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.
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