Sergei Rachmaninoff

The richly melodic music of Sergei Rachmaninoff remains a summer programming staple, and a guaranteed way of packing in the masses, as was the case once again Wednesday night at Ravinia.

Yet James Conlon found a way to provide some artful backspin on Rachmaninoff by programming the two works that led to the composer’s breakdown and his psychological and artistic recovery.

Rachmaninoff’s life was a string of unbroken successes until the disastrous premiere of his Symphony No. 1 in 1897. The audience catcalls and scathing reviews plunged the 22-year-old composer into a deep depression that continued for three years, during which he wrote little. Only a course of psychoanalysis and hypnosis with a Dr. Dahl brought Rachmaninoff out of the slough of despond, and the resulting work, his Piano Concerto No. 2, was gratefully dedicated to Dahl. (Another more subtle tribute may be the prominence of the viola section; Dahl was an amateur violist.)

The sprawling First Symphony is an odd work in the composer’s output. There are flashes of Rachmaninoff’s melodic style yet the lyrical qualities are overshadowed by a nervous, haunted qualitiy, such as the dour restlessness of the opening theme and the grinding repeated chords of the finale, hardly an affirmative coda. (His Dies irae fixation also makes a guest appearance.)

A work this complex requires more rehearsal time than is possible on a tight summer schedule, and one couldn’t help feeling that many of the score’s details went unexplored.

That said, Conlon showed a firm overall feel for this dark, nerve-wracked music and led a fiery, combustible performance that put across the explosive outbursts, rhythmic instability and sheer strangeness effectively. Even with most of the CSO principals off in the festival’s waning weeks, the orchestra rose to the occasion with notably gleaming and powerful playing, the CSO brass, in particular, sounding like its old technically assured and cohesive self.

Denis Matsuev

Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto is, of course, a much better-known commodity. Even though this warhorse suffers from overfamiliarity, one had great hopes for Wednesday’s performance by Denis Matsuev. The strapping Russian soloist launched the opening chords with a laser-like concentration and acutely calibrated dynamics that promised a traversal of power and eloquence.

Power was certainly there in abundance with Matsuev blazing through the knuckle-busting difficulties faultlessly. Rarely will one hear the octaves thrown off with such muscle and effortless ease, and the pianist’s stainless-steel bravura culminated in a thrilling coda, sending the Ravinia audience into paroxysms.

But for all the virtuosity, Matsuev’s playing seemed to miss the essential lyric heart of the music. The Adagio was all on the surface—poised and clear, yet blank in feeling and expression, with Matsuev’s hard, emphatic phrasing and mezzoforte dynamics sounding oddly removed from what the music is all about.

Conlon and the CSO seemed more in synch with this uber-Romantic music than their soloist, with the conductor leading a richly textured, responsive accompaniment. The CSO viola section was at their finest and Daniel Gingrich’s horn solos also provided a highlight.

Denis Matsuev will perform a recital at Ravinia’s Martin Theatre 8 p.m. Thursday including music of Chopin, Schumann and Prokofiev. www.ravinia.org

Jay Friedman conducts the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest in Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand" Monday night at Orchestra Hall.

Even among Gustav Mahler’s lengthy, tortuously complex works, there is nothing quite like his Symphony No. 8.

Scored for Brobdingnagian forces—which inspired the “Symphony of a Thousand” nickname—the vast work is infrequently performed, even by the world’s leading orchestras, due to its expense and difficulties, both musical and logistical. In addition to its hundred-plus orchestra members, Mahler’s 80-minute symphony calls for two massive mixed choirs and boys choir as well as eight vocal soloists.

“The work is so unique in terms of content and form that it is impossible to speak of it, even in a letter,” wrote the composer to conductor Willem Mengelberg. “It seems as if the entire universe begins to sound and ring; it is not just human voices singing, but the planets spinning.”

Enter the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest. The ambitious suburban community orchestra will—incredibly—tackle Mahler’s massive Eighth Symphony Monday night at Orchestra Hall, conducted by Jay Friedman.

“I think this is his greatest work,” says Friedman. “I really do. Not because of the size. That’s not what makes it great. But there are more ravishing passages in the Eighth than in any other Mahler work.”

Best known in his role as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s principal trombonist for the past 46 years, Friedman is also a gifted conductor. As music director of the west suburban community ensemble, Friedman has led performances of other Mahler works, including the Resurrection Symphony, but the Eighth is another matter entirely.

