Leila Josefowicz performed a recital with pianist John Novacek Wednesday night at Ravinia.

The program notes for Leila Josefowicz’s recital at Ravinia displayed all the personality of a nutrition label. Phrases like “Stark piano octaves introduce a 12-note Andante phrase, whose steadily rising quarter notes are rhythmically varied by paired eighth notes” aren’t going to get young kids excited about classical music any time soon, and few were in attendance Wednesday night.

Not that program notes are a primary marketing tool, but it’s a shame nonetheless, given that the musically and physically demonstrative Canadian violinist is just the performer to win over youthful ears to composers like Shostakovich and Stravinsky.

The 32-year-old made her Carnegie Hall debut at 16, but it was made clear again Wednesday that Josefowicz has traveled far beyond her days as a child prodigy.

The violinist took the stage of Bennett-Gordon Hall in a stunning black-and-white dress resembling magnified thumbprints, to open the evening with Brahms’ Sonatensatz, the composer’s contribution to a birthday present for violinist Joseph Joachim. Though known for often adding a little grit to the bow, Josefowicz’s muscular handling of the opening theme and its returns seemed overly aggressive, even bordering on full distortion at moments. This fearlessness at the point of contact between bow hair and string would prove to be a more effective weapon of choice after intermission.

Following a somewhat monochromatic reading of Shostakovich’s lone Violin Sonata, Stravinsky’s Duo concertante led off the arresting second half, and here the violinist and her superlative pianist John Novacek took the audience by force and only released hostages after the encore.

The Russian composer’s score plays like a Broadway show, each movement with it’s own bewitching, bigger-than-life personality. One can almost hear a chorus singing with the piano’s hustle of alternating 16th-notes in the second movement, Eclogue I; after a schizophrenic fourth movement complete with fidgety left-hand pizzicatos, the music finds itself in an alternatingly majestic and thoughtful, post-battle conclusion. Josefowicz’s effortless transitions between chaos and serenity, rollicking gypsy dances and moments of quiet repose elicited quiet gasps throughout and was easily the highlight of the evening.

A close second was the only selection from a composer not yet six feet under, Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Conversio. What begins as a groove tune, the kind of piece in which one has to—as the duo certainly did—find “the pocket,” eventually gives way to unison stabs of sound, separated by nail-bitingly wide lengths of silence. The choreography between Josefowicz and Novacek here was nothing short of remarkable, exploding each stillness with rifle-shot accuracy.

Closing the program with Schubert’s delightfully flirtatious Rondo brilliant in B minor—undeterred by an impossibly loud cell phone—the pair were brought back to the stage for a stunner of an encore, Charlie Chaplin’s sad-sweet Smile from his film Modern Times. Leaving the vibrato backstage, Josefowicz gracefully glided up and down the neck of the instrument, as Novacek’s jazz chords provided the melancholy landing pad, a dulcet end to the evening.

The Claremont Trio performed at Ravinia on Tuesday night.

Though the Claremont Trio has been receiving increasing attention in recent years due to their recordings, the glam, youthful-looking ensemble has been playing together now for 11 years.

The women (twins Emily and Julia Bruskin, and pianist Donna Kwong) appeared Tuesday night at Ravinia, shoehorned into an early-evening concert at Bennett-Gordon Hall while the masses assembled for the main rock event, Counting Crows, on the lawn.

I’ve had ambivalent reactions to the Claremont Trio’s recordings, appreciating the venturesome repertoire—notably on their most recent disc of American composers–while finding the performances technically uneven and  light in terms of sonority and interpretive depth.

Tuesday’s program left me with the same mixed feelings. At times, the trio performed with sensitivity and poise while at other times, the playing failed to rise above the level one might expect from any proficient student ensemble.

I missed the first movement of the opening work, Schumann’s Piano Trio in F major, Op. 80, as did several others, due to traffic and a prolonged backup on Lake-Cook Road. (Is it really necessary to begin these concerts at 6 p.m. and force Chicago residents to battle rush hour to make the curtain?)

