Andrew Patner: The View from Here

Life in death: Milton Babbitt, Robert Hilferty, and a brand new documentary film

Milton Babbitt at Carnegie Hall in 1998 -- photo by Steve J. Sherman/The New York Times

The death of American composer Milton Babbitt Saturday at 94 was marked by an appropriately lengthy New York Times obituary by Allan  Kozinn on Sunday and much sadness from all of those who love the meeting of mind and music.  (Alex Ross writes and provides several excellent links here.) 

The almost single-handed launcher of serialist music in the United States, in the 1940s, Babbitt was also a major electronic music pioneer, and, at Princeton for more than 70 years (!), at Juilliard for almost 40 and at many other formal and informal centers of learning around the word, a teacher and mentor of many, from Mario Davidovsky to John Eaton to Stephen Sondheim. His work in serialism paralleled, anticipated, and also influenced the works of such major European near-contemporaries as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luigi Nono.  A brilliant man -- with training and real abilities in mathematics and philosophy -- and a lover of language(s), he was also a great controversialist and wit --  a unique figure in American cultural and musical life.  

Babbitt lived a full and rich life and so my first thoughts at the news of his death, along with gratitude for his many contributions, were of my friend and colleague Robert Hilferty (left) who died tragically a year and a half ago in New York at just 49.   Among many activities and accomplishments in a number of fields, Robert had been working for many years on a film on the composer, one of his great heroes whom he first became acquainted with while an undergraduate at Princeton. Even the title of this unfinished work had become something of a legend over time -- Babbitt: Portrait of a Serial Composer. Now, I thought, we will never see Robert's film.

Instead, this part of Robert's story has a happy ending.  It turns out that Robert's partner, costume designer Fabio Toblini, had asked composer and former Babbitt student Laura Karpman, for whom Robert had shown his most recent work on the film two years ago, if she might try to complete the project.  She did so -- just now -- and today she generously placed it with NPR Music online.  You can watch it, and Robert, and Sondheim, and, of course, Babbitt, absolutely free of charge in the 64-minute version she has fashioned from Robert's work here.  

This is one of the things we look for in art -- a means of seeing that even in death there is life. Blessings on Laura, on Fabio, on Robert's soul, and on the music and art of Milton Babbitt. 

Lyric Opera of Chicago's 'La fanciulla del West': 'golden' opportunity to see a gem

Here is my Monday January 24 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times review of the Saturday January 22, 2011 opening night of Lyric Opera of Chicago's revival of Puccini's La fanciulla del West.

Soprano Deborah Voigt sings the title role of Minnie in The Girl of the Golden West at the Civic Opera House. | Al Podgorski~Sun-Times

‘Golden’ opportunity to see a gem

By ANDREW PATNER 

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats this Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and then six more matinée and evening performances through February 21.

In the 100 years and one month since its world premiere at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Puccini’s La fanciulla del West ("The Girl of the Golden West") hasn’t achieved the audience success of La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, or Turandot.  And it certainly lacks the major arias, drama, and even the melodrama of these repertory staples. But it’s the composer’s most adventurous and involving score and a work filled with psychological insight and very real characters. When given the cast and production of Saturday night’s opening at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the fervent and penetrating performance that Andrew Davis led from the Lyric Orchestra, the result is a not-to-be-missed presentation at the Civic Opera House.

In addition to being through-composed -- following Wagner, Debussy and Richard Strauss -- rather than having set pieces for singers, the three-act Girl also has met with resistance because of the absurdity for many viewers of seeing a stage filled with 1849 California Gold Rush miners singing in Italian about how much they miss their “mammas.” As this objection doesn’t come up often with starving Parisian artists, an abandoned Japanese girl in Nagasaki, or an international crowd of dignitaries in a Chinese court, let’s just suspend our disbelief and take Fanciulla as what it is: a love letter to America, a celebration of a non-hysterical, heroic woman, and a paean to a very adult idea of love and companionship.

