Mutter 2017
Performance Detail
Andris Nelsons conducts Williams, Tchaikovsky and Berlioz featuring violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter
Koussevitzky Music Shed - Lenox, MA
Program, Notes & Audio
Featured Performers
John WILLIAMS - Markings, for solo violin, strings, and harp (world premiere)
TCHAIKOVSKY - Violin Concerto
BERLIOZ - Symphonie fantastique (52 min)
Full Program Notes -
Closing out the weekend on Sunday, July 16, Andris Nelsons and the BSO are joined by violinist Anne Sophie Mutter for the world premiere of Boston Pops Conductor Laureate John Williams' Markings, for solo violin, strings, and harp. Ms. Mutter also joins the orchestra for Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, one of the most popular concertos for the instrument. Berlioz's dazzling Symphonie fantastique completes the program.
Additional Information
Immediately following Sunday afternoon's performance Deutsche Grammophon recording artist Anne-Sophie Mutter will be signing copies of her recent recordings at the tent by the Main Gate.
12noon-2pm, Tanglewood Grounds
On Sunday afternoons, enjoy new and exciting events for all ages to enhance your Tanglewood experience. Activities that take place at various locations throughout the grounds include local food tastings and other specialties of the region, face painting, and Qigong, games for families, and more!
Kids' Corner Kids' Corner offers craft activities that connect to the day's musical program in a casual, drop-in atmosphere.
THE PERCEPTION AND MEASUREMENT OF TIME How we perceive time has a profound effect on the choices musicians and composers make. A "talk with music" on the concept of capturing and experiencing time; with BSO Associate Conductor Ken-David Masur, pianist Melinda Lee Masur, and students from the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.
Free Tanglewood Tour The Boston Symphony Association of Volunteers offers free walking tours of the Tanglewood campus that last approximately one hour and include visits to the Koussevitzky Music Shed, Ozawa Hall, other music facilities, the Visitors Center history rooms, and more. In the event of inclement weather, tours will meet informally under cover.
Podcasts are Available for this Performance! Listen
Apply Promo Code
Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood
297 West Street, Lenox, MA
(M-F: 10-5pm, Sat: 12:30-4:30pm)
Tanglewood Box Office (in-season)
(M-F: 10-5pm, Sat: 4-8:30pm, Sun: 10-intermission)
Mutter 2017
Wistar at The Mutter Museum
Wistar at The Mutter Museum
Wednesday, November 15, 2017 - 6:00pm
The Mütter Museum
19 S. 22nd Street
Philadelphia, PA, 19103
Join us for a special viewing of The Wistar Insitute's pop-up exhibit at the Mütter Museum followed by a program discussing Philadelphia as the birthplace of American Medicine. Speakers include Stanley Plotkin, M.D., CPP Fellow and Wistar emeritus professor, and Anna Dhody, director of Mütter Institute and curator of the Mütter Museum.
This event is co-sponsored by the Mütter Museum and The Wistar Institute.
Connect with Wistar:
Philadelphia, PA 19104
JOIN US IN SAVING LIVES
Please make a 2013 year-end donation and help us cure cancer and other deadly diseases.
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Tour Dates 2018
Anne-Sophie Mutter concert tickets are on sale. You can find the list of Anne-Sophie Mutter tour dates here.
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a German violinist. Supported early in her career by Herbert von Karajan, she has built a strong reputation for championing contemporary music with several works being composed specially for her including by Henri Dutilleux, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutosławski, Wolfgang Rihm and Sofia Gubaidulina.
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Be the first to know when they tour near you.
6,631 fans get concert alerts for this artist.
Upcoming concerts (1)
- Monday 22 January 2018
Don’t miss out.
Track this event and we’ll remind you when it’s coming up.
Past concerts (105) See all
- Tuesday 14 November 2017
Die Glocke , Bremen, Germany Domsheide 6-8
Festspielhaus Baden-Baden , Baden-Baden, Germany Beim Alten Bahnhof 2
Philharmonie De Paris , Paris, France 221 Avenue Jean Jaurès
mutter
verb (used without object)
to utter words indistinctly or in a low tone, often as if talking to oneself; murmur.
to complain murmuringly; grumble.
Definition of mutter (continued)
to make a low, rumbling sound.
verb (used with object)
to utter indistinctly or in a low tone: to mutter complaints.
the act or utterance of a person who mutters.
