Chen leads CSO in an elegant, collegial “Four Seasons”
After two weeks of vivid concerts under music director emeritus for life Riccardo Muti, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra scaled things back this week with a string orchestra program led by concertmaster Robert Chen. If there was slightly less buzz in Orchestra Hall on Thursday night than there has been recently, the promise of Chen featured in Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons still drew a packed house.
Everyone thinks they know Vivaldi’s evergreen quartet of concertos, though as one was reminded with Chen’s radiant rendition, the ubiquitous excerpts are really just two or three ritornellos from the E Major “Spring” Concerto. Vivaldi’s ingenious naturalistic sound painting, which is seldom heard in elevators and would make for an odd ringtone, reliably registers afresh, particularly in the context of such assumed familiarity.
Such was the case Thursday, when the familiar opening strain of “Spring” immediately gave way to improvisatory chirping exchanged between Chen, assistant concertmaster David Taylor and assistant principal second violinist Danny Yehun Jin. Principal violist Teng Li made a convincing sleeping canine under Chen’s arioso playing in the central Largo, and his closing Allegro went with vernal warmth.
Vivaldi casts “Summer” in a somber G Minor, and Chen brought a certain sense of languor to the Allegro ma non molto and ensuing Adagio, before bounding through the sultry Presto. He led “Autumn” with genial grace, creating a sense of calm stasis in the Adagio molto, channeling the “great pleasure of sweetest slumber” from Vivaldi’s accompanying sonnet.
The concluding “Winter” concerto began with an icy blast leading to Chen’s bracing navigation of its breakneck solo lines. The moving central Largo was a moment of frigid poise before the precipitous gales of the final Allegro, which brought the crowd to its feet for Chen, now in his 26th year at the helm of the CSO violin section.
The orchestra had visited Mahler’s orchestration of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95 (“Serioso”) only once previously, almost thirty years ago. The treatment is an instance of Mahler’s argument that works need to be appropriately scaled to the settings in which they are heard. To that end he beefs up Beethoven’s quartet with full string sections and adds double basses, though with ambiguous results.
The storminess of the Allegro con brio came across viscerally with the added forces, though the searching Allegretto ma non troppo lost some of its inward qualities with the souped-up sonority. Chen brought a nervy energy to the unrelenting Allegro assai, though it was difficult to capture Beethoven’s angular pivots with the larger ensemble.
The Larghetto that introduces to the final Allegretto wanted greater atmosphere, particularly as the one moment of respite in the otherwise severe score, but there was an undeniable thrill to the collective acrobatics of the coda. The jury is out whether Mahler’s approach adds more than it detracts, and by the end of the night it was hard to avoid the impression that Vivaldi had accomplished more with a string orchestra almost 200 years before.
The concert opened with Mozart’s Divertimento in B-flat Major, K. 137, which generally felt perfunctory. The Andante was comely enough, but there is more to be done with this music, and Chen’s understated leadership did little more than keep the two ensuing Allegro movements on track. Conductor-less orchestral playing is a cultivated art, as ensembles like the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields make clear, and hard to pick up for just a week. Still, the audience expressed great affection for the efforts of their hometown leader.
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This week it was announced that Olivia Jakyoung Huh will join the CSO cello section, the third personnel appointment by music director designate Klaus Mäkelä. Huh began this season as one of three CSO fellows, and won the final audition for the position last month.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. cso.org
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