Andrew Patner: The View from Here

CSO: Salonen at his best as composer and conductor; Josefowicz, the unstoppable

Here is my Friday February 25 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times review of the Wednesday February 23, 2011 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and violinist Leila Josefowicz in music of Salonen and Sibelius.

 Esa-Pekka Salonen and Leila Josefowicz at the New York City Ballet performance of Salonen's Violin Concerto in June 2010.  Photo © by Paul Kolnik, courtesy New York City Ballet

Salonen in top form as conductor, composer

Josefowicz a marvel in Finn's new violin concerto

By ANDREW PATNER 

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats Saturday at 8 p.m.

At just 52, Esa-Pekka Salonen already has a major part of his career behind him: his 17-year run (through 2009) as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, reigning figure of Southern California’s lively classical music scene, and inaugurator of that orchestra’s acclaimed Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Fortunately, the Finnish conductor-composer is not resting on his laurels (as the Philharmonic’s first laureate conductor, he has them now). To catch him at Wednesday night’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra Afterwork Masterworks program was to find him better than ever in both of his callings.

His 2008-09 Violin Concerto, a co-commission by the CSO with the Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet that was to have had its world première here two years ago (until Salonen decided he wasn’t finished with the piece) shows him in top form, especially with American-Canadian violin whiz Leila Josefowicz as soloist.  And his magnificent leadership of the Sibelius D Major Second Symphony was the best podium work I have ever heard from him in several halls and cities over the years.

Recharged?  Growing?  Or just in a good place?  It hardly matters.  Still looking like a trim teenager, Salonen is now principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and he has moved his family (save a daughter now in college in New York), his office, and his studio there after almost two decades in Los Angeles. He says that he wants to do more composing and -- as with his recent Piano Concerto, heard here with Salonen and Yefim Bronfman in 2006 -- he seems to have tapped into continuous flows of melody and patterns that speak to him yet create easily identifiable moods for the listener.

Running about half an hour, the four-movement Violin Concerto follows the soul of its creator or a stand-in through dreams, late-night contemplation, hyper-activity, and, the last movement is even so titled, a moving “Adieu.”

Josefowicz, 33, the work’s dedicatee and, Salonen says, “partner in the piece," plays, astonishingly, from memory, and she is so good and so unstoppable that she seems to surprise even herself as she sends the lengthy lines off from her 1724 del Gesù instrument. Several CSO string players looked as if they might fall off their seats as they leaned and craned their necks to see how she was pulling off one technical feat after another. Percussionist James Ross gets to “go crazy” (the composer’s words) with a drum-set solo in the rock ’n’ roll-inspired third movement (the one section of the work that felt a bit too long) and Salonen seemed very pleased with his efforts.

In the great 1902 Sibelius symphony, Salonen was the conductor my coastal critical colleagues hail but who has eluded me and many of my musician friends for years -- controlled and in control, never showing off but never phoning it in. He scraped all external sentimentality off of the work and let its natural yearning speak for itself. He forced no outside ideas but brought out the internal architecture of this national treasure from his homeland in a way that jarred the players from any previous habits or tics in this music.  Daniel Gingrich captained an unblemished horn section, and principal Gene Pokorny used not one but two tubas (one a German double B-flat with a different tuning system) to round out their work with a haunting bass sound. In both works, bassoon William Buchman and tympani Vadim Karpinos had workouts that created musical keys to the pieces.

Wednesday’s abbreviated program skipped Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun with principal flute/magician Mathieu Dufour as soloist.  If it’s not a stunner Saturday, that would be the first time.  I’m going back myself.  That’s how good this concert was.

Riccardo Muti's back, looking great, and we've got pictures!: CSO musicians play for Northwestern hospital docs and staff

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Director Riccardo Muti and his wife Cristina following a CSO musicians thank you concert February 22, 2011 at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital with the team that treated him during his stay there.  ©Todd Rosenberg Photography 2011

Dr. Alexis B. Olsson, D.D.S., Northwestern Memorial Hospital's chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery, with Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Director Riccardo Muti February 22, 2011 following a CSO musicians concert at the hospital as a thank you for treating the Maestro.  ©Todd Rosenberg Photography 2011.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Director Riccardo Muti applauds alongside his wife Cristina and cardiologist Dr. Bradley P. Knight, M.D., following a CSO musicians performance February 22, 2011 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital as a thank you for treating Maestro Muti.  ©Todd Rosenberg Photography 2011

Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians Nathan Cole, Akiko Tarumoto, Kenneth Olsen, and Max Raimi play in a thank you concert at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on February 22, 2011.  ©Todd Rosenberg Photography 2011

Not to be outdone, brass players of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Tage Larsen, David Griffin, Gene Pokorny, Charles Vernon, and Christopher Martin perform for the Northwestern Memorial Hospital staff the next day, February 23, 2011.  ©Todd Rosenberg Photography 2011

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Director Riccardo Muti and CSO Association President Deborah F. Rutter talk with Dean M. Harrison, President and CEO of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, following a concert performed for the doctors and staff at Northwestern on February 22, 2011 as a thank you for treating the Maestro.  ©Todd Rosenberg Photography 2011

Roger Ebert -- At the . . . symphony: Chicago Symphony Orchestra salutes him Friday night, I talk with him here

Here is my Wednesday February 23 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times interview with Roger Ebert, a preview of this Friday's (February 25, 2011) Chicago Symphony Orchestra Friday Night at the Movies tribute to Roger.

