SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Weber: Overture to Der Freischütz

 

Liszt: Piano Concerto no. 2

 

Strauss: Don Juan, Op. 20

 

Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59

 

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos is a welcome figure in Chicago, and his rapport with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was almost tangible in a fine concert of familiar Romantic music. Under Frühbeck de Burgos’s leadership, the four works on the program received fresh, dynamic readings in which details emerged clearly and timbres received a clarity that made the scores sound transparent. Frühbeck de Burgos gave the evocative overture to Weber’s opera Der Freischütz a fine sense of drama and lyricism. Conducting from memory, he shaped the work with fluid tempos and attention to sonorities that made this piece work marvelously well as an opener to the evening. An essential part of Weber’s style, the French horns stood out for their solid intonation and attack. Likewise, the sometimes percussive strings in the allusion to the Wolfs’ Glen Scene were nicely incisive. This was no studied performance, but a dynamic reading, with the final section benefiting from the subtle shifts in tempo that gave a sense of panache to the work’s closure and allowed the final triumphant chords to resonate reassuringly.

Frühbeck de Burgos approached Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto with similar enthusiasm, which pianist Jorge Federico Osorio matched with an intense performance of this compelling work. Osorio was assertive in his execution, so that the solo piano was never hidden by the sometimes full textures of the work; and when the score required it, Osorio’s cantabile style was fully present. In the passage that has the solo piano accompanying the cellos, the chamber-music like timbre made for exciting tuttis and for singing solo piano lines. While it is impossible to call attention to all the solo players in the orchestra, cellist John Sharp was notable for shaping his contributions with great feeling and Christopher Martin’s solo trumpet was always nicely prominent without unbalancing some of the delicate sonorities in this score. The woodwinds were especially solid not only in their solo lines, but also as an entire section. All in all, Osorio’s expressive approach demonstrated his complete affinity with this score, of which he is surely one of the outstanding interpreters. Together Frühbeck de Burgos and Osorio made this familiar score both fresh and exciting.

While Frühbeck de Burgos used a score for Liszt’s Piano Concerto, he conducted the second half of the program, Strauss’s Don Juan and the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier from memory. Both scores benefited from the attention to detail that he brought to the performances of works that seemed almost second nature to him. As familiar as Don Juan is, it benefited from the clear details and subtle tempo adjustments that emerged this evening. The opening, fanfare-like gestures were appropriately brilliant, but more than that, Strauss’s rich score was fully revealed by the clear execution of secondary orchestral lines supporting the main themes. This was a masterful performance, a conductor’s conductor leading a world-class orchestra in a score which continues to impress when rendered with technical precision and artistic fervor. Thus, the slow sections, which contrast the recurring extroverted theme, were memorable for the expressiveness that principal oboe Eugene Izotov brought to his solos. He set the tone for clarinetist John Bruce Yeh, who approached his solo passages equally expertly, and the two woodwind players worked splendidly together. Frühbeck de Burgos’s vision was always perfectly clear while remaining faithful to Strauss’s intentions.

The stylistic details that Frühbeck de Burgos brought to Don Juan were also apparent in his performance of the Suite from Strauss’s later opera Der Rosenkavalier. While various suites of music from the opera exist, this performance made use of one by former CSO conductor Arthur Rodzinski, who assembled it in 1944, just five years before Strauss’s death. This particular suite, composed expressly for the CSO, draws on all of the orchestra’s technical finesse . While most suites from Rosenkavalier emphasize the waltzes from the opera, elements which come into play in the scenes with Baron Ochs, Rodzinski’s arrangement merits attention for its transcription of the music from the opera’s final scene and, without dismissing the virtues of other suites, Rodzinski’s is surely one of the most effective suites available, particularly for his retaining the rich orchestral timbres that contribute to the opera’s appeal. Frühbeck de Burgos was especially persuasive in conveying the vocal lines instrumentally: this was not just a collection of the familiar tunes from the opera, but a series of sections, each devoted to its own characters and with separate musical shapes. Like Don Juan, and not only because of the similar orchestral palette, the individual segments formed a coherent whole, ably led by Frühbeck de Burgos. At times it was possible to hear sonic elements which can be sometimes less audible from the pit of an opera house, more clearly in this arrangement, especially with elements from the percussion. Elsewhere, the shimmering sounds associated with the Presentation of the Rose scene had all of the elegance sometimes overwhelmed in the more elaborate staged performances. Here, the music was wholly the focus and conductor and orchestra positively revelled in it.

James L Zychowicz