Reviews
- Top 10 Performances of 2011, by Lawrence A. Johnson, Chicago Classical Review
The Top 10 Performances of 2011
Thu Dec 22, 2011 at 5:42 pmBy Lawrence A. Johnson
1. Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Verdi’s Otello
With Riccardo Muti’s inaugural season as Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director thrown into chaos and uncertainty by the conductor’s two medical emergencies and extended absence, much was riding on these April concert performances of Verdi’s late operatic masterpiece. In his first CSO concert in seven months, Muti answered any skeptics with his dynamic conducting and a full-throttle performance that brought out the seismic dramatic punch and poetic delicacy of Verdi’s score. Backed by an inspired group of singers and brilliant playing and ensemble support from the CSO and CSO Chorus, this memorable Otello was Chicago’s top musical event of 2011.
2. Susanna Mälkki and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Ives, Musgrave and Strauss
So, we know there is no such thing as a bad Finnish conductor. But even by the high standards of that musically gifted nation, Susanna Mälkki’s sensational October debut with the CSO was a triumph. Her demanding program included the U.S. premiere of Thea Musgrave’s Autumn Sonata (J. Lawrie Bloom, the superb bass clarinet soloist) and Mälkki brought bracing clarity to Charles Ives’ densest contrapuntal thickets and delivered an Also Sprach Zarathustra of extraordinary sweep and Straussian brilliance. Can you spell principal guest conductor?
3. The Pacifica Quartet in Shostakovich’s Quartets Nos. 7 and 10-12.
The Pacifica Quartet’s remarkable survey of Dimitri Shostakovich’s complete string quartets began last October and ended in February of this year. The cycle reached its peak with the penultimate program in mid-February with these young musicians delivering shattering, knife-edged performances that laid bare all the desolation and painful nerve-endings of these works.
4. Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Mahler’s Symphony No. 9
Bernard Haitink’s majestic June performance of Mahler’s final completed symphony was a testament to the strength of the partnership of the CSO and its former principal conductor in this repertoire. The eloquent, beautifully played Ninth resonated long after the hushed final bars had faded away.
5. Chicago Opera Theater: Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers
Equal parts opera, theatrical event and electronic art installation, Tod Machover’s envelope-pushing Death and the Powers was the undisputed opera highlight of the year in Chicago. The strange futuristic tale, Machover’s engaging electronic score, and the audacious multimedia staging proved consistently compelling and a highlight of Brian Dickie’s tenure as general director.
6. Esa-Pekka Salonen and violinist Leila Josefowicz with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen was at his finest with the CSO in a February program that featured him in dual roles as composer and conductor. Soloist Leila Josefowicz delivered a blistering Chicago premiere of Salonen’s rock-edged Violin Concerto and the Finnish conductor and CSO followed that with a richly elemental account of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2.
7. Lyric Opera of Chicago: Wagner’s Lohengrin
In the Lyric Opera’s first Lohengrin in thirty years, the company scored its greatest success of 2011 in February with Wagner’s epic tale. The first-class cast was led by Johan Botha who sang magnificently with strength and tenderness in the role of the melancholy title knight.
8. Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.
The good thing about Lollapalooza chasing the Grant Park Orchestra underground to the Harris Theater is that it allows an opportunity, sans amplification and al fresco noises, to really appreciate what a terrific orchestra Kalmar has built. With two superb soloists (Alexandra Petersamer and Christian Elsner) Kalmar led a concentrated, beautifully detailed July performance with glorious playing by the Grant Park musicians.
9. John Nelson and the Chicago Bach Project: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion
Yes, the acoustic was over-resonant, restroom facilities inadequate and parking horrific. It didn’t matter, for conductor John Nelson and Soli Deo Gloria inaugurated a new Holy Week tradition in Chicago with a gleaming, deeply spiritual and wholly idiomatic performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at St. Vincent de Paul Parish.
