Ravinia Festival opens with bombastic Gershwin, emotional Tchaikovsky

Marin Alsop trained as a violinist before she turned to conducting, and her evident ear for string tone served her well at the Ravinia Festival on Friday. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert opened with Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, a short piece that the composer – a violinist herself – orchestrated for a small string orchestra after envisioning it as a cello quintet. Beginning with an angular pizzicato statement from the viola, the piece then unfolded with fluid rhythms that passed pleasantly among the violins, cellos and basses. Montgomery leaned into folk flourishes, in both the American and English traditions – you could imagine some of the passages playing near a maypole. Although individual musicians made distinctive contributions – especially cellist John Sharp and Stephanie Jeong, the evening’s concertmaster – the work’s beauty resided in Alsop’s precise textural layering and rapid forward momentum.

Some of the snap found in Strum was missing from the evening’s marquee attraction, George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. The opening Allegro overflows with thematic ideas that pass between the orchestra and piano, and it requires a firm hand to keep the music sounding as bright and freeform as it should. Despite some memorable moments in the long development section, the rhythms often slackened, and Alsop struggled to craft a cohesive narrative among the sections. The Adagio had an elegant repose, though, and the finale got off to a promising start, its theme threading beautifully between woodwind and brass (special mention to Principal Trumpet Esteban Batallán, a convincing jazz ringer). The final moment made a big noise in the way the CSO can, but the textures were muddled and lacking in detail.

Soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s aggressive pedaling in the first movement similarly resulted in an occluded quality to his playing, although he compensated with a lithe touch in the Adagio. Even with mild amplification, though, his thread was often lost in Allegro agitato, where Alsop’s hard-charging orchestra regularly subsumed him. His encore, a coolly focused reading of the Brahms Intermezzo in A major, was a highlight of the evening.

The program ended with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6 in B miinor in a conventional reading that was enjoyable nonetheless. Perhaps other conductors and orchestras have more precisely mined the emotional depths that give the work its surtitle, Pathétique, but Alsop delivered a solid interpretation that showed off the CSO’s strengths. The long, establishing first movement flowed with natural ease, its themes passing effortlessly between the section leaders. (Principal Clarinet Stephen Williamson was especially impressive in his emotive solos.) The so-called “limping waltz” of the second movement could have used more of a canted edge, and the Allegro molto vivace unfurls with breakneck speed at the expense of detail. But the Adagio finale emerged with a striking clarity that wistfully faded to silence; a refreshingly quiet end to a bombastic evening.