 

Roger Ebert reflects on his favorite sounds in a lifetime at the cinema

Friday night Chicago Symphony Orchestra tribute to premier critic, Chicago's won

BY ANDREW PATNER

‘A TRIBUTE TO ROGER EBERT’

Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Richard Kaufman

8 p.m. Friday

Orchestra Hall, 220 South Michigan Avenue

Tickets: $34-$55 -- (312) 294-3000; cso.org

Roger Ebert has always been about 15 or 20 people: film critic, broadcaster, raconteur, bibliophile, prolific author, interviewer, historian, essayist, Anglophile, gourmand, chef, journalist, walking enthusiast, opera buff, Chicagoan, Illinoisan, Illini, prose stylist, Pulitzer Prize winner, sentimentalist, optimist, realist, lecturer, teacher, trivia buff, friend, husband, stepfather, grandparent.  And since technologies took off and he has faced health setbacks, he’s added Internet memoirist, television producer (Ebert Presents at the Movies), cookbook author, and Twitterer extraordinaire to his personae.

In addition to the whir of the film projector, Ebert also has had another relatively constant soundtrack running throughout his life. He’s a music enthusiast and a strong proponent of the role that music should play in movies, from the silent age to our own. On Friday night, no less an institution than the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will present A Tribute to Roger Ebert as a part of its popular Friday Night at the Movies series -- a series Ebert has attended under another one of his hats: unabashed fan.

Conductor Richard Kaufman, a specialist in film music and its history, will lead a program including music from such longtime Ebert favorites as Citizen Kane, Casablanca (left), The Third Man, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Gone With the Wind, as well as works by several other of Ebert’s favorite film composers.   The CSO promises some surprises, too.

In an e-mail exchange with Ebert this week, we discussed several aspects of movies and music.

Q. Is the role of music in film a “chicken or the egg” question?

A. Apparently there were scarcely any silent films of any length that weren’t accompanied by some form of music, if only by a piano, violin, or accordion. Purists talk about viewing silent films with no music, but the medium all but cries out for music. Many silent films came with recommended scores, and noted composers wrote for the medium. When sound came along, music was already there.

Q. You’re (understandably!) a longtime fan of Nino Rota, who wrote the music for so many Fellini and Visconti films, as well as Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy. Under Rota's other hat, as a classical composer and teacher, in the ’60s, Rota was the composition professor of CSO music director Riccardo Muti and remained a mentor of Muti’s until his death in 1979. If you had the chance to sit down with Maestro Muti, what would you want to know about Rota?

A. I got a glimpse of Rota only once, on a midnight in the garden under Juliet’s balcony, in Verona, when he hummed his theme music to Franco Zeffirelli and me.  He seemed so full of joy. His music for me embodies Fellini above all, and I’ve said, “I could watch a Fellini film on the radio.” I’d ask the maestro what rules Rota urged on his students.  I suspect all good teachers have rules, and all good students remember them. 

Q. Growing up in Urbana and then at Champaign-Urbana for school, did you or your family have much connection with classical music?

A. It didn’t play much in the home; we listened to the radio network shows.  WILL, the University of Illinois station, played a lot of classical music.  I went to many concerts at the university’s Smith Music Hall and the Assembly Hall, and even interviewed Harry Partch [the great eccentric American composer and builder of unusual musical instruments, who died in 1974].

Q. You've had many good friends and colleagues at [classical music] radio station WFMT over the years, not least of all the late Studs Terkel.  Did you start listening to WFMT as soon as you came to Chicago?

A. Yes, I did. I started with Studs and The Midnight Special (folk, comedy, and show tunes program), and branched out from there.

Q. One of the last times that we talked in person before your surgeries was at a CSO concert at Orchestra Hall.  You’ve also attended the Lyric Opera of Chicago for many years. Are there any favorite performances or particular memories from these companies that stand out for you? Do you recall the first time you heard the CSO live? 

A. I don’t recall the first time. There have been many times, though. I found it impractical to subscribe to the CSO because of all of the evening movie screenings I had, and have  I probably have heard more concerts overseas -- in London, Paris, Venice and Stockholm -- than in Chicago.

I was fortunate enough to meet [American conductor] Leonard Slatkin. It was in an unusual way: He was a friend of Larry Dieckhaus, our producer at Siskel & Ebert. Slatkin loved movies, and Larry would invite him to screenings and dinners, at which I found him awesomely familiar with the cinema.  I was able to attend several of his CSO concerts.

Q. I love that! Slatkin was actually born in Los Angeles and was a Hollywood baby in the ’40s and ’50s. Do you have some fantasy pairings of film directors and composers, or substitutions for scores that you think just don’t work well with the films they accompany?

A. [Martin] Scorsese should have worked with Rota, don’t you think?

Q. Absolutely! You have written movingly on your blog about changes in your life since losing the ability to speak. Have you noticed any changes in the way you listen to music in a film, or to music in general, since then?

A. In the darkest days of my illness, when my attention span was so disturbed I couldn’t focus on television or reading, [my wife] Chaz brought me some speakers for my iPod.  Music of all kinds became a lifeline.

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 Photo above: Humphrey Bogart and Dooley Wilson in Casablanca (1942).  More related film stills here.

For interested Chicagoans -- My Tuesday February 22 Election Day palm card

Do what you want to do.
And go where you're going to.
Think for yourself,
'Cause I won't be there with you.

                     -- George Harrison

These are my own personal views as a native Chicagoan and lifelong observer/participant/chronicler of, in, and of Chicago politics. These do not necessarily reflect the views of organizations that I write or broadcast for except where noted.  

 

For Mayor: Miguel del Valle

 The only independent candidate.  The only progressive candidate.  The only candidate not to have cashed in his years of public service for millions of dollars in "earned income." The only candidate to have refused political cash contributions from those doing business with the city. (Emanuel's war chest? $8.3 million. Chico's? $2.9 million. Chico's sponsor, Alderman Ed Burke's? $6.6 million.)  The only candidate who has started seriously thinking about our schools.  The only candidate with a demonstrated record of ethics in public life (as a state senator and as city clerk).  His personal style strikes some as too low-key, and his ethical stance on contributions has kept his budget beyond low, but he's been picking up steam in the past weeks.