Origin of mutter
1325–75; Middle English moteren, perhaps frequentative of moot 1 ( Old English mōtian to speak); see -er 6
Related Forms
- noun : mutterer
- adverb : mutteringly
- adjective : unmuttered
- adjective : unmuttering
- adverb : unmutteringly
See more synonyms for mutter
Grammar Greats and Gaffes
Translate
Examples from the News
- As Democrats mutter privately that their Senate majority is sinking beneath the waves, their leadership has sent out an SOS.
The Only Way for Democrats to Win
The Stupidest Hugo Chávez Hagiographies From the Yanquis Who Loved Him
- "No living aunt ever looked as you do now," Kitty will mutter, shaking her head.
The Bacillus of Beauty
F. Hopkinson Smith
The Underdog
The Prisoner of Zenda
L'Assommoir
Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and Pianist Lambert Orkis to Tour the U.S., Spring 2017
Globally-renowned violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and her longtime musical partner pianist Lambert Orkis give 11 performances across the United States in Spring 2017. The duo have spent nearly 30 years making music together, resulting in numerous successful Deutsche Grammophon recordings, earning Grammy® Awards, an ECHO Award, as well as a Choc de l'Année Award. The recital program will be played in seven cities including San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall, New York's Carnegie Hall and Washington DC's Kennedy Center, with a program including works by Sebastian Currier - who previously wrote a number of other works for Mrs. Mutter such as Aftersong (1994) and Ringtone Variations (2013) - Mozart, Respighi, and Saint-Saëns. Mrs. Mutter concludes the tour with a four-date engagement with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andris Nelsons, where the concert program features selections by Tchaikovsky and Nostalghia by Toru Takemitsu, which Mrs. Mutter played at her 35th Anniversary concert of her Japanese debut.
For 40 years, Anne-Sophie Mutter has sustained a career of exceptional musicianship with an unwavering commitment to the future of classical music. Motivated by the desire to promote contemporary music, Mrs. Mutter constantly strives to collaborate with composers and premiere new works. Mrs. Mutter's dedication to the prosperity of living composers is reflected by her nearly 25 world premiere performances by globally renowned composers such as Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutoslawski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir André Previn and Wolfgang Rihm. On the occasion of the violinist's 35th stage anniversary, Deutsche Grammophon launched a comprehensive boxed set with all of the artist's DG recordings, including an extensive collection of rare and unpublished recordings and documentation. Simultaneously, an album dedicated to the violinist was released containing the world premiere recordings of works by Wolfgang Rihm (Lichtes Spiel and Dyade), Sebastian Currier (Time Machines) and Krzysztof Penderecki (Duo concertante): a further tribute to her devotion to contemporary music.
Committed to fostering the great musicians of tomorrow, Mrs. Mutter founded the Friends of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation (Freundeskreis der Anne-Sophie Mutter Stiftung e.V.) in 1997 with the objective of developing the talents of highly gifted classical string players. Students are assisted according to their needs and musical goals, with opportunities such as tuition scholarships, teacher pairing, procuring instruments, arranging master classes or auditions with established musicians and conductors, and making introductions to valuable contacts in the classical music field. Mrs. Mutter frequently performs and tours with the foundation's scholarship students, and in 2011 she created The Mutter Virtuosi - an ensemble of former and current students from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation, whom she introduces to audiences worldwide.
Mrs. Mutter's extensive humanitarian efforts, including dozens of benefit concerts, have resulted in numerous awards and recognition over the course of her distinguished career. She was recently honored as one of the recipients of the 2017 Crystal Award presented at the 47th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Upon receiving the humanitarian award, Mrs. Mutter remarked: "During this four-minute speech of mine, 24 children have died due to malnutrition or undernourishment. According to the United Nations' World Food Programme, almost 800 million people worldwide suffer from hunger, which means roughly every ninth person. Every year, 8 million people die of hunger - which means a death approximately every three seconds. If one could eat resolutions and words, nobody would starve. I appeal to you, ladies and gentlemen, because each one of you is able to make an active and significant contribution to improving the nutrition situation throughout the world."
