Preview: MusicNOW

RECOMMENDED
Some of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW concerts have been incredibly under-rehearsed and poorly conducted, and though rehearsal time will be at a premium, as always, at least with Esa-Pekka Salonen on the podium, this concert should be solidly conducted. Salonen guests at the CSO this week but in addition to hearing him conduct Stravinsky, Mozart and Oliver Knussen over there (see separate listing), Salonon will also give the CSO performance of the Knussen Violin Concerto further context by presenting another recent piece of his on this concert, the “Songs Without Voices,” Op. 26, which won Northwestern University’s 2006 Nemmers Prize. Most intriguing on this program, however, is “LautLeben, RadiOpera for Female Voice and Four-Channel Tape,” a memorial piece to Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik co-written by Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin and soprano Sidsel Endresen which places Endresen—who will perform the piece—in a soundscape created through computer manipulations of her own vocal improvisations. The finale of the program includes Salonen’s own twenty-two-minute romp “Catch and Release,” written for the same forces (clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, percussion, violin and double bass) as a companion piece to Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale,” which oddly enough, will not be performed at this concert. (Dennis Polkow)
Monday, January 28 at Harris Theater