But in the three movements I heard, the Claremont Trio showed a shallow, somewhat miniaturized approach to music that calls out for greater thrust and vitality. Even though this is one of Schumann’s happier chamber works, the music clearly needs a bolder and more sophisticated palette, and the Claremont’s cautious tempo for the Allegretto made it seem like the work had two slow movements. Even with moderate tempos, there was repeated wayward intonation and scruffy playing from both violinist Emily Bruskin and cellist Julia Bruskin. Fewer rapturous facial expressions and more practice would be on point.

The group gets credit for providing a Ravinia premiere with Mario Castelnuevo-Tedesco’s Trio No. 2, Op. 70. Written in 1932, before the Jewish-Italian composer fled Mussolini’s Italy to seek refuge in the U.S., it shows a songful Italian heritage as well as the somewhat sticky lyricism that would prove useful when Castlenuovo-Tedesco later settled in Hollywood.

The playing of the opening movement had too soft a focus for music marked Schietto e deciso (“sincere and decisive”) suffering from the musicians’ facile style. The Claremont players proved more in their element in the central Romanza, with violinist Emily Bruskin’s sweet tone suiting the lilting main theme and some lovely playing in duetted passages with her cellist sibling.

Surprisingly, the Ravel Piano Trio came off best, and was clearly the most prepared performance of the evening. Pianist Kwong’s opening notes set just the right dreamlike atmosphere, and the ensemble’s delicate sonority suits the fragile, glassy passages of this work. Attacks were more incisive as well and though intonation throughout was not airtight, it was more consistent, with the Bruskin twins offering their best playing of the evening in the Passacaille.

The Spring section of Piazzolla’s Four Season of Buenos Aires was the lively encore to a decidedly mixed evening of chamber music.

Gustav Mahler

The Grant Park Music Festival wrapped its season with Mahler’s epic Symphony No. 2, a work that calls for a sense of fine detail as well as grand sweep, and by and large, Saturday night’s performance had both

In a city with the rich Mahler tradition of Chicago, comparisons are tough. Fine as the Grant Park Orchestra’s playing is, they can’t quite summon up the CSO’s corporate sonority and weight, in part due to smaller orchestral forces. With brass and percussion dominating tuttis. at times one wanted more ballast of string tone underneath.

Still, from the intensely projected playing of the cellos and basses in the opening theme, you knew you were in for a dramatic performance. Kalmar showed himself a deft guide in this 80-minute journey from darkness to light. and was especially impressive in the long first movement holding the 35-minute span together with strong forward momentum.

If the Andante sostenuto could have used a bit more charm, it was beautifully played with dynamics scrupulously observed. Kalmar’s take on the Scherzo was aptly in the vein of light caprice, rather than bitter sarcasm.

Allyson McHardy was a memorable Angel in last summer’s performances of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in Millennium Park, and, proved a stalwart soloist in the Urlicht movement, singing the text with radiant sensitvity. Soprano Katrina Gauvin sounded a but underpowered Saturday veering into sprechstimme rather than a sustained tone, though both Canadian singers rose to the heavenly heights in the closing section with the Grant Park Chorus.

There were more al fresco disturbances than usual Saturday night and all at the worst possible times: a succession of wailing sirens during the gentle pastoral passages of the opening movement; a loud motorcycle at the exact moment of the choruses’s entrance in the finale, and what sounded like a Park District employee dumping a large number of glass bottles into a metal garbage can just as Gauvin was about to sing.

All that may have contributed to the difficult finale not quite coming off. Also, the choral singing proved disappointing. Prepared by guest choral director Kathy Saltzman Romey, the ensemble made a mighy sound in the closing pages but was far too loud at their first entrance, and their quiet singing was bland and expressionless.

Still, this Mahler performance largely provided a rousing ending to yet another rich season from the Grant Park Music Festival, one of our city’s leading cultural treasures. Long may it continue.

Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Chicago has played a central role in the development of the Silk Road Ensemble from its inception a decade ago to the present.  Several of its performers have been Chicagoans and/or have deep area connections. Also the group spent a year here premiering works, giving concerts and workshops during the citywide Silk Road Chicago project, recording two albums with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Finally, Silk Road’s artistic director and guiding light, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, was appointed creative consultant to the CSO late last year by incoming music director Riccardo Muti.

Friday evening’s Ravinia concert was a celebration not only of the tenth anniversary of the Silk Road Ensemble, but also felt like a reunion of close friends, so intimate was the connection between the audience—at a capacity level on the lawn despite heavy downpours—and the musicians.

The repertoire was largely retrospective, as befits an anniversary celebration, and most of the pieces were well known to the audience—so much so that there was a palpable expectation of what was coming next, almost like a “greatest hits” concert by a major rock band where familiar riffs, rhythms and power chords would be greeted with cheers and mayhem.  Indeed, it often felt as if the Silk Road Ensemble has become the Grateful Dead of classical and world music, a jam band for longhairs.

The group entered in darkness, Ma included, with Cristina Pato entering from one side, offering a crooning high dirge on the Gaita, a Spanish take on bagpipes, answered by recorder and eventually pipa and three percussionists in the Pato original Caronte, which became a Haydn Farewell Symphony in reverse with ensemble members entering one by one and then performing the popular group arrangement of the Persian folksong, Ascending Bird.

Interspersed with such smaller pieces were a couple of large-scale works commissioned by the group, the most effective of which was Osvaldo Golijov’s four movement Air to Air, which seeks to cross-fertilize various national styles with Western classical music by using said styles of collage-like soundscapes where Western strings are used almost as a narrator or tour guide along the way.

Particularly clever was Golijov’s juxtaposing of Arab Christian and Arab Muslim music in a manner where one is almost indistinct from the other, so common in the cultural vocabulary.

By contrast, Giovanni Solima’s The Taranta Project seemed to substitute novelty and long, episodic improvisational stretches for a sense of meaningful structure, but the crowd ate up the self-indulgent rock solo-like beat-boxing interludes like candy.

Tabla player Sandeep Das’s Shristi, a Silk Road favorite, served as the penultimate selection, each percussionist given a rhythmic pattern with a different series of beats from Indian classical music to stay within, serving as an Eastern take on Varèse’s Ionisation.

The grand finale was the group’s arrangement of the Chinese solo pipa tour de force Ambush From Ten Sides which portrays two ancient armies in battle and their coming together for what becomes the Han dynasty.

This piece, which gives the spotlight to pipa player extraordinaire and Chicagoan Yang Wei, was heard and recorded here with full orchestra, but the enthusiasm and energy of Friday’s performance was such that the work also manages to be a stirring affair as a Silk Road Ensemble piece.

Johannes Brahms

Wednesday’s Grant Park Music Festival concert presented a nice balance of music that featured some breezy tidbits by Saint-Saëns and Bizet, coupled with a sterling performance of the Brahms First Piano Concerto by Horacio Gutiérrez.

The first half of the program was a perfect concoction for a late summer evening.  As an opener, Saint-Saëns’ Marche militaire française was showy and brief. Conductor Carlos Kalmar brought a light touch to this forgettable piece, strings and brass nicely balanced and an impulsiveness that was quite enjoyable. With the brass singing out and the strings smooth and ingratiating, it was a French version of Rossini done with finesse and a bit of flash.

This auspicious beginning led into another rather short piece of French music, Bizet’s Symphony No. 1 in C. Written when he was just 17, it is the work of a very young man with its homages and ebulliences. Yet the work is actually quite sophisticated for all the borrowings from Rossini and the two symphonies of Bizet’s teacher, Gounod. It is a piece that exists as if caught in amber, since it lay undiscovered until the 1930s and represents an early phase in Bizet’s musical development.

