At his Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concert Thursday at Symphony Center, guest conductor David Robertson felt a bit of verbal explanation was needed for a mixed grill program that surrounded the U.S. premiere of Luciano Berio’s “SOLO for Trombone and Orchestra” (1999-2000) with works by Berlioz and Sibelius.
Beyond the fact that all three works reveal “what brass instruments can bring to the orchestra,” “each composer had a radically different way of looking at music,” he told the crowd.
Precisely how different was made clear by his vivid, closely argued accounts of the Berio work as well as Berlioz’s “Corsair” Overture and the Sibelius First Symphony in E minor.
It’s hard to say what startled the audience more — the exotic soundscape Berio conjured up for the solo trombone, or the gifted performer who put this baritonal wallflower of the brass choir center stage. Christian Lindberg, the Swedish virtuoso making his CSO debut, wore a pink sport shirt and leather pants. He looked as if he had mixed up his musical gigs and wound up at Orchestra Hall instead of the House of Blues.
But his funky attire seemed just right for a work that stands defiantly apart from almost everything most listeners associate with the concerto form.
Instead of the solo instrument and the orchestra working in opposition, Berio had the CSO trombones operating as “shadow” soloists — echoing Lindberg’s trilling, flutter-tonguing, “vocal” multiphonics and other virtuosic techniques.
Instead of resolving their differences, the orchestra gradually fell away near the end, leaving the final quiet words to the trombone.
“SOLO” is a strong piece by Italy’s distinguished senior composer. To hear Berio’s sonic investigations at their most distinctive, however, you must go back to the remarkable series of solo instrumental works he calls “Sequenzas.” “SOLO” (no explanation is given for the upper-case spelling) sounds rather like an orchestral reworking of Berio’s trombone “Sequenza V.”
It requires a trombonist as astonishingly talented as Lindberg to display the enormous range and virtuosic abilities of this normally unsung member of the brass choir. I cannot imagine a more brilliant, more fiercely committed reading than the one he and Robertson gave us Thursday night.
The beaming soloist bounded back with an encore — the opening movement of his own “Koka Koka,” a rude little postmodernist joke that mixed music, speech and foot-stamping.
As if all that weren’t enough, Lindberg even took a turn as a CSO section trombonist for the Sibelius symphony. He and his newfound colleagues gave it a reading full of taut, windswept intensity. Beginning with Larry Combs’ moody clarinet solo, the music surged with inexorable force, perfectly controlled.
The sound Robertson got from the orchestra was just right — clean, hard, blazing with dark fire. This stunning performance was apt testimony to the Finnish composer’s fierce originality as a symphonist.
The mighty trombone and tuba flourishes in the final pages of the Berlioz overture — absent from the local repertory for more than 30 years — neatly anticipated the Berio showpiece.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday; phone 312-294-3000.
