Aug. 01--Whenever Lollapalooza displaces the Grant Park Music Festival to the Harris Theater for Music and Dance something interesting happens.
Always the indoor acoustic enables listeners to hear more detail and determine how well the conductor has succeeded in balancing the ensemble.
But adventurous programming also poses challenges that are perceived more easily without amplification, and nuances of playing -- or their absence -- may be determined more readily, as they were Friday night in guest conductor Christoph Konig's debut with the Grant Park Orchestra.
Konig, principal conductor and music director of the Solistes Europeens Luxembourg, was an unfussy guide to both the Overture to Carl Maria von Weber's opera, "Der Freischutz" and Anton Bruckner's Sixth Symphony. His accounts were taut but not so much as to sound driven or unyielding. And the quiet afforded by indoors allowed him to observe many degrees of volume, which of course contribute mightily to expression.
The Bruckner was, however, a first performance by the orchestra, and as it is not as directly expressive as the three symphonies that follow, the Sixth demands a bit more interpretatively from conductor and orchestra than the stable, fleet, unadorned performance Konig elicited.
Again and again we hear 21st Century conductors finding in Romantic repertory energy and clarity that together make scarcely a misstep regarding tastefulness but tend to fall short of communicating deep emotional identification. So it was again on Friday.
Sound was balanced keenly enough, having bludgeoning power as well as some delicate shading. All-important horn and wind solos were precise and technically proficient. The cumulative impact of Bruckner's many repetitions registered without excessive overpowering of inner voices.
Yet the quality of sound, particularly from the upper strings, was unsweetened, dry, bleached and expressively whitened. Soprano Anneliese Rothenberger used to speak of "the tears in the sound," meaning that tone itself had to be imaginatively coaxed, richly varied as to color and tended with unusual care to achieve depth of feeling. Friday's sound, despite its success at getting the audience shouting, was not of that caliber.
The Weber encompasses several moods in 10 minutes. Konig ticked them off one by one, smoothly and sonorously, at entirely fair speeds that resisted anything becoming showy.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph St. Free. 312-742-7647; Gpmf.org
Alan Artner is a freelance critic.
