March 06--The program with which Riccardo Muti is closing out his winter residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this weekend at Symphony Center reveals three different sides of the music director, in three contrasting areas of the repertory. The satisfying results were a reminder of what one of today's most brilliant partnerships in symphonic music can achieve when all systems are go.
The orchestra's neglect of new and recent music is shocking -- next season's subscription series will encompass only two world premieres -- so one must be grateful for the little one gets to hear. Muti began Thursday night's concert with a contemporary classic, Gyorgy Ligeti's "Lontano" (1967), a fascinating exploration of musical space and density that became the great Hungarian modernist's signature by the time of his death in 2006.
The Italian title "Lontano" refers to distance, to sound layers emerging, intersecting and receding, using shifts in pitch, textural weight and dynamic level so subtle as to be almost imperceptible. Time feels suspended. Other conductors have built the sonic arc more forcibly, with sharper contrasts. but Muti's more lyrical unfolding of sonorities proved equally valid, revealing unsuspected textural colors.
The problem here lay not with the performance but in the audience's attention level: Some of their unstifled coughs were louder than the music, ruinous in effect. Muti looked displeased when he left the podium, and who could blame him? I hope he brings more of Ligeti's music to Chicago, hopefully with a quieter, more respectful audience to experience it.
Muti the modernist morphed into Muti the classicist for his stylish accompaniment to Beethoven's Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello, the so-called "Triple" Concerto. Beyond the fact that this is not a masterpiece to rate among the great Beethoven concertos, the piece requires extra-sensitive handling if the soloistic voices are to be integrated properly within the whole.
Muti presented the concerto as orchestral chamber music, carefully coordinating the solo voices with the rest of the ensemble and adjusting the orchestral dynamics and weight accordingly. This was prudent, given the rather disparate styles of violinist Stephanie Jeong, cellist Kenneth Olsen and pianist Jonathan Biss.
Biss struck me as the most incisive and fully engaged of the three soloists, driving the rhythmic impetus of the outer movements in a really idiomatic way. The gifted American pianist is recording all of the Beethoven piano sonatas over a nine-year period, and I'd love to hear him collaborate with Muti on a solo concerto one of these days.
The smaller-scaled string soloists -- Jeong is the CSO's associate concertmaster, Olsen the assistant principal cello -- are fine ensemble players but neither is a virtuoso soloist. It's tempting to say that the violinist's bright, acidic tone and the cellist's warmly burnished sound made them an odd match, except that one was virtually a mirror image of the other in phrasing, dynamics and articulation. Too bad Olsen made rough weather of some of his high passage work.
Muti's Tchaikovsky symphony cycle this season has yielded no more distinguished entry than the full-blooded account of the Symphony No. 2 ("Little Russian") he directed on Thursday night. Hard to believe that the CSO had not touched this work, surely the finest of the Russian master's early symphonies, for 32 years.
The conductor's pacing of all four movements seemed ideal, supported by superb playing from all departments of the orchestra and undergirded by the mighty lava-flow of brass sound Muti controls so well.
The inner movements were especially becoming. Muti's relaxed tempo made for a slow movement that felt gracious, not overly martial. His crisp, mercurial scherzo drew on the dancing lightness of the woodwinds, here with Chicago-born Demarre McGill, principal flute of the Dallas Symphony, serving as guest principal flute.
Just before the concert's second half, Muti and CSO Association President Jeff Alexander presented the orchestra's highest honor, the Theodore Thomas Medallion for Distinguished Service, to David McGill. McGill (no relation to the flutist) retired from the CSO last year, after 17 years as principal bassoon, to become professor of bassoon at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music. He was, as Muti pointed out in his presentation, one of the mightiest pillars of the orchestra as both principal player and section leader, and is an orchestral and solo bassoonist who's admired throughout the world. "He doesn't play with the instrument -- he sings with it," said Muti. Truer words were never spoken about any musician of rank.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; $33-$220; 312-294-3000, cso.org.
jvonrhein@tribpub.com
