Here's the full version of my Saturday Chicago Sun-Times review of Thursday night's Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert.
--------------------------
Music that stirs the imagination
CSO instantly masters new piece
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Repeated Saturday at 8 p.m.
Contemporary orchestral composers these days usually run in or near two gangs.
The Complexity Gang turns out thick scores for large, augmented ensembles. Sometimes, though, all the concurrent instrumental activity leads to a kind of brown soup without much individual character. Audiences are often left scratching their heads wondering if they are attending an analysis class or a concert.
The Faux Naive Gang, in contrast, follows the American Mavericks of the last century. Lots of melody, major keys, and open chords. Too often, though, this crew forgets that the original mavericks were innovators who wrote what they liked. The posturing, imitation, and repetition of many of their would-be successors can grow tiring.
Fortunately, each camp has inspired some real individuals who take the best from the gangs but dig deeper.
Thursday, Chicago Symphony Orchestra audiences got their first taste of the music of Matthias Pintscher, 37, one of Germany's most important young composers, who understands complexity but also knows how to streamline it and wed it to the theatrical and the imaginary visual.
For Osiris, a co-commission of the CSO, Carnegie Hall, and the London Symphony Orchestra, Pintscher begins with the scattered pieces of a 1970s artwork by postwar German bad boy Joseph Beuys and the Egyptian myth behind it of a god torn asunder by his angry brother yet brought back to physical unity by his wife's love and the flapping of her wings.
We have no problem thinking or seeing this way when it comes to myth or visual art, Pintscher wonders. Why can’t we do the same with music? And so in the 23-minute piece, dedicated to CSO conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez, he tells the story of Osiris instrumentally but also acts it out in musical figuration. High muted trumpets and a deep contrabass clarinet offer lines like dialogue while heavily divided strings (every player has a different part) create a kind of tightly regulated set of watery tides below.
Pintscher is an astonishing colorist. He makes the players work in strange ways, but the results are both gently captivating and brilliant. The world première audience Thursday night gave the work an ovation normally reserved for a favored warhorse.
Who else but Boulez could have pulled off this world- premiere performance in the limited rehearsal time of U.S. orchestras? He approached this new work with total seriousness and utmost care. The virtuoso members of the CSO responded in kind.
Mitsuko Uchida took us to Mozartean heights as conductor-soloist in two piano concertos last week. This week she digs into another signature work, Bartók's final completed score, the Third Concerto of 1945. She and Boulez gave this beautiful musical stepsister the sort of drive that normally characterizes the vigorous Nos. 1 and 2. But they balanced this drive with chamber-sized moments of night music by the wind chairs and this great collaborative soloist.
Closing the program, Debussy's complete Images for Orchestra, 1905-12, surely suffered from rehearsal focus on the Pintscher and Bartók. It will improve by tonight and certainly by the CSO's trip next week to Carnegie Hall where the orchestra will play two programs.
-------------------------