This has been soprano Deborah Voigt’s year for singing and playing Minnie, the saloonkeeping young woman of the title.  The Illinois native made her role début in San Francisco last summer and comes immediately off of the centennial run of the work at the Met.  And if this third major Minnie were not enough, she’ll continue the independent Western gal theme as Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun at Glimmerglass Opera in New York State this summer.  The much-loved Voigt has been subject to criticism since undergoing successful weight-loss surgery several years ago, with some saying the procedure has affected the power and even character of her voice.  I’m sitting out that dispute.  Whatever the cause of some constriction in her voice on Saturday (perhaps a cold?), her absolute characterization and conviction as Minnie were equally commanding and inviting.  This is a heart-of-gold woman who can use a six-shooter and keep a man’s world of miners in line, but one who also itches for love and even book learning.

Sicilian tenor Marcello Giordani long has been seen as a might-have-been singer outside of his home at the Met.  Those doubts, too, fade away with his role as “Dick Johnson of Sacramento,” the alias used by the unhappily hereditary bandit Ramerrez who comes to Minnie’s Polka saloon in search of stored gold but instead is smitten with the proprietress and she with him after recalling a previous chance meeting.  Minnie and “Dick’s” duet “Mister Johnson, siete rimasto indietro” finds Voigt and Giordani well-matched vocally, physically, and emotionally, and this chemistry carries over through the next two acts.  (Sadly, the beauty of this music was not lost on Andrew Lloyd Webber, and his “inspiration” from it in The Phantom of the Opera retrospectively haunts Puccini’s score.)

Northern Italian baritone Marco Vratogna makes a major role and house début here as the “sceriffo,” Jack Rance.  As with the lovers so filled with self-doubt, Rance is no pure villain, and Vratogna both got his lawman’s character and earned the loudest and longest ovation on opening night with a strong and individual sound.  Lyric stalwart comprimario tenor David Cangelosi is at his best as the bartender, Nick.  The large American supporting cast is young (many are Ryan Center members) and strong across the board.  Space allows mention only of baritone Daniel Sutin as Minnie’s true friend Sonora, bass-baritone Craig Irvin as Ashby, the Wells Fargo man; bass-baritone Paul Corona as the minstrel Jake Wallace who sings a Zuni Indian ballad, mezzo Katherine Lerner as Minnie’s Indian helper Wowkle, and bass Evan Boyer as Wowkle’s boyfriend Billy Jackrabbit.

Director Vincent Liotta superbly reanimates the decades-old Harold Prince production along with updating by Scott Marr of the original Eugene and Franne Lee sets and costumes and fresh lighting from Jason Brown.  But in addition to Voigt, it is really Davis and the orchestra and Donald Nally and the men of the Lyric Chorus who make this relative rarity soar.  Atmosphere becomes feeling and characters become universal in their hands.

The seventh degree of Lois Weisberg: longtime Chicago cultural commissioner resigns and criticizes city plans

Photo: Leah Missbach Day

The seventh degree of Lois Weisberg

Longtime Chicago cultural commissioner resigns and criticizes city plans

BY ANDREW PATNER

Longtime Chicago Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg has resigned effective at the end of this month.

In an exclusive story on the website of Crain's Chicago Business this morning, Greg Hinz reported that Weisberg, 85, and the last remaining member of Mayor Richard M. Daley's original cabinet, said she was leaving due to the Mayor's merger of her department with the politically-focused Mayor's Office of Special Events.

Weisberg has also opposed recent moves to privatize the city's summer and lakefront festivals and to start charging admission to the enormous Taste of Chicago event.  She said that the Mayor never spoke with her nor sought her advice or input on any of these matters.  Daley's office had said last year that Weisberg would head the newly-merged department.

"I am not on the same wavelength as these other people," Weisberg told Crain's. 

"That's why I'm leaving.  I felt bad that the Mayor never asked, never talked to me about how to fix Taste of Chicago.  I don't believe in privatization."

Weisberg, a cultural leader in Chicago since the 1950s, directed the Mayor's Office of Special Events under the late Mayor Harold Washington starting in 1983 and joined the current administration when Daley was first elected 22 years ago. Weisberg gained additional national attention when she was the subject of a January 11, 1999 New Yorker magazine profile by Malcolm Gladwell, "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg."  The article appeared in a different form in Gladwell's best-selling 2000 book, The Tipping Point.

"The festivals have given the city an image of being a place where the people of Chicago can be together and be uplifted, all the different races and religions," Weisberg said. "You can't do that if it's not free."

