This has been a grand week for disorder at Orchestra Hall. First, recital pianists Krystian Zimerman and Alfred Brendel suffered the indignities of cold winds onstage and construction noise offstage. Then came the abrupt cancellation of German conductor Christian Thielemann, whose local debut Thursday with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had been widely anticipated.
Management promptly enlisted Yaron Traub, one of the CSO’s assistant conductors, to fill the podium vacancy, juggled the program and came up with the curious mix of music heard Thursday.
At the very least, the Israeli-born American conductor kept his musical wits about him, which is more than one could say for many a young batonsmith making his subscription series debut on short notice.
Although we lost one scheduled debut, we retained another. Thursday’s concert introduced Orchestra Hall to the very young, Viennese-born Till Fellner, winner of the 1993 Clara Haskil International Piano Competition and a former student of Brendel’s. Fellner is 25, looks as if he’s in his late teens, but plays Mozart with a maturity and grace that carry an authentic Viennese pedigree.
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in C, K.503, proved a fine choice for his debut vehicle. Fellner treated the solo part, with its broken octaves, arpeggios and chromatic runs, with a clearly organized sense of its function vis-a-vis the orchestra and within Mozart’s stylized expressive scheme. His line was that of an accomplished Mozart singer: unified, flowing, articulate. And his ideas intersected with the composer’s in a manner that was stylish but never dry or pedantic. A most promising debut.
Fellner was let down by an accompaniment that was as ordinary as he is extraordinary, but no matter: This debut deserved the warm reception it drew from the audience. Pay attention to the name. You’ll be hearing from Till Fellner again.
Conducting the program’s second half from memory, Traub replaced the originally scheduled “Pelleas und Melisande” of Schoenberg with a more familiar Schoenberg score, “Verklaerte Nacht.” His freely molded approach owed much to the interpretation of his mentor, Daniel Barenboim. In both cases the colors are smeared and the string sound thick, wanting luminosity. At least Barenboim knows how to teeter on the brink of the emotional abyss without falling in.
If Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome” proved a musical nonsequitur after the Schoenberg, Traub and the orchestra played its lush Technicolor gestures for maximum showpiece impact. Rather than merely garish, the effect was genuinely rousing.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan Ave. Phone 312-294-3000.
