![]() Ives’ Three Places in New England poses even more of an interpretive challenge, but Mälkki showed herself a most impressive hand in this repertoire, untangling Ives’ densest contrapuntal thickets and bringing out the nostalgic heartache imbedded in this music (here performed in the original version for large orchestra). The atmospheric offstage trumpet was perfectly judged, though the four flutes would have benefited from being placed in the seating behind the stage rather than in the far right lower balcony. ![]() The Unanswered Question led off the evening with Mälkki distilling a sense of timeless mystery and eliciting string playing of extraordinary concentration in the barely audible string phrases, even with outbursts from some clueless unmuffled coughers. Mälkki flanked the concerto with two works of Charles Ives. Under Mälkki’s tautly focused direction the CSO provided their colleague with close-knit support and the 83-year-old Scottish composer was on hand to share in the warm applause. Lawrie Bloom gave Musgrave’s concerto the highest possible advocacy, playing with seamless fluency and as much dark eloquence as the instrument can muster (John Bruce Yeh deftly provided the offstage clarinet Doppelganger). Resembling an antique gardening tool, the bass clarinet is not the most grateful instrument for a solo role, limited in range and expression. Only the prominent use of the opening motif of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in the closing section seems a bit twee, distracting one from Musgrave’s own compelling musical argument. Otherwise Autumn Sonata is an effective work, evocative, concise (20 minutes), and smartly scored. Near the end a second offstage bass clarinet echoes the soloist’s line. There is a violently explosive march-like middle section (con furore), followed by a searching Lamentoso. The solo line is closely woven with the undulating mystery of the orchestral fabric. Befitting the concerto’s title, the music is autumnal, restless and dream-like, cast in a dark expressive vein with ominous militaristic shadows in the martial rhythms and percussion writing. Most attention Thursday night focused on Autumn Sonata, a bass clarinet concerto by Thea Musgrave, which was being heard in its belated American premiere.Ĭast in six unbroken sections, the 1994 work takes inspiration from the haunting poems of the Austrian writer Georg Trakl, who died in a Polish hospital during the First World War. With powerful, richly eloquent, and immaculately balanced performances, Mälkki’s sensational debut is easily the most impressive CSO podium bow of recent seasons. Mälkki, music director of Ensemble InterContemporain, managed to not only pull off each work on this demanding program with striking success but sparked the CSO to some of their finest playing of the year. premiere of a bass clarinet concerto, flanked that assignment with two challenging works by Charles Ives, and closed the evening with Richard Strauss’s epic tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra. The Finnish conductor led the CSO Thursday night in the U.S. One certainly can’t say that Susanna Mälkki opted for the programming road most taken in her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut. Lawrie Bloom applaud composer Thea Musgrave folllowing the performance of her "Autumn Sonata" Thursday night at Symphony Center.
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