In addition to directing the programs at its home base, the Chicago Cultural Center, which Weisberg founded in 1991, the Department of Cultural Affairs co-sponsors the weekly Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, the summer-long Grant Park Music Festival, and many other fine arts programs throughout the city.

We'll have more on this story in the coming days and will also have a program on Critical Thinking on 98.7WFMT and wfmt.com to discuss these matters.

 

Chicago Sinfonietta: Paul Freeman living Dr. King's dream, one more time

Here, with small cuts restored, is my Wednesday January 19 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times review of the Monday, January 17, 2011 Chicago Sinfonietta Martin Luther King, Jr. Day concert with Paul Freeman and Leslie B. Dunner, pianist Reginald Robinson, vocal soloists, and the Chicago Community Chorus.

Paul Freeman, pictured with the Chicago Sinfonietta in an earlier concert, conducted his final King Day concert as music director Monday.

King Day concert is fanfare for uncommon man

BY ANDREW PATNER

As a young man, Paul Freeman, the Chicago Sinfonietta’s visionary founder, met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Atlanta airport in March 1968, just a few weeks before King’s assassination. When Freeman, then 32, told the civil rights leader that he was coming into town to conduct the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra King exclaimed, “The last bastion of elitism . . . Glory, Hallelujah!”

That encounter stayed with Freeman and fueled his mission to launch an orchestra devoted to diversity and excellence, that saw excellence as coming in part from diversity. Nearly a quarter century after the Sinfonietta’s debut, its annual King Day commemorative tribute Monday night at Orchestra Hall was a varied, beautifully executed, and moving concert, one of the finest I have heard in some time from this essential group..

Facing recent physical limits, Freeman, 75, will step down as music director after this season.  His leadership of two important abstract works by African-American composers Ulysses Kay (1917-1995) and George Walker (born 1922), as well as his witty banter with the audience as he led a hall-wide concert-closing singing of “We Shall Overcome," made it clear that his mind and spirit remain vigorous. Freeman and the Sinfonietta have recorded both Kay’s sparkling 1968 Overture to Theater Set and Walker’s more somber 1941 Lyric for Strings, and they were performed Monday with both care and grace.

Freeman ceded the podium to Leslie B. Dunner for two larger works: the 2007-10 Concerto for a Genius, a collaboration between Chicago trumpeter and orchestrator Orbert Davis and young ragtime piano wonder and MacArthur Fellow Reginald Robinson, and Robert Russell Bennett’s “concert version” of the Gershwins and DuBose Heyward’s Porgy and Bess.  Cross-genre and fusion works are always a challenge for composer and performers.  Working with four original solo neo-ragtime numbers from Robinson’s 2006 album Man Out of Time, Davis created a rich orchestral setting, sometimes too rich, so that even Robinson’s amplified (!) Steinway was overtaken by its admittedly intriguing accompaniment.  A solo encore let Robinson loose and won an additional ovation.

As for Porgy, what a pleasure to hear and see international baritone Donnie Ray Albert in Chicago in this 1956 arrangement of the great 1935 American opera.  His vocal and physical offering of “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” with soprano Lisa Daltirus took us back to the great William Warfield.  Tenor Chauncey Packer was a spirited Sportin’ Life in the razzle-dazzle character’s two interpolated showstoppers.  And the spirit of Keith Hampton’s life-affirming, mature, and all-volunteer Chicago Community Chorus and the superb shaping and playing of the score by Dunner and the orchestra capped off an inspiring concert.

When Freeman returned for the shared singing of “We Shall Overcome” with the large and wonderfully mixed audience, it was hard to separate one’s mind from recent tragic events, King’s life and sacrifice, or the continued lack of diversity in the ranks, programming, and audience of the higher-profile Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

It’s clear that Freeman, who has done so much to advance diversity in classical music, is leaving the Sinfonietta in excellent artistic and organizational shape.  “The last bastion of elitism . . .  Glory, Hallelujah!” indeed.

CSO: non Nézet-Séguin, mais oui à Renaud Capuçon

Here is my Saturday January 15 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday January 13, 2011 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with substitute guest conductor Juanjo Mena and violinist Renaud Capuçon.

French violinist rescues CSO program

Capuçon delivers despite conductor cancelation

BY ANDREW PATNER 

SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED

Repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.

