Here is my Friday July 2 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Wednesday June 30, 2010 Chicago Symphony Orchestra all-Wagner Ring excerpts concert at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, with James Conlon conducting, soprano Christine Brewer, and tenor John Treleaven.
Great orchestra in an empty forest
Great orchestra in an empty forest
CSO, Brewer dazzle small but appreciative gathering on Wagner night
BY ANDREW PATNER
Talk about a two-handed evening.
Wednesday night offered a rare chance to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra onstage in an all-Wagner evening at Ravinia, something hearkening back to the golden era there of James Levine, as well as an opportunity to hear one of our finest Wagner sopranos, American-born Christine Brewer. The stalwart Cornish tenor John Treleaven was also on hand to sing Siegfried to Brewer's Brünnhilde. The night was beautiful. The moon was out. The air was just right.
But where were the people?
As the Ravinia administration continues its campaign to marginalize a great orchestra that was once its very reason for being, they could see the results of their handiwork all around them: a half-empty Pavilion and an essentially empty lawn on the same night that the Grant Park Music Festival drew 10,000 people to its Polish repertoire program -- and at the North Shore venue where, under Levine, you'd want to get your Pavilion tickets or your patch of lawn early for such a program.
The evidence of neglect is staggering: Posters and marketing materials all over the city that barely refer to the CSO or other classical concerts. A second-rate orchestral conductor who has no following here, elsewhere, or among the players. A former music director, also second-rate, who won't go away. The ditching of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. An "opening night" for the CSO on Monday, weeks into the Ravinia season, and featuring a reduced orchestra as mere accompaniment to two piano showpieces (with the CSO players even rushed off the stage after playing the national anthem so that the soloist could perform two piano pieces alone onstage).
And with the exception of this Wagner night and two Mozart operas with fine casts to be presented in the intimate Martin Theatre in August, poor and obvious programming that also pushed the contractual pops concert limit so far that a "video game symphony" evening had to be canceled to make way for more Sondheim and Annie Get Your Gun. If the CSO's own management tried these tactics itself, it could empty Orchestra Hall, too.
After Ravinia's board chair took the stage Monday night to emphasize that the board really, really does love the CSO, one veteran orchestra player posted on the Internet, "As the number of concerts we play at our summer 'home' has dwindled over the years, the amount of times I've heard us referred to as the 'Crown Jewel' of the festival has gone up exponentially -- the sort of endearments a guy who wants to continually step out on his wife but is fearful of having her leave him might offer up."
Be all this as it sadly is, the orchestra rose to the occasion Wednesday. Music director James Conlon is better in operatic repertoire than he is in the symphonic. Still, despite having just completed not one but three complete Ring cycles in Los Angeles, there was not a sense that this is a work of limitless depth and harmonic invention.
Pacing, though, he had, and a clear love of his wonderful singers. With strings, brass, and winds all excelling (and despite the many substitute and supplementary players in the latter sections) in the vocal excerpts as well as the two orchestral showpieces, "Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey" and "Siegfried's Funeral Music," the two soloists seemed additionally empowered.
Brewer's presence guaranteed great work in both the final scene of Siegfried and the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung -- and how many singers could carry off both of these in an evening and at such a uniformly high level? Equally intelligent as a singer and an interpreter, Brewer always knows both where she and her character are going. Hitting her highest notes without effort or show, dipping deep into the alto range when called for, she was musical, dramatic, lyrical, and thrilling at all times. Treleaven, who just came off the Los Angeles Rings, was the real surprise, matching Brewer in warmth and spirit and not merely showing earnestness and stamina.
Is it too much to hope that the Ravinia board will come to its senses, recognize the jewel that exists here, and return the focus of the festival to the CSO, great conductors, and the best classical music? We don't need a tax-exempt showcase for the BoDeans, the B-52s, "The Music of ABBA" and Earth, Wind & Fire.
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