Composers who seek to overwhelm us with grandiloquence may simply be over-compensating for what is not there musically. Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Seven Gates of Jerusalem,” which had its local premiere by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus Thursday night under the composer’s direction, seems an unfortunate case in point.
In terms of performing forces, this 70-minute vocal symphony packed so many singers and orchestra players into Orchestra Hall that one idly wondered whether the fire marshal would close down the place. Director Duain Wolfe’s choristers, divided into three groups, occupied the terrace seating. Below them was a huge orchestra that included four percussion groups. Outside the auditorium stood a platoon of extra woodwinds and brass that at key moments punctuated the textures with echo effects.
The distinguished Polish composer enlists this huge conflatus to commemorate Jerusalem’s 3,000-year history, drawing his vocal texts from the biblical Psalms and books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. “Seven Gates of Jerusalem” had its world premiere in Jerusalem in January 1997.
Penderecki has written a string of religious works as fine as anything the late 20th Century has given us. But “Seven Gates of Jerusalem” represents a giant step backward for the composer of that modern choral masterpiece, the St. Luke Passion of 1966. Most of the new piece sounds portentous and hollow. Nearly everything is pumped up in such an obvious, theatrical way that an audience cannot fail to be impressed.
Penderecki’s musical style continues in the vein of tonal-modal romanticism he has been assiduously mining since the mid-1970s. “Seven Gates of Jerusalem” is full of the solemn pedal points, stabbing ostinato rhythms and slithering chromatic lines one recalls from his “Paradise Lost,” which Lyric Opera premiered here in 1978. None of these is terribly interesting. At best, this oratorio reveals a skilled craftsman raiding from various 20th Century nests, lacking anything original to say.
Penderecki is an able conductor of his own music and he did his best to keep the excitement level high. His efforts were partly undone by the problematic acoustics of the hall, which clamped the lid on resonance just when the music needed to soar unimpeded. The chorus had been well prepared and its mighty shouts of praise for the Almighty gave the brasses some fearsome competition. The choristers’ exactitude of intonation, ensemble and diction were, as usual, admirable.
The orchestra was augmented by batteries of plastic tubes called tubaphones that produced a dry, clattery effect in the wild scherzo. Of the soloists, the most interesting were alto Jadwiga Rappe, whose fiercely moving lines framed the second section, “If I forget thee, Jerusalem”; and Alberto Mizrahi, who declaimed the Hebrew text from Ezekiel with great command and conviction. The other solo singers were sopranos Bozena Harasimowicz-Haas and Izabella Klosinska, tenor Jorma Silvasti and bass Romuald Tesarowicz.
Although translations were helpfully projected on a screen over the stage, the program book contained no texts.
The concert began with a curious reading of Schubert’s Fifth Symphony–urgent and clear but so drily objective in interpretation as to be no interpretation at all.
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The program will be repeated Saturday evening. Phone 312-294-3000.
