Among conductors of today, it does seem that making symphonic programs that are varied but coherent, enjoyable but challenging, is a dying art form.
Michael Gielen, bless him, is a shining exception. The programs the guest conductor is presenting at Symphony Center in his two weeks with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are fine examples of enlightened program-making by a musician willing to take risks and who is able to persuade his players to be risk-takers too.
Beethoven and Schoenberg, those mighty bookends of the German musical tradition, were the subjects of his investigation Thursday night. Two of the three Beethoven pieces were unusual — chamber music by that composer as arranged by Franz Liszt and Gielen himself. Both represent homages to the colossus that was Beethoven.
Gielen combined them with a homage of another sort — Schoenberg’s symphonic poem “Pelleas und Melisande” (1903), which honors the late-Romantic tonal tradition that Schoenberg would tear asunder following his conversion to the serialist gospel.
The two transcriptions — Liszt’s arrangement for orchestra of the slow movement from Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio, and Gielen’s string-orchestra version of the “Grosse Fuge” — were combined with the “Egmont” Overture as a kind of Beethoven “symphony” in three movements.
For anyone who still had the velvety strings of the Saito Kinen Orchestra in his or her ears from the previous night’s concert, the harsh string sound Gielen drew from the CSO in the “Egmont” Overture came as a shock. This surely was deliberate on his part, as if he were giving us a musical portrait of the freedom-loving Beethoven shaking his fist at political tyranny.
After this strenuous account, the “Andante cantabile” came as sweet, soothing balm to the ears. Liszt’s transcription bears almost no resemblance to the original, nor does it sound very much like Liszt — call it a beautiful anomaly. The scoring is undeniably effective, with rippling harp arpeggios and discreet instrumental conversation that elicited lovely playing from various CSO principals.
But it was Gielen’s bold arrangement of Beethoven’s “Great Fugue” that made the strongest impression of the evening.
Without changing a note of the original, Gielen has given the piece (originally scored for string quartet) a spatial dimension by tossing the angular melodic lines back and forth between string choirs and individual players. Themes are Webernized, fragmented; the eight double basses mark the rhythm with snapped Bartok pizzicatos. This great, garrulous landmark of contrapuntal mastery is at once clarified and made to sound astonishingly modern. There is no getting around the difficulty of the string writing, which exposed weaknesses of intonation and ensemble that no doubt will be corrected in later performances.
“Pelleas und Melisande” is tonal music trembling on the brink of atonality; after this, there would be no turning back for Schoenberg. With its thick scoring and overripe chromaticism, the 45-minute tone poem works itself up to one ecstatic climax after another. It takes a conductor with a firm sense of perspective to save the music from its own excesses. Gielen did so in a tightly argued, clear-headed reading. The price of this intellectual rigor was a lack of atmosphere. Hardly any of the score’s softer dynamics were realized, while some of the brass playing was painfully loud.
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The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday; phone 312-294-3000.