Even if you like what's-his-name, let's see him prove himself in a serious run-off in April and not just let this be handed to him as a gift without a contest.  You can visit Miguel del Valle's website here.  My fellow city observer and nonpareil architecture eyeballer Lynn Becker has an eloquent endorsement here.

For City Clerk: Susana A. Mendoza

A competent, hard-working state representative over a Machine hack.

For City Treasurer: Stephanie D. Neely

Unopposed, but raising the bar of competency, innovation, and professionalism.

Selected aldermanic races:

2nd Ward (South Loop): Genita C. Robinson -- Toss out the disappointing, showboating incumbent.  Both papers agree.

3rd Ward (Bronzeville): Pat Dowell.  Re-elect a fine alderman.  Turn back the Tillman family. Both papers agree.

4th Ward (Kenwood-Hyde Park): William D. "Will" Burns.  In the Chicago tradition, a good state representative would rather be where the action is in the City Council. Would succeed Toni Preckwinkle, now President of the Cook County Board.  Both papers agree.

5th Ward: (Hyde Park-South Shore): Re-elect incumbent Leslie A. Hairston.  Then let's light a little fire under her.  Both papers agree. (My home ward.)

12th Ward: (Near Southwest Side): Jesus "Jesse" Iñiguez.  Experienced young community figure takes on the vestiges of the Machine's "Hispanic Democratic Organization."  Endorsed by blue-ribbon Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, Migeul del Valle, and both papers.

18th Ward (Far Southwest Side): Chuks Onyezia.  A sharp Federal government attorney takes on a meaningless incumbent.  Both papers back him.

24th Ward (West Side): Melissa L. Williams should replace an absurd incumbent.  Sun-Times agrees.

32nd Ward (Bucktown): Scott Waguespack is probably the best alderman in Chicago.  And he's also an outstanding one.  Various outfits are trying to take him down.  Don't let them.  Both papers strongly agree.

42nd Ward (Downtown): Brendan Reilly had the guts to stand up to Mayor Richie Daley over Grant Park preservation and other issues.  Amazingly, he's unopposed for re-election. Vote for him anyway.  

43rd Ward (Lincoln Park): Hyde Parkers traditionally do not understand Lincoln Park's claims to political independence.  I still don't.   For the open seat, the Sun-Times likes Michele Smith, the Trib likes Tim Egan.  I have no idea.

45th Ward (Northwest Side): Community activist John Arena is the best choice to fill what will be an empty seat and what has been a sleepy one.  Both papers agree.

46th Ward (Uptown): I've known and followed incumbent Helen Shiller since she entered Chicago politics in the 1970s and have also followed some of the love-hate reactions she generates. She's stepping down after six (!) terms. Activist Emily Stewart is the best of the 11 candidates vying for the seat and has the most balanced view of development and affordable housing in a ward where this is *the* issue.  Both papers agree.

47th Ward (Ravenswood/Lincoln Square): Ameya Pawer, 30, wasn't even born when Eugene Schulter was elected to his first of nine (!) terms as alderman of this now "hot" Northwest Side ward in 1975.  After showing some vague stirrings of independence, Schulter decided at the last (filing) minute to retire, nurse his $860,000 campaign fund, and install a flunky.  Pawer is sharp, tough, and honest.  He'd make a modern alderman for a now modern ward.  Both papers agree.  (Tom's ward.)

49th Ward (Rogers Park): Alderman Joe Moore never seems to be able to make up his mind as to what he wants his function to be (remember the ban on foie gras?).  But his heart is in the right place and a better place than his challenger.  Maybe he'll be more focused in the new Council reality.  Both papers agree.

50th Ward (West Rogers Park): Bernie Stone is the current holder of the Biggest Buffoon in the City Council title.  He's long needed to go.  Would that there were a unified campaign against him.  The Sun-Times picks Debra L. Silverstein, a CPA and the wife of Stone foe State Senator Ira I. Silverstein.  The Trib goes with architect and community activist Greg Brewer. Ahmed Khan from the ward's vibrant South Asian community is another, fresher challenger.  Pick one of these three!

You have from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. to vote at your local polling place on Tuesday. The election is officially non-partisan, no party declarations are noted or required, and there will be a run-off on April 5 for any offices where no candidate received at least 50 percent plus one vote of votes cast.  I note newspaper editorial board endorsements in aldermanic races as they tend to do a good job there.

Joyce DiDonato: belated, triumphant Chicago recital début at Mandel Hall

Here is my Monday February 21 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times review of the Friday February 18, 2011 The University of Chicago Presents recital by American mezzo Joyce DiDinato -- her Chicago recital début.

In recital, mezzo Joyce DiDonato teaches as she trills

BY ANDREW PATNER 

From Elly Ameling to Cecilia Bartoli to Dawn Upshaw to Susan Graham, the place in Chicago to hear great singers in recital, and often making débuts, along with Ravinia’s similarly intimate and historic Martin Theatre, long has been The University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall.

 On Friday night, American mezzo Joyce DiDonato added her name, triumphantly, to the Hyde Park honor roll before a sold-out house at U of C Presents that included enough young musicians and student fans that you could almost believe that solo vocal performances could be making a comeback.

Originally a music education student at Wichita State University, DiDonato has carefully built an opera and concert performance and recording career that now has her in regular demand at the world’s top companies and houses.  Chicago audiences have heard and seen her Rosina in The Barber of Seville and Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro at Lyric Opera, and she has given private song programs here for Classical Action, an AIDS awareness group, and for the faculty retirement of one of her mentors, U. of C. musicologist Philip Gossett.

