Boulez conducts CSO in Mahler's Seventh for PBS/Photo: Todd Rosenberg

By Dennis Polkow

“I knew when I received ‘the call’ that something was out of the ordinary,” admits Pierre Boulez, who was on sabbatical from conducting in order to compose back in October when Chicago Symphony Orchestra management interrupted him with an SOS to step in for an ailing Riccardo Muti. “The second sentence,” he laughs, “was something like, ‘We know that you are free.’ ”

The irony was that Boulez himself was having health issues. “I had eye surgery for glaucoma that was completely unforeseen. I asked my doctors, ‘Can it wait?’ ‘No,’ they said because it was a difficult repair and they are now very happy with how it all went. I am not entirely happy with my eyes, but it is early yet. The left eye has already improved. I see, but not clearly.”

“But I did accept,” says Boulez, “for the team here, which is wonderful. And for Muti, who was at the end of his strength and was very anxious to go home to his doctor. I was in the same case with an ophthalmologist here, so I could understand him very well, wanting to get back home to his own doctor.”

Did Muti himself ever contact Boulez at any point along the process? “He was initially so de-energized, but I did get two very nice messages from him later on thanking me.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Although many of us think of the holiday season as being in full swing now that Thanksgiving is behind us, there was a time when Christmas actually began on December 25 and extended to January 6, the full “Twelve Days of Christmas” known to us in song. The season itself would then extend to encompass a full forty days, ending on February 2.

As inconceivable as it would be to us today, the weeks prior to Christmas, or Advent, were actually an austere, penitent time when no music could be played. As such, Johann Sebastian Bach wanted the first sounds of Christmas itself to be particularly jubilant, blazing forth with trumpets, timpani and chorus festively welcoming the newborn Savior.

Eighteenth-century German Lutheran worship services were literally all-morning affairs. The Leipzig services that Bach musically oversaw included biblical readings, hymn singing, organ preludes and postludes, a long and dramatic sermon, and a musical cantata based on the lesson for that day for vocal soloists, orchestra and chorus that Bach himself composed and directed. Read the rest of this entry »

Hector Guzman

By Dennis Polkow

With the August announcement of Mei-Ann Chen to become music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta, the ensemble is performing most of its twenty-fourth season with Chen listed as music director designate, yet not conducting the ensemble until the final concerts of the season in May, and not officially taking over as music director until the fall of 2011.

With the suspense over as to who would actually succeed Paul Freeman, the Sinfonietta’s founding music director who is retiring at the end of the 2010-11 season after twenty-four years in that position, the ensemble still has a few surprises up its sleeve for this Freeman-farewell season nonetheless.

As with its longstanding annual Martin Luther King Day concerts each January, the Sinfonietta is experimenting with another annual concert tied to a holiday, in this case the Mexican “Día de los Muertos,” or “Day of the Dead.”

“In December, holiday concerts are certainly not hard to come by,” Freeman, who has already moved back to his home base in the Virgin Islands and now commutes for his concerts here, is quoted in a press release. “But something around the Day of the Dead and Halloween is much less common in classical music, so we decided to seize the opportunity. We hope this concert can become a new annual tradition for the Sinfonietta.”

Mexican conductor Hector Guzman, who will be the guest conductor to inaugurate this new tradition, is excited not only for the opportunity to work with the Sinfonietta again—which he first conducted two seasons ago and considers an “excellent orchestra, very attentive and professional”—but to be able to showcase important Mexican music while helping to celebrate a holiday that meant so much to him growing up in Mexico.

“The Day of the Dead is not a sad occasion,” says Guzman, “but a celebration of life. There is no sadness. We remember the ones who have passed, yes, but in a joyous celebration with food and family reunions and a looking forward to one day joining them.” Read the rest of this entry »

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While music director Riccardo Muti is reportedly hospitalized in Milan and undergoing a battery of tests to determine the underlying cause of the “extreme gastric distress” that flared up before the CSO’s October 2 Symphony Ball and that forced him to withdraw from the rest of his fall residency concerts here, more backstage drama is emerging about this week’s replacement concert.