The slow second movement contains a beautiful oriental-flavored oboe solo that contrasts with a slow fugal section in the low strings. Each of the four short movements has its own charm, from the bagpipe rusticity of the Scherzo to the scampering strings and cheerful march of the finale, and Bizet’s symphony was played with style and good humor by the Grant Park Orchestra.

Horacio Gutiérrez

A quick changeover brought the piano on stage and the appearance of pianist Horacio Gutiérrez signaled the beginning of something much more substantial: an early masterpiece by the 27-year-old Brahms, which contains some of his most deeply felt and original music.

The Piano Concerto No. 1 was first performed in 1859 after a long and painful struggle with the material, during which time his mentor and friend Robert Schumann slipped into madness and, eventually, death. It seems to reflect Brahms’ deepest emotions, involving himself, Schumann, and Clara Schumann – his only muse in life.

But it isn’t necessary to know the biographical details to be affected by this bold and somber collaboration. In the capable hands of Gutiérrez and Kalmar, the music spoke quite eloquently for itself. After the extensive instrumental introduction, the pianist gently entered in a perfect balance with the orchestra, demonstrating here, as throughout the performance, a marvelous rapport between soloist and orchestra.

The long first movement, marked Maestoso, (majestic, or dignified) is an epic journey through a craggy emotional landscape. One can only wonder how the audience of the day reacted to such an outburst. (It’s interesting that the Bizet Symphony was written only four years previously.)
What stands out is how all the arpeggios, octaves, and trills seem to have a purpose. Unlike Liszt in his concertos, the technical elaborations lead to a musical and emotional goal that is ultimately resolved into a satisfying whole.

The middle Adagio movement is ideally as intense in its way as the more overt first movement. Here the noisy Grant Park environment milked the music of some of its rapt intensity. Still, it was never less than satisfactory and came to a perfectly judged close.

The artists moved right into the brusque and almost rollicking rondo Finale where again the equal partnership stood out. The bravura was varied by subtle changes and technical felicities, and the music-making was at a very high level.

Kelly Kaduce as Cio-Cio San and Brandon Jovanovich as Pinkerton in Santa Fe Opera's "Madama Butterfly." Photo: Ken Howard.

SANTA FE: Few subjects can provoke more rancorous debate among opera mavens than the primacy of singing in the art form. Some maintain that it is the most crucial, essential ingredient, to which all other elements take a distant back seat. Others see opera as a collaborative medium in which the voice is just one of many factors, to be considered equally with acting, musical direction, scenic design and production values.

That debate took center stage Saturday night when Santa Fe Opera presented Madama Butterfly, the company’s first production in 12 years of Puccini’s classic tragedy of the ill-fated geisha, Cio-Cio San.

As one would expect of the celebrated Santa Fe company, the production had the usual distinction, with a strong cast, exemplary musical values and a traditional production with several clever touches.

But, as always, every Butterfly stands or falls on the strength of its female lead, and never was that more the case than with Kelly Kaduce in the current production.

The gifted soprano is one of the great singing actresses of our time. I’ve experienced her daunting versatility and ability to disappear completely into a variety of roles from Gretel and Mimi to the title role in David Carlson’s Anna Karenina.

Kaduce’s provocative performance of Cio-Cio San in Santa Fe’s current production is so controversial and revisionist that Saturday night it seemed at times revelatory, other times miles over the top, and frequently, simply exhausting.

The petite American soprano is physically well suited to the role of the innocent Japanese teen bride who is married, then heartlessly abandoned by the caddish American naval office Pinkerton, an act that leads to her destruction. For much of Act 1, Kaduce brought extraordinary insight to this thrice-familiar role with several individual touches, such as her jarringly violent reaction to the thought that Americans use pins on butterflies.

