Visiting the Chicago Symphony

A red-jacketed usher guards the balcony.

I didn't get to see Riccardo Muti conduct the Chicago Symphony. This would have been nifty because he was music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra when I was a graduate student in Philadelphia and somewhat addicted to orchestral concerts. He's The Man in Chicago now...

Chicago Symphony Center with giant Muti poster

...but Leonard Slatkin skippered the Chicago Symphony when I was in town and I was not disappointed.

First, the hall: everything is round. The stage itself is round in back and curved in front. The balconies are rounded and join a narrow balcony over the back of the stage which holds more people. The 'ceiling' over the stage is an incomplete dome. The organ pipes are framed with arches. That thing suspended over stages everywhere that holds lights, wires, speakers, and whatnot, is round in Chicago' Symphony Hall. The decorations on the walls are round wreaths. Of course the proscenium arch is round. Even this guy's head...

This night's program was all American: exciting, accessible, sparkling American music. I had just heard Samuel Barber's Overture to The School for Scandal on the radio a week before, so I knew that this piece, premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1933, was a student work of Barber's. He could have already called himself a musical success as he had a triple major at the exclusive Curtis Institute, but this premiere kicked off a new kind of success. He enjoyed a career as an innovative composer with commissions coming in from many of the top names in music and dance. Take a look and listen to the Metropolitan Orchestra conducted by William Schrickel...

Few people know Barber's contemporary, William Schuman, so Maestro Slatkin filled us in. It's very unusual for a conductor to turn around and talk to the audience, but this is what he did before the orchestra's performance of Schuman's Symphony No. 6 (1949). He told us how Schuman (no relation to Romantic Robert) was an educator who worked his way up to president of the Juilliard School in New York City, and then the first president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. We really should know him better because he won two Pulitzer Prizes, the first in 1943 for Music, and the second in 1985 for his work as an educator and composer. As a busy administrator and educator, he had to compose in the morning before going to work. Maestro Slatkin gave us a few tips on listening to Schuman's Symphony No. 6, most notably that he often wrote in more than one key at a time which gives the impression that various sections of the orchestra are arguing. The four movements of the Symphony No. 6 are played contiguously. I couldn't find a Slatkin recording, so here is Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphians back in 1948.

After intermission, the orchestra performed Mason Bates's Violin Concerto (2012) featuring soloist Anne Akiko Meyers. You know, modern music composed by live composers can be at times difficult to listen to and understand without studying the composer's methods and philosophies. Sometimes it seems boring and the listener imagines that it must have at least been interesting for the composer to compose or else why would it exist? I'm happy to report that Bates's piece was fabulous to listen to, with changing orchestral colors, innovative effects, and fiercely virtuosic violin riffs. The audience leapt to its feet at the concerto's conclusion, and as a special treat, Mason Bates himself appeared onstage to acknowledge the ovation. Now I couldn't find a recording of this piece to share, so you're on your own there. I did find an interview that Bates and Meyers did before the premiere of the work by the Pittsburgh Symphony in 2012.

How can you attempt to top the excitement of the Bates Violin Concerto? George Gershwin's joyous An American in Paris can do it! Imagine being in that first audience in 1928 when this piece premiered with its jazzy rhythms, expanded percussion, car horns, and SAXOPHONES! Gershwin imagined the piece as a ballet while he was in Paris and sketched it out for two pianos. The orchestration was completed just after he returned from Paris with four Parisian car horns to use for the traffic jam section. What a treat! I couldn't find Slatkin online, so here's Dudamel with the Los Angeles Philharmonic:

I loved this concert! I didn't think it was possible to enjoy another orchestra as much as I enjoy the home team (The lush Philadelphia Orchestra), but the Chicagoans' sound was bright and shiny. Slatkin won me over when he turned around to tell us about the Schuman, and the program he selected was engaging and exciting! When was the last time you described an orchestra concert as exciting?!