But this was her first full-scale public recital here, and -- befitting her character, curiosity, individuality, and range both vocally and of interests -- she offered unusual works in Italian and French by known and little-known composers. Threaded with a running commentary both humorous and informative, the evening proved to be both a recital and a seminar in the very best senses.

While operatic Rossini popped up as an encore in a perfect presentation of “Tanti affetti” from La donna del lago -- the best I’ve heard since Marilyn Horne -- the program proper was given over in the main to the composer’s songs as well as those of the neglected Frenchwoman Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944), the Venezuelan-French-Jewish dandy Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947), various lesser Italians, and a scena by Haydn. Easily capable of giving an evening of show-stoppers, DiDonato chose instead to let us hear how she considers and shapes a variety of works.

Rossini also opened the concert’s second half with the Willow Song from his (not Verdi’s) early opera Otello from Shakespeare, but it was presented as Desdemona singing a song, to herself and to us. As with everything DiDonato does, communication --  personal, musical, and emotional -- is more important than theatrics.  She’s a natural onstage, in part because you have the feeling that she is never acting.

The mechanics are all there. In both the Haydn Scena di Berenice of 1795 and the Rossini encore from 1819, DiDonato covered the runs of scales, trills, and the dramatic shifts of mood seamlessly but without any sense of “look at me.”  Hahn’s suite,  Venezia, set and sung in Venetian dialect, had both the singer and her superb and regular French accompanist David Zobel making us feel the ripples of the lagoons on which these works were actually first performed.  Each song on the whole program, however obscure, was given its due and had its best case made for it by the pair.

As DiDonato really is from Kansas, I’ll waive the ban on singing Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  Of course, she also sang it with such taste, honesty, and simplicity that it worked as a welcome ribbon around the perfect gift box she gave to her audience that night.

 

Meet the CSO's first Solti Conducting Competition and Apprenticeship winner: Sean Kubota, 29

WFMT/Chicago Sun-Times, Saturday evening, February 19, 2011

Sean Kubota, 29, of Japan and Juilliard

Sean Kubota is winner of First International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition and Apprenticeship

Two-season apprenticeship with Muti, Boulez, and other key guest conductors, a $20,000 cash award each year, and travel and lodging expenses to young winner

BY ANDREW PATNER

Sean Kubota, 29, was named the winner of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s First International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition and Apprenticeship on Saturday afternoon, February 19, at Chicago's Orchestra Hall.

Kubota receives a two-season apprenticeship, which includes at least four weeks a year in Chicago studying with CSO music director Riccardo Muti and Helen Regenstein conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez, along with other key CSO guest conductors.

A $20,000 cash award each year, as well as travel and lodging expenses, help support apprenticeship activities, according to a CSO press release.

Muti, CSO administrators, and Lady Valerie Solti devised the competition to focus on Muti's belief that "young people, when studying the craft of conducting, should develop the ability to work with singers and instrumentalists from the piano.

"I believe this study is crucial in the development of a complete musician, one who is able to stand in front of an orchestra, or a chorus, with natural authority," Muti said at the competition's announcement in October 2009.

These are concerns that were shared by Solti, music director of the CSO from 1969 to 1991, and then conductor laureate of the orchestra until his death at 84 in 1997, Muti and Lady Solti have both said. Muti approached Lady Solti, with whom he shares many interests in music education and training and who has maintained a very close connection with the CSO, for her permission to name the program for her late husband. 

The new competition drew 225 young applicants from 40 countries on five continents, the CSO said.  Ten semi-finalists were selected for a closed door round where they coached singers from the piano and rehearsed and led the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO's professional training orchestra, in Chicago from February 4 to 6.  

Jurors for the semi-final round were the conductor James DePreist, director of conducting and orchestral studies at The Julliard School, bass-baritone Samuel Ramey, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra music director Leonard Slatkin, as well as four CSO musicians: concertmaster Robert Chen; clarinet and bass clarinet J. Lawrie Bloom, 'cello Katinka Kleijn, and trombone Michael Mulcahy.

Four finalists were chosen to compete for the apprenticeship and were then judged by Muti himself, Ramey, and the four CSO musicians at another closed round.  As the earlier finals date of February 7 had to be shifted due to medical issues and an accident Muti experienced, DePriest and Slatkin were unable to attend the re-scheduled round on Saturday.  

In addition to Kubota, the finalists, all male, were David Danzmayr, 31, of Salzburg, Austria, former assistant conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Lio Kuokman, 29, of Macau, a recent Curtis Institute of Music graduate; and American Ryan McAdams, 28, music director of the New York Youth Symphony.  The finals followed a similar format to the semi-finals.

The winner, Kubota, is a Tokyo native (his given name is Shoichi) who has diplomas from Juilliard and Mannes College of Music. He has conducted the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Civic Symphony, the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, the Sofia Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra della Toscana. His teachers have included Hugh Wolff, Marin Alsop, Slatkin, David Zinman, and Kurt Masur.

For four summers (2004-2007) he was a fellow of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, working with Gianluigi Gelmetti. In 2008, he was a conductor fellow at Aspen. He is a 2008/09 season recipient of the Japanese Government Overseas Artist Fund. 

Funding for the Solti Conducting Competition and Apprenticeship is provided by a grant from The Claire Rosen & Samuel Edes Foundation, which focuses on supporting emerging artists in and around Chicago. Additional funding is provided by Chicago philanthropists Nancy Lauter McDougal and Alfred L. McDougal. 

The Solti Conducting Competition and Apprenticeship joins the existing training programs run by the orchestra's ambitious Institute for Learning, Access, and Training.  The specific responsibilities and activities of the apprenticeship will be tailored to each individual who holds the position.

