Here is my Friday January 15 suntimes.com and Saturday January 16 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday January 14, 2010, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with conductor David Robertson and violinist Kyoko Takezawa.
Robertson brings 'jaw-dropping beauty' to CSO Boulez fête
Violinist Kyoko Takezawa makes deeply moving downtown debut
BY ANDREW PATNER
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday January 19 at 7:30 p.m.
David Robertson will also lead the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO's professional training orchestra, in a free concert of Webern and Mahler on Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. Pierre Boulez will join him for onstage commentary.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s monthlong commemoration of the 85th birthday of conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez has assured four weeks of fascinating, challenging, and rewarding programs. Thus far, the concerts have also shown the CSO and soloists playing these 20th and 21st century works at the highest level before rapt audiences.
That Boulez achieves these results has to do with the tremendous respect and affection the legendary composer-conductor has earned in his two decades as a regular leader of the CSO as well as his own unique abilities. That this week’s concerts started out Thursday night with the same success is also a tribute to Boulez, although this time as talent scout, mentor, and example.
[Conductor David Robertson]
American conductor David Robertson, this week’s guest on the podium, was just 32 when he took over musical direction of Boulez’s Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris, and for 10 years he stretched and strengthened the group, and was stretched and strengthened by it.
Now, at 51, he is in his fifth season as music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra where he has had excellent results locally, on tour, and with recordings. He has done so as his own man, programming both works of Boulez and other High Modernists, as well as those of John Adams and the American populists.
Robertson made his CSO debut exactly 11 years ago with a program that very neatly parallels this week’s concert: a French work, a modern violin concerto, and a Stravinsky ballet score. In the intervening time, his work has only deepened, and on Thursday night at least, the once often kinetic conductor seemed to have found a calm both in the works played and in his style on the podium.
Surely some of this emanated from Les offrandes oubliées (“The forgotten offerings”), the concert-opening work by Boulez’s teacher Olivier Messiaen. Written in 1930 when the mystical composer was just 21 and before he had fully developed his unique and eccentric musical language, this 13-minute “symphonic meditation” captures one’s attention literally from its first chord and holds it for its three-part continuous spiritual journey. Jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Japanese-born violinist Kyoko Takezawa made concerto appearances at Ravinia in the mid-1990s but only makes her belated downtown CSO debut now in another work of exquisite beauty and moving seriousness, the 1935 Berg Violin Concerto. One of the three pillars of the Second Viennese School along with his teacher Schoenberg and his contemporary Webern, Berg in his final completed work created something of such intricacy that one could easily spend a year or more analyzing it. Yet especially with such an analysis -- as Robertson and Takezawa have clearly given the work -- it creates a mournful and hypnotic atmosphere in performance. Takezawa, the 1986 gold medalist at the Indianapolis International Violin Competition, understood throughout the deeply inward and personal nature of the piece. She should come back soon.
How many times does one need to hear Stravinsky’s 1911-12 Rite of Spring, a work that long ago moved from revolutionary shocker to repertory staple? As played by Robertson and the CSO, the answer would have to be many more. It’s not often that a performance of a well-known work hits the reset button in our minds and unfolds as an absolutely fascinating adventure for its entire 35 minutes. From David McGill’s opening high themes on the bassoon (can anyone, anywhere play this part better? Call for reward if so) to the full ensemble of 103 players breathing together through every challenging rhythm to the way the chilling explosions of sound emerged right out of the score itself with no frenetic telegraphing from the podium, this was an experience both educational and thrilling. What better tribute to Pierre Boulez could there be?
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