Here is my Saturday January 23 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday January 21, 2010, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with Pierre Boulez conducting, pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich, and percussionists Cynthia Yeh and Vadim Karpinos.
CSO celebration of Pierre Boulez reaches a crescendo
Orchestra features his own work and others by Bartók and Stravinsky and then a tour
Sunday promises a blow-out of Boulez works and world première by two young composers
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s monthlong tribute to the upcoming 85th birthday of its much-loved conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez is in its last days but is hardly winding down.
This weekend, Boulez is conducting a thrilling CSO program of two rarities and an evergreen at Orchestra Hall. Then on Sunday afternoon he’ll share conducting duties with Cliff Colnot as the CSO’s MusicNOW series presents a blow-out program that includes two world première commissions from young composers, as well as virtuosic Boulez works for piano, violin, two pianos, and electronics.
Next week, the composer-conductor will talk about Modernism on Tuesday at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then he and the full orchestra and vocal and instrumental soloists head off for concerts first in Ann Arbor, Mich., and then at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
While such a blur of activity might tire most of us, Boulez himself has shown no signs of flagging during the past three weeks, which also included leading a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic in New York. Thursday night at Orchestra Hall, he had a large audience cheering a program of his own “Livre pour cordes” (“Book for Strings”) in its 1989 version for string orchestra, Bartók’s much-too-infrequently performed Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra (itself a 1940 expansion of a chamber sonata for soloists only) and then the complete ballet version of Stravinsky’s 1909-10 The Firebird.
The audience seemed very much aware that these are Boulez’s last CSO concerts at Orchestra Hall until the 2011-12 season (he’s on a composition sabbatical next season), offering ovations to the applause-averse conductor when he first walked out onto the stage and throughout the evening. In a program that required -- and received -- serious concentration from listeners, this combination of celebration and seriousness was most appropriate.
“Livre pour cordes” is an 11-minute work that grows out of a string quartet Boulez wrote in the late 1940s when he was still in his early 20s. A first reworking for string orchestra had its U.S. première in 1969 when Boulez made his own CSO debut (along with a 26-year-old piano soloist named Daniel Barenboim).
This was the second performance here of the most recent revision. As with so many Boulez works that start with a cell or an initial set of ideas and are then developed, teased out, expanded and remade by the composer over the decades, “Livre” fascinates harmonically, conceptually, and even physically as fragments and phrases are tossed about from section to section and even player to player.
Bartók’s two piano and percussion concerto takes this physicality to the nth degree. Pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and his protegée Tamara Stefanovich faced each other at lidless Steinway concert grands while CSO principal percussionist Cynthia Yeh and assistant principal timpanist Vadim Karpinos had their batteries of instruments on either side of the pair. Given by the CSO only twice before, with the legendary Gold and Fizdale duo in the ’60s and the Paratore brothers in 1986, the concerto is a 24-minute work of simultaneous excitement, virtuosity, and introspection. Soloists excelled, and Boulez and the orchestra fulfilled their essentially supporting role.
The Firebird in its full 47-minute form has been a Boulez specialty here and elsewhere for much of his orchestral conducting career. His trademark elegance, precision, and control were all at work here, allowing listeners to follow threads and lines, and to hear colors that they might miss in more high-octane interpretations or in the needlessly abbreviated Suite. While the horn section has had many better nights, the wind soloists in particular led the orchestra in matching Boulez’s vision.
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