March 13--The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is giving special attention to French music this season, via a survey of Gallic composers that will culminate in a three-week festival in May emphasizing French operatic and dramatic works.
Few, if any, living conductors are better suited to the task of making an orchestra long grounded in the Austro-German tradition speak with an authetic French accent than Charles Dutoit. After all, for 25 years as artistic director of the Montreal Symphony, the Swiss-born conductor made that orchestra the finest French orchestra in the world.
Dutoit is devoting the two weeks of his annual CSO residency to familiar as well as lesser-known French symphonic repertory. The opening concert of that series, Thursday night at Symphony Center, held both types of works and spoke to the respectful musical and personal rapport he and the orchestra have developed over the nearly 15 years they have collaborated.
His attractive all-French program had as its centerpieces neglected works for piano and orchestra that are neither precisely concertos nor concertante works, since soloistic display isn't really what either is about. In fact, both Cesar Franck's "Symphonic Variations" and Vincent d'Indy's "Symphony on a French Mountain Air" treat the piano as a voice from within the orchestra that sparks and often leads the musical discussion.
The Franck has turned up at these concerts on an irregular basis ever since the CSO gave the U.S. premiere in 1898, under Theodore Thomas, in Carnegie Hall. But the d'Indy symphony (also a theme and variations, and composed only a year after the Franck) has seriously fallen out of fashion; in fact, the last time it was done at a CSO downtown concert was 70 years ago.
In a performance as sympathetic and idiomatic as the one Dutoit and pianist Louis Lortie gave on Thursday, the d'Indy symphony stands revealed as a piece of modest, albeit quintessentially Gallic charm. That said, one can't escape the conclusion that the big, rhapsodic tune of the finale is closer to the Bette Davis cornfields of Hollywood than the Cevennes mountains of southeast France.
In any case, the brilliant French-Canadian pianist took obvious delight in his dialogs with various instruments, especially Scott Hostetler's purling English horn as it sounded the central mountain air. Dutoit's elastic handling of the orchestra tucked seamlessly into the piano part, and vice versa.
So, too, did Lortie engage with the composer's "with fantasy" direction in the dreamier pages of the Franck, so that when the finale emerged out of the central meditation it did so scintillatingly, sparks flying in all directions. Dutoit and the orchestra were with him all the way, making the 15-minute piece sound like an extended improvisation.
What came as a bracing revelation to these ears -- no surprise, given Dutoit's long-established authority in this repertory -- was the exacting attention to nuance and color he lavished on the two Maurice Ravel favorites that opened and closed the program.
With both "Rapsodie espagnole" and Suite No. 2 from "Daphnis and Chloe," he proved that atmosphere is best achieved in this music when dynamic markings are respected (especially those on the soft end) and instrumental details clearly and precisely etched within the overall sound-pictures.
Ravel's Iberian travelog gloried in evocative nocturnal mystery at the outset and flashing yet supple Spanish dance rhythms later on. You could easily imagine a sunbaked village square erupting in frenzied festivity at the end.
Fineness of detail and a lucid illumination of Ravel's masterful orchestration were key to the voluptuous allure of Dutoit's "Daphnis" suite. Dawn broke with burbling woodwinds, and every section thereafter unfolded with closely observed gradations of sound, including the flute solo taken by the returning guest principal flute, Lorna McGhee, of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Dutoit built the "General Dance" urgently but steadily, achieving a feeling of heady exultation without losing his cool in the process.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; $29-$216; 312-294-3000, cso.org.
jvonrhein@tribpub.com
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