NORTH AMERICAN RECITAL TOUR:
MOZART Sonata for Piano and Violin in A Major, KV 526
RESPIGHI Violin Sonata in B Minor
SAINT-SAËNS Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, Po 28
March 26, 2017 - 7:00 PM - San Francisco, California, Davies Symphony Hall
March 29, 2017 - 8:00 PM - Chicago, Illinois, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
March 31, 2017 - 7:30 PM - Kansas City, Missouri, Harriman-Jewell Series
April 2, 2017 - 2:00 PM - New York, New York, Carnegie Hall
April 4, 2017 - 7:30 PM - Tallahassee, Florida, Ruby Diamond Concert Hall
April 6, 2017 - 8:00 PM - Naples, Florida, Artis-Naples
TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto, Op. 35
TAKEMITSU Nostalghia (In Memory of Andrei Tarkovskij) for violin and strings
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 6
April 27, 2017 - 8:00 PM - Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Symphony Orchestra
April 28, 2017 - 8:00 PM - Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Symphony Orchestra
April 29, 2017 - 8:00 PM - Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Symphony Orchestra
May 2, 2017 - 8:00 PM - Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Symphony Orchestra
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a musical phenomenon who celebrates 40 years as a virtuoso fixture on the international stages of the world's major concert halls, making her mark on the classical music scene as a soloist, mentor and visionary. The 2016-17 season marks the 40-year anniversary of her debut as a 13 year old soloist at the Salzburg Whitsun Concerts under Herbert von Karajan's baton.
The four-time Grammy® Award winner is fully committed both to the performance of traditional composers and to the future of music: so far she has given world premieres of 24 works by composers including Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutoslawski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir André Previn and Wolfgang Rihm. She has been honored as a Perspectives Artist at Carnegie Hall, as well as New York Philharmonic's Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence.
Furthermore, she dedicates herself to numerous benefit projects and to supporting tomorrow's young musical stars: in the autumn of 1997 she founded the "Association of Friends of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation e.V.", to which the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation was added in 2008. These two charitable institutions provide support for the scholarship recipients, support which is tailored to the fellows' individual needs. Since 2011, Anne-Sophie Mutter has regularly shared the spotlight on stage with her ensemble of fellows, "Mutter Virtuosi".
The year 2017, featuring concerts in Europe in North America, reflects the violinist's musical versatility and illustrates her unparalleled rank in the world of classical music. At the Tanglewood Festival, she performs the world premiere of John Williams' work Markings for solo violin, strings and harp. She also appears at the Salzburg Whitsun and Summer Festivals, at the Lucerne Summer Festival and La Scala in Milan, as well as performing with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She will perform and record Schubert Trout Quintet with Daniil Trifonov and three of her you fellows as well Vivaldi The Four Seasons with the Mutter Virtuosi. Together with pianist Lambert Orkis, she gives recitals in Europe and in North America.
Anne-Sophie Mutter has been awarded the 2017 'Crystal Award' by the World Economic Forum for her services to music education and young artists. In addition she has been awared the German Grand Order of Merit, the French Medal of the Legion of Honour, the Bavarian Order of Merit, the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria, and numerous other honours.
More From This Author
Hot Stories
Leonard Bernstein Exhibition to Feature 100 Artifacts in Philadelphia
Daron Hagen Joins Faculty at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts
Susan Graham to Appear in BSO's 'DAMNATION', Met's 'WIDOW' & More in 2017-18
The Chamber Orchestra Announces Next Improvisational Concert ALL BEETHOVEN
Conductor Nell Flanders to Join The Chelsea Symphony
NY Phil Apprentice and Master Violins Now Available for Students
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to Stage PELLEAS ET MELISANDE
REVIEWS
BWW Review: EMMA MATTHEWS, JACQUELINE DARK, AND TAHU MATHESON at Ukaria Cultural Centre
Two of Australia's favourite artists, Emma Matthews and Jacqueline Dark.
Mutter's Spiral
A Doctor Who Podcast and Blog
MUTTER’S SPIRAL Podcast 143 – LI Who 2017 Preview
MUTTER’S SPIRAL Podcast is back, and we’re previewing the upcoming Long Island Who 5 convention, taking place this weekend in Islip, New York! We’ll look back at last year (our first LI Who) and then dive into what we’re most anticipating about this year’s edition – guests (McCoy! Hussein! Ward! Manning! Oliver! Hines!) and seeing our Doctor Who family, plus all those fun game shows and panels! We will also discuss some news, but there’s no trivia this week.
We’ll be doing mini-podcasts from the convention this coming weekend, so look for those as well!
Take a listen, won’t you? Thanks!