Why would Pierre Boulez, who along with Bernard Haitink both relinquished their official administrative involvement with the CSO after Muti took over the reins, be willing to interrupt a scheduled sabbatical put aside for composition to come back and pinch hit for Muti, but with a completely different program spotlighting Boulez’ strengths rather than Muti’s?

This week’s concerts were scheduled to be taped for an October 27 “Great Performances” that was to be broadcast nationally on PBS television stations, affording the curious across the country an opportunity to experience a slice of the Muti/Chicago magic in their own homes. With Muti’s withdrawal from the rest of his fall residency, CSO management needed to come up with a conductor and a program that would not have the orchestra lose such a high-profile national exposure opportunity. As such, Mahler, which is not a Muti strength but is a CSO specialty, seemed to foot the bill perfectly. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Todd Rosenberg

By Dennis Polkow

Conducting his first Symphony Center concert as the tenth music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last Thursday, September 23, Riccardo Muti received more applause, cheers and accolades just for showing his face than his predecessor Daniel Barenboim used to receive for showing his stuff.

Indeed, you would have to go back to the heyday of the CSO glory years under Sir Georg Solti some three decades ago to encounter a comparable reception or experience such a solid marriage of conductor and orchestra.

The program—repeated through Tuesday, September 28—was a curious mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar: an all-Berlioz program that opened with his iconic “Symphonie fantastique” followed by its rarely performed sequel, “Lélio, or the Return to Life,” conceived to immediately follow “fantastique,” though those wishes are rarely respected today. (While barely a season or two goes by that the CSO has not performed “fantastique,” “Lélio” was being given its first-ever CSO performance on this occasion.) Muti had time-tested this pairing at concerts in Salzburg and Paris, even releasing a recording and DVD of performances in Europe with the same narrator that was used here, French actor Gérard Depardieu. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Todd Rosenberg

By Dennis Polkow

Not since the Chicago Symphony Orchestra triumphantly returned from its first European tour some forty years ago and then-mayor Richard J. Daley hosted a parade in celebration has the CSO so dominated an event downtown.

Hopefully, you came early, because if you hadn’t, spaces were few and far between across a Millennium Park that eventually became so crowded Sunday afternoon, September 19, that the park was shut off to additional concertgoers.

“What a great day to be a Chicagoan!” exclaimed co-sponsor Bank of America’s Paul Lambert, to a sea of people waving small flags proclaiming “Festa Muti” so ferociously that if the celebrated Italian maestro were running for mayor, he would be a shoo-in.

Could the performance itself possibly live up to all of the hype and anticipation? By the time Riccardo Muti actually showed his face for the first time to the vast crowd as the tenth music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the crowd stood and went as ballistic as if Bono had walked onto the stage. Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Kalmar/Photo: Norman Timonera

RECOMMENDED

Ten seasons ago when Carlos Kalmar was made principal conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival, hearing Mahler performed by the Grant Park Orchestra was a rarity. But one of Kalmar’s earliest concerts here was a stunning performance of the Mahler “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2, and it was that extraordinary concert that led to his being hired for the post. Kalmar, who was born in Uruguay to Austrian parents and had his musical training in Vienna and spent his early career conducting in Europe, admits that he had never heard of the GPO when former artistic director James W. Palermo first invited him to guest-conduct here back in 1998. “I expected that a city the size of Chicago would have a ‘good’ orchestra,” Kalmar recalls, “but they were so immediately responsive.” Palermo asked Kalmar back the following 1999 season to conduct the Mahler, and neither he nor the Grant Park Orchestra have ever been the same. “I didn’t know it at the time,” says Kalmar, “because I didn’t even know they were looking for someone [to become principal conductor], but that became my ‘audition’ piece. Well, if you can’t get a reaction from a piece like that, you’re not much of a conductor!” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Dvorák is best known as an orchestral composer who wrote bright, Czech-influenced “Slavonic Dances,” symphonies, a memorable cello concerto and chamber music, but the Dvorák who wrote the large-scale choral work “Stabat Mater” represents a more introspective and meditative side of the composer, a man who lost three children within the first four years of his marriage. Turning to the famous medieval poem that portrays the grief of Mary at the foot of the cross of Jesus, Dvorák found setting the text with four soloists and a full chorus and orchestra an expression of his grief.