“It really came down to whether we could get all the choral forces,” said Friedman. “I knew the orchestra could do it and I knew I could get the [extra] players. But we got all the singers and the right soloists and everything kind of fell into place.”

“It’s an amazing thing for a community orchestra to be doing this,” added Charles Pikler, principal viola of the CSO and the Oak Park-River Forest Orchestra’s concertmaster. “I hope we can pull it off, and I think we will.”

The 80-member Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest will be expanded to 129 players for this single performance. While the chorus will not approach the vast scale of some performances, Friedman has fielded a respectable 250-member ensemble drawing from four separate choruses.

“The nucleus comes from our own symphony chorus,” said Friedman. Other ensembles will include Concordia University’s Choir, the Chicago Concert Chorale, and Chicago Men’s A Cappella, with the Oak Park-River Forest Children’s Choir.

Friedman is especially happy with his eight soloists, which include some of the area’s top singers: Nancy Pifer, Marcy Stonikas, Elizabeth Norman, Deborah Guscott, Tracy Watson, Kurt Hansen, Douglas Anderson, and Peter Van De Graaf.   “I have to say that I got every soloist I wanted for this,” says Friedman. “Everyone I asked said they would do it.”

Jay Friedman rehearses the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest at Concordia University.

At an early evening orchestra rehearsal at Concordia University in River Forest, there was barely room to move with over a hundred musicians crammed into the tight rehearsal hall. Friedman patiently led the orchestra through sections of the vast score, stopping frequently to address early or late entrances, balances and tuning. With many of the players part-time freelancers with day jobs, musicians continued to stream in during the rehearsal.

Sir Mark Elder, in town to guest conduct the CSO, sat in on the rehearsals, and accepted Friedman’s invitation to rehearse some sections. The English conductor encouraged the players with his personal charm and specific suggestions, such as bowing tips, as well as his wit. After leading the orchestra through the rapid, tortuous coda of the first movement, he looked around at the players,” Very good,” Elder said. “Anyone hurt?”

Gustav Mahler

Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 was written fairly quickly by the composer’s standard. The work is built on texts from two vastly divergent sources: the first a setting of the Latin vesper hymn, Veni, creator spiritus and the second a large-scale setting of the closing section of Goethe’s Faust. Yet the unifying force is a merging of the sacred and secular, uniting Christian belief with redemption through earthly love, as reflected in Goethe’s tale. As Mahler wrote to his wife, Alma, “The essence of it is really Goethe’s idea that all love is generative, creative, and that there is a physical and spiritual generation which is the emanation of this Eros.”

Unlike many of Mahler’s works, the first performance of the Eighth, September 12, 1910 in Munich, was an instant success, one of the few the composer enjoyed in his lifetime, and the last premiere he would conduct of his own music.

Though Mahler privately disparaged his manager’s coining of the term “Symphony of a Thousand” as “Barnum and Bailey methods,” the huge forces approximated that total at the Munich premiere, with an orchestra of 171 players and a chorus of around 850.

David Leehey, president of the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest, first became enamored with Mahler’s Eighth when performing it as a chorus member at the Tanglewood Festival. “Jay and I have been talking about doing this for a long time,” he said. “We’ve been doing Mahler symphonies in installments over the last five years.” Mounting a performance in the centennial year of the work’s premiere made sense, as did performing it downtown at Symphony Center.

Did he have a difficult time selling the daring proposal to his board. “You mean, will they kick me out after this?” Leehey asks. “They might.”

With the choruses arrayed in the risers behind the stage, that means about a 2,000-seat capacity in Orchestra Hall and Leehey is hoping to fill at least fifty percent of the house Monday night to make his expenses. “We figured that if we can get a thousand people, than we can break even.”

For a community orchestra made up largely of part-time freelance musicians, performing Mahler’s epic work offers a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“This is pretty exciting,” said principal horn David Barford. “We’ve played Mahler before but nothing like this and not at Orchestra Hall.”

“It’s a great opportunity to play this spectacular music,” said clarinetist Bruce Currie. “I’ve talked to other musicians around the country who are envious.”

Perhaps the musician most anticipating Monday night’s performance is horn player Jennifer Murtoff. The freelance editor and translator grew up in a small town in south central Pennsylvania, listening to classical music radio broadcasts since she had no opportunity to experience live classical music in her rural home.

