A multitasking Szeps-Znaider shows convivial rapport with CSO
Someday, some enterprising soloist is going to create a sensation by playing one of Max Bruch’s other violin concertos.
Yet it was the composer’s inescapable Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26, that was on the menu once again Thursday night with Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider doing double duty as soloist and conductor in a Generally German program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
There was a feeling of back to business as usual after last week’s life-changing Shostakovich with Jakob Hrůša. Still, Szeps-Znaider is a capable conductor, popular with the CSO musicians, and Thursday night’s concert proved largely rewarding.
That the opening Bruch concerto provided the highlight of the evening shouldn’t be surprising since the Danish musician was a superb, highly acclaimed violinist before he took up the baton. What was surprising was how well he finessed both duties, delivering a fresh and engaging performance with the CSO of this tuneful fiddle warhorse.
Szeps-Znaider played standing center stage where the podium would normally be, which facilitated his turning around to conduct the orchestra as needed. After an unfortunate sour note in his opening phrase, the violinist’s playing was nearly faultless. His sweet yet firmly focused tone felt ideally suited to Bruch’s big-boned Romanticism, and the drama as well as the aching lyricism were equally well served in the opening Prelude.
The soloist dialed down his sound to a barely audible thread of chaste tone in the reflective Adagio, drawing comparably hushed playing from the orchestra. Vigorously directing the tuttis, Szeps-Znaider drew fiery and responsive support from the orchestra in the finale that matched his solo playing and made for an animated coda.
Repeated ovations brought Szeps-Znaider back out, with the musicians vigorously applauding him as well. The soloist obliged with a collaborative encore of Manuel Ponce’s “Estrellita,” a favorite bonbon of Jascha Heifetz. If the J.A.C. Redford arrangement for violin and strings flirts with the salon, Szeps-Znaider and the CSO strings put across this transcription of the popular Mexican song with just the right dollop of tasteful charm while skirting the schmaltz.
Pierre Boulez’s 100th birthday (March 26) is being observed this week by the CSO and his music was performed at Sunday’s MusicNOW concert. The Boulez centenary was marked in this program’s centerpiece with Boulez’s Livre pour cordes (Book for strings) in its first local hearing since the composer led the last CSO performance 15 years ago.
Like most of Boulez’s music, Livre pour cordes reached its final form only after a tortuous, decades-long compositional process. The music originated in 1949 as a string quartet (Livre pour quatuor) and evolved into a two-movement work for string orchestra (1968) and ultimately a single 11-minute movement for strings (1988).
Much of Boulez’s output seems dry and ascetic to these ears. (A MusicNOW performance a decade ago of his 50-minute Dérive 2 felt interminable.)
Yet Livre pour cordes is one of the French composer-conductor’s more successful works. While still crafted in his uncompromising style, there is a compelling narrative and moments of real, if fleeting, beauty in this closely argued score. The cool expression and elegant luminosity of Livre feels like a close descendant of the tripartite founding fathers of the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg and Webern).
Szeps-Znaider directed Boulez’s work attentively and with a string player’s practical skill and control. He didn’t draw quite as nuanced a rendering as the composer did in his own performances, but this Livre had stronger momentum and was nearly as acutely balanced. The CSO players delivered an alert and sensitive performance with the quiet string playing like delicate tendrils of golden tone. With communicative solos by principal cellist John Sharp and principal violist Teng Li, the performance successfully conveyed the best qualities of Boulez’s restless, atonal score.
The evening came full circle with another German cornerstone, Schumann’s Symphony No. 3.
Despite the misleading numbering, the “Rhenish” was Schumann’s fourth and final symphony to be written. Just three years after the 1851 premiere, Schumann’s erratic behavior and hallucinations would result in his being confined to an asylum, where he would die two years later, age 46. Yet despite his incipient mental illness, Schumann’s Third Symphony, inspired by trips to Cologne, is one of his happiest and most unclouded works.
Szeps-Znaider clearly has a sense of the score and directed a vital performance Thursday night. The ebullient theme that dominates the opening movement went with admirable energy and élan. For the third week in a row, the CSO horns are separated from the other brass and stationed on the left side of the stage, from where they sang out grandly near the end of the movement. The Rhine rolled amiably in the Scherzo, though the ensuing third movement was a bit heavy-footed and short on Biedermeier charm.
The brass, sepulchral trombones particularly, majestically sounded out the monastic ceremony of the fourth movement, inspired by a processional Schumann attended at Cologne Cathedral. If there was a fitful lack of grip in the finale, Szeps-Znaider and the orchestra kept the music-making lively (as Schumann requests), and the performance was rounded off with a brassy and rousing coda.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday at Wheaton College and 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Center. cso.org
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2 Responses to “A multitasking Szeps-Znaider shows convivial rapport with CSO”
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Posted Mar 29, 2025 at 10:34 pm by Robert Eisenberg
Saturday night was a splendid show without a sour note and with particularly glorious horn work in the Schumann.
The more of Szeps-Znaider the better.
Posted Mar 30, 2025 at 2:26 am by Chuck
I attended this performance. Excellent, informative and I would say accurate review of the concert for those unable to attend. Thank you!