Chicago Classical Review

Following yet another violent morning storm, the weather cleared to bestow a perfect backdrop for the Grant Park Music Festival Wednesday night.

The lakefront series has provided Chicago’s most thoughtful and imaginative America 250 programming this year. So it proved once again in the festival’s penultimate program with Giancarlo Guerrero leading the Grant Park Orchestra in works of American composers and a cornerstone Czech symphony that draws on homegrown music.   

John Adams and Philip Glass came to renown as leading lights of what was called the American “Minimalist” movement in the 1980s. Both composers have long since moved on from that limiting designation—a tag each came to resent. But many of their early works remain among their finest, imbuing classical forms with the edge and rhythmic insistence of rock music.

Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine led off the evening.

The title says it all—a four-minute motoric thrill ride, which holds up very well indeed 40 years after its debut. Percussionist Josh Jones kept admirably tight time on the crucial woodblock part and Guerrero brought incisive energy to Adams’ “fanfare for orchestra,” charting its segue from insistent to increasingly malign before a soaring theme for trumpets ushers in a bright and affirmative coda. There was superb wind and brass playing by all. 

Philip Glass, who turns 90 in January, continues to be astoundingly prolific, writing operas, chamber music, piano works, concertos and symphonies. (His Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln” was premiered by the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood just last month.)

Glass took an unorthodox route as composer, writing five operas and numerous works in other genres before turning to the orchestra. The Violin Concerto No. 1 (1987) was his first piece for orchestra and remains one of the composer’s most engaging early works, providing an ideal gateway drug to Glass’s music.

Anne Akiko Meyers showed herself a largely inspired soloist in this deceptively challenging work. The violinist kept strong, rhythmic bite in the cascading arpeggios of the pulsing outer movements. She brought out the doleful rumination of the passacaglia middle movement expressively, some occasional sharpness of tone apart.

While Meyers was an ardent Glass advocate, at times she seemed to be trying to inflate the work into a more conventional Romantic showpiece—as with the overemphatic note attacks that alternate with the pulsing repetitions. Likewise, the soloist’s decrescendo in the concluding section felt excessively drawn out and over-romanticized; Glass’s unexpected slowdown and more abrupt quiet coda better suits this idiosyncratic piece. 

Guerrero led the GPO musicians in an alert and sympathetic performance, though quiet, accompanimental passages were often so softly focused as to verge on inaudibility. The festival shouldn’t still be working out balance/amplification issues the final week of the summer.

Is there anything new to be heard from Antonin Dvořák‘s “New World” symphony? Yes, when a performance is delivered with the kind of dramatic thrust, rich understanding and lyric sensitivity served up by  Guerrero and the GPO musicians Wednesday night.

As they say, there is always somebody in the audience hearing even the most familiar work for the first time. Anyone coming new to Dvořák’s Ninth and final symphony could hardly wish for a more communicative or enjoyable experience.

Following a spacious introduction, the opening movement went with striking verve and drama. Yet nothing ever felt overdriven—Dvořák’s canvas was cast in a lithe and gracious style, with an ideal pastoral blossoming in the lyrical sections. Anne Bach floated a hushed yet nostalgic English horn solo in the famous Largo, and Guerrero brought out the rhythmic cut of the scherzo as surely as the rustic charm of the middle section.

The GPO brass put across a stentorian account of the finale’s rugged main theme and Guerrero charted the contrasting ebb and flow ideally, balancing the baleful drama with the pastoral element and sustaining the final note effectively.

This was first-class Dvořák in every respect and a highlight of this summer’s concerts. The only regret was that there is no repeat, but, hopefully, Guerrero will favor us with more Dvořák in future seasons.

The Grant Park Music Festival closes its season with Julia Wolfe’s Liberty Bell, Michael Daugherty’s Mount Rushmore, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, 6:30 p.m. Friday and 7:30 p.m. Saturday. gpmf.org

Posted in Performances
2 Comments