Here is my December 30 suntimes.com and Friday December 31, 2010 Chicago Sun-Times classical music calendar year in review.
2010 a high-caliber year for Chicago classical music scene
BY ANDREW PATNER
Chicagoans were again fortunate that the year’s biggest news on the local classical front continued to be the astonishingly high quality of music-making here -- from the mighty Chicago Symphony Orchestra to the enviably well-managed Lyric Opera of Chicago to the ever-exciting Grant Park Music Festival, the adventurous Chicago Opera Theater, and literally dozens of mid- and small-size groups offering everything from early music to works where the ink is still wet on the page. Audiences are strong and growing in many areas, and the worldwide recession has not caused any major casualties here.
2010, though, was a year of newsmakers. Here are some of the most prominent:
Riccardo Muti -- photo: Tom Cruze/Chicago Sun-Times
• Riccardo Muti. He came, he saw, he conquered, he left, he’s due to come back in a month’s time. The CSO’s new music director announced grand plans in February, released a recording of the Verdi Requiem on CSO Resound that earned two Grammy nominations, had 25,000 people in the palm of his hand at Millennium Park, gave two weeks of intense programs at Orchestra Hall, and then had all the stress and exhaustion of the last three years of his nomadic life catch up with him and knock him out physically just as he was to conduct the orchestra’s gala concert in early October. The Neapolitan maestro, 69, says he’s more than recovered and can’t wait to return “to the city I have come to love so much.”
Bernard Haitink | copyright: todd rosenberg photography
• Bernard Haitink. Always more than a caretaker, the eminent Dutch conductor wrapped up his four years as principal conductor of the CSO with a Beethoven Festival in the spring that left audiences and critics alike running out of superlatives. He turned an orchestra with tremendous morale over to Muti and he, too, picked up a Resound Grammy nod. He will be back for two weeks this spring.
• Pierre Boulez. How many 85-year-olds are as young at heart as this titan of 20th century music and conducting? And through plan and circumstance, he wound up making Chicago the base of much of his activity for calendar 2010: a “Boulez@85” festival for, by, and with him across the CSO’s various platforms; a substitute week for an ailing Muti; and two more weeks of his own triumphs this winter. He also made it a CSO Resound Grammy trifecta.
©Todd Rosenberg Photography
• Anna Clyne and Mason Bates. These two young artists blew away the premature cobwebs left by their predecessors as CSO Mead composers-in-residence practically from the instant of their arrival. Clyne, a bouncy Brit transplant ensconced in Wicker Park, and Bates, commuting from San Francisco, pop up everywhere in Chicago and are interested in meeting, hearing, and hanging out with local composers and performers. And they are awfully able creators themselves.
• Bill Mason and Brian Dickie. After literally a lifetime at Lyric (he started off as a boy soprano soloist in the 56-year-old company’s first seasons), Mason, the longtime general director at the Civic Opera House, announced in July that he would step down at 70 in 2012, triggering the first-ever serious outside search for an organization that has had only three impresarios in its history. Exciting singing and some uncharacteristically daring productions in 2010 saw Mason riding high. Over at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park, COT’s Dickie scored two major triumphs with little-known works of Rossini and Cavalli. And he snared mezzo Frederica von Stade for both a farewell opera and recital.
• Renée Fleming. Just months after Mason announced his retirement plans, Lyric unveiled the world’s most well-known soprano as its first-ever “creative consultant.” Fleming rolled out a list of goals -- from American musicals to a world-première opera to a voice-training program for talented children, and on and on -- that made her sound like an artistic director.
• Carlos Kalmar and Elizabeth Hurley. The Austro-Uruguayan conductor with way too much hair marked 10 years as principal conductor at the indispensable Grant Park Music Festival, and the tough-minded but much-loved returning Chicagoan racked up more successes in her first season as executive director. Tens of thousands flock to Frank Gehry’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion for free concerts of unusual and ambitious repertoire in one of the world’s most unusual and attractive spots for music.
• Pacifica Quartet and Shauna Quill. The Illinois-based ensemble hit the heights its fans have always dreamed for them as they launched a full cycle of the 15 string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich. New York, London, and Urbana also will get the series, but its sold-out start and base is the jewel box Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University downtown. No sooner had she heard about Pacifica’s plans than University of Chicago Presents director Shauna Quill, the city’s top chamber music presenter, made the Pacifica series the centerpiece of an almost two-year festival with 26 area organizations examining “The Soviet Arts Experience.”
• Losses in 2010. A number of important Chicago and Chicago-connected artists died this year. Go his own way composer Richard Muczynski, beloved operatic divas Giulietta Simionato and Joan Sutherland. Piano wizard, orchestral and opera accordionist, and leading accompanist/partner Joe Vito. But perhaps the loss that has hit the largest portion of the city’s musical community was the unexpected death this month of Captain Willie Lee Yates, longtime chief of security at the CSO. A man with a heart as big as a Beethoven crescendo and a warmth and twinkle in his eye that could have inspired Mendelssohn, he was in many ways the face -- and the soul -- of the CSO -- downtown and on tours around the country and the world -- since the Solti era. Messages of heartbreak came from Lady Valerie Solti, Elena Barenboim, Patricia Haitink, as well as every member of the orchestra, staff, and regulars at Orchestra Hall. Pierre Boulez put things most succinctly, “Captain Willie Yates was a preeminent figure in the Chicago Symphony's life. He was always there when he was needed and his helpfulness and extraordinary kindness made him a real treasure.”
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