Andrew Patner: The View from Here

Structure and emotion: Haitink, the CSO, and Perahia in Haydn, Lutosławski, and Beethoven

Here is my Saturday November 29 suntimes.com and Sunday November 30 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Friday November 28 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with CSO principal conductor Bernard Haitink and piano soloist Murray Perahia.

 

Haitink draws musical intensity from CSO

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday

Among his many gifts, Bernard Haitink has a very special ability to balance and even marry structure and emotion in music.  Few other conductors see a piece whole, attend to both its form and details, and offer performances of great personal and musical intensity.  

In his concerts as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Haitink finds the form in such composers of sprawling works as Bruckner, Mahler and Shostakovich.  And he brings out the inner moods of those seen as devoted more to craft and formalism, such as Haydn, Mozart, and Poland's Witold Lutosławski (pictured above, left; link takes you to Alex Ross's superb 1994 New Yoprk Times memorial essay on the composer).

This weekend at Orchestra Hall, Haitink reminds us that he sees a concert program itself as made up of elements that connect and illuminate each other, as having a beginning, a middle and an end.  Opening with Haydn's 1771 E minor Symphony No. 44 (Mourning), he used discipline and control Friday to make this one of the most expressive Haydn performances I can recall.  Slow and fast movements, major and minor harmonies, play off of each other -- but Haitink knows that Haydn's is serious play.

Lutosławski is described as one of the great individualists of 20th century music, belonging to no school, writing works of complexity that are enjoyed by audiences resistant to atonal and serial methods.  But Lutosławski saw himself as belonging to a great tradition of Western art music -- Beethoven's creations of long forms and Haydn's understanding of structure spoke directly to him even if he acknowledged that he heard these masters' works in a different way from others.

His popular Third Symphony was written for Sir Georg Solti and the CSO and was premièred here in 1983.  Lutosławski's fourth and last symphony was delivered to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1992 and first played with the composer conducting them in 1993, just a year before his death at 81 in his native Warsaw.

The Fourth, just 25 minutes long, is a distillation of many of this gentle and independent artist's interests -- two movements are played as one with a set of long lines weaving in and out of short outbursts and exchanges, volume ranges from great roars of the brass to near-silence.  Haitink brings out the delicacy in this valedictory work in a way I have heard from no other conductor.  While Lutosławski's interest in "psychological form" parallels the greatest postwar writing for film, Haitink knows these pieces don't need to sound like Leonard Bernstein's soundtrack to 1954's On the Waterfront.

The word pellucid must have been coined for the playing of London-based, Bronx-born pianist Murray Perahia (above, right), now 61.  His approach since recovering from a series of hand problems matches that of his longtime colleague Haitink.  At first, one wondered if Beethoven's 1805-06 Fourth Piano Concerto, in G Major, Op. 58, could offer as much beauty as precision in Perahia's interpretation, but soon we were off on a sort of intensely plotted magic-carpet ride.  I can't think of any other pianist today who plays with such intellectual analysis and such heart while avoiding all eccentricities and displays of ego.  A marvel.

How do you say "Mortier" in Spanish? -- intense intendant signs with Madrid's Teatro Royal

 

The pipe dream of having Gerard Mortier take over the beleaguered New York City Opera having come to its expected end earlier this month, the controversial former Salzburg Festival and outgoing Paris Opéra chief will instead head Madrid's Teatro Royal, beginning in January 2010, the Spanish opera house announced today.

In the Mortier manner, the Flemish opera kingpin, who turned 65 yesterday, will replace both artistic director Antonio Moral and music director Jesús López Cobos with the expiry of their contracts with the house.

After Frenchman Stéphane Lissner decided last week to remain as general director at Milan's La Scala until at least 2013, speculation had centered on the Flying Belgian, the intendant without a home, to be the next man in Madrid.

A storied house in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, The Real has been looking for an international profile since it re-opened in its 1850 home ten or so years ago.

¡Olé!

