CSO caps 125th anniversary with Bruckner’s glorious ‘Te Deum’

With its performance of a program featuring two works by Anton Bruckner – the brief but glorious “Te Deum,” and the composer’s unfinished “Symphony No. 9 in D Minor” – the 125th anniversary season of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is drawing to a close. And on Thursday evening, Maestro Riccardo Muti took the occasion to pay homage to the superb ensemble of musicians he clearly loves, as well as to toast all those who were part of the orchestra throughout the decades and “made great music that gained the respect of audiences in Chicago and around the world.”

The two Bruckner pieces comprising the concert – part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective designed to remind audiences of the orchestra’s history – both received their U.S. premieres by the orchestra. “Symphony No. 9,” written between 1891 and 1896 (the year of the composer’s death), was first performed here in 1904 at the Auditorium Theatre, under the baton of Theodore Thomas, the founder and first music director of the CSO. The “Te Deum,” which debuted in Austria in 1886, was performed at the Cincinnati May Festival by the CSO in 1892, also with Thomas conducting.

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Recommended

When: June 25 at 8 p.m. and

June 26 at 3 p.m.

Where: Symphony Center,

220 S. Michigan

Tickets: $34 – $221

Info: (312) 294-3000; http://www.cso.org

Run time: 2 hours

with one intermission

The symphony, which runs more than an hour, feels more unedited than unfinished. The individual sections are beautiful, and run the gamut in style and emotional coloring. But listening to it is more like thumbing through a great writer’s massive journal – or a composer’s notebook – and finding expertly crafted pages that have yet to be given the final organization that might transform them into a cohesive whole.

Written in the years just before Bruckner’s death, the work also bears the mark of a man who would “not go gentle into that good night,” and in a way was reliving his own passions and musical themes.

Muti, with an orchestra that is invariably sublime, shaped the meandering work with total conviction – from the opening sound of horns and the hum of strings, through richly lyrical sections, to sudden storms (terrific work by tympanist David Herbert), and then to sudden bits of quiet. Great swells of sound ceded to ruefully sweet moments, with fluid, singing, passages moving into a fury generated by the string section that was followed by calm. Memories of a joyful youth seemed to meet premonitions of mortality, with the lines between moods as thin as a hair. You can detect a bit of Mendelssohn at times, and even a hint of Tchaikovsky. But no one would doubt that this is the work of a late Austro-German Romantic who was greatly admired by the younger Gustav Mahler, who described him as “half simpleton, half God.”

And speaking of God. The “Te Deum”- for full orchestra, chorus (in absolutely glorious, clarion form here, under the direction of Duain Wolfe), and four soloists – could not have sounded a more thrilling “thanksgiving.” Sung in Latin, there was no need to even read the English translation: From the opening words, “We praise you, O God…..to you all the angels, to you the heavens, and all the powers,” this relatively brief but soaring work generated the sense that all humanity was celebrating something beyond themselves. The performance temporarily turned Symphony Center’s hall into a cathedral, with the notably warm tenor voice of Steve Davislim, along with soprano Erin Wall, mezzo-soprano Okka von der Damerau and bass-baritone Eric Owens adding luster.

In a program note, Phillip Huscher describes Bruckner as “a deeply religious” composer and tells this anecdote: “Once, when Bruckner was asked how he would greet his beloved God in heaven, he said simply: “I will present to him the score of my ‘Te Deum,’ and he will judge me mercifully.” That might sound like pure hubris to some, but after hearing this work you might well find yourself in full agreement.