Quotations Kubota has posted on his public facebook page give a sense that he's been heading in the direction of this accomplishment for a while:

"making the world around us a better place through music"

"if you open your mouth, you close your ears." - R. Muti

"if you have forte, don't play fortissimo." - D. Zinman

"not O.K., but O.K." - B. Haitink

"you just play, that's all." - A. Herseth. 

"just let me do my job." - J. Bauer

CSO: Noseda has another win, pinch-hitting for Muti, and Andsnes is again a master

Here is my Saturday February 19 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday February 17, 2011 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with substitute guest conductor Gianandrea Noseda and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.

Leif Ove Andsnes in Risør, Norway.  Photo: Sven Goll

Another conducting pinch-hit win for CSO

And pianist Andsnes demonstrates again he's of the highest order

BY ANDREW PATNER

RECOMMENDED

Repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.

Riccardo Muti has demonstrated that his unique spirit animates activities at Orchestra Hall even during his absence. The commitment the Chicago Symphony Orchestra players have to music and to their leader remains enviably strong, even during the last three weeks of programmatic reshuffling.

This week’s CSO subscription concerts are being handled by Northern Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda, who made an excellent début here just under a year ago. They are raised to an even higher level by Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, returning as a soloist here after a too-long five-year absence and giving his first Chicago performances of the tremendous Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2.

Just 40, Andsnes has had a major international concert and recording career since he was a teenager, making his CSO débuts at Ravinia and downtown in 1993 and 1995.  Rather than relying on flash or gimmickry, Andsnes adds slowly to his repertoire and digs deep into works -- whether solo, chamber, or with orchestra -- in a way that recalls the masters of the past.  In the days when concert soloists were international celebrities based on their artistry alone, he’d be a household name.

Having followed his career for more than two decades and regularly visiting the chamber music festival that he co-led in Risør, Norway for many years, I still find something disarming about this man’s talent: Rarely does someone have his level of technical ability, interpretive insight, and sometimes almost otherworldly musicality without any trace of personal or performance eccentricity.  Here again, he is a reminder of the sort of ideal player that Brahms and Schubert -- a great Andsnes specialty -- wrote for: a technical wizard who meets the music on the composer’s terms and is carried away enough by that communion to move an audience as well.

The grand 45-minute, four-movement Brahms concerto is so loved and well-known that a listener can move in for the aural equivalent of close-ups and back out for the sonic and harmonic big picture without any loss of the work as a whole. Double trills, light passage work, and oceanic chord sequences came off as child’s play in Andsnes’s hands but never as show-off displays. Prompted by turns by Daniel Gingrich’s seductively mellow horn introduction and John Sharp’s heart-touching treatment of the famous slow movement 'cello solo, the pianist also showed his anchor in collaborative music-making, with principals, orchestra, and soloist bringing out the best in each other.

I traveled to New York three years ago to hear Andsnes and Muti perform this work with the New York Philharmonic, which marked the two musicians’ first meeting and collaboration.  It’s no criticism of Noseda’s strong late save to say that he did not match the special electricity that ran between Muti and Andsnes then.  Noseda’s was a collegial take with no attempt to create a “contest” with the soloist as is often, and mistakenly, done.

Despite his Italian heritage and Turin base, Noseda was a longtime assistant and protégé of Valery Gergiev in St. Petersburg, and the Russian works on the program gave him better chances to shine.  I would still like to know what Muti wanted to demonstrate with Stravinsky’s 1928 Tchaikovsky tribute ballet The Fairy’s Kiss, here offered in the composer’s later 25-minute suite.  To me, the piece has never been either Stravinsky or Tchaikovsky, but Noseda captured well its start-stop back-and-forth nature.

While the scheduled Arcana of Edgard Varèse was missed, it would have been too much to expect from a recruited sub.  I and much of the audience enjoyed hearing an orchestra of the CSO’s caliber play the late 19th-century pseudo-Oriental melodies of Alexander Borodin’s "Polovtsian Dances” from his unfinished opera Prince Igor. Even though many know this music from Broadway’s 1950s Kismet, with Noseda’s knowledge and commitment, Mathieu Dufour’s golden flute and Russian-born Eugene Izotov’s elegant oboe solo for “Stranger in Paradise,” all that was missing was an encore of Khachaturian’s plate-spinning “Sabre Dance” from Gayane to make the evening complete.

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Andsnes has Sunday afternoon recitals coming up at Orchestra Hall in Chicago both this season and next, again after a long period when calendars and schedules just did not mesh.  This April 3, he'll play music of Beethoven, Brahms, and Schoenberg including the Beethoven Op. 111 and the Brahms Four Ballades.  And in February 2012 he'll return with Debussy and Chopin, including more ballades!

My (radio) guest tonight -- Part Two of Jennifer Homans on "Apollo's Angel's: A History of Ballet"

 
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 (in the second of two new programs) will be dance critic and historian Jennifer Homans discussing her new, critically acclaimed book, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (Random House), named one of the five best non-fiction books of 2010 by The New York Times Book Review.  Apollo's Angels, the first cultural history of ballet's 400 years as a centerpiece of Western (and, for much of that time, Russian) civilization to be published, is also a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction. It is beautifully written, seriously annotated, and filled with a remarkable collection of illustrations.

Jennifer grew up in Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago, where she began her own ballet studies, continued at the North Carolina School of the Arts, American Ballet Theatre, and The School of American Ballet.  Her professional dance career took her to the Lyric Opera of Chicago Ballet (under Maria Tallchief), the San Francisco Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. She later earned her B.A. at Columbia University and a Ph.D. in modern European history at New York University where she is now a distinguished scholar in residence. Dance critic for The New Republic, she also writes for many other major international publications.  And she's a delightful interview.

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

See you on the radio!

Muti to take CSO on road next season, 2011-2012 plans announced as conductor leaves hospital

My February 14 suntimes.com and February 15 2011 Chicago Sun-Times and WFMT Radio 2011-2012 season Chicago Symphony Orchestra and presenting series  preview story.

