Riccardo Muti, Leif Ove Andsnes kick off CSO season on high note

After a short hiatus following its perennial summer residency at the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra returned to Orchestra Hall Thursday evening, launching its 2019-20 season in fine form.

The concert marked the beginning of Riccardo Muti’s 10^th year as music director — an important milestone for any conductor in such a role, especially in today’s fast-changing orchestra world — and the program book rightfully highlighted some of his notable accomplishments so far.

It was also the first subscription concert for David Cooper in his role as the orchestra’s new principal French hornist. He took over July 8, replacing Daniel Gingrich who ably served as acting principal hornist following the 2013 retirement of the celebrated Dale Clevenger after 47 years in the post.

For this opening concert, Muti chose a mix of selections that was anything but obvious, primarily emphasizing less frequently heard works. One intriguing thread throughout was the young ages of the composers at the time they composed these formative pieces — just 19 to 26 in three of the cases.

Dmitri Shostakovich was an older 33 or so when he wrote his Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54, and had already composed his milestone Fifth Symphony two years earlier, but he would live to be 68 and still had more than half of his life yet to go.

By far the best known work on the program was Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, with one of the most eloquent and incisive keyboardists of our time as soloist —fellow Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes. The pianist delivered nothing shy of a definitive performance of this ever-popular masterpiece, playing with poetic elegance, unyielding clarity and nuanced touch. Never overselling or pushing too hard, he conveyed the innate romanticism and beauty of this music.

The long cadenza in the first movement is meant to impress and it did here in spades. Andsnes brought a spellbinding, inward-looking approach to this solo while realizing all of its showier effects with panache. It was hard not to break with etiquette and applaud afterward.

Muti is a seasoned hand at accompaniment, and he and Andsnes were seamlessly in sync with each other, with the veteran conductor extending the feel and flow of the pianist’s playing to that of the orchestra.

The end of the performance was greeted with cheers, and after a few ovations, Andsnes returned to the stage for a well-deserved encore — a wonderfully light and airy take on one of Grieg’s 66 “Lyric Pieces” — No. 2, “Gangar (Norwegian March)” from Book V, Op. 54.

© Todd Rosenberg Photography

The concert began with Felix Mendelssohn’s “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” Overture, Op. 27, a once-overlooked work that has been making a steady comeback in recent decades. Muti and the orchestra made sure what are essentially two mini-tone poems inspired by Goethe poems came together as the brilliant, evocative musical narrative they can be.

Muti has long been a champion of Alexander Scriabin, and he opened the second half with the Chicago Symphony’s debut performance of the Russian composer’s “Rêverie,” Op. 24 (1898). With a handsomely sustained through line, they made the most of Scriabin’s first work for orchestra, which packs surprising sweep and grandeur into just five minutes.

Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony from 1939 doesn’t make the kind of big musical statement like some of this other works in the form, and it often gets lost between the much better known Fifth and the World War II works that followed.

It is more of an atmospheric piece, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pack a devastating emotional wallop of its own, especially when performed with the kind of haunting, sharp-edged intensity that Muti and the orchestra brought to it.

After a doleful opening, the first movement settles into a kind of extended rumination suffused with doubt and unease. A lonely, forlorn piccolo solo, potently realized by Jennifer Gunn, is followed by plaintive solos by the English horn, bass clarinet and other woodwind instruments.

The second movement, the first of two much shorter concluding movements in this unusually structured work with prominent roles for xylophone and high E-flat clarinet, is more upbeat but it can still be emotionally raw at times.

The third movement, said to be Shostakovich’s favorite, gallops along with passages that echo Rossini’s “William Tell” opera. But even in this often light-hearted romp, the lingering heavy mood from the first movement never completely lifts.

All in all, a compelling concert that nicely whetted the appetite for all that is to come in 2019-20.

Kyle MacMillan is a local freelance writer.