We have new theme music! It’s a track called “Ecstasy” from Purple Planet:
Chicago Classical Review
Mutter lights a fire with Tchaikovsky in CSO’s season-opener
By Michael Cameron
Anne-Sophie Mutter performed Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s season-opening concert Saturday night. File photo: Harald Hoffmann / DG
The day after violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter graced the Symphony Center stage for the gala Symphony Ball in a performance of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 (“Turkish”), the German superstar was again the center of attention in Saturday night’s official season opener for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—this time in a scintillating account of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto under the baton of music director Riccardo Muti.
There is little relief during the orchestra’s 127th season from the conservative programming that has marked the Muti era, so it came a welcome surprise to hear the concert open with Krzysztof Penderecki’s The Awakening of Jacob. The composer himself preferred the English translation The Dream of Jacob, but perhaps the former label was deemed by CSO management more appropriate for the occasion.
Penderecki was loathe to draw direct programmatic inferences in any of his instrumental works, but with its appropriation in the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, The Shining, it’s difficult for some audience members to dissociate the mesmerizing score from the chilly cinematic masterpiece.
The composer requires all wind players to double on the ocarina, an ancient vessel flute that gives the vague impression of a hushed, wordless chorus. Muti gave minimal expressive cues to his forces, choosing to let the otherworldly score unfold deliberately and dispassionately. Among the uniformly fine section work throughout, the lower brass were particularly noteworthy, lending an aura of ominous foreboding that no doubt was the bait that lured Kubrick.
Mutter is celebrating 40 years on the concert stage this season, and her glamorous persona and unapologetically individual interpretations have at times earned her more praise from fans than critics.
But her enthusiastic embrace of rigorous contemporary music is evidence that she takes the printed page quite seriously. Her free-wheeling approach suggests that modern virtuosos who don’t personalize their readings of romantic repertoire are themselves being unfaithful to the expectations of 19th century composers like Tchaikovsky.
Conductor and soloist both imbued the opening pages with a casual approach that belied the fireworks and fissures that followed. Mutter’s sound was remarkably chameleonic, shifting colors with each new melodic gesture, change in tempo, or adjustment in orchestral texture. Her refusal to submit to a predictable interpretive routine was as bracing as it was unsettling, providing interest to each bar of music, but sometimes making connections in the sprawling score difficult for the listener to trace.
Nearly each new section in the first movement was marked with a shift in tempo, and often Muti and his forces needed a few beats to catch up. But the occasional unease in ensemble was more than compensated for by her mastery of the concerto’s considerable physical demands. Her staccatos flew from her bow like machine-gun pops, while her legato phrases were luxuriously liquid. The opening of the slow movement was intoned with nary a wobble of vibrato, and with a hushed breathiness that barely crossed the threshold of audibility. The risks and idiosyncrasies usually paid off, with the exception of a few overwrought portamentos that obscured the pitches they were attempting to connect.
The finale zipped along at a breakneck pace, the soloist barely breaking a sweat through the composer’s tortuous stream of virtuosic exhibitionism. Not surprisingly, Mutter drove the tempo ever faster in the coda, etching the solo part with remarkable clarity given her torrid pace. Muti struggled to keep up, but by the final bar soloist and orchestra were in synch, more or less. The violinist treated her rapturous admirers to a vibrant account of the Gigue from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor as encore.
After this incendiary collaboration, the maestro’s reading of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 seemed tame and lifeless in the early going by comparison. Muti’s insistence on an excessively quiet dynamic led the brass and winds to some tentative playing, and an exaggerated sustain in the principal theme restricted forward momentum until a more satisfying coda. Haydn seemed to be the model for Muti’s effervescent take on the scherzo, a tactic that succeeded only intermittently.
For many, Schumann’s glorious Adagio is the primary reason for the symphony’s continuing inclusion in the canon, and here the maestro didn’t disappoint. Guest oboist Alexander Vvedenskiy, principal of the Louisville Orchestra, soared above the orchestra in splendid fashion, and Muti lovingly molded each sublime phrase in the violins with a brooding, operatic intensity. The finale was nicely paced, well-balanced, and topped off with a vigorous coda.
Book of mutter
Please choose whether or not you want other users to be able to see on your profile that this library is a favorite of yours.
Keep this favorite library private
Find a copy in the library
Finding libraries that hold this item.
