Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Friday November 18, 2011 8:00PM CST
In Depth: The CSO, Semyon Bychkov reveal nuances of Strauss’s iconic tone poem
'Beyond the Score': 'Ein Heldenleben'
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
8 p.m. Saturday (with Poulenc and Ravel works, without ‘Beyond the Score’)
3 p.m. Sunday
Orchestra Hall, 220 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago
(312) 294-3000, cso.org
BY ANDREW PATNER
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Exactly six years ago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra launched its “Beyond the Score” series, a multimedia live educational presentation that puts major concert works in context. Analytical and entertaining presentations are followed by the piece being performed again without commentary but with an additionally enlightened and attentive audience.
“Beyond the Score” has taken off even beyond the high hopes of its creators, CSO artistic vice president Martha Gilmer, who serves as executive producer, and creative director Gerard McBurney, the British musicologist, composer, and theatre veteran. Not only is each season’s three-program series now presented on two dates, Friday as well as Sunday afternoons, but orchestras nationwide also are hiring McBurney, his scripts, and his heavily researched and time-synched projections for their own presentations, netting the CSO additional income in the process.
This season’s “Beyond the Score” lineup kicked off Friday with a revisit to the very first piece that the series examined, Richard Strauss’s autobiographical 1898 tone poem Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”), which received its U.S. première by the CSO here in 1900. On the podium, guest conductor Semyon Bychkov (as he also is for the regular CSO subscription concerts this week). This is no retread but a total reimagining, with the first half’s presentation drawing on the lessons of six seasons of experimentation and improvement.
Working with Chicago actors Stef Tovar (made up as a dead ringer for Strauss at the turn of the last century) and David Darlow, Chicago Opera Theater Young Artist program alum soprano Leila Bowie, and stalwart Chicago pianist Elizabeth Buccheri, McBurney goes well beyond the illustration of the still young composer’s very healthy ego (Strauss himself is the “Hero” of the work’s title and story) to demonstrate the cultural and political swirl that drove the German-speaking parts of Europe at that time and later consumed them.
Through McBurney’s narration, remarkable projections gathered by Alison McBurney and Hannah Whitley, and keen performances by Tovar and Darlow, the program explores the explosion of commercial department stores, the development of personal cameras by Eastman Kodak, the Continental appetite for caricature, Nietzsche’s revolution in person-centered philosophy, Freud’s self-described discoveries in psychology and of the unconscious (like the merchandising moguls, seeking to determine "What does a woman want?"), and Bismarck’s view of warfare as a natural state of national expression and diplomacy. Musical examples and sources, from Strauss’ many previous tone poems (a programmatic form he developed, and once seen as avant-garde) to songs written about and for his soprano wife, Pauline, are clear, never overreaching, and integrated seamlessly into the hourlong program.
Having the CSO on hand and onstage to provide snippets, excerpts, and themes is sort of like having a kid who brings his dad with him to school for a show-and-tell on “What My Parents Do” when the kid’s dad is Steve Jobs. Versed in the format and largely big fans of the series, the CSO players are attentive and enthusiastic in their many demonstrations. After intermission, Bychkov (left) led a performance of the 50-minute work itself so clear, elegant, and unshowy that it seemed more to confirm all that had been discussed previously than to illustrate it.
Concertmaster Robert Chen gave Pauline Strauss eloquent representation in his many solos. Sitting in the section’s first chair, associate principal horn Daniel Gingrich upheld the great CSO Strauss tradition. English horn Scott Hostetler’s limpid playing was matched by his other wind colleagues.
The “Beyond the Score” series returns later this season when CSO conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez takes up Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in February and music director Riccardo Muti himself makes his “BTS” debut in June with nothing less than Beethoven’s Fifth.
Semyon Bychkov photo by Sheila Rock
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