My (radio) guest tonight -- Alex Ross

 

Monday 24 November 2008 -- 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CST

Critical Thinking with Andrew Patner

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, author of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (now out in paperback from Picador), recent recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and proprietor of the one and only The Rest Is Noise weblog in a conversation recorded earlier this month

on 98.7WFMT Radio Chicago and streamed (free) on wfmt.com

and subsequently available at 

http://wfmt.com/criticalthinking

for free podcast/streaming

See you on the radio!

They made me do it -- Some reactions to the orchestra "rankings" by The Gramophone

I really had nothing to say about the "rankings" of the world's major orchestra's by The Gramophone magazine for its December 2008 cover story.  But my bosses at the Chicago Sun-Times wanted a story and so, here 'tis.  From the Saturday November 22 edition.

Sweet sound of success

CSO | Respected London magazine rates Chicago Symphony No. 5 in the world and tops in the U.S

BY ANDREW PATNER

What would happen if a leading British-based music magazine ranked the world's leading orchestras and the "winning" U.S. ensemble didn't care?

That's basically what's happened when leaders of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra shrugged their collective shoulders over the London monthly The Gramophone saying that it's the top classical outfit in the United States.

World-renowned conductor Riccardo Muti guest conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last year.  Muti, who takes over as musical director for the CSO for the 2010 season, will be inheriting the best U.S. symphony orchestra, according to Gramophone magazine. 
(Photo: Associated Press)

ON TOP OF GRAMOPHONE’S LIST OF “THE TOP 20 ORCHESTRAS”:

1) Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam

2) Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

3) Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

4) London Symphony Orchestra

5) Chicago Symphony Orchestra

6) Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

7) Cleveland Orchestra

8) Los Angeles Philharmonic

9) Budapest Festival Orchestra

10) Dresden Staatskapelle

11) Boston Symphony Orchestra

12) New York Philharmonic

13) San Francisco Symphony

14) Mariinsky Theater Orchestra (tours the West as the Kirov Orchestra)

15) Russian National Orchestra

16) Leningrad Philharmonic

17) Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

18) Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

19) Saito Kinen Orchestra (Japan)

20) Czech Philharmonic

"I think it is safe to say that we are not advocates or necessarily firm believers in lists of this sort, given the subjective nature of these types of rankings," said CSO President Deborah Rutter, using the sort of language that one usually hears from someone who's just been voted off the island, not named king of the hill.

Although such surveys are basically not much more than publicity gimmicks for the outlet conducting and trumpeting them, The Gramophone's December cover story list is a cut above many similar rankings.  (I've heard all 20 international orchestras on the list perform live, as well as two other excellent and historic U.S. orchestras that are odd omissions: the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony.)

Coming out on top is Amsterdam's universally revered Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, a superb orchestra that was led for decades by the CSO's current principal conductor, Bernard Haitink. Not surprisingly, the top ensembles of Berlin, Vienna, and London follow. and Chicago pops up at No. 5 on the overall chart.

1. Perhaps the biggest winner in the pack, though, is the Concertgebouw's music director Mariss Jansons.  The Latvian-Jewish conductor has two ensembles in The Gramophone's "Top 10" -- Munich's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was rated No. 6 overall, just behind the CSO and just before the exceptional Cleveland Orchestra.

The high ranking for the Dresden Staatskapelle (No. 10) seems reasonable after their outstanding showing at Orchestra Hall on Sunday.  The Los Angeles Philharmonic at No. 8, three places above the far superior Boston Symphony Orchestra, seems a stretch, although well-traveled Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed was on the Gramophone jury, along with The New Yorker magazine super-critic Alex Ross.  A top 10 spot for the spunky Budapest Festival Orchestra is another oddity.  Former CSO music director Daniel Barenboim's Berlin Staatskapelle is nowhere to be seen.

"As everyone should know," Rutter continued in an e-mail, "on any given evening anywhere and everywhere in the world there are 'best concerts' taking place by many great orchestras.  Music is always a subjective experience, and that's why there isn't and can't be a 'World Series' in our world to firmly, regularly rank orchestras.

"All that said," Rutter concluded, "in any case, it is wonderful to have international recognition of our truly superb and peerless orchestra."

