Oct. 02--With a new labor contract firmly in place, a palpable sense of relief mingled with the music Thursday night at Symphony Center where Riccardo Muti led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the third and final subscription program of his fall residency.
The maestro was in peak form, demonstrably engaged in the works at hand, as were his virtuoso musicians. The program honored the CSO's illustrious, 125-year heritage while affirming its many present strengths, not least those provided by the music director.
While Muti was not party to the collective bargaining sessions that yielded the new, three-year contract between orchestra members and the CSO Association that was jointly ratified on Tuesday (music directors stay clear of involvement in contract negotiations), without the quality of leadership and inspiration he has provided and continues to provide, a less happy contractual outcome could well have resulted.
The last four CSO seasons have brought record ticket sales and contributions, a dramatic surge in income that must be attributed, to a great extent, to what Muti has achieved as music director and, in a larger sense, as the city's most eloquent and prominent spokesman for the essential role of culture in a civilized society.
Agreed, each of those seasons also brought deficits -- $1.4 million in fiscal 2014 -- but red ink goes with the territory at all major U.S. orchestras, and $1.4 million is chump change for an orchestra with total assets of $529 million such as the CSO reported a year ago. The key point is that without Muti, the association undoubtedly would be facing a much worse financial situation. There's much cause for optimism in the Muti seasons ahead, financially as well as artistically.
So much for fiscal matters.
Muti's program fell into two halves, one Classical-Romantic, the other early-20th-century modern. Each half neatly balanced and complemented the other. Muti had one of his frequent collaborators, the musically scrupulous pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, as soloist in Mozart. Hindemith and Prokofiev, central composers in the maestro's 20th-century canon, completed the concert.
The evening began with Beethoven's "Leonore" Overture No. 3, the same curtain raiser a hardy throng heard Muti conduct two weeks earlier at the CSO's free Concert for Chicago, at a rain-soaked Millennium Park. This time around, there were no wailing sirens and other traffic noises to mar the proceedings. Muti made the overture a suspenseful precis of the music drama that follows, with Christopher Martin sounding the trumpet calls from offstage.
The excessively cool Nordic reserve that marred some previous performances by Andsnes one has heard fortunately did not crop up in the patrician account of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor (K.466) he delivered Thursday.
What felt emotionally detached on previous occasions felt finely poised, full of musical grace, this time around. The Norwegian pianist paid Mozart's most darkly tragic concerto the compliment of respecting the letter of the score, never asserting willful ego in the name of interpretive freedom. Articulation was limpid, runs and phrasing immaculate. The outer movements took on added refinement by virtue of sensitive piano-orchestra dialogue, particularly the sparkling conversation in the finale between Andsnes and principal flute Stefan Ragnar Hoskuldsson and guest principal oboe Peter Smith (of the Philadelphia Orchestra).
I have heard the serene romance done with greater spontaneity, but Andsnes' unhurried attention to the singing line had me hanging on every note. He played Beethoven's familiar cadenza in the first movement, Hummel's unfamiliar cadenza in the finale. The pianist is due to return to Symphony Center in April to play the three Brahms piano quartets with violinist Christian Tetzlaff, violist Tabea Zimmermann and cellist Clemens Hagen. It promises to be a musical event worth the wait.
Muti is among the few conductors who bother playing Hindemith's music these days, and good for him for doing so. The Concert Music for Strings and Brass, Opus 50 (1930), composed for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is one of the neglected German master's strongest works. The second and final section begins with a racing fugue for strings and ends with a jazzy brass figure dancing the music to triumph.
Muti steered his athletic strings and formidable brass through Hindemith's typically tough contrapuntal textures with firm rhythm and as much clarity as the music allows, which admittedly isn't always a lot. Each of the orchestra's brass principals was given a well-deserved solo bow. The program note made mention of the fact that, as of this season, the CSO's principal viola chair (occupied by Charles Pikler) will be named after Hindemith, who was a notable solo violist and chamber musician.
Sergei Prokofiev was a frequent visitor to the CSO, as piano soloist and guest conductor, between 1918 and 1937, and in 1918 he led the orchestra in the U.S. premiere of his "Scythian Suite." A massively scored distillation drawn from an abortive ballet about prehistoric Russia (intended for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes), the work is sometimes unfairly dismissed as a poor man's "Rite of Spring." That it is a worthy score in and of itself was shown by the CSO's imposing performance.
Muti had the orchestra fairly reveling in every clashing dissonance, driving rhythmic figure and explosion of color, but he also brought ravishing musical atmosphere to the quieter, more mysterious sections. The augmented CSO sounded like a huge percussion machine in which every moving part meshed precisely. All in all, a fine addition to the CSO's 125th anniversary retrospective.
The weekend concerts are the last Chicago will hear from Muti until his return to the subscription series in early December, although he will be taking the CSO on a brief U.S. tour beginning later this month.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; $34-$221; 312-294-3000, www.cso.org.
John von Rhein is a Tribune critic.
jvonrhein@tribpub.com
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