Classical music, like any other form of art and entertainment, has its stars and stars in the making. Charismatic conductors and soloists sell tickets and can produce a genuine and even healthy sense of excitement.

In the case of orchestral music, things are a bit different, as with an ensemble at the level of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the group itself can be the point of attraction.  Still, it’s better to have a great music director than an indifferent one, and it’s always interesting to check out a potential Next Big Thing.

Quebecois conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin is said today to be that NBT.  Just 35, he already has been named to be the next head of the esteemed Philadelphia Orchestra. His scheduled CSO début set for this week was marked on many calendars and triggered a bump in ticket sales.  But then the busy maestro-in-the-making canceled with short notice a few weeks ago.  He offered no explanation until a New York Times critic pressed Philadelphia’s management while preparing a review of a Nézet-Séguin concert there: He just had no time for Chicago, it seemed.

CSO management was forced to scramble and found that the middling Basque conductor Juanjo Mena had some time and was willing to pick up the existing program without changes. More significantly, the announced soloist, Nézet-Séguin’s good friend and contemporary Renaud Capuçon, said he’d make good on his debut contract.

Thank goodness for that.  For the unalloyed success of the concert Thursday night at Orchestra Hall came from Capuçon.  Small in stature, the French violinist has a beautiful and rich sound, aided, in part, by his having the coveted instrument of his former teacher Isaac Stern at his disposal, thanks to a Swiss bank which purchased the 1737 Guarneri del Gesù as an investment.

Playing Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1945 D Major Violin Concerto, premièred and popularized by Jascha Heifetz and revived in our day by Gil Shaham, he brought a refined sensibility to a melody-rich work drawn from popular film scores by the Viennese refugee composer.  This is a work one doesn’t need to hear more than once a decade or so, but Capuçon is the man to hear it from.

Numerous curtain calls brought an equally personal and non-syrupy encore of Fritz Kreisler’s transcription of the “Melodie” from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Let’s hope that this was the first of many Chicago appearances by this gifted artist.

Ravel’s own 1912 orchestral version of his  Valses nobles et sentimentales benefits greatly from the control of a Pierre Boulez, and Tchaikovsky’s much-played B minor Symphony No. 6,  Pathétique, is aided by the depth of a Barenboim or Muti.  It’s no insult to Mena to say that he is not on the level of these three megastars, but he did not crash or burn Thursday. And he’s not yet had chances to lead many major U.S. orchestras.  But his fussiness often stood in the way of strong work from the CSO players, including flute Mathieu Dufour, the horn section led by Daniel Gingrich, bassoon William Buchman, and, in the Tchaikovsky, oboe Eugene Izotov. 

My face for radio on television this week: I'm Ken Davis's guest on 'Chicago Newsroom'

With other panelists having last-minute conflicts, I'm Ken Davis's only guest on this week's CAN TV program Chicago Newsroom.

The program was taped and originally aired on CAN 19 on cable television on Thursday, January 13, 2011.  We discuss the possible abolition of the death penalty in Illinois, the recent turmoil at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the upcoming mayoral election, inter alia.

You can watch it on a free stream here.  (30 minute video clip.) And here's the YouTube link.  (Same.)

The program is produced by Chicago Access Network TV.

Brian Dickie: Chicago Opera Theater's unique savior will step down after 2012 season

Here is the full version of my Thursday January 13, 2011 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times story.

Brian Dickie, shown in 2004 | al podgorski~sun-times

Chicago Opera Theater chief Dickie to step down in August 2012

BY ANDREW PATNER

Brian Dickie, who has done more to change the shape of opera in Chicago than anyone since Lyric Opera of Chicago impresarias Carol Fox and Ardis Krainik, announced Thursday that he will step down as general director of Chicago Opera Theater after the 2012 COT season at the end of his current contract.

Dickie, a Briton who will then be 71 and marking his 50th anniversary in opera management and administration, and his wife Nell have a young daughter and they will return to London where their extended families are. 

"The time obviously comes at a certain point.  And in addition to our daughter, Beatrice, I have nine grandchildren -- eight of them boys," Dickie said in an interview Wednesday.  "But I’m here and quite busy for another 18 months!"

