{"id":78148,"date":"1998-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1998-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/chicagos-new-sound\/"},"modified":"2024-03-22T08:37:12","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T12:37:12","slug":"chicagos-new-sound","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/chicagos-new-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago\u2019s new sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cM<\/font>ake no little plans\u201d was the advice of Daniel Burnham, the man who, in 1903, designed and built the original Orchestra Hall, home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Whatever other reservations can be voiced about the current management of the orchestra, even the flinty Chicago architect couldn\u2019t accuse the powers that be of taking timid half-measures in the recent renovation of the hall. Three years and $110 million in the making, the celebrated orchestra\u2019s new, greatly expanded digs at 220 South Michigan Avenue were rededicated in October as Symphony Center.<\/p>\n

The extensive renovation comes at, as the Chinese say, interesting times for the fortunes of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The tenure of Daniel Barenboim as the orchestra\u2019s music director\u2014launched in 1991 with starry, well-received events such as the clever, semi-staged performances of Mozart operas\u2014has now settled into a kind of sanctioned and complacent mediocrity, with performances that are occasionally inspired, often commonplace, and sometimes downright awful. While the technical level of individual musicians is higher than ever, the standard of the ensemble has slipped, to the point where sloppy playing is too often the norm, a far cry from the orchestra\u2019s razor-sharp corporate musicianship under the late, lamented Sir Georg Solti. Barenboim remains indisputably one of the world\u2019s greatest pianists, yet on the podium his performances often suffer from a desire to make an Individual Statement, which can result in a mannered, portentous brand of music-making, heavy and rhythmically dull \u2014a kind of Furtw\u00e4ngler Lite, without Furtw\u00e4ngler\u2019s dynamic tension or architectural grasp. By all accounts, a charming, cultured, and highly intelligent man, Barenboim, after six seasons as music director, remains a remote and enigmatic figure to many in the Chicago audience and, for that matter, to many in his orchestra.<\/p>\n

Yet with the opening of Symphony Center, the suspicion, mistrust, and ill will of recent years between the orchestra\u2019s management and local critics were cast aside\u2014 for the moment. While some skeptics have grumbled that the massive renovation was extreme overkill\u2014a case of bulldozing one\u2019s house for better ventilation\u2014one can hardly castigate the planners for not heeding Burnham\u2019s advice. Spearheaded by the energetic, often controversial president of the orchestra, Henry Fogel, the costly expansion and refurbishment of the Chicago hall (designed by architect Joseph Gonzalez of the prestigious firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with Lawrence Kirkegaard as project acoustician) adds a new wing west and north of the existing structure, encompassing a 300-seat recital hall, an interactive learning center, and a 250-seat restaurant. The exterior roof has been raised twenty-five feet to increase bass response and reverberation time by about 50 percent, and the air-conditioning and heating has been relocated to another building to reduce noise. The most striking difference is the new terraced seating behind the orchestra and the imposing eleven-ton steel and glass canopy over the stage, designed both to reflect sound more directly to the audience on the main floor and to enable the musicians on stage to hear one another better.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that, architecturally, the new Symphony Center is a stunner, close to an unqualified success. The gold trim and new terraced seating behind the stage lend a warmth and pleasing intimacy to the previously rather sterile room. The cool lines and understated formality of the new wing\u2019s ninety-foot rotunda, winding staircase, and multi-level arcade create a dignified but open and unstuffy environment. The only design disaster is in the new Buntrock Hall, where the cement walls make it look less like a chamber music venue than a prison recreation yard.<\/p>\n

But the raison d\u2019\u00eatre for the extensive refurbishment is acoustical enhancement, and, while there is definitely a greater warmth, resonance, and bass response, there remain, despite hosannas from some of the press, persistent and unsettling problems. To these ears there has been a major trade-off in brilliance, clarity, amplitude, and sonic impact, a good chunk of the top frequency range seemingly sheared off along with the original roof. With weeks of renovation work remaining and much fine-tuning still ahead, at this writing the acoustical revampment is very much a work in progress.<\/p>\n