Haitink's Mahler 2 -- A conductor's late triumph with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

 

Here is my Saturday, November 22 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday November 20, 2008 Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus concert with CSO principal conductor Bernard Haitink,  soprano Miah Persson, and mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn.

 

A rapturous Mahler symphony, courtesy of Haitink

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats at  8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday Nov. 25

There is much discussion these days about "late style" in the work of composers, writers, painters, and other artists.  To this fascinating phenomenon of continued and late flowerings by Beethoven, Verdi, Shakespeare, and Rembrandt should be added the work that comes late in the life or careers of great symphony orchestra conductors.

From Sir Georg Solti's reconsideration of Beethoven's tempos and Shostakovich's politics to Pierre Boulez's blossoming as an interpreter of classical works he had long ignored to Daniel Barenboim's unanticipated taking up of Mahler, Chicago has seen many examples of late style at the podium.

But the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's current principal conductor, Bernard Haitink, just a few months shy of his 80th birthday, seems to be outdoing them all.  With each new addition to his CSO repertoire of major works by Bruckner, Mahler, and Shostakovich (and, with the Boston Symphony, J.S. Bach), it is as if we are participating in real time in the conductor's own deeply personal and scholarly reexamination of these weighty scores.

I have attended at least a dozen different presentations of Mahler's C minor Second Symphony, the so-called Resurrection, since the 1970s, and it has long been one of my favorite works in any genre.  But I have never heard the piece as it sounded under Haitink on Thursday night.  It was as if the players and listeners were experiencing the musical discoveries that Mahler made in this revolutionary work (composed and revised from 1888-94, and premiered in full in 1895 in Berlin) just as they were being made by the composer.

In an 80-minute-plus work whose many fans often have to fight the urge to sing along with the choral and vocal solo parts, and at least to hum along with both the massive and intimate orchestral writing, concentration in the packed hall was total.  While being ever loyal -- but with the loyalty of a champion, not an acolyte -- to the score, Haitink made each choice of tempo, rhythm, volume, massing, and color seem almost shocking.

When before have the offstage brass in the huge fifth and last movement sounded both so striking and so altogether right? When did the eerie passing of solo lines come off so quietly and in such silence that you could actually hear the lips of the principal trumpet, horn, and flute leave their instruments? When was the second movement Ländler dance played so delicately that it was as if we could see couples greeting each other with a "How do you do?"

Many in attendance still had the voice and presence of the great American mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (left) in mind from the CSO's most recent performances of this symphony in March 2006. Not only was her singing of the fourth movement "Urlicht" ("Heavenly Light") in full keeping with its name, but just months after these, her final concerts anywhere, she was dead from cancer at 52. 

But in the fine young Dutch mezzo Christianne Stotijn (left), like Hunt Lieberson herself a former string player, Haitink somehow has found a singer who shares his vision totally, and so we wound up listening to and thinking of Mahler, and not any particular artist, however gifted.

Duain Wolfe's chorus, all instrumental sections and soloists, there's nowhere here to start or stop.  We're experiencing historic musicmaking in Chicago these days.  Miss it at your peril.  And don't be late.

Gil Shaham receives Avery Fisher Prize 2008 -- "Live and Surprised" on national PBS telecast

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, or a better musician.

This just in from M.L. Falcone, press representative for the Avery Fisher Artist Program:

2008  AVERY  FISHER  PRIZE Awarded to GIL SHAHAM

Complete Surprise Unveiled During "Live From Lincoln Center" Presentation

As a "Live From Lincoln Center" presentation of Gil Shaham’s evening of music by Sarasate at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse came to a close tonight (Thursday, November 20), Gil Shaham was presented with a complete surprise.  His friend and colleague, conductor Gustavo Dudamel, emerged through the invited audience, interrupting the festivities on air to present him with the coveted Avery Fisher Prize for 2008.  Calling out, "Hola, Gil, I have a message for you," the ebullient Dudamel presented the Avery Fisher Prize to Gil Shaham before the invited audience of 100 people, and a television audience of millions.  The Prize, Dudamel explained, was being given to Gil Shaham for his outstanding achievement and excellence in music.  Present to congratulate Shaham were Avery Fisher Artist Program Chairman, Nathan Leventhal, and Fisher family members Charles Avery Fisher and Nancy Fisher.

