In our ongoing series reviewing the best and worst entertainment events of the year, today we present freelance classical music critic Ted Shen’s picks for the highlights — and lowlights — of 1999.
– Contemporary Chamber Players at Mandel Hall: After several years of listless leadership, this venerable presenter of 20th Century music was in danger of running on empty. But the season opener dispelled such fears. Cliff Colnot, a veteran conductor hired to shake things up, guided the still-rigorous group in a program of works mostly by established composers based in the Midwest. Mandolin whiz Dimitris Marinos showed off his uncanny dexterity in Robert Lombardo’s concerto Orpheus and the Maenads. Even more vivid was the performance by mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley, flutist Mary Stolper and harpist Alison Attar of Marta Ptaszynska’s “Un Grand Sommeil,” a delicate song version of a Paul Verlaine poem.
– CUBE at Columbia College: This eclectic collective of instrumentalists and composers dedicated to the contemporary cause has probably introduced more new works than any other area chamber group with similar ambitions. Admittedly members Patricia Morehead and Janice Misurell-Mitchell often get their latest compositions performed, but they’re risk-takers always loaded with intriguing ideas. At this January concert that kicked off CUBE’s season, Misurell-Mitchell’s “Gift of Tongues” continued her experiment of intermingling utterances of the flute (which she plays) and the voice for street-smart dramatic effects. Morehead’s “Dance: Women’s Song of the Corn” sounded lyrical and nostalgic in vocalist Bobbi Wilsyn’s lovely rendition.
– His Majestie’s Clerkes at Quigley Seminary: When will Frank Ferko be recognized for what he is, a talented and erudite innovator of old vocal genres? Also a scholar of the voluminous output of the 12th Century German abbess Hildegard von Bingen, Ferko six years ago updated her music in a set of motets for the a cappella Clerkes. Which led to another commission, the 45-minute-long, Hildegard-indebted Stabat Mater that the Clerkes unveiled in February. It’s a marvelously intricate and sincerely devout tour de force that showed off the Clerkes’ disciplined, sensitive and uncommonly nuanced singing. An unexpected bonus were the soaring solos delivered by young Chicago soprano Rauquaia Hale-Wallace.
– Pierre Boulez conducts “Moses and Aron” at Orchestra Hall: The French trailblazer knows his Schoenberg, having tireless championed the Viennese atonalist’s oeuvre since the early ’50s. Leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in this concert performance (in late March) of Schoenberg’s singular opera, he unfolded with impeccable logic the paradoxical twists and turns that sustain the ingenious retelling of the moral tugs-of-war between Moses and his wayward brother. Both the singing and orchestral playing were eloquent and sternly spiritual.
– Min Xiao-Fen at the Cultural Center: The pipa player extraordinaire, originally from China and now living in Brooklyn, brandished her virtuosic skills coaxing cascades of pearly notes from the pearlike Chinese lute in a medley of traditional tunes. And she could be subtle, too, navigating through the poetical passages. That was just in the top half of this March recital. After her solo turns, she jammed with local improv-jazz cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and trombonist Jed Bishop–in a spirited declaration of the timeless versatility of this most ancient of instruments.
– Steve Reich at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts: Several seminal works from the ’70s and ’80s by this influential American minimalist are contemporary classics, and two of them were featured in this April concert presented by Performing Arts Chicago. Reich was part of the ensemble that adroitly sifted through the complex rhythms of parts one and two of “Drumming.” The same vigor and precision was applied to “Different Trains,” a resonant musical collage that draws on history for its emotion-laden gestures. The multimedia show, “Hindenburg” offered tantalizing proof of Reich’s relentless quest for idioms relevant to our times.
– John Adams at Orchestra Hall: The Bay Area composer, who’s gone beyond his minimalist roots for neoromanticism, was feted in May by the CSO with a series of thoughtful programs showcasing some of his greatest hits and mostly conducted by himself. Receiving CSO premieres were “Century Rolls,” the Violin Concerto, and the symphonic “Harmonielehre,” each a crafty reconciliation of minimalism’s hypnotic repetition and romanticism’s rhapsodic riffs. “Century Rolls,” as performed by pianist Emanuel Ax under Christoph Eschenbach’s direction, was the most fun, a gleeful compilation of sly quotes from other works and overlapping rhythms. The far more serious “Harmonielehre,” given a mesmeric reading, may be a postmodern landmark.
– Chicago Chamber Musicians at the Museum of Contemporary Art: In the second round of their ambitious three-year survey of key chamber works by major 20th Century composers, these CSO-affiliated instrumentalists showed remarkable zeal not only for standard-bearers such as Schoenberg and Stravinsky but also eccentrics and non-Europeans from Lou Harrison to Toru Takemitsu. Their four concerts in May, which also included unproven pieces by Young Turks, were marvels of precision, thoughtfulness and sparkling camaraderie.
– Chicago String Quartet at DePaul University Concert Hall: In late May the Chicago String Quartet and friends paid birthday tribute to George Perle who, at 84, is finally enjoying recognition as a significant postwar innovator. The five works on the program–capped by the 15-movement “Brief Encounters” commissioned for the centennial of Perle’s alma mater DePaul–exemplify the spiky exuberance and humor his structurally ingenious music often exudes. The nimble, lively performances enthralled the audience and flattered the composer who was in attendance.
– Music in the Loft: This welcome series, started in ’92, takes chamber music from the concert hall back to the salon that, in its case, is the West Loop loft of presenter Fredda Hyman. But it was in restaurateur Jerry Kleiner’s Vegas-chic house in Ukrainian Village that a marathon retrospective of 20th-Century highlights took place. Hyman rounded up more than 30 local instrumentalists for a program that ranged from Scott Joplin to Elliott Carter. Four Chicago composers wrote new pieces for the event. Most of the performances were top notch and, not surprisingly, intimate in feel.
– Lyric Opera’s “Macbeth”: Has it yet occurred to Lyric’s management that director David Alden might harbor a grudge against singers besides nursing a death-wish for beloved warhorses? In his retro-trash production of Verdi’s “Macbeth,” he repeated the worn gimmick–first evident in “Wozzeck” and carried to an absurd brink in last year’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”–of using handy pop-cultural emblems and references to evoke tawdriness beyond redemption.
– Chicago Opera Theater’s “Tales of Hoffmann”: Erstwhile artistic director Carl Ratner often comes up with outlandish ways to update the classics. Some turned out to be inspired; others fell flat. Re-casting Offenbach’s romantic poet Hoffmann as cinema’s enfant terrible Orson Welles seemed intriguing on paper, but Ratner’s staging strained hard to look like a ’40s fashion parade of celebrities in top hats and slinky gowns. The singers posed rather than acted, adding to the incoherence of meshing the opera’s plot and Welles’ life. Even worse, the singing was barely adequate, despite lush orchestral support.