“I used to listen to the Chicago Symphony on the radio,” she says. “And for me to play Mahler’s music in their hall on the same stage is just a huge honor.”

Jay Friedman conducts the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest and associated soloists and choruses in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 7:30 p.m. April 19 at Symphony Center. Former CSO president Henry Fogel will give a half-hour lecture on the work at 6:15 p.m. preceding the performance. 312-294-3000; www.cso.org.

Tuesday night it was the turn of the Rembrandt Chamber Players. Currently marking its 20th anniversary season, the event at the Merit School of Music’s Gottlieb Hall brought the third and final installment of the ensemble’s Mahler Project, which has been presenting major works of the Viennese composer in chamber reductions.

In the pre-recording era, the only way to hear large-scale new works like that of Mahler was to present live chamber performances. Arnold Schoenberg began his transcription of Das Lied von der Erde for his Society for Private Musical Performances. Considering that Schoenberg’s 14-player version was completed by Rainier Riehen, it is suprisingly effective, the artful scoring losing little of Mahler’s expressive high points, with piano and celesta filling in the harmonies.

If not possessing the most youthful of tenor voices, Kurt R. Hansen showed himself a spirited and nimble Mahlerian, idiomatic in the opening song and The Drunkard in Springtime.

Emily Lodine’s mezzo is rather slender in the low and midrange, but the singer was a consistently inspired and expressive soloist, ardent in The Lonely One in Autumn, and handling some challengingly fast tempos by conductor Jane Glover in the central section in Of Beauty.

Lodine rose to the supreme challenge of the finale Der Abschied, singing sensitively and conveying the nostalgic heartache and sadness of the setting with sensitively nuanced shading at the coda.

Even with just 14 players, Mahler’s music is complex enough to require a conductor. Since the Rembrandt Chamber Players was launched as a spinoff group from Music of the Baroque, it’s apt that the latter’s current music director Jane Glover lead these performances.

Outside her usual Baroque-Classical bailiwick, Glover showed an impressive command of the Mahlerian idiom, judging the ebb and flow skillfully and bringing out the scoring details with punch and emphatic impact from the ensemble. Perhaps too emphatic at times, with Glover’s vividly characterized chamber forces at times competing too aggressively with the singers rather than supporting them.

Still, if a bit high-powered the playing of the ensemble was consistently inspired with especially terrific support from Robert Hanford’s refined and expressive violin playing.

The concert began with the Two Rhapsodies of Charles Martin Loeffler. Longtime co-concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Loeffler’s works for oboe, viola and piano are darkly chromatic, inspired by a pair of gloomy poems by Maurice Rollinat.

Oboist Robert Morgan, violist Keith Conant and pianist Andrea Swan provided fine advocacy to these gorgeous, dark-textured works with especially sensitive playing by Conant in The Bagpipe.

So imagine the situation when two people with peripatetic schedules in nonparallel universes try to squeeze in a joint interview from different time zones.

Fortunately, David Finckel and Wu Han are as flexible and communicative in conversation as they are on the concert platform. Though there were some initial technical issues, as the Taiwanese pianist tried to get her on-the-road cellist husband on a conference line from their office at Lincoln Center.

“Hi! Just a second,” Wu Han says brightly. “We’ve only worked here five years,” she adds by way of apology, “and I haven’t figured out the phone yet. Playing piano is easier, I tell you.”

Soon all technical challenges are conquered and Wu Han and Finckel talk about music, their lives, and Franz Schubert’s extraordinary piano trios—works that the two, with violinist Philip Setzer, will bring to the University of Chicago Presents series Friday night at Mandel Hall.

For Wu Han, performing the two Schubert trios—works that like the late piano sonatas and the great C major String Quintet come from the end of the composer’s short life—is not only an enriching musical experience but an honor.

“This music really is one of the greatest achievements in history,” says the pianist. “Just two masterworks and each one feels like climbing Mount Everest. And we have to climb two of them in one night.”

“The language itself is organized yet its complicated,” she adds. “Like all of Schubert’s music, it always has a double meaning—happiness and sadness in the same phrase. That’s what makes this music so incredible and so interesting to play. It’s a lifetime study, and I am humbled by it all the time.”

Franz Schubert

Finckel has, of course, been playing Schubert’s chamber masterworks his entire professional life with the Emerson String Quartet. Yet while he has also performed the piano trios, it’s only recently, with his wife and Emerson violinist Setzer, that he has dug as deeply into them.