 

Dickie came to Chicago in 1999 at a time of transition both for COT, Chicago’s smaller opera company, and for him.  COT’s founder, Alan Stone, had retired for health reasons and the group’s initial mission of opera performed in English had fallen out of fashion in an age of supertitles.  Raising money for American works had also stalled.

Dickie, who had a long career with the famed Glyndebourne Opera in England and had also been head of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto was living in the U.S. and looking for a new position.  

The COT board took a major gamble in bringing an international figure to the small, cash-strapped operation. Dickie almost immediately brought it to renewed national and even international attention with innovative productions of Baroque and modern works with singers, conductors, stage directors, and designers who were newcomers to U.S. houses or even to opera itself.  Dickie also led the group in its successful move from a small North Side former school auditorium to the new 1,525-seat Harris Theater in Millennium Park in 2004.

“I did not want to duplicate what our great friends at the Lyric were doing,” Dickie said in a statement, “but to give Chicagoans three more titles every season to expand their experience of operatic repertoire, and to provide additional opportunities for innovative approaches to production.  This I believe we have done,  thanks to a wonderful board and staff and especially to an adventuresome group of donors and ticket buyers who championed our cause.  I will miss this city deeply.

“I have no plans to retire and hope to continue to contribute to the opera community for many years to come.”

In an interview, Dickie added, “What we want to ensure is that this company can build on what we have achieved.  It’s certainly a very difficult period for all arts organizations and for the ticket-buying public.”

COT has an annual budget of only $2.5 million -- “That has to change,” Dickie said -- compared with Lyric’s $53 million.  “I’ve always believed in keeping to one’s artistic standards and achieving excellence.  That in the end will win through.  COT will find someone.  There are all kinds of exciting people out there in their ‘30s and ‘40s and they’ll figure out the challenges.  Necessity being the mother of invention and all that.” 

COT board president, Gregory O’Leary, is chairing a search committee for a successor which will begin its work immediately and the company has retained a search firm as well.

Dickie presented 20 Chicago premières at COT ranging from Monteverdi’s 1607 Orfeo, to such 20th century masterworks as Britten’s Death in Venice and John Adams’s Nixon in China.  2011 will bring the Midwest première of Tod Machover’s cyber-opera Death and the Powers and a new production of Charpentier’s 1693 Medée, also a Chicago première.  Such artists as soprano Danielle de Niese, conductor Jane Glover -- now music director of Chicago's Music of the Baroque, and stage director Diane Paulus made their  U.S. or opera débuts with the company under Dickie. 

 

My (radio) guest tonight -- Chicago author Ted C. Fishman on his new book 'Shock of Gray: The aging of the world's population'

Tonight from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CST on 98.7WFMT Radio Chicago and via free streaming anywhere in the world at wfmt.com my guest will be Chicago author and journalist Ted C. Fishman (China, Inc.) discussing his new book Shock of Gray: The aging of the world's population . . . . (Scribner). A thoughtful, insightful, and witty observer of trends that are affecting all of our lives but are rarely looked at through a single lens, Ted is a delightful guest.

The program will then be posted Tuesday at wfmt.com/criticalthinking for free podcast, download, and streaming.

See you on the radio!

CSO's "Beyond the Score": an honest look at the Prokofiev Fifth

Here is my Sunday January 9 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times review of the Friday, January 7, 2011 Chicago Symphony Orchestra Beyond the Score presentation on Prokofiev's 1944 Fifth Symphony.  Repeats Sunday at 3 p.m.

CSO's "Beyond the Score": an honest look at the Prokofiev Fifth

BY ANDREW PATNER

RECOMMENDED

Repeats  Sunday  at 3 p.m.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s deservedly popular Beyond the Score series of multimedia presentations on single works of music shifts emphases depending upon the piece.   Personal histories, unpacking of musical themes, and the context of world events all shape these audio-visual immersions.  This week’s examination of Sergei Prokofiev’s 1944 Fifth Symphony takes on the form of old March of Time newsreels, in part because so much of the composer’s life (1891-1953) played out against major events of the first half of the 20th century.

Gifted art director Hillary Leben and series founder, creative director, and narrator Gerard McBurney worked together to make the hour-long presentation flow rapidly Friday afternoon.  Guest conductor Sir Mark Elder and the CSO gamely present appropriate excerpts of the Fifth and related and influential works.  Actors Roger Mueller as various Russian and Soviet figures and William Dick as Prokofiev himself are superb, with fine support from Kelly O’Sullivan speaking the parts of various women and pianist John Goodwin.  (Elder and the CSO perform the full 45-minute symphony on its own after an intermission.)

