Saturday night, exactly one week after the formal opening of Symphony Center, the home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra underwent its consecration. It was probably inevitable that for this first subscription program Daniel Barenboim chose Beethoven’s epic Ninth Symphony, which has probably consecrated more concert halls than any work in music history.
Practically any performance of the “Choral” Symphony creates a sense of occasion because of what Beethoven’s masterpiece represents in musical terms and for what it has to say, universally, to mankind. Still, it was good to behold Saturday’s singers and instrumentalists throwing themselves into the music with a belief that went beyond workaday professionalism. The “Ode to Joy” finale took on a special urgency on this occasion: not a bad way to anoint a hall that aspires to be a musical environment for the entire community.
The concert celebrated something else, and that was the 40th anniversary of Margaret Hillis’ founding of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. To this day, the CSO remains the only orchestra in America with its own large-scale resident chorus. It’s a tribute to the talented voices painstakingly prepared over the years by Hillis and in recent seasons by her successor, Duain Wolfe, that this is one symphony chorus that never has been overshadowed by its parent orchestra. Certainly Barenboim’s program, which preceded the Beethoven with a soft-focus reading of Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms,” gave the choristers a virtuoso test they passed with flying voices.
The improved Orchestra Hall acoustics sometimes helped Barenboim achieve the inwardness of feeling he sought in the Beethoven, sometimes exposed the vagueness of his baton. The Scherzo galloped with a Brucknerian urgency made extra robust by the hall’s improved bass response. In the slow movement the brass proclamations registered with majestic immediacy, as did the serene string responses. But the uncertain definition of his beat caused the cellos and basses to flounder for what seemed like an eternity in the initial statement of the “Ode to Joy” theme, and the open-fifth triplets at the very beginning also were not together: poor ensemble masquerading as a depiction of the cosmic void.
Overall, however, the desired unity prevailed, giving way to a moving finale. The reliable solo quartet consisted of soprano Soile Isokoski, mezzo-soprano Rosemarie Lang, tenor Ben Heppner and baritone Robert Holl. Holl inflected every word with meaning. Heppner projected with exciting swagger. The bright cutting edge of Isokoski’s voice served her well in the cruelly high soprano tessitura. At full volume, the choral-orchestral tuttis sound somewhat congested. The placement of the chorus at the center of the terrace seating gave good balance with the orchestra, however. And so the sonic adjustments go on.