Muti to take CSO on road next season

2011-2012 season and tours announced as conductor leaves hospital for CSO auditions

BY ANDREW PATNER 

 

Riccardo Muti, shown leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last September, has a full plate for 2011-12. | Tom Cruze~sun-times

 Having dealt admirably with musical director Riccardo Muti’s spate of physical bad luck this season, a sunny mood -- buoyed surely by the pair of Grammys Muti and the CSO received on Sunday -- animated the announcement Monday afternoon of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s ambitious 2011-2012 season, its 121st and Muti’s second as its 10th music director.

Muti, 69, who is reportedly making good progress as he continues to recover from surgeries to repair a broken jaw and implant a pacemaker, is scheduled to lead 10 weeks of CSO subscription concerts as well as six weeks of tours -- three of them: to Europe (in August and September), California (February 2012), and the United Arab Emirates and Italy (April 2012).

The orchestra’s highly regarded senior conductors, Pierre Boulez and Bernard Haitink, are each slated for two weeks of major works.

“Riccardo Muti is very much the architect of the whole season but many people have worked with him to make sure the season is fully realized,” said CSO Association president Deborah Rutter, who mentioned that Muti was at Orchestra Hall to oversee several auditions Monday. He emphasized once again to Rutter that “Chicago is where I’m putting my energy,” he is eager to resume his full CSO duties, and that “we are not treating him like an invalid in any sense.”

Muti’s concerts next season will be marked by his eclectic musical interests: Cherubini, Verdi, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, his teacher Nino Rota, Honegger, and lesser-played works of Wagner and Bruckner are all on tap. Muti also will make his first appearances on such CSO series as “Afterwork Masterworks,” “Beyond the Score,” and the Symphony Center Presents orchestra series. He’ll also lead an additional non-subscription performance of Carl Orff’s mega-hit Carmina Burana and a run-out performance of Brahms in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  And he will preset two commissioned world premières by the orchestra's young composers-in residence and will lead the gala Symphony Ball at the beginning of the fall season.

The sort of community engagement Muti has talked about will include a three-week, multi-genre 13 event piano festival Keys to the City in May and June 2012 curated by regular CSO guest pianist Emanuel Ax. 

Among Muti programming highlights:

Free concert, Sept. 22, and Symphony Ball, Sept. 24: While Muti’s inability to conduct this season’s Symphony Ball was the first in a series of health-related cancellations, his free CSO concert in Millennium Park a few days before was an enormous hit and the orchestra plans another one this fall at a location to be determined (Pritzker Pavilion is already booked for that day).

Muti’s “Free Community Concert” includes Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Ibert’s Flute Concerto featuring CSO principal flute Mathieu Dufour, and Nino Rota’s suite from Visconti’s classic film The Leopard.  Muti then repeats this program at his first subscription concerts, Sept. 23 and 27.

Yefim Bronfman is soloist in Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto at the Symphony Ball evening, a concert opening and closing with Verdi: his overture to Giovanna d’Arco (Joan of Arc) and the ballet “The Four Seasons” from I vespri siciliani (The Sicilian Vespers). 

Mahler tribute: Under the banner “An Exuberant Era: 1911-12,” Muti and the CSO will mark the centennial of the death of Gustav Mahler not with the usual cycle of the composer-conductor’s symphonies but with lesser-heard music associated with or written by him and works by such contemporaries as Ravel, Prokofiev, Debussy, Stravinsky, Falla, and Schoenberg.

Historical concerts: Muti has unearthed two unusual historical programs, one the CSO presented almost 100 years ago to the day to mark the centennial of the birth of Franz Liszt, including Liszt’s A Faust Symphony with tenor Eric Cutler and the men of the CSO Chorus, Wagner’s 1864 “Huldigungsmarsch” (“Homage March”), and Italian pianist Michele Campanella in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto No. 1. on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 and 4.

That will be followed Oct. 6-8 by the last concert program that Mahler ever conducted: an overture by Torinese Leone Sinigaglia (later a victim of the Nazis), Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony No. 4, Southern Italian Giuseppe Martucci’s Second Piano Concerto, with German soloist Gerhard Oppitz in his CSO debut, and pieces by Ferrucio Busoni and the Lombard Marco Enrico Bossi.

Carmina Burana: In January 2012, Muti will lead three subscription performances Jan. 26-28 and one additional concert Jan. 31 of Orff’s Carmina Burana with the CSO Chorus, the Chicago Children’s Choir, and vocal soloists.

CSO commissions: A world première commission from Mead composer-in-residence Mason Bates, Alternative Energy, is joined by Honegger’s Pacific 231 and the Franck Symphony in D at Muti’s next program Feb. 2-4 and 7. It will be followed by the first performances Feb. 9-11 of a commission from the other Mead composer, Anna Clyne, along with Schubert’s Great Symphony No. 9 and music from his Rosamunde. James Matheson’s Violin Concerto, co-commissioned by the CSO and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will receive its debut Dec. 15-17 under guest conductor Esa Pekka Salonen, with the CSO’s principal first violin Baird Dodge as soloist.

Muti favorites and firsts: Muti’s March 2012 programs feature music of Brahms with guest violinist Pinchas Zukerman and the rescheduled date of a Muti favorite: Cherubini’s Requiem in C minor, along with the rare Brahms “Schicksalslied” (“Song of Fate”) for chorus and orchestra, and Schoenberg’s 1936 setting of Kol nidre, with Chicago cantor Alberto Mizrahi on March 15-17.

Season closers: Muti’s season-closing June concerts include South Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov in the first CSO performances of Shostakovich’s late Michelangelo Verses, on a program with Prokofiev’s "festive poem"  The Meeting of the Volga and the Don and . . . . Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (!), which Muti also will lead as a part of a “Beyond the Score” bill June 14-17 and 19.