McBurney, a Soviet music specialist with a great affection for things Russian, presents an honest portrait of Prokofiev, a politically naïve figure whose real strengths as a composer include the realm of fairy tales and story-telling.  Excerpts from his Chicago-commissioned and -premiered opera, The Love for Three Oranges, such great film scores as Alexander Nevsky, and ballets including Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella and his children’s tale Peter and the Wolf both emphasize this and lay out the ingredients for the hodgepodge of the Fifth Symphony itself.  We see how Prokofiev composed in blocks and bits of ideas and that his problems with orchestration were apparent all the way back in his early studies with Rimsky-Korsakov.

Prokofiev’s ignorance of the consequences of politics and war appears even more astonishing against the backdrop of newsreel clips of the February and October Russian Revolutions and the Nazi assaults on and long sieges of Soviet cities in World War II.  His embrace of the optimistic messages of New York department stores and Boston-born Christian Science gave him strength if not depth and encouraged his lifelong discipline and speed at his work.  But they also meant that once he foolishly returned to the Soviet Union in 1935 he remained an artistic prisoner of Stalin’s caprices until his death, on the same day as the dictator, in 1953.  (No mention is made of what became of Prokofiev after the Fifth Symphony nor of the literal imprisonment of his first wife Lina from 1948 until after his death.)

Some of the condensed You Are There-type narration is confusing and confused. “1929. The Great Depression, Roosevelt’s New Deal, Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan” is meaningless, inaccurate, and misleading.  Franklin Roosevelt was not elected President until 1932 and the New Deal did not begin until after he was inaugurated in March of 1933.  Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan had nothing to do with the Great Depression and began a year earlier, in 1928, in any event.  

But we do get a good sense of how this man’s self-absorption and love of nature (wherever he goes in the world he comments on the trees and flowers that surround him) and train and car travel led to his creation of Russian-nurtured melodies and music on his own terms.

(This edition of Beyond the Score is being recorded by the CSO for eventual full-length video streaming at cso.org.)

Nézet-Séguin explains (to the New York Times): I'm just too busy for Chicago

Hotshot young conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has apparently offered a little more explanation of his recent scheduling shuffles.  

Last week, the 35-year-old Quebecois, who is music director-designate of the Philadelphia Orchestra, gave just a few weeks notice that he was canceling his much-anticipated Chicago Symphony Orchestra début this month -- announced almost a year ago -- "for personal reasons."  (See my story here.)  His transatlantic calendar is busy enough this winter, so many figured that the pressure was on in Philadelphia for him to focus his U.S. dates at Verizon Hall. But YN-S, his management, and the PO all offered no explanation and remained mum while Chicago ticket-buyers were ticked and CSO musicians were left scratching their heads.

Now New York Times music critic James R. Oestreich, in a mixed review -- posted Friday at nytimes.com and slated to appear in Saturday's Times -- of Nézet-Séguin's Thursday night PO concert (Debussy's Nocturnes and the Mozart Requiem), reports as follows:

"Mr. Nézet-Séguin was originally scheduled to make his debut at the Cleveland Orchestra this weekend but re-allotted the dates to Philadelphia after his appointment was announced, to give him a greater presence here this season.  That sort of thing is not uncommon, as a matter of courtesy -- or negotiation -- between orchestras.

"But Mr. Nézet-Séguin has definitely raised eyebrows by canceling his debut appearance with the Chicago Symphony next weekend on short notice for unspecified 'personal reasons.'

"He now amplifies in a statement released by the Philadelphia Orchestra: 'Due to an overly taxing fall schedule, I made the extremely difficult decision to create additional time in my schedule for rest and study.'

"Mr. Nézet-Séguin is evidently content to put all his American orchestral eggs in one basket, and Philadelphia, as it emerges from a painful interregnum, seems happy to have them."

That all sounds like what many of us suspected. And perhaps with his eggs happily placed in the Philadelphia basket there was no need for him or his new orchestra to share his elaboration with the press or public in Chicago.  

(And thanks to Jim Oestreich for linking to The View from Here !)