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Apr. 5--This is the final season of MusicNOW concerts to be curated by Augusta Read Thomas, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's tireless composer-in-residence and an inspirational force behind the series from its inception.
She has done a remarkably thorough job of it, bringing local audiences a great deal of new music in a wide variety of styles they would not ordinarily have been exposed to. By entrusting this music to musicians from the CSO under principal conductor Cliff Colnot and a host of guest composer-conductors, she also has ensured performances at the highest level of skill and commitment. Of how many concerts of contemporary music can that be said?
"Gusty" Thomas signed off on the series Monday night in Orchestra Hall with a generous program that included two world premieres--her own "Carillon Sky" (2005) and Oliver Knussen's "Requiem--Songs for Sue" (2005-06), a MusicNOW commission.
Knussen, a big, jovial bear of a man, was there to introduce his own works (three were performed) as well as conduct the various CSO ensembles. The quality was somewhat variable but everything was cleanly and convincingly played, and the audience clearly was grateful for the aural adventure.
The requiem Knussen wrote in memory of his late wife, Sue, lasts about 12 minutes and is a song cycle--in English, Spanish and German--based on poems by Emily Dickinson, Antonio Machado, W.H. Auden and Rainer Maria Rilke. Knussen describes it as an act of public mourning. Elegantly crafted reflections on what it means to lose a loved one, the songs reveal a more nakedly personal side of his art than one has ever encountered before.
The clear, cool soprano of Claire Booth curled around the words and music, fusing them into something eloquent, poignant and touching within the luminous 15-piece ensemble of winds, strings, piano, harp and percussion.
"Secret Psalm," for solo violin, also is a memorial, in this case for Michael Vyner, the late artistic director of the London Sinfonietta. Knussen slyly imbeds disguised fragments of Vyner's guilty pleasure--an unnamed fiddle war horse--in a brief lyric meditation that sounds neither tonal nor atonal. Do I win the cigar for guessing that the cryptic source is Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1?
Baird Dodge dispatched the piece as beautifully as he did the featured violin solo in "Carillon Sky," Thomas' "thank-you" to the entire CSO family. The title suggests the image of a sky full of pealing bells and chirping birds. The violin shifts expressive character like a musical chameleon, nestling in the delicate scoring for 13 instruments before improvising a cadenza.
The music, not to mention Dodge's playing, was so engrossing that I wished Thomas had developed her materials at greater length. Maybe she will somewhere down the line.
On the other hand, Knussen's tiny piano piece, "A Fragment of Ophelia's Last Dance" (which sounded like a homage to Ravel), felt not a note too long in Amy Dissanayake's assured performance.
And German composer Detlev Glanert's "Secret Room," a piece for eight players suggested by an Edgar Allan Poe story, built its intended claustrophobic effect through adroit manipulation of various pungent sounds, timbres and levels of desperate rhythmic energy.
jvonrhein@tribune.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
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