Seeing Esa-Pekka Salonen on the podium with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra evokes a metaphor the CSO’s Music Director Emeritus, Riccardo Muti, is fond of. This orchestra is like a Ferrari, capable of the highest levels of performance with minimal instruction. Leading the CSO this past Thursday night in Richard Strauss’ Don Juan, Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and his own new Sinfonia concertante for Organ and Orchestra, Salonen drove the orchestra like an F1 champion.
The ringing opening of Don Juan saturated the air with the high partials formed out of precise intonation, announcing that this concert would excel, right from the jump. Salonen took the orchestra through episode after episode, showing careful dynamic shaping from one to another, transitioning smoothly through textural changes. He showed clear command of the listener’s focus, and even in a busy fortissimo, he never let the sound get clangorous.
For the Sinfonia concertante, organist Iveta Apkalna was situated at Salonen’s immediate left, where the soloist might play in a violin or cello concerto, in contrast with the more usual spot for this hall, on the conductor’s far right. The unorthodox positioning belied the role of the organ. As with traditional concertos, Salonen gives the piece three movements, a slower one sandwiched between more active ones and a big, raucous finish. But unlike the standard alternation between showy soloistic passages and orchestral statements, the organ here functions like a first-among-equals in the ensemble – as if she sat back by the cellos. Especially in the first and second movements, the timbres of the orchestra weave in and out of the registration of the organ, particularly blending woodwinds with the reedier sounds of the organ.
In the second movement, Variations and Dirge, which began with muted string harmonics so soft and distant you might think it was momentary tinnitus, the orchestra plays in a harmonically searching idiom not totally rootless, like Messiaen but more grounded. In several cadenzas, Apkalna produced impressive registral changes on the fly, creating crescendos and diminuendos and shifting coloration. Even though it travels to fortissimo and occasionally requires fast passagework from Apkalna, the oceanic feel of the movement drew a contrast with the clicking-along first.
Salonen notes that the discordant sounds in the third movement were inspired by the stadium organs at hockey games. He must also have heard some Rite of Spring in there, because the aggressive on-beat chords have some riot in them, too. The movement unfolds with the most virtuosic playing yet from Apkalna, culminating in near-cacophony, but over a pedal tone, a Salonenian marker of control. Applauded with gusto, Apkalna gave an encore of Aivars Kalējs’ Toccata on the Chorale “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr”.
Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra felt like a thoughtful pairing with the Sinfonia concertante. Like Salonen’s piece, Bartók distributes soloistic attention around the orchestra. Unlike Salonen’s composition, however, the character of the Bartók is much more square-cornered.
Salonen showed himself and the CSO completely capable of shifting styles. After an impossibly quiet opening, the orchestra moved through the terraced textures expertly, always knowing their place in the sound. Salonen found expression in all the angularity, and even humor from laughing strings and a comic trombone.
All this Salonen accomplished with minimal gestural eccentricity, suggesting he communicated it all in rehearsal and needed to barely do more than beat time for the performance. Cues were no more than dropped left hands. Maybe he stood straighter at times to show a mood of rectitude, but only subtly. For the final beat of the Bartók, he made his one theatrical gesture, angling his baton upward for a final flourish, similar to a string quartet’s bows in the air.
It was an impressive achievement, for Salonen and the CSO. When Salonen took his final bow, he gestured behind him with his thumb, like “Hey, how about these guys?”
