Oct. 29--VIENNA -- You don't sneeze when Riccardo Muti is trying to build soft gradations of sound with his Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Not even if you happen to be a privileged Austrian concertgoer who's paid the euro equivalent of nearly $134 to hear the orchestra at the gold-encrusted Musikverein here.
It happened as the maestro was easing the orchestra into the quiet opening measures of Stravinsky's "Firebird" Suite on Tuesday night at the first concert of the CSO's weeklong residency in this city of music. Someone among the sold-out throng of 1,700 sneezed. Immediately Muti stopped the orchestra, pausing for absolute silence before taking it from the top. No doubt the inadvertent sneezer spent the rest of the concert in mortified misery.
It was the only glitch, and a decidedly minor one, amid a special evening of music-making in this most special of concert halls.
The packed house included several dignitaries, including Heinz Fischer, president of the Austrian Republic, and Jeff Alexander, the incoming CSO Association president. A dozen media people representing the U.S., Austria, Italy and France were on hand to cover the event, the opening salvo in what the sponsoring Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien is calling its "Riccardo-Muti-Zyklus," or Muti cycle. (What, no Muti/CSO cycle?)
Buoyed by the warmly enveloping acoustics of the historic edifice, freed from the sonic uncertainty of previous halls on the orchestra's European tour route, the orchestra members played beautifully for their chief.
Which is not to say that the ensemble scaled heights here it doesn't reach at home. The Chicago Symphony is famous for maintaining its lofty standards wherever it performs, even in substandard halls before audiences far less knowledgeable than the Viennese.
As CSO assistant concertmaster David Taylor told me after the concert, "Every time we come here we come to kill. The Musikverein is our favorite hall. It's always a wonder to play it. It has a presence, brilliance, a naturalness, a golden sound. You feel you hear everybody on stage easily."
For the players in the Stravinsky, including piano and extra percussion, it was a tight fit under the organ case that dominates the front end of the narrow concert room. It's a highly reverberant space, but warm bodies absorb enough of the excess reverb so that the long period of sound-decay is accompanied by acute sound reflections in the high frequencies.
And so, in the "Firebird," an amplifying network of what acousticians call upper partials made every nuance of the Chicago strings register clearly; the brass had firm presence without booming, and each solo woodwind carried a distinctive timbre. For his part, Muti touched in the colors of Stravinsky's 1919 orchestration with the finest of brushstrokes.
And the various solo players -- including William Buchman, bassoon; Eugene Izotov, oboe; Stephen Williamson, clarinet; John Sharp, cello; and substitute principal flute Christina Smith -- covered themselves with glory.
During the morning rehearsal here, Muti had pointed out to me why this glorious hall also is a tricky space for orchestras to perform in.
"You must not play too loudly, or it will sound thick and heavy," he said. "But if you play too dolce, too softly, there will be no power."
With the music director making instant adjustments in volume, tonal quality and balances, both Tchaikovsky's "The Tempest," which began the program, and Schumann's Symphony No. 3 ("Rhenish"), which ended it, had the desired mellowness and mettle. You had a sense of listening from within the orchestra's sound, as opposed to listening from a separate part of the room, like at Orchestra Hall.
The Tchaikovsky may come off as cheap currency in lesser hands, but on this occasion the Russian master's Shakespearean tone poem sounded like a million rubles. Daniel Gingrich's extended horn solo took on both warmth and depth in the nurturing acoustics.
Muti had paid particular attention during the rehearsal of the "Rhenish" to nudge rhythmic accents rather than attacking them full-on, and this accommodation to the sensitive Musikverein sonics paid extra dividends in the finished performance. His interpretation has mellowed since he last played the symphony in concerts in Chicago in April 2013. The robust German romanticism remains, but various instrumental details are now better integrated. No doubt the hall deserved much of the credit for that.
Muti had the five splendid horn players take their bow before signaling each section to rise in turn. Viennese concertgoers seldom go in for the pushbutton standing O's American audiences routinely dish out to performers, and the Musikverein refrained from doing so on Tuesday. But their applause was hearty and steady, and "bravos" rang out by the end of the long ovation.
Under the circumstances, it would have been unthinkable not to play an encore. The result was Verdi's "Nabucco" Overture, which summoned full-throttle yet finely shaped playing that fueled collective anticipation of the two performances of the Verdi Requiem with which Muti and the CSO will end their residency this weekend.
"The Schumann was quite special. And Muti can still make me cry," remarked an audience member, Megumi Rogers, as she queued up with other well-wishers outside the reception room where Muti held court afterward. An organist and an avowed Muti fan, Rogers said she's been a regular at the Vienna Philharmonic concerts the maestro has led during his 44-year affiliation with that august band.
Once inside the inner sanctum, I asked Muti how the concert felt from his perspective. "It's a great orchestra on a great stage" was his succinct reply. Clearly he was more interested in pointing out something printed in the program book.
"Look here," he said, reading the description by his name: "Ehrenmitglied der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien" (Distinguished Member of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna). It's an honorific the society once bestowed on Schumann and Stravinsky -- "but not Tchaikovsky," Muti observed. "Every time I read that, I am embarrassed, because they are all there, the great composers.
"Just to show you this, because in Chicago they can sometimes forget!"
If you ask me, I'd say the maestro looked more pleased than embarrassed.
jvonrhein@tribune.com
Twitter @jvonrhein