As the recipient of the coveted 2008 Avery Fisher Prize, Gil Shaham receives a monetary award of $75,000.  On a marble plaque in Avery Fisher Hall, his name will join the nineteen previous Prize recipients: Lynn Harrell, cellist and Murray Perahia, pianist (1975); Yo-Yo Ma, cellist (1978); Emanuel Ax, pianist (1979); Richard Goode, pianist (1980); Horacio Gutiérrez, pianist (1982); Elmar Oliveira, violinist (1983); Richard Stoltzman, clarinetist (1986); André Watts, pianist (1988); Yefim Bronfman, pianist (1991); Garrick Ohlsson, pianist (1994 ); violinists Sarah Chang, Pamela Frank and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (1999); double bassist Edgar Meyer and clarinetist David Shifrin (2000); violinist Midori (2001); Emerson String Quartet (2004); and Joshua Bell (2007).

The prestigious Avery Fisher Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement and excellence in music.  The late Mr. Fisher's devotion to music and performers was immortalized with a gift to Lincoln Center in 1974, establishing the Avery Fisher Artist Program.  Thirty-four years later, this Program continues to provide recognition to outstanding U.S. instrumentalists and, since 2004, chamber ensembles, in two categories: the Prize and Career Grants.  The Prize recipients are chosen by the Executive Committee of the Program: Emanuel Ax, pianist; David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Henry Fogel, Senior Advisor to the League of American Orchestras; Anthony Fogg, Artistic Administrator, Boston Symphony Orchestra; Pamela Frank, violinist; Ara Guzelimian, Provost and Dean of The Juilliard School; Nathan Leventhal, Chairman of the Avery Fisher Artist Program; Reynold Levy, President, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; Yo-Yo Ma, cellist; Zarin Mehta, President and Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic; Jane S. Moss, Vice-President of P rogramming at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; and Joseph W. Polisi, President of The Juilliard School; Mrs. Avery Fisher, Charles Avery Fisher and Nancy Fisher are advisors.  The Avery Fisher Artist Program is grateful to Lincoln Center, Inc., and its president Reynold Levy for continued support. 

Gil Shaham is recognized internationally by audiences and critics alike as one of today's most virtuosic and engaging classical artists, and is sought after worldwide for concerto appearances with celebrated orchestras and conductors, as well as for recital and ensemble appearances on the great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.  Highlights of the 08/09 season include appearances with the orchestras of New York, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, among others, as well as in Europe in Berlin, London and Munich.  Among Mr. Shaham's many concerto and solo CDs are a number of best sellers that have earned prestigious awards, including multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, a Diapason d'or and Gramophone Editor’s Choice.  In 2004, Mr. Shaham founded his own record label, "Canary Classics."  His most recent recording for this label, featuring Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, with Yefim Bronfman, pianist, and Truls Mørk, cellist, was released in August 2008.  A recording of Elgar’s Violin Concerto is due for release this fall.

Mr. Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in 1971, and at the age of 7 moved with his parents to Israel where, with annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music.  In 1981 he began studying with Dorothy DeLay and Jens Ellerman at Aspen, and in 1982, after taking first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition, he became a scholarship student at Juilliard, studying with Ms. DeLay and Hyo Kang.  He has also studied at Columbia University.  An Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient in 1990, Gil Shaham plays the 1699 "Countess Polignac" Stradivarius.  He lives in New York with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their two children.

Dresden Staatskapelle and Fabio Luisi in Chicago -- das Echte

Here is my Tuesday, November 18, 2008 suntimes.com review of the Sunday, November 12 matinée concert at Orchestra Hall by the Dresden Staatskapelle with conductor Fabio Luisi and 'cellist Jan Vogler.

The Semperoper in Dresden.  Photo by Christoph Münch.