Muti will then be joined by CSO concertmaster Robert Chen as soloist in Paganini’s First Violin Concerto and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 on June 23-24. Muti and the CSO also appear together for the first time on the Symphony Center Presents orchestra series with the same program on June 22.

CSO tours: All with Muti, they consist of a pre-season European sojourn beginning in late August with works of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Hindemith, and a new work by composer Bernard Rands in Salzburg, Austria (the CSO’s first appearance there in 17 years); Lucerne, Switzerland; Luxembourg (first ever CSO appearance); Paris; Dresden, Germany; and Vienna.

The CSO will make its first tour to California in more than 20 years with the Bates and Clyne new works among others on concerts in February 2012 in San Francisco (two performances in honor of the San Francisco Symphony’s centennial), Costa Mesa, Palm Desert, and San Diego.

 

In April, the CSO’s first-ever trip to the Middle East with two concerts in Abu Dhabi will be followed by a tour of Italy.

Haitink and Boulez: Bernard Haitink, the CSO's former principal conductor, leads two weeks of concerts in October: Berg’s Violin Concerto, with German soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann, and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the CSO debut of Swedish soprano Klara Ek on Oct. 20-22.  His first-ever performances of Haydn’s cantata The Creation, not heard in Chicago since Sir Georg Solti’s 1993 concerts, will feature the CSO Chorus, Ek, German bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann and English tenor Ian Bostridge on Oct. 27-29.

Helen Regenstein conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez will lead two weeks of concerts in February and March 2012: Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, also the subject of a “Beyond the Score” presentation, and Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. American soprano Kiera Duffy makes her CSO debut and Pierre-Laurent Aimard is guest pianist in these programs Feb. 24-26 and 28.

On March 1-3, Aimard is again soloist with Boulez, in in Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, and mezzo-soprano Michelle De Young and tenor Stuart Skelton return as soloists in Mahler’s monumental Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth).

Guest conductors: 

Four conductors will make CSO debuts next season.

Finland’s Susanna Mälkki, one of the few women making an international conducting career and music director the Boulez-founded Ensemble InterContemporain, has a program of Ives, Richard Strauss, and Thea Musgrave’s bass clarinet concerto with the CSO’s J. Lawrie Bloom as soloist on Oct. 13-15 and 18.

French-born Stéphane Denève of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra presides over an all-French program Nov. 10-12 and 15.

French-Armenian Alain Altinoglu, who had a hit leading Lyric Opera’s Carmen this season, offers music of Chabrier, Bizet, and Florent Schmitt on Feb. 23-24, 2012.

Russian Kirill Petrenko, recently appointed general music director of the Bavarian State Opera, heads an all-Russian program of Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff on March 22 and 24, 2012.

The fourteen returning guest conductors are Semyon Bychkov, Charles Dutoit (two weeks), Mark Elder (two weeks), Manfred Honeck, Ludovic Morlot, Carlos Miguel Pietro, David Robertson (two programs), Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Mitsuko Uchida, and Jaap van Zweden (two weeks) as well as early music advocates Ton Koopman, Bernard Labadie, and Trevor Pinnock.

Guest Soloists:

Debuting solo instrumentalists include South African-born multi-keyboard artist Kristian Bezuidenhout, French cellist Gautier Capuçon in a modern work by Dutilleux, American pianist Jeremy Denk in a much-belated debut, Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky in the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto, Quebecois organist Richard Paré, and British violist Lawrence Power.

Vocalists performing with the CSO for the first time include Croatian-born countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic, American tenor Eric Cutler, French baritone Stéphane Degout, and Italian soprano Maria Grazia Schiavo.

Additional returning soloists include pianists Till Fellner and Stewart Goodyear, violinists Leonida Kavakos and Stefan Jackiw, and cellists Pavel Gomziakov and CSO Green creative consultant Yo-Yo Ma.   

CSO principals Charles Pikler, viola, John Sharp, cello, David McGill, bassoon, and Christopher Martin, trumpet, will also be featured in solo and concerto roles with guest conductors.

Keys to the City Piano Festival

The effervescent American pianist and teacher Emanuel Ax has curated a three-week, 13-event piano festival with the CSO as well as other events throughout the season that will take in everything from the mechanical history of the instrument to the social and cultural history of its place in society.  Considering the piano’s place in jazz, solo recital, as a member of the orchestra and a collaborative instrument; in chamber music, orchestral solo, and piano four-hands; and in repertoire for multiple pianos, “As artists, we want to examine how the piano speaks to us today in its various forms,” said Ax. 

Among the highlights:

Performances by duo pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque of Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos in D minor with the CSO, led by guest conductor Semyon Bychkov.  (November 17 and 19)  

Mitsuko Uchida returns for both a solo recital of Schubert and her traditional CSO Mozart concerts as pianist-conductor. (March 25, 29, 30, 31;  and April 1) 

Ax and students Dong-Hyek Lim, of South Korea, and American Orion Weiss along with longtime CSO principal pianist Mary Sauer perform a chamber music program of Brahms, Weber, Ravel, and Rachmaninoff. (May 20) 

A CSO special non-subscription performance under David Robertson features pianists Ax, Lim and Weiss as soloists in Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.  (May 22) 

On the Symphony Center Presents jazz series Ax will join Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes for a Jazz Piano Showcase. (May 25)  

A special late-night concert, “Piano After Dark” with Internet stars Igudesman & Joo and Ax taking a humorous approach to the piano as a collaborative instrument.(May 26)  

A day of free piano-related events takes place at Symphony Center on Sunday, May 27, hosted by Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor David Hyde Pierce and Ax, celebrating the piano and pianists of all ages. Igudesman & Joo are also scheduled to appear. (May 27) 

