Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Friday January 6, 2012 4:52PM CST
Conductor Mark Elder and the CSO are at one with the Bard and Berlioz
Mark Elder
Repeats 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday
Orchestra Hall, 220 South Michigan Avenue
Tickets, $19-$199
(312) 294-3000, cso.org
BY ANDREW PATNER
RECOMMENDED
British conductor Mark Elder first appeared on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s podium almost 30 years ago in an unusual program that opened with a too rarely heard Berlioz overture.
Thursday night he was back at Orchestra Hall with a program in that same pattern. In recent seasons, though, Elder, head of the Hallé orchestra in Manchester, England, has emerged as the CSO’s genre man, spearheading a terrific Dvořák Festival in June 2009 and presiding over thematic Russian evenings. It was natural that a conductor interested in organizing works around an idea who also has a fairly theatrical side would want to match excerpts from Shakespeare plays with orchestral works they inspired. This week’s all-Berlioz lineup shows Elder’s desires to be worthy of the execution.
The literary connection with Berlioz’s 1844 overture The Corsair is twice removed from the Shakespeare concept as the title attribution is ostensibly to another Berlioz favorite, the poet Byron (and in fact it has nothing to do with any author but was inspired by a vacation stay on the French Riviera). Still, its nine minutes are filled with all of the dramatic energy, variety, and bluster that British conductors love and do excellent jobs with, as Elder did here.
That feel for the composer’s own feelings carried over to the two excerpts from Romeo and Juliet (1839), Berlioz’s pioneering “dramatic symphony.” Elder wisely wanted these works paired with staged readings from the edition of the play that the composer, then 23, saw in Paris of 1827 and found life-changing. For that version, English actor David Garrick had rewritten the dénouement to have Romeo alive when Juliet awakes in the Capulet tomb so that the teen lovers could be united before dying “again.”
Brendan Marshall-Rashid and Susan Shunk of Chicago Shakespeare Theater were an eloquent pair, as was Marshall-Rashid alone in Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech; Elder, who could do voiceovers if he ever wanted to give up the podium, added intriguing readings of his own. Though the miking of the voices could stand to be turned down, the clarity of the playing of both the Queen Mab Scherzo and the Garrick-inspired Tomb Scene could not have been improved upon.
Elder’s compatriot violist Lawrence Power has made the brave decision to pursue a solo career on an instrument that has few solo works written for it and gets far too little respect. Perhaps Power, 34, can do for the viola what William Primrose did for it in the mid-20th century: He is a player of poise, elegance, and individuality. I have never heard a performance of the de facto viola concerto that Berlioz called Harold in Italy (1834) as interesting as Power’s; it pulled the orchestra itself into his wholly thoughtful and musical realm even when Elder seemed to fall out of synch with him.
Harp Sarah Bullen and English horn Scott Hostetler were Power’s total partners and wove their parts in and around his with similar understanding that this Byron-inspired 40-minute piece is a work of musical experimentation as well as storytelling. Dark and lightly bearded, giving a sense of the gentler side of the swashbuckling Byron, Power was making his CSO début. It would be great to have him back to share the rest of the viola’s repertoire. Elder is also back next week with more Shakespeare, this time teamed with Elgar, Delius, and Tchaikovsky.
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