Ravel, Peter Lieberson, Mahler: Kelly O'Connor (mezzo-soprano), Bernard Haitink (conductor), Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, New York. 15.5.2008 (BH)

Ravel: Menuet antique
Peter Lieberson: Neruda Songs
Mahler: Symphony No. 1


Flush with recent news of Riccardo Muti's appointment as the group's next music director, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra roared into town with Bernard Haitink at the helm, the latter looking mighty fit and alert for someone who turns 80 next year.  As I've said about the soon-to-be-centenarian Elliott Carter, "I'll have whatever he's having."

If this concert had an emotional core, it was Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs, in first performances since those of the dedicatee, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.  Given the overwhelming sadness of her untimely death and the naked emotions of the texts, tackling the set might seem daunting, almost like intruding into a memory that should never be stirred.  But these gorgeous songs don't deserve to be ossified by tragedy; on the contrary, they should be heard over and over.  The five sonnets by Pablo Neruda have a disarming, even uncomfortable intimacy, as if the writer were whispering into his lover's ear, and it is not hard to see why Lieberson was drawn to their power.  The third sonnet in particular teems with anguish, as the writer aches imagining being without his love—and yet he understands that despite the coming pain, there is no recourse but to observe while it is happening.

Singing from memory and with glowing ardor, mezzo-soprano Kelly O'Connor seemed to link the cycle to the fine opener, Ravel's Menuet antique.  (Lieberson's palette often seems to echo his French precursor, with lavish attention to strings and glistening woodwind accents.)  The songs sit perfectly in O'Connor's range, and with great sensitivity and a dusky timbre, she made the most of their often extravagantly scored paragraphs.  At the close, with the audience cheering its approval, the composer made a graceful ascent onstage, smiled at O'Connor and embraced her, both of them seemingly on the verge of tears.

In both the songs and the Ravel, I admire Haitink's willingness to wield a gentler hand rather than cracking a whip, and appreciate the commensurate musical results.  Both works unfolded with a naturalness so relaxed that some may have deemed it "boring."  But Haitink has plenty of tricks up his modest sleeve, and as a true showman, he doesn't reveal everything all at once.

After intermission Carnegie Hall was throbbing with the sound of birds coursing through Mahler's First Symphony, and the Chicago woodwinds, in particular, seemed to love every measure.  One could have been spending an afternoon idly meandering through a sunlit forest, sounds showing down from the treetops.  What impressed most was Haitink's attention to inner detail, never being flummoxed by the hefty orchestration, and he and the ensemble found true pianissimos wherever needed.  Tempi were easygoing: no charging statements here, but the same radiance as the clutch of Lieberson songs.  The tempestuous finale had a deliberate, slightly "held-back" quality, as if the conductor felt no need to underline the composer's audacity, but the final pages erupted with the kind of adrenalin that Chicago seems to produce at a moment's notice.  The sold-out audience virtually leaped to its feet at the conclusion, bringing out the conductor six times before he turned to wave the orchestra offstage.

Bruce Hodges

This concert programme was also reviewed in Chicago by James L Zychowicz earlier in May (Here)

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