Yet with Act 2, one felt Kaduce’s performance slipping further away from the demure Butterfly into a more worldly contemporary zone. Part of that was clearly the intent of the production with the “American wife” wearing Western clothes. But too often her movements, responses and, especially, her hyperreactive approach to every line of dialogue made it seem more like Kaduce’s unhinged Butterfly was channeling Wozzeck. When the tragic denouement arrives, Kaduce’s violent explosion of rage came as no surprise and you just knew she was going to pick up and throw that chair right before she did so.

There’s nothing wrong with a new approach to a character, but Kaduce’s uninhibited excesses should have been reined in by director Lee Blakeley. As with Natalie Dessay’s floozy Violetta in Santa Fe Opera’s Traviata last season, you were constantly aware of watching an individual acting performance rather than an opera role as a part of a greater ensemble.

Kaduce’s vocalism was less controversial, the soprano singing with technical sheen and consistently illuminating the text. Her Un bel di was a small masterpiece of storytelling through music.

Yet while unfailingly sensitive, the inescapable fact is that Kaduce’s voice is too light for this role. Yes, she can sing all the notes and be vocally effective in smaller venues. But in Santa Fe’s mountaintop arena, it was clear that she doesn’t have the vocal heft for the big moments, all of which fell short with abruptly curtailed climactic top notes in the love duet and her Act 2 aria.

Ultimately, even with Kaduce’s acting bona fides and daunting intensity, instead of a tragic ennobled figure, her Butterfly comes off like a deranged basket case, an unstable, neurotic woman who was likely going to have major problems even if Pinkerton had stayed with her.

With Kaduce’s showy star turn, it’s a testament to Brandon Jovanovich that he still managed to make a strong impact as Pinkerton despite being offstage for more than half of the opera. Jovanovich’s imposing tenor lacks Italianate quality and ping, yet he sang robustly and looked and acted like the swaggering villain. Unlike most, he also managed to make Pinkerton’s belated remorse over his actions seem genuine and sang an especially fine Addio, fiorito asil.

Finding a Suzuki shorter than Kaduce must have been difficult, but the tiny Elizabeth DeShong made an impact far greater than her physical stature, acting credibly and touchingly, and showing a surprisingly ample mezzo-soprano voice.

James Westman occasionally overdid the emotive reactions but made a sympathetic Sharpless. The wonderful Keith Jameson was an unctuous and quietly resentful Goro, Matthew Hanscom a fine Yamadori, Harold Wilson, a physically intimidating Bonze. The ensemble sang well but proved almost inaudible in the Humming Chorus. And I know we’re supposed to be living in a post-racial age, but isn’t having an African-American singer (Brandy Lynn Hawkins) as Butterfly’s mother carrying colorblind casting a bit far?

Jean-Marc Puissant’s revolving unit set was simple and atmospheric, artfully assembled by workmen during the action of Act 1, and showing dilapidated disrepair in Act 2. Conductor Antony Walker set off at a dizzying pace in the opening bars yet proved an assured hand in the pit, though he skirted over many of the small beauties of the score in haste. This was not a night for subtlety.

Santa Fe Opera’s Madama Butterfly has two more performances August 20 and 26. http://santafeopera.org.

For more dispatches from Santa Fe this week, go to The Classical Review.

Carlos Kalmar led the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus in Dvorak's Requiem Friday night.

Distant lightning flashes provided a dramatic visual backdrop for Friday night’s concert at Millennium Park, yet, mercifully, the rain held out until the end of the evening.

That was fortunate indeed, since Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus provided their own brand of electricity in a riveting, beautifully sung performance of Dvorak’s Requiem, which made for one of the most memorable musical events of this summer.

Friday’s concert, devoted solely to Dvorak’s vast choral work, is a prime example of why Chicago’s lakefront music series is the festival of choice for discerning summer concertgoers. Where else can one experience an entire evening given up to a sprawling work for four soloists, large chorus and orchestra, which few people in attendance are ever likely to have heard before?