Staatskapelle in a class by itself with Strauss's 'Don Quixote' 

BY ANDREW PATNER

When Wynne Delacoma retired as the Sun-Times's classical music critic, among the things that she said she would not miss was having to listen to the tone poems of German composer Richard Strauss.

Certainly these are works that can reek of pomposity and gimmickry, especially in the wrong hands.  While not sharing Delacoma's sense of comprehensive dismissal, I do like to budget against too many Zarathustras, Don Juans and Heledenlebens.  And I especially dread having to hear the 1897 Don Quixote too many times.

So it was an unexpected pleasure -- a revelation, really -- to hear Strauss's 40-minute retelling of the Cervantes novel, his "Fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character," in the right hands at Orchestra Hall on Sunday afternoon.  In fact, I am not sure that I want to hear this piece again if it is not played by the Dresden Staatskapelle with its principal conductor, Fabio Luisi, on the podium and the gifted German cellist Jan Vogler, a former principal player with the Dresden orchestra, as Man of La Mancha soloist.

While some orchestras sound more and more like each other these days, the 460-year-old (!) Staatskapelle maintains a marvelously characteristic string sound.  And its wind players and horns play in such a rich and distinctive way, individually and collectively, that you can imagine that you are hearing the very sound that convinced Strauss to premiere no fewer than nine of his operas in Dresden with the predecessors of these players.

As we heard in the concert's second half, Luisi, 49 (left, with one of his pugs, Leonie), whose brilliant Rigoletto at Lyric Opera eight years ago still sounds in my head, takes Strauss's picaresque tale-telling as seriously as a Brahms or Beethoven symphony.  By understanding each composer on his own terms, by conducting a strict analysis of each score and then transforming this into a flowing line, Luisi could play just about anything.

I did hesitate a bit in the middle movements of the 1885 Brahms Fourth Symphony in E minor. Op. 98, wondering if Luisi was getting too cerebral, but when he took apart and put back together the great closing-movement passacaglia before our eyes and ears, he had won me and the audience over to his ideas.

And this is Luisi's most important gift: In addition to his technical abilities, his tremendous focus and his palpable energy (his players are on the edges of their seats much of the time), he has ideas about the music he plays -- not eccentric, but deep ones.  And whether he is presenting a narrative, as with Strauss, or showing us how Brahms solved a musical problem, he conveys a wonderful mixture of thought and art.

Weber's overture to his 1826 opera Oberon was the generous and convincing encore.  It made you want to go to Dresden and hear Luisi in his opera house there.  In the meantime, he will play it again, along with large-scale works of Nielsen and Berlioz, at his Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut concerts December 18-20.  Don't miss them.

Porgy and Bess comes to Lyric Opera of Chicago at last

Here is my Monday, November 17, 2008 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com preview of Lyric Opera of Chicago's first-ever production of Porgy and Bess, opening Tuesday night November 18 at the Civic Opera House.

'Porgy' at last 

Lyric yearned to do the classic, but delivering wasn't easy

BY ANDREW PATNER

Chicago -- one of the great music cities, great African-American cities, and great Jewish-American cities -- has waited a long time for its major opera company to produce the great American opera, Porgy and Bess.

Embraced by both the classical and jazz worlds since its 1935 Broadway première, the string of songs by brothers George and Ira Gershwin -- born in 1890s Brooklyn and on New York's Lower East Side, respectively, to Russian Jewish immigrants -- became both instant standards ("Summertime," "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin," "It Ain't Necessarily So") and anthems of the black American experience for singers and audiences around the world.  Its powerful story of life in the face of adversities still stirs the soul.

Morenike Fadayomi (center) plays Bess in the Lyric's first production of the Gershwins' opera for an all-black singing cast. 

(Dan Rest/Lyric Opera of Chicago)

This very set of origins has made Porgy and Bess iconic and also difficult and unusually costly to produce in its full operatic form.  The Gershwins, and then the Gershwin estate (composer George died at just 38 less than two years after Porgy's launch; co-lyricist Ira, in 1983), have required that the work be staged with an all-black cast of singers.

