Considering the music and the musicians involved, it`s no wonder the concert went on as scheduled Monday night at the Civic Theatre, despite the Loop flood disaster.
Because electrical power had not been interrupted, the folks at Performing Arts Chicago (previously known as Chamber Music Chicago) wisely went ahead with an exquisite program by the Peabody Trio, with 200 obviously devoted listeners attending.
The evening`s highlight was the Midwest premiere of ”Arias and Barcarolles” (1990), Leonard Bernstein`s last composition. Though the work is familiar to record listeners, the vivid concert performance affirmed that, at least in this piece, seeing is as important as hearing.
”Arias and Barcarolles” reminds us that, to the end, Bernstein remained a man of the theater. The interwoven layers of dramatic and musical meaning, the extroverted nature of the score, the pervasive sense of dialogue between singers andinstrumentalists-every facet of this score suggests musical comedy.
Though the piece reflects on life, love and death, it approaches these big themes with a light touch and through everyday scenes. A look at a married couple falling asleep, a contemplation on childbirth, a turbulent recollection of a wedding scene-these are Bernstein`s starting points.
But the composer captures the magic beneath these ”ordinary” vignettes, much as the opening of Mozart`s ”The Marriage of Figaro” reveals the sublime poetry of a simple domestic scene.
In ”Arias and Barcarolles,” the puckish rhythms and crossfire dialogue of the ”Love Duet” say a great deal about the quixotic nature of romance. And the brooding baritone solo in ”The Love of My Life” shrewdly parodies one man`s ambivalence about love.
Add to that the thick Yiddish lyrics of ”Oif Mayn Khas`neh (At My Wedding)” and the softly hummed lines of ”Nachspiel,” and you have as alluring a piece of musical theater as two singers and two pianists could perform.
Mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle and baritone Kurt Ollmann added much meaning to this music in the way they gestured and positioned themselves onstage. Ollman, in particular, was in superb voice. Castle, though suffering a cold, made up for it with a meticulously conceived interpretation.
And pianists Bright Sheng and Seth Knopp played the four-hand score with a natural affinity for Bernstein`s jazz-tinged idiom.
The program also marked Sheng`s concert farewell to Chicago. In two weeks he`ll become composer-in-residence of the Seattle Symphony, the same post he has held for the past three years at Lyric Opera.
Seattle is fortunate to be getting him, at least judging by his Four Movements for Piano Trio. The piece eloquently expresses the particular lilt of Chinese language and music, particularly in its first and fourth movements. It`s a musical language Sheng has created from bent pitches, slides, glissandos and the like.
The Peabody Trio, which commissioned the piece, played it for all its rich atmosphere and intense lyricism.
The other major work on the program, Shulamit Ran`s ”Excursions”
(1980), represented virtually the antithesis of Sheng`s delicate esthetic. Textures were thick, gestures rhapsodic, phrases Eastern European in influence.
In a performance as striking as this one, there was no resisting the visceral strength of Ran`s remarkable voice.