Antonin Dvorak

Even for a composer as popular as Antonin Dvorak, there are vast swathes of his oeuvre that remain terra incognita to most concert-goers. And, along with his operas—Rusalka apart—no area of Dvorak’s output has been as throughly forgotten as his choral music. Extraordinarily popular in Dvorak’s lifetime, such works as the Stabat Mater, St. Ludmilla and The Spectre’s Bride are now historic curios.

Such is also the case with Dvorak’s Requiem. As with the Requiem of Verdi, Dvorak’s setting of the Roman Catholic liturgy is an expansive work on the grand scale, and, like Verdi, the Czech composer intended his Requiem for the concert hall and not sacred services.

While Verdi’s operatic setting employs solo arias and those famous drop-into-hell choral screams, Dvorak’s Requiem is less overtly theatrical and more spiritually centered, particularly in the latter sections of Part II.

Yet, there’s no shortage of drama or expressive force in Dvorak’s setting. From the somber opening and malign terror of the Dies irae and Confutatits, to the heartfelt pleading of the Hostias, the graceful Sanctus, and the supplicatory Pie Jesu and Agnus Dei, Dvorak’s Requiem actually seems like a deeper, more balanced work than Verdi’s for all the excitement and operatic passions of the Italian’s setting.

Friday night’s performance benefited from fielding an uncommonly well-balanced vocal quartet, with four first-class soloists. Kyle Ketelesen is a familiar local figure after his fine work in Faust and Le nozze di Figaro at the Lyric Opera last season, and the American bass-baritone’s sonorous, firmly pointed vocalism provided the requisite dramatic pedal-points. German mezzo-soprano Alexandra Petersamer displayed ample tone and polished vocalism in the Recordare and Libera Me.

The two younger singers were especially fine. Brendan Tuohy showed a superb, plangent tenor and his strongly projected solo singing was a consistent pleasure.

Layla Claire: Photo: Sebastian Bresson.

Layla Claire, currently a Lindemann Young Artist at the Met, is clearly meant for great things. The Canadian soprano possesses a rich, luminous instrument and her sensitive, expressive singing consistently illuminated the text, with supremely affecting vocalism in the Graduale.

Scrupulously prepared by guest choral director William Jon Gray—incoming chorus director of Music of the Baroque—-the mighty massed forces of the Grant Park Chorus delivered one of their finest performances of this season, resounding and majestic in the impassioned climaxes, singing with cohesion, clarity and delicacy, and thrilling in the great choral fugues. So impressive was the ensemble work, Tuohy and Ketelsen frequently turned to listen, smiling at their choral colleagues’ vocalism.

Kalmar is at his finest in these large-scale works, and Grant Park’s principal conductor provided masterful advocacy, eliciting fiery, virtuosic playing and sustaining momentum throughout this long and demanding work. Apart from some sour woodwind tuning at the start of the Offertorium, the Grant Park Orchestra members were at the considerable top of their form, with clarion brasses, and radiant, athletic string playing. Kalmar obtained a strikingly wide palette of dynamics and tonal coloring, his attentive detailing apparent in every transition.

There is one more performance Saturday, and Chicagoans shouldn’t pass up the chance to hear this neglected rarity, especially given this level of advocacy.

The Dvorak Requiem will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Pritzker Pavilion. www.grantparkmusicfestival.com.

Toumani Diabate performed West African music for the kora Wednesday night with the Grant Park Orchestra. Photo: Norman U. Timonera.

Maybe it’s the venue—the extravagantly fanciful Jay Pritzker Pavilion rising over a vast, open-air lawn in Millennium Park downtown.

Or perhaps the pavilion’s weekly concerts featuring world music and local pop groups are having an effect. Maybe it’s the fact that the concerts are free.

Whatever the reason, a remarkably relaxed spirit of experimentation permeates the Grant Park Music Festival’s classical programming. The Grant Park Symphony’s large, loyal audience is willing to hear new things, and its musicians and principal conductor Carlos Kalmar seem equally open to moving beyond the usual round of Beethoven and Brahms.

