Classical Music

[Hasty Ent]

sorry about the bad link, here's the text (by the way, the two Webern pieces were heartbreakingly beautiful, absolutely transcendent):

Harris Theater up to conductor's challenge

By John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune music critic, Published December 16, 2003

It seemed fitting that the first concert of ensemble music to be given in the new Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance downtown on Sunday evening should be a program of cutting-edge modernism by the Chicago Chamber Musicians under Pierre Boulez.

What better music to explore the auditorium's sonic properties from a variety of perspectives? And who better to lead the exploration than one of modernism's most influential avatars, who has long been involved in the creation of performing spaces in which new music can thrive.

If the $52.7 million Harris Theater blithely thumbs its nose at tradition, so did the composers Edgard Varese, Elliott Carter, Anton Webern and Harrison Birtwistle, each of whom was represented by a landmark work. Their contrasting scores made up as rigorously difficult a program as could be imagined. Few groups would even have attempted it.

Thanks to the X-ray-like clarity and precision of Boulez's direction and the virtuoso skills of the CCM players and guests, however, the music spoke persuasively for itself.

The various ensembles were positioned deep within a wooden stage shell, and the aural evidence suggested the enclosure did its job just fine. I sampled the sound from seats in two locations, the first fairly close to the stage, the second roughly in the middle of the auditorium. The acoustics seemed uniformly good in both places.

The acid test of the hall's ability to convey the softest possible dynamics of a string quartet was Webern's Five Movements (1909) and Six Bagatelles (1913). The music's delicate wisps and sudden flurries of atonal sound, as played by members of the Chicago String Quartet and cellist Stephen Balderston, emerged with a clean, even startling immediacy.

At the other end of the sonic spectrum were the two large ensemble pieces, Varese's "Integrales" (1925) and Birtwistle's "Secret Theater" (1984). Both are scored for roughly the same number of players--15 winds, brass and percussion in the Varese, 14 strings, winds, brass, piano and percussion in the Birtwistle.

Under Boulez's steady, decisive hand, the eruptive blocks of sounds in "Integrales" took on a highly charged intensity that was echoed by the wordless drama of "Secret Theater."

The Birtwistle divides its cast into a seated Continuum group and a standing Cantus group, and various players move from one ensemble to the other. The music percolates with dense, florid instrumental activity that is always tightly controlled even when it sounds hectic. Piling many layers of rhythmic and metrical complexity on top of one another doesn't make it easy for the ear or mind to follow, but Boulez made doing so a challenging and bracing adventure.

The ever-productive Carter, who turned 95 last week, was represented by his song cycle, "A Mirror on Which to Dwell" (1975). These settings of six rather oblique poems by Elizabeth Bishop are framed by a busy web of splintery, often delicate instrumental gestures through which Valdine Anderson wove her bright, vibrant soprano. Fortunately, she had the accuracy and the high extension needed to nail the jaggedly leaping intervals. It was gratifying to see such a large, enthusiastic turnout for a tough contemporary program that refused to make concessions to audience members who might have sought more comforting sounds at holiday time. No "Jingle Bells" here, not even in an Elliott Carter arrangement.