By Lawrence A. Johnson, Chicago Classical Review
December 23, 2010
1. The Pacifica Quartet in Shostakovich’s Quartets Nos. 1-3
The Pacifica Quartet’s presentation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s complete string quartets this season is notable for its ambition alone. But the opening October program at Ganz Hall delivered one of the most memorable, high-voltage concerts of the year. In the first three quartets, the Pacifica musicians’ knife-edged intensity and idiomatic feel for this music launched this series in supremely compelling style.
2. Michael Tilson Thomas and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Stravinsky
Most Chicago Symphony Orchestra attention was focused, understandably, on Riccardo Muti in 2010. But one of the most triumphant and sheerly enjoyable performances of the year at Orchestra Hall came in February with Michael Tilson Thomas’s evening of Neoclassical Stravinsky. In the right repertoire (Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Copland, and Stravinsky) few can rival Tilson Thomas and the magnificent performance of Oedipus Rex brought out all the ceremony, astringent audacity, dynamism and sly wit of a work still regarded by many as awkward and unwieldy. In addition to playing of galvanic commitment by the CSO, soloists William Burden and Michelle DeYoung, the men of the CSO chorus and narrator Patrick Stewart all made first-class contributions. The conductor and the CSO strings also provided a luminous performance of Stravinsky’s ballet, Apollon musagete.
3. Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra in Dvorak’s Requiem
Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra often have their best nights in offbeat repertoire and so it proved again with this August performance of Dvorak’s little-known Requiem. With a stellar quartet of soloists and inspirational ensemble singing by the Grant Park Chorus, Kalmar and his forces brought out the operatic drama as well as the glowing spirituality of this neglected masterpiece to moving affect.
4. Jane Glover and Music of the Baroque in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio
Music of the Baroque had many inspired nights in 2010—the Mozart Requiem among them—but it was the brilliantly played and sung performance of Bach’s glorious Christmas Oratorio earlier this month that proved most memorable.
5. The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s L’elisir d’amore
Likewise, the Lyric Opera of Chicago had several worthy performances in 2010 with a charming Le nozze di Figaro in May and a stylish new production of Macbeth in September. But it was the January performances of Donizetti’s frothy comedy that provided the most consistent and sheerly enjoyable evening. Giuseppe Filianoti made a sensational company debut as the lovelorn bumpkin Nemorino, in a performance as beautifully sung as it was comically resourceful. As Adina, local favorite Nicole Cabell was charming and vocally faultless.
6. Bernard Labadie and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Bach’s Saint John Passion
To get performances of two major Bach works in one year is a rarity, but to have both works be so superbly performed is special indeed. The Canadian Baroque specialist Bernard Labadie led these buoyant, sensitively paced and idiomatically sung performances of the less-often-heard Saint John Passion with outstanding singing by the CSO Chorus, and German tenor Tilman Lichdi a memorable Evangelist.
7. Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Millennium Park
In his inaugural season as the CSO’s new music director, Riccardo Muti conducted only two weeks of subscription concerts before falling ill due to exhaustion and returning to Italy.
Yet of his interrupted September opening residency, it was Muti’s debut as music director at Millennium Park that made the most indelible impact. The program may have been largely Romantic potboilers but the level of depth, eloquence and burnished refinement Muti drew in works of Respighi, Verdi, Tchaikovsy and Liszt was remarkable. With a crowd estimated at 30,000 in attendance that Sunday afternoon, there was a thrilling sense of occasion and this was truly one of those unforgettable Chicago musical events.
8. Sir Mark Elder and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in English program
Sir Mark Elder remains one of the Chicago Symphony’s most engaging and versatile guest conductors. In an English program in April, he led the orchestra in a rich and eloquent performance of Elgar’s majestic Symphony No. 2, the CSO’s first of the work in a quarter-century. Violinist Elena Urisoste made the evening complete with the delicate intimacy of her playing in A Lark Ascending—amazingly, the belated CSO premiere of Vaughan Williams’ famous work.
9. The William Ferris Chorale’s program of Baltic music
The William Ferris Chorale may not be quite as high on the city’s musical radar screen these days but with a new home at Loyola University, watch for a coming resurgence. Clearly, the high standards of the ensemble’s founder have been maintained under current director Paul French. The imaginative and wide-ranging program of Baltic music in May offered an array of beautiful and mostly unknown works from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, sung with great feeling and tonal sensitivity.
10. Access Contemporary Music– Songs about Buildings and Moods
On a September weekend when most attention was focused on Riccardo Muti, ACM served up five world premieres, each performed in a different, architecturally significant Loop building. The intrepid music lovers who traversed from the Cultural Center to the Marquette Building, the Monadnock and Aqua on that rainy Saturday afternoon heard some wonderful music by several of Chicago’s most intriguing young composers, enhanced by the magnificent settings, and performed with great panache, sensitivity and dedication.