That work cemented Dvorák’s international reputation and a follow-up commission emerged from England to set a specific text for the same forces, Cardinal John Henry Newman’s “The Dream of Gerontius,” which Elgar would later set and which the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus performed last season. Dvorák rejected the text and preferred instead a setting of the Catholic Requiem Mass which afforded him the opportunity to offer a contemplative alternative to the bombastic settings of the same text by Berlioz and Verdi.

It is a work that is rarely performed and has a moving effect on both performers and audiences, despite its length of almost ninety minutes, and should provide an extraordinary showcase for the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus along with soprano Layla Claire, mezzo-soprano Alexandra Petersamer, tenor Brendan Tuohy and bass Kyle Ketelsen and conductor Carlos Kalmar. (Dennis Polkow)

August 13, 6:30pm, August 14, 7:30pm, Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion, (312)742-7638. Free.

RECOMMENDED

We tend to think of rhythm as the essence of African music, being its characteristic element. That West African rhythms were cross-fertilized with European classical harmonies in America to create the genres of jazz and their stepchildren blues, rock, hip-hop, et al, only serves to spotlight the significance of rhythm as we experience it. And though the kora, the twenty-one-stringed lute-shaped instrument unique to West Africa is played rhythmically—indeed, polyrhythmically—it is the forerunner of the modern guitar as a true chordophone where the player can create harmony as well as fascinating rhythms simultaneously.

No one does this in a more compelling, musical and virtuosic manner than Toumani Diabaté, who is to the kora what Hendrix was to the guitar. Tracing seventy-one generations of griots, or master musical village storyteller’s chroniclers to his Malian heritage—including the “King of the Kora” Sidiki Diabaté (1922-1996)—Diabaté has expanded that village tradition on a global level by communicating his music mastery on a world stage. He also skillfully incorporates rock and pop genres into his playing that extends beyond his African roots and has immensely expanded the technical possibilities of the instrument. Diabaté will be heard on this program as kora soloist and with his own group the Symmetric Orchestra, as well as with Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra accompanying him in a live performance of his 2008 album “The Mandé Variations” (Nonesuch). (Dennis Polkow)

August 11, 6:30pm, Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion, (312)742-7638. Free.

RECOMMENDED

Last week I received an email from a high-octane PR firm that primarily deals in rock and pop music with the subject line that “Renée Fleming to take on indie rock” at Ravinia. Hmm. Someone was confused, I thought, but then again, Sting showed up at Ravinia last week with the Royal Philharmonic, so anything is possible.

It turns out that yes, America’s reigning superstar operatic soprano has recorded an album called “Dark Hope” (Decca) which “finds her exploring a parallel universe via songs by Arcade Fire, Band of Horses, Leonard Cohen, Death Cab for Cutie, Jefferson Airplane, The Mars Volta, Muse and others; the album debuted on the Billboard Top 200,” as the release explained. But unless Fleming is planning to do any of these as an unlikely encore for her Ravinia appearance, we will have to settle for her doing one of her signature art pieces, Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs” with Christoph Eschenbach (spelled Eschenback in the pop release) and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, doing these polished gems from late in Strauss’ life about life, loss and the inevitability of death as no one else can. Can the same be said for her “parallel universe” exploration of pop music? I have yet to hear, but generally speaking, there are good reasons that trained voices stay away from this stuff: neither the material nor the voices benefit. Read the rest of this entry »