If cancellations have become epidemic lately at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, audience members should summon patience and assure themselves that the recent rash of podium no-shows was just a fluke. After all, Riccardo Muti is due back in town in little more than a week, and all presumably will be right with the symphonic world.
The loss of John Eliot Gardiner from this weekend’s guest roster denied listeners the chance to hear what the British early music specialist would do with 20th century repertory not associated with him. But all was decidedly not lost at Thursday’s concert in Orchestra Hall: Leonard Slatkin stepped into the breach, taking up the same program Gardiner would have conducted had not he suffered the recurrence of a shoulder injury.
As it turned out, Slatkin had ample time on his hands, since musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, of which he is music director, have been on strike since Oct. 4, making theirs the longest work stoppage in that orchestra’s history.
Detroit Symphony members whom the CSO had brought in as substitutes for our weekend concerts were joined by CSO colleagues sympathetic to their cause (including bassist Stephen Lester, head of the orchestra players committee) in distributing handbills before the concert outside Symphony Center. The handbills read, in part, that the “musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra support the DSO musicians in their efforts to achieve a contract that will preserve their orchestra.” The show of solidarity went without incident.
Back inside, the program of Elgar, Stravinsky and Bartok also came off smoothly, for the most part. Slatkin, whose association with the Chicago Symphony goes back nearly 40 years, was in firm control of music that thrives on cool executive intelligence. And the orchestra sounded in good form, apart from the recurrent flubs of the principal horn.
The curtain raiser, Elgar’s concert overture “In the South,” was energized in such a way as to celebrate its roast-beefy opulence of orchestration. Slatkin, a practiced Elgarian, elicited a warm, tender sound from the strings in the pages preceding the return of the main material. The sternly martial undergirding of the low brass further stressed the score’s kinship with the tone poems of Richard Strauss.
In Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements one missed the razor-sharp delineation of textural detail that marked Pierre Boulez’s recent CSO performance (available on a recent CSO Resound release). Still, Slatkin turned in a decisive, vigorous reading of his own, bringing strong forward thrust and point to the jostling neo-classical rhythms while keeping sonorities properly clean and grounded.
An even stiffer test of the orchestra’s – any orchestra’s – virtuoso mettle is Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, which followed after intermission. The CSO has practically owned this colorful showpiece since the Fritz Reiner days, releasing no fewer than five recordings under as many music directors within the last half-century.
Slatkin’s reading favored flat-out symphonic brilliance more than atmosphere, although his subtle handling of dynamics as the cellos crept into the hazy opening pages of the first movement was much to be admired. Much was made of the Shostakovich parody in the “Interrupted Intermezzo,” capped off by a hearty razz berry from Charles Vernon’s trombone. The woodwinds gave much aural delight, from the jaunty bassoon duo to the piercing high piccolo.
Apart from some sour horn intonation at the very end of the first movement and a shaky entrance by the violins at the outset of the breakneck finale, all was well in Bartok Land. Each first-desk soloist earned his and her vociferous ovation.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. $24-$207; 312-294-3000, cso.org.