"Lyric has long wanted to do Porgy," said the company's general director, William Mason.  "Ardis Krainik [Mason's predecessor] expressed this desire publicly in the 1980s, and it has never been off of our wish list.

"But planning an opera involves many considerations: You want the right production, the right conductor, assurance that the right singers will be available.  And, to be frank, the current Lyric Chorus has only two African-American members.  To add some 50 outstanding black professional singers -- which we did via national auditions -- as well as a large credited cast for a run of 13 performances is not inexpensive."

Lyric also wanted the right production.  It was Houston Grand Opera that brought the tale of the impoverished inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina's, Catfish Row back to its operatic origins in 1976.  But Mason, and many others, believed that it was not until director Francesca Zambello's new 2005 staging at the Washington National Opera that the work had as powerful a theatrical side as its landmark score deserved.

"The chance to bring Cesca's production and insight together with the conducting of John DeMain -- who has shepherded this score since the Houston re-première -- just managed to work with the rest of our schedule and planning.  We would rather do this great work right than have done it first."

For Zambello (left, drawing by Tom Bachtell) and DeMain, both American artists themselves, the location and timing of this Lyric première have additional significance.  "This is a work of music theatre, of course," said Zambello, who has staged some 25 new operas around the world and whose Little Mermaid has been a Broadway hit.  "But it is really an opera -- the great American opera -- and to be able to do it in a great and historic opera house with the full cast and a full and truly marvelous opera orchestra is to do Porgy as it should be done.

"And to do it in Chicago, to have been in rehearsals with the cast and crew throughout the presidential election, and for all of us to be in Grant Park on the night Barack Obama was elected . . . . well, let's just say that this opera is the story of indomitable hope and aspiration of black Americans, and the timing of this run is just amazing."

DeMain (left), longtime artistic director of Madison (Wisconsin) Opera and music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, adds, "Porgy and Bess has been from its origins a work of tribute and respect to the African-American music and African- American lives that made this country what it is.

"These two Jewish brothers midwifed the world that DuBose Heyward captured in his original novel and said to the world: This is our opera, the lives and the music of African-Americans are our country's great gift to the world."

Ludovic Morlot and Simon Trpčeski -- Up to their early start with the CSO

Here is my Friday, November 14, 2008 Chicago Sun-Times and  suntimes.com review of the Wednesday November 12 Chicago Symphony Orchestra "Afterworks Masterworks" concert with conductor Ludovic Morlot and pianist Simon Trpčeski.

From Russia with appeal

Masterworks program pleases wide audience

BY ANDREW PATNER

Repeated only on Friday at 1:30 p.m.

RECOMMENDED

Among many successful efforts by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to broaden its audiences and spread the gospel of concert music, the Afterwork Masterworks series has taken longer to grow than some others.  But Wednesday night's performance and the large, enthusiastic audience there and at the reception and artists' Q&A that followed showed that this experiment in earlier-hour, intermissionless formats is paying off.

With a 6:30 p.m. start time and a goal of a 60-minute program, the series draws many newcomers to Orchestra Hall without watering down the repertoire.  Wednesday's all-Russian concert, repeated on this week's subscription dates, held a real rarity, Rachmaninoff's final symphony, the Third, in A minor, Op. 44, as well as that well-certified warhorse, the First Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto in B-flat minor, Op. 23.

Having the young and dependable French-born Ludovic Morlot (left) on the podium and a younger rising soloist, Simon Trpčeski (below) of Macedonia, at the keyboard for the concerto did not hurt things.  The ready ease with which these two worked together and the respect that they showed to the orchestra and audience resulted in an evening both serious and pleasing.

Rachmaninoff composed only six works in the 26 years after his escape from Revolutionary Russia in 1917 and his death in an odd exile in Beverly Hills in 1943.   The composer, whose success as a pianist continued throughout his life, never felt comfortable in the West or in the modern world in general.  Yet his Third Symphony, with its wistful themes and beautiful tone colors in both its orchestration and solo passages, deserves to be heard more often.  (It was last played by the CSO in 1984.)