10. Fulcrum Point: Speaking in Tongues
Just by definition new-music concerts are often mixed, uneven affairs but in this March program Fulcrum Point managed to deliver one of the finest contemporary programs of recent seasons with three world premieres. Most notable were Vivian Fung’s engaging Yunan Folk Songs and Geoffrey Gordon’s unapologetically 12-tone Tiger Psalms, the latter given a sterling performance by Julia Bentley. With artful, non-distracting projections, all the varied works received tight, full-metal performances under Stephen Burns’ focused direction.
Honorable Mentions
Kurt Masur’s memorable Bruckner Fourth with the CSO; Mitsuko Uchida’s effervescent Mozart piano concertos; Christoph von Dohnanyi’s magisterial Brahms at Ravinia; Carlos Kalmar’s powerful Verdi Requiem with the Grant Park Orchestra; the Chicago Chorale’s program of Baltic and Scandinavian music; Stephane Deneve’s impressive CSO debut in a French program; Joyce Di Donato’s engaging recital at Mandel Hall; Chicago a cappella’s program of Jewish sacred music; Yuja Wang’s virtuosic keyboard fireworks; the Lyric Opera’s delightful Magic Flute revival; the Emerson Quartet at Mandel Hall; and the fiery Brahms First Symphony with Larry Rachleff leading the Chicago Philharmonic.
Most Depressing Development
Light Opera Works abandoning — well, light opera, with no staged operetta scheduled in its announced 2012 season.
Most Heartening Development
A healthy Riccardo Muti
Second Most Heartening Development
Three new organizations springing up in this lousy economy: the Haymarket Opera Company, the North Shore Chamber Music Festival and Chroma Chamber Orchestra, all making impressive debuts in 2011.
Once again a heartfelt seasonal thank you to the advertisers whose support of Chicago Classical Review allows us to continue to do what we’re doing. And thanks again to my colleagues, Wynne Delacoma, Dennis Polkow, Bryant Manning, Michael Cameron, Gerald Fisher and all CCR contributors for their dedication, superb writing and musical insight.
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“Based on the book by Eleanor Coerr and using the charming chalk illustrations by Ed Young (flashed on a screen behind the ensemble) the 45 minute cantata melds images, narration, and music by Kevin James to recount the poignant real-life story of Sadako Sasaki, a spirited young Japanese girl. Music, song, image, and spoken word form a seamless and deeply moving meditation. Unutterable sadness at last gives way to the hope that the warring nations will learn to make a better, safer world for their own Sadakos...With the threat of mass nuclear suicide again bullying its way to the center of the world stage, 'Sadako: Prayers for Peace' could not be more timely."
— Chicago Tribune
"The most energetic and innovative of Chicago’s younger music ensembles, the Fulcrum Point ensemble has built its reputation on boldly straddling the barriers between classical and world music.”
— Chicago Tribune
“Stephen Burns’ intrepid chamber ensemble Fulcrum Point has made a mark in Chicago, providing a bracing shot of youthful adrenaline to the local music scene and drawing a loyal audience to the group’s imaginative concerts of classical works with strong popular music influences.”
— Chicago Sun-Times
"Hand it to the dynamic young trumpeter-conductor Stephen Burns. Many groups talk about the possibilities of crossover and multicultural programming using classically trained musicians in concert hall settings. His Fulcrum Point New Music Project is doing it, and doing it with remarkable skill and consistently provocative programming.
Presented by Performing Arts Chicago, this season Fulcrum Point ranged from ecumenical meditations on Sept. 11 to Brecht and Weill to contemporary poetry and music. For their season-closer Saturday evening, they paired with the Art Institute of Chicago to offer 'Border Crossings,' a program of three Chicago premieres by Mexican and Mexican-American composers in the museum's spectacularly restored and intimate Fullerton Hall."
— Chicago Sun-Times, Andrew Patner 5/13/02
"The Wolpe quartet, a prime example of his flexibly expressive use of 12-tone techniques, made a good foil to the gritty Brechtian poetry. In his rumpled raincoat, Studs Terkel even looked like a character out of Brecht, and his marvelous readings were all too brief. Paul Schoenfield's manic and enjoyable 'Burlesque' brought the program full circle."
