CSO suggests Shakespearean grandeur of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4

Sometimes it is all a matter of the company you keep.

For the second of its three different programs spinning off the citywide celebration of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under Maestro Riccardo Muti, is playing two “fantasias” inspired by the Bard’s plays. Composed within just a few years of each other they include the widely familiar “Romeo and Juliet” (whose themes can often be heard even in commercials), and “The Tempest,” a work heard less frequently, that suggests a tale of exile, magic, first love and storms at sea.

The second half of the program is devoted to Mahler’s exquisite Symphony No. 4 in G Major, which possesses its own extraordinary form of magic. And guess what? In many ways this hour-long stunner, which has absolutely nothing to do with Shakespeare in any literal sense, turns out to be downright Shakespearean.

There is something in its sweeping emotional shifts and magical transitions of mood, in its often off-kilter melodic themes that move from the introspective to the flamboyant, and in its great range of musical colors, which draws on the many voices of the orchestra (strings, horns, timpani, and percussion ranging from cymbals to sleighbells), that suggests both a series of landscapes and a profound probing of the human soul. In addition, in the symphony’s brief but haunting fourth (and final) movement, the human voice comes into play as a soprano (in this case the altogether beguiling Rosa Feola) sings Mahler’s enchanting setting of a traditional German poem, “Das himmlische Leben” (“Heavenly Life”), with its naive and enthusiastic description of that other world.

Mahler certainly didn’t set out to be “Shakespearean,” but his impulses – and his genius – conspired to make him so. And this concert – played in the ravishing manner that marks its tenure under Muti – might make you reconsider the composer’s entire symphonic output in that light, despite all the modernist, Middle European edginess that also clearly marks it.

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Highly recommended

When: April 15 and 16 at 8 p.m.;

April 22 at 1:30 p.m. and April 24 at 3 p.m.

Where: Symphony Center,

220 S. Michigan

Tickets: $36 – $260

Info: (312) 294-3000;

http://www.cso.org

Run time: 2 hours and

15 minutes with one intermission

Far from programmatic, Tchaikovsky’s two fantasias are dreamy evocations of major themes in the Shakespeare plays. In “The Tempest” you sense the churning and receding of the waves and wind, with lyrical passages suggesting first love, and the more flighty, agitated sections capturing the sprightly spirit of Ariel, who helps the noble Prospero cast his spells while in exile on an island. And, as in Shakespeare, there is a neat resolution, with two quick beats coming before a silence.

In his “fantasy-overture on “Romeo and Juliet,” Tchaikovsky captures all the essential plot lines with a solemn, formal opening and a subtle tension in the strings ceding to the lyrical romanticism of first love, the fury of civil combat (a human storm generated by strings and percussion), the ardor of the balcony scene, and the return of enmity, marked by the speed and agitation driving the music. Swells of passion alternate with flaring tempers, and then anguish and foreboding. The musicians brilliantly suggest it all.

Mahler’s “Fourth Symphony” opens with a rapturous dance-like theme (as always in Mahler, one laced with a strain of yearning, a bittersweet undertow), and then moves into a gorgeous passage to which Muti and the orchestra bring an uncanny lightness and quickness. There is magic and immense subtlety here, and it makes the great gathering of thunderous sound that follows all the more thrilling, just as it does in the symphony’s iconic waltz. Of course by now it has become a veritable trademark of the CSO under Muti that there is a clarity to every note, no matter how layered the music might be. And when a sense of serenity and calm is called for, you can almost hear the orchestra (and conductor) exhale collectively.

The soprano in this symphony has a difficult challenge. She must sit through the entire work before rising to sing the eight short, wildly descriptive verses of a song. Feola, a young Italian singer (who happens to be a great beauty on top of everything else, and who was dressed in a notably elegant gown with a black satin skirt and silver-beaded top), let her face do the singing throughout the first three movements. And then, when she began to sing in the most excitedly playful German – with a voice that had the hint of a little choir boy – she was even more captivating, as her velvety tone and precise, animated diction blended ideally.

The final words of that poem (in English translation), say it best: “The angelic voices/Delight the senses/For all things awake to joy.”