Composed in 1935 and 1936 and revised in 1938, the 38-minute work comes after most of the 20th century's musical revolutions.  Yet Rachmaninoff's mind and heart are elsewhere, in the haunting sound world of Wagner and the solitary path of Sibelius.  Associate principal Daniel Gingrich was the eloquent horn soloist.

Trpčeski (left), 29, realizes that "everyone" knows the 1874-75 Tchaikovsky concerto.  He delivered the opening chords and athletic octave runs with the authority an audience loves.  But he also showed a delicacy beyond his years in the second and third movements, where he and Morlot, 34, were in especially happy accord.

This afternoon's program also includes Glinka's popular Overture from Ruslan and Ludmila.

Leon Botstein plays conductor with the Jerusalem SO in Chicago

I'll have more to say here soon on Leon Botstein (above -- Bard College photograph by Steve Pike) and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.  For now, here is my Thursday, November 13, 2008 suntimes.com review of their November 11 concert in Chicago.

Conductor Botstein proves he knows the score, but little more

BY ANDREW PATNER

Whatever else one thinks of the educator, writer, and orchestra conductor Leon Botstein, there can be no disagreement that he is tireless.

A University of Chicago alum, he became president of a small college in 1970 at age 23 and had taken the same job with Bard College up the Hudson River from New York City in 1975 at 29.  Building that school up since then, complete with celebrity faculty members and starchitect-designed buildings, meant the polymath Botstein didn't have a chance to pull all the pieces together for his Ph.D. thesis in history (from Harvard) until 1985.

Since then, Botstein has launched the well-respected and interdisciplinary Bard Music Festival -- Sergei Prokofiev was the subject this year; its 20th edition next summer will focus on Richard Wagner -- and taken the helm of not one but two financially struggling orchestras: the American Symphony in Manhattan in 1992 and the Jerusalem Symphony in 2003.  He pulled off these feats with a combination of fund-raising savvy and an educator's sense of building thematic programs that, on paper at least, are unusual and often enlightening.

There's only one problem here. Botstein is not a conductor.

Yes, he stands in front of his orchestras and leads them through rehearsals.  Yes, he was an amateur violinist.  Yes, as a college president he hired teachers to drill him on baton technique.

But the results one has heard over the years. and in the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra's Chicago debut at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park on Tuesday night, are no different from what one would hear from any other tireless person from any other field who had the financial backers to keep him on a podium for years going through the moves of being an artist.

All three composers on Tuesday's program, one of two the Jerusalem Symphony is playing on a 16-city U.S. tour, were Jews who at one point or another wrote for Hollywood. Refugees Ernst Toch and Miklós Rózsa (above) had successful careers scoring films that left them with little time for their concert compositions.  The output of Aaron Copland, a son of European immigrants, was in reverse proportions.  

Although the Vienna-born Toch (left, at far right, in a remarkable 1937 photo in Santa Monica with Otto Klemperer, Prinz Hubertus zu Loewenstein, and Arnold Schoenberg) won a 1956 Pulitzer Prize for his Third Symphony, he remains best known for his 1930/1950 spoken-word-game Geographical Fugue.  The program-opening Big Ben Variation Fantasy of 1934 is a work of purely biographical interest, if that, and was played listlessly.

The evening's hero was the remarkable American fiddler Robert McDuffie in Rózsa's Violin Concerto, written for Heifetz in 1953-54.  A specialist in obscure works himself, McDuffie plays with magnetic energy and seeming effortlessness, making a strong case for this Romantic-tinged, perpetual-motion work.  Unusually for him, McDuffie lost his way at two different points and, as he was carrying the performance, this caused some uncomfortable musical moments.

One day, Chicago will hear a top-flight performance of Copland's famed 1944-46 Third Symphony complete with its extensive development of the composer's Fanfare for the Common Man.  I have heard more poor performances of this piece than I'd care to remember, but never one so leaden and deadly as Tuesday's.  With the conductor's head buried in the score, his arms offering wayward cues and workmanlike tempos, one wondered if it was worth giving these musicians employment for such indifferent musicmaking.