O<\/font>n the first Saturday in October, with the threat of a strike averted by an eleventh-hour agreement the previous night (the last-minute holdup for extra Rheingold, not the orchestra\u2019s finest hour), Chicago\u2019s glitterati turned out in their well-heeled best for the sold-out gala opening concert. After a sumptuous banquet, the glitzy first-nighters and a phalanx of journalists and music critics from the four corners of the globe repaired to the gleaming new Symphony Center hall for the main event.<\/p>\n

Preceded by the season- and hall-opening National Anthem\u2014a nice tradition in an era not ostentatious with patriotic fervor\u2014and much self-congratulatory speech-making, the concert proper opened with the \u201cNimrod\u201d section from Elgar\u2019s Enigma Variations<\/i>, played in honor of Solti. The long string-lines of the late-Romantic elegy formed a fitting homage to the former music director laureate, performed with a loving legato by the burnished strings, nicely molded by Barenboim.<\/p>\n

The evening\u2019s requisite star-power was provided by Barenboim\u2019s colleague Placido Domingo, who, in excerpts from Verdi\u2019s Otello<\/i>, showed once again why he reigns supreme today in the role of the haunted Moor. While Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski\u2019s light timbre didn\u2019t quite match the celebrated tenor\u2019s virile vocalizing in the Act One duet, Domingo\u2019s anguished rendering of Otello\u2019s death scene brought a galvanizing theatrical intensity that belied the gala-concert setting.<\/p>\n

Some of Daniel Barenboim\u2019s best moments in Chicago have come with his performances conducting from the keyboard, and so it proved again with his stylish performance of Mozart\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 27, the centerpiece of the tripartite program. The relaxed bonhomie of the finale was tossed off with just the right delicate vivacity, yet it was in the central Larghetto that the performance really shone. With beautifully poised phrasing, Barenboim underlined the elegiac, valedictory quality of Mozart\u2019s final essay in this form, the sensitive response of the reduced orchestra to Barenboim\u2019s rapt playing like chamber music writ large.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a great fan of Pierre Boulez\u2019s knotty, atonal musical algorithms, but with the umpteenth cancellation of the premiere of the CSO<\/font> principal guest conductor\u2019s Notations V-VIII<\/i> <\/font><\/i>, the lack of music with some bite to it was sorely felt. Further, with the wealth of home-grown music to choose from, it\u2019s hard to understand why Copland\u2019s deadly Lincoln Portrait<\/i> got the nod as the obligatory American work, unless it\u2019s the slender reed of the Illinois connection. Barenboim showed a surprisingly deft hand with Copland\u2019s Americana fripperies, while the authoritative and resonant narration of Lincoln\u2019s words by seventy-seven-year-old bass William Warfield brought a dignity and resonance to this lightweight occasional work. <\/font><\/p>\n

The spotlight on the music of Beethoven this season got off to a less than stellar start with a dogged, rough-and-ready performance of the German composer\u2019s Fifth Symphony, showing Barenboim in his breezy auto-pilot mode at its worst. There was little to complain about, however, in the conductor\u2019s handling of the long evening\u2019s closing work, Bruckner\u2019s Te Deum<\/i>. Though the CSO<\/font> Chorus\u2019s words didn\u2019t project clearly in the new environment, Barenboim managed his large forces with admirable control, building the double fugue of veneration and praise into a heaven-storming finale, a jubilant conclusion to the program. In this Clintonian era of the triumph of surface presentation and \u201cspin\u201d over reality and honest utility, it was the music rather than the venue that managed to remain the message, something in which we can all take comfort.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the opening concert at Chicago\u2019s Symphony Center<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1512,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tags":[637],"department_id":[558],"issue":[3133],"section":[],"acf":{"participants":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_65fd9fbaa0408","label":"Authors","name":"participants","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"user","value":null,"menu_order":0,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"role":"","return_format":"array","multiple":1,"allow_null":0,"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"participants","_valid":1}},"page_number":{"simple_value_formatted":45,"value_formatted":45,"value":"45","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_647e2bc0c860c","label":"Page 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