“This is kind of a culmination for me of my study of Schubert, having played and recorded all the major quartets and the Trout Quintet and the Arpeggione Sonata,” says Finckel. “I learned the trios early on but I never played them as extensively or in as committed a fashion as I am now.

Like Wu Han, Finckel believes the Piano Trio in B flat and Piano Trio in E flat constitute two of the great cornerstones in the chamber repertoire.

“The fact that they are coming from his last year or two makes them even more of an experience, especially knowing he was only 31 years old [when he died],” says Finckel. “It’s the eternal question—whether a sense of impending, inevitable death accelerates one to a kind of maturity and otherworldliness that some one like Schubert achieved at that age.”

Finckel is best known as the anchor of the Emersons, yet he spends equal time performing solo recitals and duos with his wife, as well as trios as on the present 15-city Schubert tour.

And while he brings the Emerson’s familiar brand of acute focus and polished intensity to his non-quartet performances, he finds playing in other ensembles offers varied and unique experiences.

“It’s very different,” says Finckel. “Every time you play a piece of music, it’s a different situation. Playing with Wu Han is different than playing with the other three guys. I’m not saying it’s better or worse, it’s just very different.”

For one thing, a more soloistic appearance requires a different type of “mental activity” and preparation. “If I approached a sonata recital with the same mindset and the same priorities that I approached a quartet concert, I don’t think it would be successful.”

Adding a piano to any chamber setup changes the equation completely. “When I’m playing in a piano trio I set my pitch to that of the piano. But when I’m playing in the quartet, the cello really sets the pitch. So that’s two hugely different responsibilities right there.”

“Also, when I’m in a piano trio, there’s only one other string voice to work with. So, it’s not so much a matter of blending into something, than it is being an equal partner in a two-part string dialogue, with the piano role, which is enormous. The whole chemistry is different.”

In addition to their performances together and apart, Wu Han and Finckel are kept busy as artistic directors of two bicoastal festivals: Music@Menlo, a three-week summer chamber music festival they founded seven years ago in the San Francisco Bay area; and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a post they took up in 2004.

As a presenter who is also a performer, Finckel notes that programming—summer festivals, in particular—calls for an array of repertoire, yet they often prefer to explore just a single composer’s life and work.

“Our approach is what we call an inch wide and a mile deep,” he says. “We prefer to go deeply into the music. You know, if you stick your nose into a Beethoven string quartet, you can stay there for three weeks and never run out of incredible discoveries.”

Finckel and Wu Han have also been in the vanguard of classical artists producing their own recordings with the duo’s ArtistLed label, now in its eleventh year.

“It’s a label that really speaks to artistic freedom,” says the pianist. “We were the first internet-direct company by [classical] musicians before the whole trend started. Every time we’ve released something we’ve made our expenses back. And nobody can drop me from my own label,” she laughs.

While many of the releases feature Wu Han and Finckel in cornerstone sonatas for cello and piano, there is also the recent Schubert trio disc with Setzer, Derek Han playing Mozart piano concertos, and a disc of music by the cellist’s father, Edwin Finckel.

“We didn’t want to just record repertoire that a recording company dictates,” said Wu Han. “We do our own sort of idealistic production and use the internet as a way to reach a new audience.”

Among the most satisfying releases for the couple is a disc of cello and piano music commissioned for them by composers Pierre Jalbert, George Tsontakis, Lera Auerbach and Bruce Adolphe.

“It’s a project that has taken some time but we did collect four really terrific pieces,” says Finckel. “I think its important for the future that the people for whom a work is written do a recording as a historical record. And several of these works are already being performed by other cellists in different places around the world and, for us, nothing could be more gratifying.”

The couple, who live in New York, are about to mark their 25th anniversary. They met at the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut where Finckel was coaching chamber music and Wu Han was a newly arrived graduate student from Taipei.

In fact, they were performing colleagues for some time before the personal side of the relationship began to develop. “When we first started playing concerts, people would walk up to us and say, ‘Are you guys married?’ and we would just laugh,” says Wu Han.

“I liked her playing, we began playing together, and then, after some years, one thing led to another,” says Finckel.

“But I think the [relationship] was always incredibly strong,” she adds. “And because we started out as professional colleagues, even today it’s easy to go back to those roles in rehearsals.

“As soon as the music starts, it’s quite spectacular in terms of the chemistry and the communication. We’re very, very lucky to have that.”

