Here is my Saturday March 26 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday March 24 2011 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with guest conductor Charles Dutoit and pianist Evgeny Kissin in music of Sibelius, Grieg, and Stravinsky.
Evgeny Kissin and CSO principal oboe, and fellow native Muscovite, Eugene Izotov backstage at Orchestra Hall in 2008.
Northern stars shine under Charles Dutoit
Kissin illuminates Grieg concerto
BY ANDREW PATNER
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Repeats Saturday at 8 p.m.
Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit is a dedicated traveler who says he's visited and traveled in all 195 of the world’s countries.
With a reported repertoire of more than 2,000 pieces, perhaps he intentionally assembled this week’s wholly engaging Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert, the second of his annual Orchestra Hall run, with works of three great composers from far northern climes along the 60th parallel, the equivalent in our hemisphere of Alaska and northern Canada.
In the Nordic lands and Russia, however, that means Sibelius, Grieg, and Stravinsky. In works spread from the 1860s to 1911, their geographic, temporal, and conceptual aspects fit naturally in concert Thursday at Orchestra Hall.
Though just 15 minutes, the 1893 suite that Sibelius made from his set of sound murals from Finnish history, Karelia, was played in full by the CSO only once before, under associate conductor Tauno Hannikainen on a "popular concert" in 1949. Sections have been played by Frederick Stock (“Intermezzo”), Fritz Reiner (at Ravinia, well before he joined the CSO) and Sir Thomas Beecham (“Alla marcia”), but nothing recently and never all three on a subscription concert. In anticipating the 100 more works that were to come from the composer, this is music so charming and so fascinating that it was a great treat to hear it here in full at last. In his solo, Scott Hostetler on the English horn hit another one out of the park.
Evgeny Kissin might have seemed luxury casting for the Grieg A minor Piano Concerto. But the Russian former prodigy -- now 39, hard as that might be to believe -- is such a fine pianist and continues to go so deeply and to show more subtlety as an adult artist, he reminded listeners that this 19th century Norwegian classic is much more than a warhorse. Through all three movements, Kissin put his prodigious technique at the service of the work, making his speed, gentleness. and power all equally transparent. A standing ovation earned an encore of Grieg’s piano transcription of his own 1864 song “Jeg elsker Dig” (“I Love but Thee”) from his Melodies of the Heart, Op. 5.
The greatest surprise of the evening came in Dutoit’s near-perfect presentation of Stravinsky’s ballet score Petrushka in its lushly orchestrated original 1911 version. I do not usually think of Dutoit as innately theatrical. But this was dramatic storytelling of the kind that makes you wonder what happens next. The Shrovetide Fair and the Grand Carnival segments bustled, as they should, but you could see the sawdust puppet Petrushka, the Moor, and the Ballerina within the crowds. And their own sections were truly poignant.
Remarkable solo playing by Chris Martin and John Hagstrom on cornets, pianist Mary Sauer (who played the work under Stravinsky in the ’60s), flutist Mathieu Dufour, oboist Eugene Izotov, clarinetist John Bruce Yeh. and bassoonist David McGill assured that this was theatre of the greatest musicality.
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