CSO artistic programming advisor Gerard McBurney leads a free symposium and concert with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, The Evolution of the Piano Concerto, an in-depth exploration of the piano concerto’s evolution from Vivaldi to Bartók. (May 29) 

Music for Keyboards, Ancient to Modern, a free symposium, moderated by McBurney and featuring Trevor Pinnock and Kristian Bezuidenhout as guests. The three discuss music written throughout the centuries for the piano and its predecessors. (June 10) 

Pianist Stephen Hough wraps up the festival with a piano series recital featuring Beethoven, Scriabin, Liszt and the Chicago premiere of Hough’s own composition, “Empty Branches.” (June 10) 

Symphony Center Presents Series

Piano

Eight superb pianists in addition to Ax return to the piano series. Britain’s Paul Lewis performs twice in his ongoing Schubert series, Oct. 16 and Apr. 29. Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes plays Chopin and Debussy on Feb. 19.  Richard Goode returns to the series after a four years with a program TBA on March 4.  Uchida plays Schubert on March 25.  Russian superstar Evgeny Kissin plays a TBA program Apr. 22.  Maurizio Pollini does the same May 13.

The one solo piano debutant is young French pianist David Fray who has been gaining excellent reviews both for live performance and recordings.  He happens to be Riccardo Muti’s son-in-law but his career and style are original and his own.  He plays Mozart and Beethoven on Dec. 11.

Chamber

The chamber series includes violin sensation Hilary Hahn with pianist Valentina Lisitsa in a program of Bach, Brahms, and short new commissioned works by 11 contemporary composers on Oct. 23.  Joshua Bell will return to the series after four years in a TBA program with pianist Sam Haywood on Jan. 29.  Cellist and CSO advisor Yo-Yo Ma will curate a chamber music afternoon with  CSO Players Mar. 18. The excellent Australian Chamber Orchestra makes its Chicago debut April 15 with its acclaimed lead violin Richard Tognetti and major soprano Dawn Upshaw in a work by Maria Schneider.  On June 3 pianist Jeremy Denk with the intriguing young Korean-German-American violinist Stefan Jackiw and other players TBA will present a program on the idea of collaboration.

Orchestras

Guest orchestra next season are the top-flight Budapest Festival Orchestra with its conductor Iván Fischer in a mixed program Oct. 31. Charles Dutoit leads London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and French-American pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in Romantic works on Jan. 22.  Michael Tilson Thomas brings his San Francisco Symphony centennial tour to Chicago with an “American Mavericks” program including music of Cowell, Ives, and a new work by John Adams written for the orchestra and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Mar. 21.  And the CSO, with  Muti and concertmaster Robert Chen, is a guest in its own house on the series on June 22.

Tickets

Subscription tickets are now on sale. For more details go to cso.org or call (312) 294-3000.

Update 7: Muti's fall caused by an irregular heart rhythm, pacemaker installed, called "standard"

WFMT/Chicago Sun-Times, as of Friday afternoon February 11, 2011 5PM 

Muti's fall caused by an irregular heart rhythm, pacemaker installed, called "standard"

Heart function otherwise said to be "superb"

BY ANDREW PATNER

Todd Rosenberg Photography

The fall February 4 that left Riccardo Muti with multiple jaw and cheekbone fractures was caused by “a common heart rhythm disturbance,” cardiac specialists at Northwestern Memorial Hospital said in a statement Friday afternoon.  

Doctors installed a pacemaker “to prevent possible future episodes of slow heart rate,” a procedure that they described as “standard.”  

“Fortunately, the remainder of the maestro's medical evaluation has revealed that he has superb heart function,” the doctors said.

Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 69, fell from the conductor’s podium at Orchestra Hall last Thursday during a rehearsal and has been at Northwestern since being taken there by emergency responders immediately after his accident.  On Monday he had surgery to repair the injuries to his jaw and face which his surgeon described as “successful.”

Friday afternoon’s statement was the first word on the underlying cause of Muti’s black-out and fall.

Dr. David Lloyd-Jones, a Northwestern cardiologist, and Dr. Bradley P. Knight, director of cardiac electrophysiology at the hospital, said in the statement that pacemakers “are small devices (about the size of a silver dollar)” that monitor heart rhythms and can deliver a small charge to prompt a heart beat if the patient’s heart rate drops significantly.

“Patients with pacemakers live full and active lives with excellent prognosis,” the doctors’ statement said.

Spokeswomen for both the CSO and Northwestern said that they had no further information on other areas that might have been tested or on any other matters regarding Muti’s overall health.  Nor could they say if there was any connection between this problem and the illness that caused Muti to cut short his conducting duties in September and return to Italy.

Dr. Alexis B. Olsson, the Northwestern dental surgeon who operated on Muti Monday, described him at a press briefing Tuesday as “strong” and unusually responsive to treatment “for a man of his age, or even younger.”

William A. Osborn, chairman of the CSO Association board, added, “The board, musicians and staff of the [CSO] completely stand behind Riccardo Muti, and we have made his recovery our top priority.  

“I can say with certainty that the relationship between the CSOA and Maestro Muti is strong; he is an important part of our family. While health is a private and personal matter, we are grateful to Maestro Muti for allowing us to share his information with you.”

Muti himself was quoted as saying, “I am so grateful to all of you for your support, caring and words from your hearts to mine. I am so disappointed that I was not able to share in the music making by our great Orchestra these past weeks.   In my rehearsals, the Orchestra sounded like angels, and I wanted so much to make music together with them. 

 “A music director’s relationship with his orchestra is like a marriage.   Together, we are a family and we bond in times of joy and in times of challenge.  

“I think it was destiny that I came to Chicago,” Muti concluded, “and I think what has happened is also destiny, because now I understand and feel more comfortable than ever about returning to my work.”