Mei-Ann Chen airmails resume to Sinfonietta

CONCERT REVIEW | Season’s first guest conductor floats like ‘Butterfly’

Chicago Sun-Times
By Bryant Manning
October 6, 2009
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The Chicago Sinfonietta’s 23rd season, which opened Sunday afternoon in River Forest, spotlights several exciting guest conductors this year as the orchestra continues its search to replace the venerable Paul Freeman.

While no one can ever quite fill the shoes of an orchestra’s founder and longtime music director, the pickings for a replacement are hardly slim. Taiwan-born conductor Mei-Ann Chen, who shared conducting duties in a highly engaging “East vs. West” program Sunday at Lund Auditorium, brought immediate excitement with her caffeinated podium presence and near-fanatical respect for dynamics.

Now enjoying a one-year post as assistant conductor to Marin Alsop of the Baltimore Symphony, Chen has a flair for a global repertoire that dovetails with the Chicago Sinfonietta’s mission. She led Chinese erhu player Betti Xiang in a wondrously sweeping account of “The Butterfly Lovers” Concerto (1959), a popular fairy tale scored to music by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao. The erhu, a tiny cellolike instrument that sits on the lap, sounds closer to a sluggish violin with its teary-eyed tone and naturally bending notes. Xiang brought an expressive depth to her performance that only a 30-year veteran of the instrument can.

An-Lun Huang’s sprightly “Saibei Dance” was a “Carmen”-esque thrill, while Ravel’s whimsical “Mother Goose” Suite had everyone looking back on their youth (and quite literally, too, with a crying baby in the audience interrupting several key moments). From the podium, Chen etched such a graphically shaded account in both works that it would be a shame to not see her back in town very soon.

Chicagoan Jeremy Jordan, 20, is a tremendously talented young pianist in just his third year at the Juilliard School. With Freeman as conductor for Rachmaninoff’s seldom heard Piano Concerto No. 1, Jordan fused an old-school austerity with a punch-the-clock workmanship that recalled the old Russian composer himself. Jordan isn’t a virtuoso who strives to draw eyes to himself, and you could see this best in his soberly drawn cadenzas. He didn’t rhapsodize carelessly, either, with the innately flowery poetry of the andante, and we thank for him it.

With a harder-edged tone and natural booming bass, Jordan could benefit from bringing out more treble in his playing. To his credit, balances between orchestra and piano were often weighted to the former, which should have improved when the program was repeated Monday in the cleaner acoustical space of Orchestra Hall.

Jordan’s jazz chops also informed an impressive encore, his own transcription of Wagner’s Siegfried’s Funeral March from “Gotterdammerung.” With Jordan filling out the work’s violent episodes to create a three-dimensional canvas, it was inspiring to see a young musician so confidently setting his place at the table with a musical god.