for personal reasons," said Los Angeles Philharmonic director of public relations Sophie Jefferies.  "He had a one-year contract with us, and with his known Chicago concert date commitments and his medical leave, he has fulfilled that contract and has played his last concert here.

"We’re very sorry to see him go and wish him all the best.  He is an amazing player."

"I know that Chicago is home now," Dufour said.  "After ten years I know that.  Even in this winter weather -- it's a part of our life.  I can say that again, 'our life.'"