Aug. 22--Carlos Kalmar has ended recent seasons of the Grant Park Music Festival with large works for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra that otherwise are seldom played.
Friday night's penultimate concert in the 2015 season again held one such piece, Edward Elgar's 1906 oratorio, "The Kingdom."
Where other local organizations were not bothered to present this once-in-a-lifetime score at all, Friday's impassioned Grant Park performance was its second in 35 years, again illustrating how adventurousness long has been part of the summer enterprise.
"The Kingdom" is a belle 鰯que composition written in a time of national optimism yet marked by a persistent ache. So already in its orchestral prelude you hear premonitions of such later, inward-turning masterpieces as Elgar's Second Symphony.
It has been suggested, in fact, that "The Kingdom" is like a long continuous slow movement containing majestic and tender flashes. British conductors often present it like that, blending contrasting episodes into a patiently unfolding flow.
Kalmar's account was more volatile, allowing dramatic sections to stand out and thus risk disconnectedness. The texts, about the life and work of Christ's Apostles after the Crucifixion, already are disparate in message and have shifting narrators that do not propel in a straight and unmistakable trajectory. Kalmar's operatic vividness, apparently heartfelt and thrilling in itself, gave a lurching rather than smoothing quality.
The large chorus, prepared by guest director Donald Nally, performed with a clarity that occasionally surpassed that of the vocal quartet. But apart from moments of blurred diction when singing together, the soloists shared in overall command even when some warmed to the texts more gradually than others.
Bass-baritone Alfred Walker's Peter initially showed a graininess that snagged silken passages, yet it disappeared well before his great extended solo envisioning old men dreaming dreams, which dominated the first half as it should. More varied in her range of spirit, inward to dramatic, was soprano Erin Wall as The Blessed Virgin, especially in her masterly aria coming near the end, "The sun goeth down."
Having less to do than the others, mezzo-soprano Jill Grove (Mary Magdalene) and tenor Garrett Sorenson (St. John) were still persuasively stentorian. And Kalmar's orchestra played with both a power and sweetness that made Part III, just before intermission, particularly inspiring.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Jay Pritzker Pavillion, Millennium Park; free; 312-742-7647; gpmf.org
Alan Artner is a freelance critic.
