Copland and Mozart shine brightly with Kalmar and Grant Park Orchestra
Wednesday night’s concert at the Grant Park Music Festival reflected two core repertoires that have been touchstones for Carlos Kalmar over the past quarter-century that he has led Chicago’s lakefront series: American music and Austro-German cornerstones.
The former was represented by Appalachian Spring. On a pluperfect summer evening, Aaron Copland’s 1944 ballet suite seemed about as ideal a work for al fresco performance as one could think of.
As he has demonstrated in a vast array of American repertoire over the past 25 years, Kalmar not only has an innate sympathy for homegrown music but possesses a fully equipped skillset for obtaining successful performances across a variety of compositional styles.
Such was the case once again in Copland’s celebrated ballet. The conductor seemed to find just the right tempo, shading and emphasis in Appalachian Spring to bring out the lyric sweetness, naiveté and inner strength inherent in Copland’s score. This was a spacious performance with Kalmar often drawing out the wistful quality (much as the composer did in his own recording). Yet there was no lack of buoyancy or spring in the dance rhythms and the climactic “Simple Gifts” section was rounded off with a majestic rendition of the concluding variation. Kalmar and the musicians also made the quiet final pages register with just the right expression of relaxed contentment.
While deceptively simple on the surface, Copland’s restless tempo shifts can be intensely challenging, as any string player will tell you. Yet, apart from a boomy horn entrance—which may have been due to errant amplification or microphone placement—the Grant Park musicians rose to the occasion across all sections. Principal clarinetist Dario Brignoli was especially inspired, conveying Copland’s pastoral nostalgia with plangent and evocative playing.
As one might expect of this essentially Austrian conductor, Kalmar also has a natural affinity for music of his compatriots. That was manifest in last weekend’s Bruckner Fourth and once again Wednesday in the evening’s concluding work, Mozart’s Symphony No. 41.
Photo: Norman Timonera
Even in music as familiar as this, the conductor and orchestra brought bracing freshness and vivacity to this “Jupiter” performance. Kalmar took all repeats in the outer movements, giving Mozart’s final essay in the symphonic genre the scale and weight it deserves. His direction of the opening movement provided a fine blend of incisive rhythms and lyric grace. Equally well paced, the middle movements delivered the requisite introspective elegance and rustic elan.
In the final movement Kalmar built inexorably to the celebrated climax where Mozart’s contrapuntal legerdemain serves up all five—count ’em five—themes blasting out simultaneously. That moment was duly exhilarating as much for the textural clarity as the dynamic energy of the playing.
The program led off with Ritirata notturna di Madrid (Retreat by Night in Madrid), the final movement of a 1798 quintet for guitar and string quartet by Luigi Boccherini. In his transcription Luciano Berio stacks four different Boccherini arrangements of the piece on top of each other, morphing the original into an orchestral showpiece.
Berio’s subversive backspin proved highly effective, with the antic scoring suggestive of a rustic village banda. Kalmar kept a steady pulse for the crescendo and decrescendo that paint the approach and retreat of the Madrid night patrol, and the lively performance delivered Berio’s rambunctious retooling without sacrificing Boccherini’s galant elegance.
Carlos Kalmar conducts the Grant Park Orchestra 6:30 p.m. Friday and 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Debussy’s Ibéria, Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole, Elena Kats-Chernin’s Mythic, and Brahms’ Double Concerto with Vadim Gluzman and Johannes Moser. gpmf.org
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