The exotic collaborations that occasionally pop up—whether with local rockers such as Poi Dog Pondering or a Tibetan choir—may or may not work. But they seem driven by genuine musical curiosity rather than a desperate attempt to get bodies into seats.

The West African kora—a 21-string instrument that is plucked like a zither but stands upright like a cello–was the exotic centerpiece of Wednesday night’s Grant Park Symphony concert conducted by Kalmar. The virtuoso soloist was Toumani Diabate, a native of Mali, who brought along five musicians of his Symmetric Orchestra to play acoustic guitar, ngoni (a traditional African guitar), balafon (a xylophone-like instrument) percussion and bass.

The half-dozen West African pieces that Diabate and his colleagues played with the orchestra had a New Agey, go-with-the flow mellowness.  Usually driven by folk-like tunes, they were built on repeated melodic phrases and steady, pacing rhythms. Their mood was generally soothing, though jazzy syncopations often erupted, sometimes evoking the lilt and energy of a Celtic jig. The orchestra functioned mainly as a rustling, attentive backup band.

But Diabate’s kora brought an unexpectedly powerful solo voice to the mix. Amplified by microphone, its tone was resonant and clear, combining the bright ping of a harpsichord and the agile, expressive tone of a guitar. Diabate sat front and center with the kora, an instrument with a long neck and a bulbous base, standing upright on the floor, its strings facing him.

Often when non-Western instruments pair with a symphony orchestra, their timbre is a distraction. Their sound can be too weak or simply too dissimilar to blend well or set up a convincing dialogue.

That problem didn’t exist Wednesday night. Diabate, who wrote most of the concert’s pieces, is committed to moving the kora beyond its role as a solo instrument, and his instrument’s voice sounded both authoritative and at ease with the Grant Park Symphony. Whether setting out serene melodies for the orchestra to echo or seizing the spotlight with lightning-fast, bristling cadenzas, Diabate was a virtuoso by any measure.

Mezzo-soprano Emily Fons was the standout singer Friday night at a concert featuring young artists from the Lyric Opera of Chicago's Ryan Opera Center.

The Grant Park Music Festival headed indoors Friday night, presenting Mozart and Rossini operatic finales sung by young artists from the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center.

Neither baritone Paul La Rosa as Dandini nor tenor René Barbera as Ramiro seemed comfortable at the beginning of the La Cenerentola finale, which opened the concert.  Kalmar pushed the Grant Park Orchestra to almost breakneck speed, leaving his singers to catch up.  La Rosa in particular had problems with audibility throughout his voice and his runs—Rossini doesn’t seem to be for him.  Mezzo Katherine Lerner and soprano Jennifer Jakob sang the two sisters Clorinda and Tisbe.  Both acted well but neither showed much individuality.  All singers needed work on their Italian diction.

Evan Boyer turned things around in his entrance as Alidoro, showing off a polished true bass.  Given the uneven singing up to this point, mezzo Emily Fons was a welcome surprise as Cenerentola.  Fons stood head and shoulders above her peers with pure vocal quality and technique.  The Milwaukee native possesses an instrument of size, control, and flexibility, as she showed off precise coloratura and an idiomatic Rossini style.

The final scene from Don Giovanni followed, with a few switches in casting.  La Rosa took over duties as the Don and improved over his Cenerentola selection, but still struggled with projecting his voice.  Sam Handley as Leporello sang with a clear, sharp bass that filled the theater with ease.  The concert version of the finale produced awkward standing around during the dinner scene, but Handley improvised well. Soprano Amanda Majeski was reliable as Donna Anna, yet it was Fons who shined yet again as Donna Elvira, displaying a vocal gleam that already seems like that of a seasoned professional.

A short intermission preceded L’Italiana in Algeri’s act one finale.  Lerner sang an underwhelming Isabella while Fons was inexplicably relegated to Zulma.  James Kryshak as Lindoro made the most of his small role, using his Rossinian tenor to pierce through the hectic ensemble with ease.  Baritone Paul Scholten as Taddeo has a voice a bit too light for the basso comedic roles he sang during the performance, but the Michigan native made up for it with his acting.

