Here is my Friday, December 3 suntimes.com and Saturday, December 4 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday December 2, 2010 Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus concert with conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez and vocal soloists including American soprano Christine Brewer.
Boulez triumphs with Janáček mass
Conductor and CSO find beauty and delicacy in Schoenberg work as well
The rejuvenation of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under a trio of three very different men among the world’s greatest conductors was underscored this week by Grammy nominations for four recordings by all three men -- music director Riccardo Muti, recent principal conductor Bernard Haitink, and conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez -- on the orchestra’s own essential label, CSO Resound.
And those who’ve experienced the live concerts with Boulez over the past few weeks have witnessed again the combination of this great orchestra with a composer-conductor of unique powers of inquiry and presentation.
Since his last Chicago outing with this theatrical 45-minute work, Boulez spent several years working on and conducting Janáček’s last opera, From the House of the Dead, a contemporary of the Mass, throughout Europe. The experience has underlined the conductor’s conviction that Janáček’s music is not at all designed to please Western ears or to conform to European expectations.
It growls, it shouts, it talks as people talk with each other, it screams to heaven as they scream. The late works can feature fanfares for a celestial kingdom of the mind, and timpani, three sets, help to make clear in the Mass that this kingdom can be terrifying as well as glorious. As Brahms did, as Verdi did, Janáček, another non-believer, makes his own text for this mass, even, to underscore the Eastern effect, setting the liturgical excerpts, sections and scraps that he selected in a disused Old Slavonic (the title relates to this tongue) and giving even that an extra Czech spin. The work is both thrilling and heavy. There are multiple calls for mercy, but not for peace.
Duain Wolfe’s chorus (also up for a Grammy for Muti’s Verdi Requiem) delivers, and how: barking, purring, demanding, as if the animals from Janáček’s fantasy The Cunning Little Vixen had become overwhelmed with human passion. The superb soprano Christine Brewer, a native and resident of Southern Illinois, led the vocal quartet of soloists in both the size of her part and its execution. Canadian tenor Lance Ryan was valiant as the imploring figure. Reliable American mezzo Nancy Maultsby is a veteran of the 2000 CSO performance. There seemed little need to engage Russian bass Mikhail Petrenko for his small part. Young organ dynamo Paul Jacobs, who debuted with the CSO just last month, performed both his instrument's eerie solo lines and the wild solo part Janáček inserted into the Mass with fiery dedication.
Last time, Boulez paired the explosive Janáček with Stravinsky’s contemplative 1930 Symphony of Psalms, another case of East confronting West. This week he offers the 1917 string orchestra version of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4. I don’t know how it connects, if at all, with the Janáček, but I do know that in a lifetime of hearing and loving this swirling, shimmering, hypnotic work, I have never heard it played with such beauty and delicacy. It even earned a rare extra curtain call from the crowd. All in all, another Boulez concert not to be missed.
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