David Finckel, Wu Han, and Philip Setzer perform Schubert’s Pianos Trio in B flat and Piano Trio in E flat 7:30 p.m. Friday at Mandel Hall. Call 773-702-8068 or go to the University of Chicago Presents website.

The weekend’s most venturesome program takes place Friday night at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan Ave. ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) will present an evening of music for flutes and bass clarinets in various combinations including works of John Zorn, Felipe Lara, and three world premieres by Pablo Chin, Marcos Balter and Ryan Ingebritsen. Concert time is 7:30 p.m. www.iceorg.org; 312-494-2655

Also notable this week: the Lyric Opera of Chicago opens its production of Franz Lehar’s operetta perennial, The Merry Widow, starring Elizabeth Futral and Roger Honeywell Saturday night; the Callisto Ensemble offers the local premiere of Brett Dean’s Poems and Prayers Tuesday; and eighth blackbird serves up Schoenberg’s  Pierrot Lunaire along with works of Berg and George Perle Wednesday at the Harris Theater. See calendar for details.

Since his 2001 professional debut, Luca Pisaroni has made headlines in the musical press around the world. The Italian opera singer won the “Newcomer of the Season” medal of the Vienna State Opera and kicked off a flourishing international career.

Regarded as one of the best bass-baritones of our time, he made his mark in Mozart and Händel. His Figaro, especially, has created a sensation from Paris and Vienna to the Metropolitan Opera and Santa Fe, and was particularly noted in Mozart’s hometown at the venerable Salzburg Festival.

 A powerful voice schooled in the great tradition and a remarkable stage presence has made Pisaroni one of today’s most exciting young stars. He is now on his first American tour, which will include his debut in Ravinia’s Rising Stars series this Friday night.  His recital (8 p.m. at Bennett-Gordon Hall) will offer songs of Schubert, Rossini, Meyerbeer and Liszt.  From Ravinia he will go to New York where he will make his Carnegie Hall recital debut (Nov. 13), and return to the Metropolitan Opera (Le nozze di Figaro, starting Nov. 23) .  

 Born in Venezuela, he returned with his family to Italy when he was four. He does not remember his early years in Venezuela, yet he still speaks perfect Spanish with a delightful “Made in Argentina” accent, where he completed his vocal studies. Growing up in Busseto, Verdi’s hometown, his love for opera and singing was encouraged by his grandfather. At 11, he knew he wanted to become an opera singer as he explains in a phone conversation from Amsterdam, where he is performing Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

 LP: It was thanks to a TV commercial for the World Soccer Championship in 1986 that I decided to become a singer. The commercial showed an Italian player running ecstatically after scoring a goal while in the background Pavarotti sang Nessun dorma. I turned to my mother and said “I want to do that!” First, she didn’t know if I was referring to the soccer player or the opera singer, but then she realized it was the latter as I did poorly in sports.

 SS: You attended the Accademia Verdiana of Carlo Bergonzi in your hometown and then Milan…

 LP: I was a teenager when I sat in classes Bergonzi taught in Bussetto. After school I went to the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan and then left for Buenos Aires to study with the Argentinean tenor Renato Sassola.

 SS: Being the center of the operatic world, why Argentina?

 LP: When Sassola moved to Buenos Aires, I decided to continue working with him and went there for a year. I realized it was more important to prepare a repertoire than just getting a degree from the conservatory. After Buenos Aires I went back to Europe and in 2002 I went to Salzburg where my whole life changed….not only my career but also my personal life. I went to Salzburg to sing Masetto to the Don Giovanni of Thomas Hampson. That summer I had the fortune of not only meeting Thomas, but also his daughter Catherine, who is now my wife. My whole life changed.

 SS: Why is Mozart so difficult to sing?

 LP: It’s not a secret that if you want to sing Mozart well, it’s very demanding. You need a solid technique, good diction and a huge range of colors. You need to be a well rounded singer. For a young singer it is the best vocal gym, it allows you to grow as an artist without damaging your instrument.

 SS: You sing  Figaro, Leporello, Guglielmo, Papageno… why not Don Giovanni?

LP: Don Giovanni scares me a bit. The problem is that there is nothing between being a great Don Giovanni and a bad one. I have two models. First, Thomas Allen who really changed how we perceived it and then, Thomas Hampson who defined the role for my generation. Whenever I sing Leporello I think about how elusive Don Giovanni is as a character, like a chameleon continuously changing colors. Frankly, the role is less of a vocal challenge as it is a challenge to portray the character dramatically. If you go on stage and do not electrify your audience, you are in trouble.

