Chicago Classical Review

Bach and Beethoven were not among the three B’s scheduled for the Grant Park Orchestra’s Thursday night concert, featuring singers Janai Brugger and Sankara Harouna. Rather, their names were replaced by Anton Bruckner and Margaret Bonds. As it turns out, they were the only ones who managed to be heard, as Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 was not played due to the remainder of the concert being cancelled due to a forecast of dangerous weather.

Guest conductor Anthony Parnther opened the concert with an extraverted performance of Bruckner’s setting of Psalm 150. His approach was most effective in the loud outer sections, in which he elicited a sense of genuine jubilation from the Grant Park Chorus. In his accompaniment, Parnther made sure the brass lent majesty without overwhelming the choir.

While Parnther handled the lushest soft passages quite well, the phrases that Bruckner marks pianissimo in the score could have been played and sung more delicately. There are very few of these, and they require a true hush to register as the magical moments they are intended to be.

Bruckner’s piece calls for a soprano soloist, but doesn’t give her much to do, as the part lasts about thirty seconds. Janai Brugger made the best of it, however, navigating the highest passages with ease.

Although Margaret Bonds is often grouped with Florence Price (her teacher) as one of Chicago’s two major black women composers of the mid 20^th century, her compositional voice is quite different from that of Price. 

This is evident in Bond’s Credo, heard Thursday night. Its musical influences are more eclectic than Price’s, its harmonies more complex while still tonal. And its choice of text, a civil rights manifesto by W.E.B. Dubois, reflects the fact that it was written in 1965.

Throughout the piece, the chorus sang with crisp diction, a testament to Eugene Rogers, the guest chorus director. The men projected power at the end of the third movement, “I Believe in Pride of Race.” The women tuned their tricky harmonic progressions well in the fifth movement “I Believe in the Prince of Peace.”

Parnther ably highlighted some of Bonds’ most striking bits of orchestration. He gave a Stravinskian punch to the music for bassoon, low strings, and percussion that opens the fourth movement, “I Believe in the Devil and His Angels.” And he brought out the individual colors of each overlapping line in the introduction to “I Believe in the Prince of Peace.”

Brugger returned as soloist for the second movement, “Especially Do I Believe in the Negro Race,” in which she displayed good dynamic control and idiomatic bluesy melismas.

Better still was baritone Sankara Harouna, whose timbre was unfailingly rich and replete with dynamic nuance across his entire range in his sixth movement solo, “I Believe in Liberty.”

The program will be repeated 6:30 p.m. Friday with Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. grantparkmusicfestival.com

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