— Chicago Tribune 4/02
"Fulcrum Point dug into Bowles' genially mordant 'Music for a Farce' while Belden read some of Bowles' bizarrely beautiful poetry. Listening to the clash of Bowles' vivid, often violent words against his amiable but austere and unsettled musical lines, I longed to be sitting at a cocktail table nursing a drink in a casually hip spot like HotHouse. With evocative but unobtrusive black-and-white photos filling the wall behind the ensemble, this was a performance to sit back and absorb rather than sit up straight and analyze."
— Chicago Sun-Times 4/02
"The Fulcrum Point ensemble has built its reputation on boldly straddling the barriers between classical and world music. There was some of that barrier-busting in the five 20th Century works for strings, which shared a meditative serenity and a tonal harmonic base despite their composers' different ethnicities and traditions."
— Chicago Tribune 12/01
"Fulcrum Point Chamber Ensemble at the School of the Art Institute. Fulcrum Point makes children's fare a winner with rock and a show. Burns, a trumpeter and a conductor of the American Concerto Orchestra, has boundless and a restlessly eclectic taste. Ever since settling down here in the mid-1990s, he's given concerts that straddle musical categories from Baroque to jazz to pop. It was only inevitable that he, a father married to a school psychologist, should get around to music for children. What's more, he also realized that the Nickelodeon wouldn't sit quietly just for music.
No surprise, then, that this concert was really a multimedia show, complete with narration (by Channel-7 Chicago anchor Kathy Brock) and slides of crayon drawings (courtesy of patients at Rush Children's Hospital).
Under Burns' crisp direction, the musicians -- violinist Sharon Polifrone, bassoonist Lewis Kirk and piccolo ace Mary Stolper, among others -- played with verve, but they were upstaged by Brock's vivid storytelling in many (well, at least six) voices and by the beguiling, colorful drawings. Kids are notoriously tough customers to please. Fulcrum Point's performance, however, kept this bunch -- and their elders—in rapt attention."
— Chicago Tribune Music Review October 7, 2001
"Frankenstein" Lives! Fulcrum Point toys with a classic to the audience's delight.
"Conductor Stephen Burns ably guided Fulcrum Point through an often complex score. The costumed instrumentalists, whose conservatory classes surely were lacking in the finer points of the toy saxophone, performed with admirable aplomb. A highlight for me was repeated paper bag explosions at the outset, an opinion seconded by the enthusiastic outbursts from the youngsters present."
— Chicago Tribune 10/00
"The fledgling Fulcrum Point, two years old, is already distinguishing itself through uncommon and often brilliant musical juxtapositions. Its Performing Arts Chicago program focused on the kinship between jazz and classical music, as director and solo trumpet Stephen Burns led a program that showed off the group’s delectable playing. String work meshed seamlessly, with a burnished hue that triumphed over the decidedly not classical-friendly Park West acoustics. Deftness was the calling card.”
— Chicago Sun-Times 5/00
“Stephen Burns’ intrepid chamber ensemble has made a mark in Chicago, providing a bracing shot of youthful adrenaline to the local music scene and drawing a loyal audience to the group’s imaginative concerts of classical works with strong popular music influences.”
— Chicago Sun-Times 2/00
“The most energetic and innovative of Chicago’s younger musical ensembles, the Fulcrum Point ensemble has built its reputation on boldly straddling the barriers between classical and world music.”
— Chicago Tribune 12/99
“In a lean-and-mean envelope pushing mode, Stephen Burns and Fulcrum Point presented a bracing evening of edgy chamber music that was daring, imaginative and exhilarating.”
— Chicago Tribune 12/99
“Few of Chicago’s musical ensembles combine audacious programming and full-throttle musical energy with such flair as Fulcrum Point...Burns led the group in a performance bristling with energy and bite. It was a terrific performance.”
- Chicago Tribune 11/99
"The ensemble displayed uncommon exuberance in its first Chicago appearance (3/98). Burns has shown himself to be a meticulous, energetic conductor who draws the most eloquent articulations from his players, and his programming already looks promisingly irreverent.”
— The Reader 10/98
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