Abstract:
The composition of this book requires the reader to participate in constructing links, noticing patterns, and making meaning; it is what Barthes would call a 'writerly text,' welcoming the reader into its many entrances and possibilities. Zambreno's work is an exercise in semiotics, a study of meaning-making, for things that seem intimate, foundational, and basic to being human: history, memory, mother, mourning. * Publishers Weekly, (<b>starred review</b>) * Above all, Book of Mutter is a work of tone; it expresses a failure to transcend grief, written from a place of guilt and shame, in halting and inarticulate gestures. Writing may not change anything, may not heal or even console -- but, like Bourgeois's Cells, it creates a space in which formlessness, pain and chaos are enclosed and held like holy relics in a church. -- Jenny Hendrix * Times Literary Supplement * The book is relentless in its search for meaning and its simultaneous refusal of simplistic acts of closure. Even its structure seems designed to reflect pain intermittently avoided and confronted. Zambreno places her memories into a kind of assemblage piece, where the form shifts with its underlying emotions. -- Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore * Bookforum * Book of Mutter is ultimately a self-consciously unsentimental yet deeply moving book. The distance of its aesthetic styling belies an intense vulnerability and love that emerges through a number of affecting details: her father's handwriting continuing her mother's gardening journal, memories of 'fraught yet tangy' meatloaf, a cream-colored dress with flowers that almost pains the narrator to mention. In a craft lecture reproduced in Semiotext(e)'s magazine Animal Shelter, Zambreno writes, 'All I want is a literature both tender and grotesque.' With Book of Mutter, she finds it. -- Alexander Pines * Bomb Magazine * Among its many concerns -- the death of her mother, grief, autobiography, photography, memory -- are the conventions of book-making itself: It seems as invested in unforming itself as it is in forming itself, and the result exists outside of any of the familiar expectations of genre. -- T. Clutch Fleischmann * The Brooklyn Rail * The slim book of bristling fragments is heavy but moves swiftly, as if laid down in one long fever dream. -- Nate Lippens * Queen Mob's Tea House * As with all her books, Zambreno's sharp and stylish intellectual masonry, her careful gathering of evidence, is a kind of (intentionally) incomplete catharsis. She collects anecdotes like novelist David Markson, but unlike him -- he of the impersonal (and emotionally devastating) story -- she builds an altar to her own past, these anecdotes both personal and yes, sometimes political. -- Amber Sparks * The Fanzine * Barthes, Handke, Louise Bourgeois join the chorus of citations scattered like waymarks through this mournful, fragmentary text, which dwells around, without answering -- as though the attempt were the only answer possible -- the question, which in the text is posed without a question mark: 'What does it mean to write what is not there. To write an absence.' -- Adrian Nathan West * Review 31 * Mutter is unapologetically intellectual, and unapologetically bodily. But while this reader enjoys an intertextual puzzle as much as the next, I found the most compelling threads within Mutter were those bearing witness to the ordinary; sites of lament and also startling beauty. * The Lifted Brow * Kate Zambreno's Book of Mutter is an elegy, an archive, a palimpsest of fragmented memory. It's as if the book's language has broken with the weight of sorrow. -- Anne Yoder * The Millions * The distance of its aesthetic styling belies an intense vulnerability and love that emerges through a number of affecting details: her father's handwriting continuing her mother's gardening journal, memories of 'fraught yet tangy' meatloaf, a cream-colored dress with flowers that almost pains the narrator to mention. -- Claire Marie Healy * Another Magazine * Read more.
Similar Items
Related Subjects: (5)
You may have already requested this item. Please select Ok if you would like to proceed with this request anyway.
Linked Data
Primary Entity
schema:about ; # Authors, American--Family relationships
schema:about ; # Reflections in literature
schema:description " "Composed over thirteen years, Kate Zambreno's Book of Mutter is a tender and disquieting meditation on the ability of writing, photography, and memory to embrace shadows while in the throes—and dead calm—of grief. Book of Mutter is both primal and sculpted, shaped by the author's searching, indexical impulse to inventory family apocrypha in the wake of her mother's death. The text spirals out into a fractured anatomy of melancholy that includes critical reflections on the likes of Roland Barthes, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Darger, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Peter Handke, and others. Zambreno has modeled the book's formless form on Bourgeois's "Cells" sculptures--at once channeling the volatility of autobiography, pain, and childhood, yet hemmed by a solemn sense of entering ritualistic or sacred space. Neither memoir, essay, nor poetry, Book of Mutter is an uncategorizable text that draws upon a repertoire of genres to write into and against silence. It is a haunted text, an accumulative archive of myth and memory that seeks its own undoing, driven by crossed desires to resurrect and exorcise the past. Zambreno weaves a complex web of associations, relics, and references, elevating the prosaic scrapbook into a strange and intimate postmortem/postmodern theater." -- publisher's website. "@en ;
Related Entities
schema:name " Authors, American--Family relationships "@en ;
WorldCat is the world's largest library catalog, helping you find library materials online. Learn more ››
Please sign in to WorldCat
Don't have an account? You can easily create a free account.
