Chicago Classical Music
By Elliot Mandel
May 18, 2010
original link
The Chicago Sinfonietta closed out its season Monday night at Symphony Center in a program showcasing, as it has done all year, some of the brightest young talent in the orchestral world.
The Sinfonietta’s longtime director, Paul Freeman, opened the concert with Mozart’s brisk and festive Overture to “Der Schauspieldirekter.” He followed with the same composer’s first movement of the Sinfonia Concertante, featuring violinist Ilmar Gavilán and violist Juan-Miguel Hernandez of the Harlem Quartet. While performances of neither piece lacked energy, they seemed to serve merely as a warm-up for an otherwise lively concert.
Guest conductor John McLaughlin Williams led the orchestra in the remainder of a program that featured, in his words, “populist music.” He gave the audience a guide to George Frederick McKay’s “Variants on a Texas Tune,” having the orchestra play excerpts to illustrate the twists and turns of the piece. At the risk of giving away the entire piece before performing it, Williams made an instant connection with the audience.
The Harlem Quartet, a dynamic group of virtuoso players, joined Williams and the Sinfonietta in Michael Abels’ “Delights and Dances,” written for the quartet. Relying on American idioms of bluegrass and blues, the ride begins with an incantation from the cello, which is picked up by the viola. Before long, all four instruments trade riffs as the orchestra holds down a pizzicato groove. Violinist Gavilán easily shrugged off fiddle licks not unlike Mark O’Connor, trading dialogue with his counterpart, Melissa White. Violist Hernandez reveled in the music, loving each glissando and blue note gesture. Though cellist Russell Rolen subbed for the Quartet’s regular cellist, Desmond Neysmith, his rich tone and fat bass line seemed a natural fit. Clearly, the Quartet had not only the personality, but the chops to pull off such a piece. The crowd wanted more, and the Quartet obliged with a fitting arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train.”
To close, Williams conducted the Sinfonietta in Zoltán Kodály’s “Dances of Galanta,” a piece fraught with technical and emotional torment. The stately and melancholic theme undergoes several variations, emulating folk music of the composer’s native Hungary. Williams inspired a passionate reading from the orchestra, further enhanced by impressive solos from the flute, oboe, clarinet, and horn, completing a program of music that, simply put, looked like a lot of fun to play.
Copyright © 2010 Chicago Classical Music
event key