The evening ended with the finale from act two of Le Nozze di Figaro.  La Rosa returned, this time as the Count, and seemed more comfortable with Mozart’s declamatory writing.  Bass Craig Irvin’s bellowing Figaro was well sung and acted, while Jakob’s Susanna seemed stuck on one volume (loud).  Majeski assumed the role of the Countess and performed elegantly, floating several phrases effortlessly into the warm acoustic of the Harris.  Handley made an appearance as Antonio, as did Boyer as Bartolo, both singing admirably in their small roles.

The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Harris Theater, Millennium Park. www.grantparkmusicfestival.com

Christian Teztlaff performed Dvorak's Violin Concerto Wednesday night with Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra. Photo: Norman U. Timonera.

The meteorological gods smiled on the Grant Park Music Festival again Wednesday night. With the day’s rainy weather moving out, the cloudy skies serendipitously parted a half-hour before concert time making a pleasant backdrop for Carlos Kalmar’s return.

It’s too bad the program was a one-nighter, since it provided one of the finest solo performances of the summer and offered a worthy take on an offbeat Shostakovich symphony, which likely would have benefited from a second outing.

Christian Teztlaff has practically been an honorary Chicago citizen this past season. The German violinist performed Bach’s complete solo fiddle works last October, Brahms with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in April, and was back to tackle the Dvorak Violin Concerto Wednesday night.

Dvorak composed one great concerto (for cello) one good one (for violin) and one not-so-good one (for piano). But so stylish and compelling was Tetzlaff’s take on the Czech composer’s Violin Concerto that he almost had you believing it was a semi-neglected masterpiece.

Dispensing with his spectacles and formal concert garb, Teztlaff, clad in black slacks and T-shirt, looked more like a wiry athlete than a classical violinist, minus his usual scholarly demeanor.

Yet he brought to the Dvorak concerto an engaging mix of tensile strength and lyric spontaneity. Tetzlaff’s dramatic point and vitality helped skirt the weaknesses of the unwieldy first movement, and the violinist eased into Dvorak’s lyrical melodies in idiomatic style. The Adagio was especially inspired, with the lovely main theme floated by Tetzlaff with touching tenderness, the simple expression all the more affecting for the lack of heavy vibrato.

Kalmar and the Grant Park musicians provided their soloist with superb support, especially in the bravura finale. With Teztlaff bringing a physical intensity to the virtuosic writing, Kalmar artfully underlined the ingenuity of Dvorak’s writing in the varied reappearances of the folk-flavored main theme.

After World War II, Stalin and his Soviet cultural commissars expected a victorious Ninth Symphony, a la Beethoven, from Dmitri Shostakovich, and were less than ecstatic at the result. Cast in five short movements, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 is a strange amalgam, veering from lightly satiric to deeply pessimistic and hardly the triumphant work the Soviets wanted.

Kalmar certainly had the sense of the jokey opening movement, bringing out the schizoid off-kilter humor. In the hard-driving finale, Kalmar’s sharp-edged direction made manifest that this music is more fraught with frenetic desperation than light-hearted ebullience.

Eric Hall’s bassoon solo unerringly captured the bleak desolation of the Largo, but the wind playing elsewhere was largely undistinguished, particularly in the second movement with some bland, literal solos that made little of the music’s expressive opportunities.

Someone at Grant Park has a sense of humor, programming John Adams’ Lollapalooza to open the evening the same week that the titular rock festival forces the orchestra underground to the Harris Theater.

Adam’s riff has the rhythmic drive and contrapuntal ingenuity one would expect, with the main five-note theme echoing the work’s title. But Wednesday’s opener felt under-rehearsed and a bit too careful, lacking swagger and bite. Whether a technical issue or not, balances seemed off, with the strings virtually inaudible throughout the five-minute piece.