The jubilant double fugue of Bruckner’s “Te Deum” hadn’t yet stopped resounding Saturday night when a long wave of humanity already stretched down Michigan Avenue, eager to hear some of the free musical events starting at midnight and to catch a glimpse of the newly unveiled Symphony Center.
“The girls heard about it at school and on the news, and they just wanted to see it,” said Ruth Fitzpatrick, standing in line with daughters Kelly, 11, and Kari, 8. “I wanted to see it, too.”
Also standing in line was Mark Burschard, who had come directly from that evening’s performance of “Nabucco.” “I went to the opera tonight and I just keep going,” he said.
For the next 24 hours the music just kept going, too. Sponsored by Marshall Field, the “Day of Music” at Symphony Center offered an open-house party free to the public, with a cornucopia of diverse musical and cultural events running at four different venues around the clock. From Mozart to East Indian traditional dance, from a seminar on the arts to gospel choirs, there was something for every taste.
With the gala concert running more than three hours, the festivities didn’t get started until 35 minutes after midnight, when Daniel Barenboim and Chicago Symphony Orchestra colleagues kicked things off with a fiery 15-minute set of popular music from South America. Barenboim and friends entered fully into their late night jam-session mode, the Argentine-born pianist building up a head of steam with his faster and more complex variations, matched by Alex Klein’s almost indecently hot and insinuating oboe licks.
The popular Wolf Gang vocal quartet followed next, providing a unique brand of smoothly blended harmonies and wry humor. In the rotunda, Terran’s Greek Band was already in full cry, the traditional Mediterranean rhythms sparking some impromptu Greek dancing in the atrium.
At the halfway point of the “Day of Music” Sunday afternoon, the hall was filled almost to capacity for a sparkling, nicely blended performance of Mozart’s Piano and Wind Quintet by Barenboim and the CSO’s principal wind players. I sat in the “terrace” seating behind the stage, where the sound was surprisingly good despite facing the back of an open Steinway, the piano actually sounding clearer and more incisive than it did from the right of the lower balcony Saturday night.
Immediately following, I walked the few steps to the new Buntrock Hall, which showed itself a hospitable room for voices, though the stark brick environment looks less like a chamber music setting than a prison recreation yard. Rosemarie Lang used her warm mezzo with finely calibrated restraint in a selection of Brahms lieder, but soprano Soile Isokoski nearly brought the brick house down with her animated and cheerfully over-the-top rendition of Bernstein’s quirky “I Hate Music” song cycle.
The dizzying variety of culturally far-flung offerings continued in the rotunda with a performance by the East Indian Natyakalalayam Dance Company. Dressed in traditional costumes, the dancers showed amazing unanimity and poise in their stylized, sharply rhythmic movements.
