David Robertson is without doubt one of the fastest-rising and most talented American conductors of his generation. He seems to be everywhere these days, having recently taken over St. Louis Symphony tour concerts at Carnegie Hall from an ailing Hans Vonk. The prediction here is that he will garner a major U.S. post sometime after 2006 when the next round of symphonic musical chairs begins. He deserves to.
Thursday night at Symphony Center, Robertson began a two-week guest engagement with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by offering an intriguing concept: Stravinsky as a neo-classical window on Mozart. This turned out to be not so great a stylistic stretch as it appeared, since both composers made the aesthetics of style a defining element in their music.
Robertson began with that marvelous stylization of baroque models and manners, Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto. It tied in nicely with the CSO’s season-long survey of the Bach “Brandenburg” Concertos, on which the 1938 concerto is modeled.
To Robertson fell the tricky business of balancing 16 instrumentalists, keeping textures clear, rhythms incisive and accents precise. He succeeded in propelling irregular phrases exactly, within an obstacle course of shifting meters.
Once past the savory hors d’oeuvre, it was time for the Stravinskyan entree, the Violin Concerto in D. The 1931 work represents the composer’s back-to-Bach manner at its most inspired. What a soloist needs above all is a dexterous bow arm and enough tonal strength to set the angular solo lines in stark relief against the orchestra. Gil Shaham delivered the goods brilliantly on every front.
With an ideal combination of buoyancy and weight, the Illinois-born virtuoso made the music dance without benefit of the Balanchine choreography. He got resilient support from the orchestra and Robertson, who underplayed nothing and gave it a texture closer to chamber than orchestral music.
The rich, cushiony string sound and full wind sonorities in the early and late Mozart works — Violin Concerto No. 2 in D (K.211) and Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”) — made a striking foil to the crisper, leaner, more modest Mozart Christopher Hogwood’s Academy of Ancient Music had brought us the night before.
This was the first CSO subscription performance of this charming, if musically slight, Mozart concerto. I was glad to have heard it in so smartly turned a reading as Shaham’s. It was impossible to resist the patrician poise of his phrasing, and if his vibrato seemed a bit ripe for Mozart, his immaculate fiddle playing swept all else aside.
No anemic Mozart playing for Robertson, either. He threw himself into the “Linz” Symphony with full-blooded vigor, using a full complement of players and drawing richly detailed responses from them. He is conducting Sunday’s MusicNOW contemporary event and a Civic Orchestra concert on March 11. You owe it to yourself to catch this gifted dervish in his musical element.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday; phone 312-294-3000.
– CSO music director Daniel Barenboim next week will play two piano recitals in the Mideast — “in the spirit of peace, in light of the political turmoil in this region,” according to a statement. On Tuesday in Jerusalem, he will perform the last three Beethoven sonatas in a concert presented by the Jerusalem Symphony. On Wednesday he will travel to the West Bank to play in Ramallah, at the invitation of the local music conservatory.
