Chicago Classical Review

The Grant Park Music Festival settled quickly into high summer gear Friday night with Giancarlo Guerrero leading a nicely diversified program that included the first season appearance of the Grant Park Chorus.   

Following up on Joan Tower’s Made in America on opening night, the weekend program opened with Charles Ives’ Variations on America. As in the Tower piece, Ives deconstructs a patriotic ode, in this case “America” (“My country ’tis of thee”). Originally written for organ, the teenage Ives’ anarchic mashup is aimed not at the song (or the country) but at the academic New England composers he loathed for their conservative musical styles (which frequently incorporated adaptations of national songs).

William Schuman’s arrangement for orchestra brilliantly transcribes Ives’ original into a vivid showpiece and Guerrero led the Grant Park Orchestra in a spirited, personality-plus rendition that put across Ives’ wryly satirical variations with subversive humor and great panache.

The major work of the evening was Gabriela Lena Frank’s Conquest Requiem. In his brief introduction, Guerrero extolled the work’s anti-colonial message, stating that Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro “were directly responsible for the destruction of entire societies.”

Frank’s piece is less overtly polemical. The inspiration is the true story of Malinche, an indigenous Nahua woman who became a mistress and political liaison to Cortés, the Spanish conqueror of the Aztecs. Their son Martín is still considered one of the first mestizo, or mixed-race, people in North America.

Premiered in 2017 by the Houston Symphony, the Conquest Requiem alternates the Latin text of the Catholic liturgy for the dead (in the music for chorus) with solo sections for two soloists, representing Malinche and Martin. Those words come from a mix of ancient Nahuan poetry and new Spanish texts by playwright and librettist Nilo Cruz.

The scoring by Frank—who won the Pulitzer Prize in music earlier this year for her symphonic work, Picaflor: A future myth—is typically colorful, inventive (including thunder sheet at one point) and kaleidoscopic. In the “Judex ergo” section the percussion and primitive cross-rhythms seem to recall Orff’s Carmina Burana. 

Amid the sermonic style of much of the music there is a brief but welcome moment of peace in the “Recordare, Jesu pie” for chorus, and the work ends on a hopeful and forgiving note in the concluding “In Paradisum.”

And yet, despite those moments and the colorful orchestral writing, ultimately Conquest Requiem seems like less than the sum of its parts. The work feels weighed down by the ballast of its variegated sources and solemn revisionist perspective. And, despite its surface engagement, the music lacks a strong expressive profile and indelible moments. I’ve had the same reaction to other Frank works, including her opera El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, seen at Lyric Opera and the Met this past spring.

Soprano Jessica Rivera and baritone Andrew Garland were the two soloists, reprising their appearances at the Houston premiere. Rivera has a rich-toned soprano and brought apt angst to the conflicted Malinche. Unfortunately, much of her vocalism Friday night was alarmingly wobbly. Rivera seemed to get her vibrato under control in the latter sections and sang more convincingly and effectively in Cruz’s Spanish text as well as the uneuphonious Nahuatl language of the Aztecs.

The character of Martin is a cipher with his brief moments  giving no chance to etch a character. Even so, Andrew Garland sang impressively, showing a refined yet imposing baritone, and one would like to hear this singer in a more grateful opportunity.

The Conquest Requiem is clearly a work that Guerrero believes in, having recorded it last year (with the same soloists), and he elicited playing of great vitality and dedication from the Grant Park Orchestra. Well prepared by Christopher Bell, the Grant Park Chorus distinguished itself with polished and well-blended singing of the Latin liturgy.

Frank’s Conquest Requiem may have been the marquee piece on this program, but it was Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 on the first half that provided the highlight of the evening.

Guerrero led an individual yet wholly idiomatic account of this familiar work. Taking the “non troppo” seriously, the conductor directed a spacious and searching account of the first movement—finding a rare fantasy element, while allowing the musical drama to unfold naturally yet with momentum.

In a flowing account of the Andante, Guerrero showed himself a subtle and sensitive Brahmsian, drawing burnished string tone and inward expressive depth from the orchestra.  The third movement was aptly bracing and the variations of the concluding Passacaglia rounded Brahms’ last symphony off with apt strength and defiance.

The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday. gpmf.org

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