SS: As Figaro in Santa Fe last year, you exuded a contagious joy of singing not common nowadays.

 LP: I try to sing it as naturally as I can. Mozart and da Ponte are all about humanity and truth. Nothing should be artificial or sound manufactured. You need to have a strong core and sing with your heart. I will sing also the Count in the future. He is a very intriguing character and a good intermediate step between Figaro and the Don.

 SS: Mozart and Handel lie at the core of your current repertoire

 LP: Handel’s music sounds so modern to me, even a bit “jazzy.” The agility is not simply a showcase of vocal virtuosity but a chance to infuse a scene with dramatic meaning.  It is very good for my voice—it keeps it high and light. In every Handel opera you find many astounding moments that let you dive deep into the human soul.

 SS: And Rossini?

 LP: I have plans to sing Maometto II. Rossini’s music is the natural progression after Mozart and Handel. Maometto II is special to me, ever since I saw Samuel Ramey at La Scala in 1993, I have been dreaming about it.

 SS: When is Verdi’s turn?

 LP: When I turn forty, you can ask me this question again. It takes time to inhabit these characters. You need to have achieved a certain maturity. Remember that a bass-baritone is like a bottle of red wine, like Brunello di Montalcino—the older the better.

 SS: How do you compare the current styles of American and European productions?

 LP: America has traditionally resisted the new European way. I feel that in America audiences are more “voice driven” while Europeans are more “production driven”. Regarding directors I like to work with someone with ideas.  It doesn’t matter to me if the production is avant-garde or traditional, it’s about whether it is intelligent or not.

 SS: Like singing the part of Jesus in Robert Wilson’s staged version of Bach’s Saint John Passion?

 LP: [Wilson is] a master of creating atmosphere with lighting and a few gestures. Singing within the stillness he demands was very hard at times. An extraordinary experience. Movement is an essential part of any of the performing arts and different genres call for different styles of movement.  Wilson’s techniques are invaluable for my recitals. Every Liederabend is a collection of miniature scenes. One has to be more restrained. You act with the voice creating  scenes that the audience can imagine without seeing it.

 SS: When preparing a new role, how do you start?

 LP: First, I like to work on the piece by myself. I don’t agree with some of my colleagues who say that you are not supposed to listen to recordings to prepare a role. If you want to paint, you need to know the masters, right? If I am learning a German lied how can I not listen to Fischer-Dieskau? I do not see anything wrong with getting inspiration about tempi, diction or phrasing from the voice of experience. After I have done my research I try to make it mine.

 For instance, my Carnegie Hall recital will include Schubert, Rossini, Meyerbeer and Liszt. The German lied is very close to my heart and also my personality. It is curious but I feel more Mittel-Europäisch than Italian. I am really very much into the deep and sometimes dark German lied art form. I would love to do a recital on the theme of “Desperation and Suicide”. That tragic stuff is closer to my heart than, for instance, the sunny songs of Tosti.

 SS: How do you feel about historically informed music practice?

 LP: The great thing about music is that there is no absolute truth; art is a process more than a product. I don’t believe in dogmatic approaches. In those times, there was no distinction between bass and baritone and the instruments were tuned at a lower pitch; as a consequence many Baroque roles played with modern instruments are much higher than they used to be. Working with an orchestra playing historical instruments makes these parts much more comfortable to sing. 

 SS: Any attempts into the contemporary opera repertoire?

 LP: A new role that I wanted to sing and that was cancelled due to budget problems was the Figaro in Corigliano’s Ghosts of Versailles. It was a great chance to portray Figaro in a modern piece. I haven’t sung many operas in English and to sing at the Met I need to do at least one thing a year that scares me. I call it my yearly challenge. It keeps me going at full speed.

 SS: In conclusion, can you name some of your role models?

 LP: Without any order of importance, my first was Pavarotti. I love the intrinsic beauty of his instrument, that unbelievable sound that flooded the theater. I was seventeen when I first heard him at La Scala in 1992. I was sitting far up in the loggione and when he started singing I turned my head thinking there was a speaker behind me. I never felt anything like that ever since.

 From Carlo Bergonzi, I learned a great deal especially about diction and phrasing. For his incredible musical imagination, for the way he is committed to a role, for being so serious and profound in everything he does, Thomas Hampson is a role model.

 Last but not least: Nikolaus Harnoncourt.  When I sang Masetto for him in Salzburg I thought, “Ok, here I go, I am Italian and this is going to be fairly easy.” And then, I realized that I had no idea about anything. Harnoncourt has this incredible sense for the words and for the drama and after working with him you never look at a piece of music the same way. For me time falls into “before and after Harnoncourt.” I admire his love, respect, passion and dedication to this art form and I hope to have half of his musical curiosity when I reach his age.

As the training ensemble of the Chicago Symphony and the only such entity paired with a major U.S. orchestra, the Civic hosts a swinging door for prominent guest conductors in first-rate concerts that are free of charge. Collaborations with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bernard Haitink and Kent Nagano are just a few of the notable partnerships that have taken place over the last couple of years.

Local conductor Cliff Colnot, however, is the rock and driving force of the orchestra. Colnot opened the Civic’s 91st season on Monday night at Orchestra Hall with a program of tugging Teutonic opposites: Beethoven’s amiable Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral) and Paul Hindemith’s punchy Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber.

Hindemith’s 1943 playful symphonic showpiece is a rhythmic force with origins in ballet, but the work wasn’t performed as such until George Balanchine’s New York City ballet premiered it almost a decade later. It was choreographer Leonid Massine who suggested to Hindemith he write a ballet based on Weber’s music before the two had a falling out. Whatever esoteric morsels of Weber we hear are largely obscured by the German émigré’s codified and heavily indulgent scoring.

The orchestra ate this all up.  The work is a Stravinskian snapshot colored with a few shades of The Pines of Rome, and several Civic soloists took the opportunity to show off the individual goodies written into the music. Horns, flutes and low strings all had a bite and swagger that even the most gifted regional professional orchestras would have had trouble matching.

The Oriental-tinged scherzo radiated with abundant color, propelled with a percussive energy that would recur in the final Shostakovich-like march. The unmemorable andantino happens to be saved by some amazing virtuosic flute writing, a solo that would have even made Debussy sit up and listen.

Still, no matter who the ensemble and conductor, this is music that’s hard to snuggle to. A nice pretty gloss coats this music, but it can dirty-up pretty quick without an enthusiastic performance and dynamic, sonorous treatment. The Civic delivered on all accounts.

Although performed with equal brilliance of sound, the Beethoven suffered mildly from a sobriety that downplayed the composer’s drunk-on-life escapades in the countryside. Colnot has interesting ideas about this music but his glacially-paced tempi in the opening movement turned “happy feelings” into sleepy ones, which carried over to the brook scene as well.

The individual performances were top shelf and hearty kudos to bassoonist Susan Stokdyk, flutist Jeong-Hyung Kim and the oboes-at-large for providing the nimble and sparkling woodwind playing on which this symphony thrives. Similarly, the smoky and thick-bodied tone in the lower strings would’ve made any audiophile drool. And while there certainly have been more raging thunderstorms than the one we heard Monday, Colnot’s tempest had a certain abstract appeal that allowed Beethoven’s writing to breathe. Even the jovial peasant gathering felt like more like a spirited game of bridge instead of rustic dance. 

 Yet the intensifying buildup in the final Shepherd’s Song packed a wallop that might have been lost had Colnot not opted for such a steady and, perhaps for some, vanilla reading. The standing ovation was well-deserved and this was more than simply an Orchestra Hall primer for the CSO’s anticipated homecoming later in the week. Here was a pleasant reminder that some of the city’s strongest orchestral players aren’t limited to Chicago Symphony and Lyric Orchestra payrolls.

Photo: Merri Cyr

Chicago’s music season will get its official start with the Lyric Opera’s Tosca opener next weekend, but one can ease into the fall lineup this Friday night with the Avalon String Quartet.  The ensemble-in-residence at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb opens its downtown—actually far West Loop— series with a worthy program of Romantic music: Beethoven’s Quartet in B flat major, Op. 18, no. 6, Debussy’s Quartet and Chausson’s Concert for Violin, Piano and String  Quartet with guest violinist Rachel Barton Pine and pianist Matthew Hagle. 

Concert time is 7:30 p.m.  at Gottlieb Hall, the Merit School of Music, 38 S. Peoria (three blocks west of Halsted), Chicago. $25, $10 for students and seniors. 800-838-3006;  www.brownpapertickets.com/event/70182.