Chicago Classical Review

It’s been a good month for Aaron Copland in Chicago.

Coming off an extended period of local neglect, the composer’s Appalachian Spring and Lincoln Portrait have been played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as part of its America 250 series.

On Friday night, the Grant Park Music Festival got into the act with Giancarlo Guerrero leading a performance of Copland’s epic Symphony No. 3.   

The Third is Copland largest work for orchestra and one of the composer’s finest achievements. Written during and after WWII, Copland finds a synthesis between his populist lyrical style and symphonic structural rigor, in a canvas rich with characteristic melody and a grandly affirmative coda.

Is Copland’s Third, as was once widely proclaimed, the “Great American Symphony”? I would give the edge to David Diamond’s contemporaneous Symphony No. 2, a deeper and darker (though also ultimately affirmative) work.

Yet the powerful and eloquent performance delivered by the Grant Park Orchestra under Guerrero’s alert direction Friday night made the best possible case for Copland’s music. In the 80th anniversary year of the work’s premiere (by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra), one could hardly imagine more successful advocacy. 

Like his predecessor Carlos Kalmar, Guerrero seems to have an innate feel for how American music should go. The gentle start of the symphony fully evoked the composer’s open-prairies lyricism. Guerrero charted the complex development, distinctly marking the contrasted motives and building the music with strength to an imposing climax with resounding brass and timpani. The massive scherzo-like second movement was snappy and incisive with nimble brass playing, Guerrero underlining Copland’s lovely wind writing in the pastoral middle section.

The conductor led a spacious account of the slow movement, conveying the glassy, searching quality of the violins in the opening measures (led by guest concertmaster Alexander Velinzon, first associate concertmaster of the Boston Symphony). The sensitive flute solo by principal Jennifer Lawson ideally reflected Copland’s lonely, sweet-sad qualities. 

The subtle initial statement of the “Fanfare for the Common Man” theme by the winds, led to a clarion statement by Grant Park’s terrific brass section (one trumpet apart). Guerrero directed the final movement with impressive focus, giving the contrasting themes due delicacy, while building to a muscular coda that felt—not like empty nationalistic tub-thumping—but both well-earned, consequential and exhilarating.

The audience listened attentively throughout this 46-minute symphony, and the ovations in the pavilion and on the well-filled lawn were enthusiastic and extended for this brawny American masterwork, which many in attendance were likely discovering for the first time.

The first half of the program proved more mixed.

The evening led off with Reena Esmail’s Black Iris (prefaced by a performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to mark Juneteenth, by Grant Park Chorus member Leah Dexter and pianist Christopher Guzman).  

Written in 2017, and originally titled #metoo after the movement that it was inspired by, the work was retooled by Esmail as Black Iris, the title of a work by Georgia O’Keeffe. In a nod to its #MeToo origins, at one point the women of the orchestra are supposed to sing, entering “one by one in the order in which they joined the orchestra.” That’s a lot of rehearsal prep to request for an 11-minute piece; with a large symphony to prepare on the same program, it sounded Friday like the vocal component was dispensed with.

Black Iris is solidly crafted but repetitive and bombastic. A forlorn passage for English horn and cello made its effect, yet, ultimately, Esmail’s work felt much longer than its duration.

The bombast continued with Stewart Goodyear’s ensuing performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The composer’s explosive steel and thunder showpiece may not be the most subtle concerto in the repertoire but there are more opportunities for nuance and contrast than Goodyear seemed interested in on this occasion.

The pianist started loud and mostly stayed there, finding little light and shade in the more inward of the central variations. In the mounting excitement of the finale, Goodyear’s fiery and combustible buildup to the coda was undeniably exciting. But even with the solo bravura, and a worthy accompaniment by Guerrero and the orchestra, this was not a performance to linger long in the memory.

Goodyear provided a bonus with his own composition Panorama, which, he said in an introduction, drew on his Trinidadian heritage. The pianist played this lively, syncopated work with panache but do you really need an overlong virtuosic encore after the Prokofiev concerto?

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

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