My Friday October 29 suntimes.com and Saturday October 30 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday October 28, 2010 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with guest conductor Jaap van Zweden and soprano Measha Brueggergosman.
Jaap van Zweden Photo: Bert Hulselmans
Van Zweden makes most of his CSO spotlight gig
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
with Jaap van Zweden
and Measha Brueggergosman, soprano
Repeats Friday at 8 p.m. at Orchestra Hall
and at the University of Illinois’s Krannert Center in Urbana, Saturday at 8 p.m.
RECOMMENDED
BY ANDREW PATNER
Jaap van Zweden has been the most remarkable substitute conductor in modern Chicago Symphony Orchestra history. The Dutch music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and several ensembles in The Netherlands and Belgium did such astonishing work in the 2008-2009 season filling in at eleventh hours for ailing conductors Riccardo Chailly and Semyon Bychkov that he was booked for his own subscription program this fall. The ink was hardly dry on that announcement when he managed to jet in again in April to replace a canceling Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Those three weeks featured large-scale symphonies by Bruckner, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff, and van Zweden, who possesses an unusual blend of high energy, intense focus, and palpable intelligence, offered the same in a concert of his own design Thursday night with the CSO, Shostakovich’s relatively neglected hour-plus C minor No. 8, Op. 65 of 1943. Van Zweden, 49, showed his additional curiosity with two opening works that promised much on paper: the major orchestra debut of Dark Waves, a 2007 work by Alaska-based composer John Luther Adams, and four of Gustav Mahler’s 1890s’ Wunderhorn songs with Afro-Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman making her CSO debut as soloist.
I’m a fan of Adams, the current holder of the Nemmers Prize at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and his unusual music which conveys senses of Arctic space and time through broad sweeps of sound and senses of mood. But hearing the pre-concert performance of the two-piano version of the 12-minute electronics-enhanced work -- expertly performed by Amy Briggs and Daniel Schlossberg -- made me wonder what purpose a full live orchestra served in producing what is largely a set of effects, including an alluring, chilling response to the sunrise in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. That the string parts looked like a recipe for instant repetitive stress syndrome was an additional cause for concern.
Brueggergosman is a delight in recital. Seeing her at her 2006 local debut with University of Chicago Presents and several times in a tiny Baroque wooden church at the Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway this summer, she displayed interpretive and vocal gifts that made you wish you could listen to her all night. But, at 33, her voice does not seem to be there yet for orchestral work. Stunning to look at in her shiny, silver Mylar-like dress and bare feet, you knew from her pacing and postures that she cared and had thought seriously about this variety pack of four songs of the series, but her voice did not carry.
The Shostakovich Eighth is loved by fans of the preeminent Soviet composer and viewed more cooly by others. A favorite work of van Zweden, he had wisely scheduled it for his own orchestra in Dallas last week as well. He doesn’t try to fight the sprawl of the five-movement wartime work, how could he? Rather he illuminates the individual parts and lines in a piece that showcases Shostakovich’s technical expertise and his style of braiding and extending these lines, as well as his bombast and his plays to the crowd. Van Zweden, a former concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, reportedly took 30 minutes of intense rehearsals to work with the first violin section alone. The results of this and his other rehearsal and podium work and the current and rare heights of the orchestra made this as fine and bracing a performance of the piece as could be imagined. Solo players across the board -- but led by English horn Scott Hostetler -- gave everything demanded but as importantly never more. The audience listened with rapt attention and demanded repeated curtain calls. It’s wonderful to have van Zweden as part of the CSO family.
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