CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
The timing of this latest bad press couldn’t have been worse. Ambitious plans to expand the subscriber base as well as the building could be put on hold if corporate donors and the public no longer perceive the CSO as a civic success story. Certainly the peripatetic Barenboim, who was born in Argentina and reared in Israel, hasn’t helped his own cause. Even if his musical merits are debatable, Solti 25 years ago at least took the then-provincial orchestra on a long-awaited tour of Europe and brought it a coveted recording contract. The biggest and most frequent complaint against him throughout his reign was that he regarded Chicago as a remote outpost, his American pied-a-terre.
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Operatic flourishes abound, and to Barenboim’s credit, he let the tragic and wise drama unfold in the heart-tugging, endearingly vulgar Italian manner (as opposed to the more cerebral approach one might take with Brahms’s A German Requiem). In the opening Kyrie, which contains echoes of Nabucco, the Chicago Symphony Chorus cried and whispered like devout pilgrims. Later, in the idiosyncratically swift Sanctus, the choristers sounded like they’d just stepped out of a sprightly operetta. In the sprawling and spectacular Dies Irae–the longest by far of the mass’s seven sections–the quartet of soloists take turns lamenting and beseeching in a parade of arias. Here the soloists assembled by Barenboim were quite impressive. Bass Ferruccio Furlanetto conveyed awe in “Mors stupebit,” and tenor Vicente Ombuena, though less subtle and ardent, was a fairly convincing penitent in “Ingemisco.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Steere.