Muti, Mutter open CSO season on a familiar note
Most Chicago Symphony Orchestra gala performances are predictable affairs, short and sweet programs that place few demands on orchestra players or audience members. The Symphony Ball concert with which Riccardo Muti and the CSO began the 2017-18 season Friday night at Symphony Center was no exception.
Some brisk tempos could have been motivated as much by the music itself as the need to speed patrons to the post-concert black-tie gala at the Four Seasons, where they were wined and dined and where table packages ranged from $10,000 to $30,000.
The benefit, the largest fundraising event of the year by the CSO Association, took in more than $1.4 million, co-chairs Earl J. and Sandy Rusnak announced from the stage. An association that has posted deficits for the last six fiscal years — last year’s amounted to $1.1 million — can use every penny.
Muti and his multimillion-dollar band got down to more serious subscription-series business Saturday night. I will report on a repeat performance later this week. The German violin superstar Anne-Sophie Mutter served as soloist for both the gala concert and the opening subscription program. Her glamorous presence, typically swathed in a stunning, skin-tight, red-and-black gown, presaged the strong roster of guest artists and conductors promised in the 127th season.
Pressing internal business lies ahead, along with much generic programming that may satisfy conservative audience tastes but hardly makes the CSO an artistic pacesetter among the world’s orchestral elite. Yes, the 60th anniversary of the great Chicago Symphony Chorus will be duly celebrated, but there will be only three world premieres, and where are the other big commemorative events, the innovative late-season festivals that used to enhance the CSO’s national and international reputation?
As the music director prepares to take his orchestra on a West Coast tour next month, both the principal oboe and principal trumpet chairs remain unoccupied (auditions are ongoing), and principal viola Charles Pikler is on leave for undisclosed reasons. The Louisville Orchestra’s principal oboe sat in as guest principal oboe for Friday’s concert, but the more remarkable playing came from Emma Gerstein, a Chicago native playing her first concert as the CSO’s new second flute.
The orchestra sounded in good if not optimum form after its monthlong break, in a program of standard repertory that at least played to Muti’s strengths as an interpreter of Rossini and Tchaikovsky.
In the maestro’s hands, Rossini’s familiar “William Tell” Overture was more like a grand tone poem than a prologue to the composer’s grand operatic swan song. From the John Sharp-led cello ensemble that sets the scene, through the storm music (very dramatic), and whiplash exchanges between English horn and flute, to the “Lone Ranger” gallop (crisp but not vulgarized), this was Muti in his element.
He was a model of discretion as he led a chamber version of the CSO in an intimate accompaniment to Mutter in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, K.519 (“Turkish”). The violinist was just a teen herself when she made her first recording of the 19-year-old Mozart’s final violin concerto. Her playing retains the immense technical security, brilliance and tonal purity of before, now overlaid with romanticized touches.
Such ultra-sophistication clearly found favor with Friday’s audience. Those listeners who favor a more straightforward, more classical view of this sunny music, as I do, went home disappointed. To my ears, Mutter’s penchant for extreme contrasts of dynamics, tone and speed sounded anachronistic and crossed the line from expressive refinement to mannerism. Further relocating the concerto to the 19th century were the cadenzas — the standard Joseph Joachim ones as gussied up by one Ossip Schnirlin.
Muti closed with the standard suite Tchaikovsky drew from the score to his ballet “The Sleeping Beauty.”
Apart from a “Pantomime” that was lovingly played but dragged its feet, the five sections came off with all the lush lyrical sweep and dramatic intensity you would expect from so powerhouse a combination of orchestra and conductor.
Riccardo Muti will lead the CSO’s first subscription program (music of Penderecki, Tchaikovsky and Schumann), with Anne-Sophie Mutter as violin soloist, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; $36-$250. He and the orchestra will premiere resident composer Elizabeth Ogonek’s “All These Lighted Things,” which shares the program with works by Rossini and Bruckner, at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Sunday; $34-$221; 312-294-3000, www.cso.org.
John von Rhein is a Tribune critic.
Check out the latest movie reviews from Michael Phillips and the Chicago Tribune.
Check out reviews for all new music releases from Tribune music critic Greg Kot.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий