Chicago Classical Review

The Chicago Sinfonietta marked Women’s History Month with a program of female musical firsts Saturday night at the Harris Theater. There were some rough edges, but despite these a spirit of celebration was palpable and an atmosphere of jubilation prevailed under the enthusiastic leadership of music director Mei-Ann Chen.

Saturday’s performance was offered in collaboration with Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, which is celebrating its 30^th anniversary season. The evening opened with Deeply Rooted co-founder Gary Abbott’s choreography of Dances in the Canebrakes by Florence Price, who became the first black woman to have a symphony played by a major American orchestra when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor in 1933.

The opening “Nimble Feet” shuffles with a leisurely ragtime groove, to which Abbott offers literally high-stepping treatment for three couples costumed in vivid primary colors. The ensuing “Tropical Noon” was unchoreographed and functioned as an interlude.

The Dances were written in 1953, the year of Price’s death, and Abbott enhanced her subtle syncopations of the final “Silk Hat and Walking Cane” with understated steps that evoked the period. Still, while Price’s music has lately enjoyed a deserved resurgence and belated appreciation, it would be a stretch to consider this late work an undiscovered masterpiece.

The other collaboration was the world premiere of Seventh Sense: Incidents in the Life of Queen Amanirenas by Shirley J. Thompson, commissioned by the Chicago Sinfonietta and choreographed by Deeply Rooted artistic director Nicole Clarke-Springer. Thompson is the first black woman to have composed and conducted a symphony in Great Britain, and her score conveys the story of the historical African queen who drew on the wisdom of seven ancestors to repel Roman invasion.

Thompson’s 12-minute score channels a more ancient musical lexicon, with modal harmonies and short, gestural phrases. The dancers enter in Attic poses, and a conference swirlingly unfolds among Amanirenas and her forebears. The music rises to an agitated pitch just before the conclusion, when the ancestors leave Amanirenas alone, seemingly changed by their council and with an air of determination. The collective result is an engaging tableau that vividly animates a fascinating historical figure.

Between the two dances was the Sinfonia in C Major by Marianna Martines, thought to be the first woman to write a symphony of any description. Chen referred to her multiple times as the “female Mozart,” and while Mozart and Martines were indeed alive at the same time, Saturday’s performance did not make a convincing case for the comparison.

In order to accommodate the dancers, the orchestra was pushed entirely to the back of the stage, which predictably had a muting, distancing effect, including 50 feet of dark proscenium between the string sections and the audience. Chen led a classically idiomatic performance, with eloquent solo turns from concertmaster Paul Zafer, but ultimately this is comely music that needs more help than it received.

The stage arrangement also bedeviled the second half, even without the dancers. With her 1894 Gaelic Symphony, Amy Beach became the first woman to have a symphony published and performed by a major orchestra (the Boston Symphony, in 1896). As Chen noted, in this work Beach is clearly inspired by Dvořák, whose “New World” Symphony—in the same key—was written in America a year before.

Beach’s score is full of lush melody and inventive scoring, and it was unfortunate the orchestra remained sequestered at the back of the stage in a way that muted these fine attributes. Why not reset the stage during intermission?

Still, one could appreciate piquant woodwind contributions throughout the first two movements, with reedy piping from the oboes and clarinets creating a Hibernian ambience.

The Lento featured an intimate dialogue between Zafer and principal cello Ann Hendrickson Griffin, though there is more poetry in this music than Chen elicited. Her conducting can default to an all-purpose busyness that elides detail and leaves little room for stillness, which lamentably became increasingly the case as Beach’s moving and intricate score drew toward its close.

Saturday’s printed program was a glorified leaflet, as is unfortunately becoming the norm in many quarters. If an organization is going to go this route, an orchestra roster and movement titles—which were missing Saturday—are bare minimum requirements.

The Chicago Sinfonietta next performs “American Rhapsody,” featuring the music of Gershwin and Miles Davis, Friday May 8 at Wentz Hall in Naperville, and Sunday May 10 at Pick-Staiger Hall in Evanston. chicagosinfonietta.org

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