Here is my Friday October 15 suntimes.com and Saturday October 16 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday October 14, 2010 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez substituting for music director Riccardo Muti.
Pierre Boulez works magic with Mahler and CSO
If life gives you lemons, make a tart au citron.
That was the strategy of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when music director Riccardo Muti fell ill two weeks ago and returned to Italy for medical tests. What other institution could then pull the legendary composer-conductor Pierre Boulez out of a hat to fill in for Muti’s last scheduled October concerts, and have him offering instead four performances of a major program of Mahler and Anton Webern?
Boulez began his current close association with the CSO when former music director Daniel Barenboim invited him to return to Chicago some 20 years ago. In 1995, the relationship was formalized with the title of principal guest conductor (only the third in the CSO’s history). Now 85 and the CSO’s first Helen Regenstein conductor emeritus, Boulez restricts his appearances to only a few major orchestras.
There is nothing token or thrown together with Boulez, even for a last-minute substitution. “I would have done this even if I had had to rearrange my schedule,” Boulez said after the performance. “For the orchestra, for the team, for Muti. The friendship is there and is strong. I feel very much for him.”
The availability of a top name also enabled the CSO to keep its date for a PBS Great Performances taping by New York’s WNET, previously scheduled as a part of Muti’s opening weeks.
Chicagoans must find it odd that Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 is seen as the ugly duckling among the composer’s output. Written in 1904-05, the work had its U.S. premiere here in 1921 under Frederick Stock, who so believed in the piece that he played it the next two seasons as well. Even if fewer conductors program the 80-minute work, when that few includes Solti, Abbado, Barenboim, and Boulez, the work is not a stranger here.
Nor should it be. Its “Night Music” sections are among Mahler’s most personal creations, and the middle movement scherzo is perfect heartbreak. The sheer range of sounds that emerges from the large orchestra -- a repeated song from the unusual tenor horn, chilly timpani rolls, tuba murmurs, the infamous cowbells, and even guitar and mandolin -- points to Mahler’s sense of expansion and experiment. Even his approach to an optimistic finale has a way of getting under the listener’s skin.
Boulez knows all of this and brings all of this out, of course, as he did when he led it here four years ago as well. After recently hearing some younger and vastly less experienced conductors take up some of the "Mahler Nine," it was beyond refreshing to hear this supposedly sprawling work guided by a master’s hand. Delicacy, structure, harmonic invention are all made clear. The music is rich without exaggeration.
It was also interesting to contrast the interpretations of two senior figures with Webern’s 1908 Passacaglia for Orchestra, Op. 1. When Bernard Haitink led this historically transitional 10-minute work in 2006, there was a sense of sweep and flow, a painterly quality as in a Monet cityscape. That depth was also present with Boulez, but seemed to have been achieved out of individual points, as in a Seurat painting. How lucky we have been to have these two great leaders with this great orchestra.
Boulez has two weeks of can’t-miss CSO subscription concerts as a part of his regular schedule, including Ligeti’s Violin Concerto with concertmaster Robert Chen in late November and Janáček’s massive Glagolitic Mass in early November. These are good times.
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