If any single trait characterizes the average Grant Park concertgoer, it`s resilience. As impervious to rain as they are pervious to music, these listeners seem willing to brave all discomforts and distractions for the privilege of hearing orchestral music free at the lakefront.
Because the summer series, sponsored by the Chicago Park District, at the Petrillo Music Shell is so completely at the mercy of Chicago`s fickle weather, and regularly punctuated by the noises of a vast urban populace at play, those who regularly attend Grant Park Symphony concerts have long since accepted that you cannot listen to symphonic music here the way you do at Orchestra Hall. The conditions just aren`t as formal, or as controlled, or as artistically consistent. And they never will be.
Yet, on a cloudless summer night, when the air is cool and still, there is nothing quite like Grant Park. Where else in the great American outdoors can you hear so extensive a series of symphonic and choral music and pops, all with a spectacular cityscape as backdrop?
Ravinia, it is true, boasts a more prestigious roster, and it has the mighty Chicago Symphony and music director James Levine in stellar residence. But Ravinia is generally loathe to try the imaginative things that Steven Ovitsky, Grant Park`s artistic director and general manager, has made it his mission to bring to the park–conductors and soloists new to the city, worthwhile new American pieces that the CSO has not touched, the occasional oddball event.
Last season, for example, he brought us William Bolcom`s mammoth celebration of America`s dizzying musical diversity, ”Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” This summer he has scheduled an entire concert of music by that supreme eccentric of 20th-Century performance, Percy Grainger. You go to Grant Park expecting to make offbeat discoveries of this sort, season after season. And you are seldom disappointed.
Listeners like what Ovitsky presents. Steadily increasing attendance and increased corporate and foundation support attest to that. More aggressive fundraising by the organization`s support wing, the Grant Park Concerts Society, has allowed him a freer hand to make the kinds of artistic statements he believes are healthy for the series.
Even so, with a relatively modest artistic budget of $1.2 million, he must walk a very thin line between conservative and innovative programming.
Sometimes Ovitsky miscalculates. Sometimes rehearsal time is inadequate to satisfy the technical demands of the music (a problem shared by virtually every summer festival). Sometimes pieces of music that look fine on paper simply don`t work in outdoor performance. Sometimes the amplification reduces musical sound to a glassy blur for listeners on the lawn.
The important thing is that Grant Park can be relied upon to take educated risks, to present valid alternatives to Ravinia`s more high-powered programming. These concerts make the downtown lakefront a livelier place to be in summer. With Orchestra Hall, the Opera House and the Auditorium silent for most of this time, Grant Park is practically the only downtown site where you can hear choral and symphony concerts by professional musicians.
Let`s take a closer look at the Grant Park offerings for the 53d season, which runs June 27 to Aug. 30.
There will be 24 park premieres, and 13 artists will make series debuts, including Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Barry Douglas, Jose Feghali and Lee Luvisi, piano; Benita Valente, Janice Taylor, Delores Ziegler and Andrew Schultze, singers; and Nathaniel Rosen, cello.
Ovitsky`s ongoing exploration of some of today`s more diverse approaches to early-music performance will continue with the podium engagements of Baroque-Classical specialists Andrew Parrott, Frans Brueggen and Trevor Pinnock.
Parrott, founder and director of England`s Taverner Choir and Taverner Consort and Players, will make his local debut July 25-6 with an interesting choral program that includes Schubert`s rarely heard Mass No. 5 in A-flat and a Haydn Te Deum.
Dutch recorder virtuoso Frans Brueggen makes his dual Chicago podium and Grant Park Concerts debut Aug. 8 and 9 with a concert promising new modern-instrument perspectives on Mozart`s ”Jupiter” and Beethoven`s ”Eroica”
symphonies.
Pinnock, director of the original-instrument ensemble English Concert, returns to conduct a mostly classical program Aug. 19 and 21. Richard Goode will be the soloist in a pair of Mozart works for piano and orchestra.
Principal conductor Zdenek Macal will be on the podium for the season opener June 27-28. ”Celebration” by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich will precede a performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, with the Grant Park Symphony Chorus and vocal soloists Benita Valente, Janice Taylor, Jonathan Welch and Kurt Link. Thomas Peck is the chorus director.
Following this will be two Grant Park Pops concerts conducted by Newton Wayland–June 30 with jazz pianist George Shearing, and a Big Band Night July 1. Macal will preside over the annual Independence Day concert July 3 featuring music by Bernstein, Gershwin and Tchaikovsky (the ”1812”
Overture), along with Sousa marches and a fireworks display. Lorin Hollander is piano soloist.
Macal`s program of July 8 and 10 holds Andre Previn`s ”Principals,” the Sibelius Violin Concerto (with soloist Joseph Swensen) and the Borodin Second Symphony. Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman will make his Grant Park debut with the concerts of July 11-12, a program consisting of Michael Torke`s ”Bright Blue Music,” the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and the two ”Daphnis and Chloe”
suites of Maurice Ravel.
A program devoted to Percy Grainger orchestral and choral music occupies the Petrillo Music Shell July 15 and 17, with the Symphony Chorus and Orchestra under Keith Brion, best known here for his John Philip Sousa band concerts. The following weekend, July 18-19, brings a Family Night concert conducted by David Amram.
Pianophiles will wish to circle July 22-23 on their calendar, for on those dates Barry Douglas, the young Irish pianist who won top prize in last year`s Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, will make his Chicago debut playing the Prokofiev Third Concerto as part of an all-Russian program conducted by Gerhardt Zimmermann.
The concerts of July 29 and 31, with James Paul conducting and soloists Catherine Robbin, mezzo-soprano, and David Schrader, organ, include Elgar`s
”Sea Pictures” and the Saint-Saens ”Organ” Symphony. The following weekend, Aug. 1-2, James DePreist will direct symphonies by Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. Sing-along man Mitch Miller returns for a pops program Aug. 5 and 7.
Robert Shaw, music director of the Atlanta Symphony,will extend his relationship with Grant Park this season by conducting two pairs of August concerts. The first, Aug. 12 and 14, holds Beethoven`s Seventh Symphony and the Brahms Second Piano Concerto, with soloist Lee Luvisi. Shaw`s second program, Aug. 15-16, will bring the Grant Park Symphony Chorus front and center for a pair of religious works, Stravinsky`s ”Symphony of Psalms” and Mozart`s Mass in C minor, K.427.
The final three Grant Park concerts for the summer will be under Macal`s direction. Aug. 22-23 brings music by Berlioz and Tchaikovsky, with pianist Jose Feghali as soloist. Mahler`s Symphony No. 5 is the major work Aug. 26-7, while cellist Nathaniel Rosen makes his local debut in an all-Dvorak program Aug. 29-30.
Finally a word to the less resilient: Don`t forget to bring raincoats and umbrellas.
