James Gaffigan receives praise for his Chicago Symphony Concerts

Conductor James Gaffigan energetically commands the Chicago Symphony Orchestra live in concert (Photo Credit: Todd Rosenberg)

Three Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concerts to Remember
By Hedy Weiss
WTTW
June 17, 2022

Although they were performed earlier this month, and are now beyond their “attendance dates,” three recent concerts by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – led by two different guest conductors and featuring two different guest violinists – deserve to be chronicled. They were memorable for a great variety of reasons.

On June 10, James Gaffigan – the wonderfully animated New York-bred conductor with a wide range of orchestral and opera credits who has just been appointed music director of Komische Oper Berlin – led a program of five truly magical pieces with the Georgian-born violinist Lisa Batiashvili as soloist in works by two late 19th century French composers, Camille Saint-Saens and Ernest Chausson.

The concert opened with a rousing performance of Saint-Saens’ aptly titled “Bacchanale,” the wonderfully seductive ballet segment from his opera, “Samson and Delilah,” that pays homage to Bacchus, the Greek god of wine and ritual madness. Alternately wild and rhapsodic, with castanets and cymbals enhancing the sound of the full orchestra, which was in its usual stellar form, it ideally set the pace for the rest of the evening.

Next came Batiashvili (dressed in an elegant tomato-red gown), to play Chausson’s “Poeme for Violin and Orchestra,” with its pensive, lyrical opening enhanced by her beautiful, singing tone and the music’s heartbreaking quality that led to a burst of increasingly intense passion. Saint-Saens’ seamless use of the violin soloist was notable in both the work’s grandly dramatic passages and its final moments of calm.

And then it was back to Saint-Saens, with Batiashvili returning to the stage for the composer’s “Introduction and Rondo capriccioso.” An opening passage paired the violinist with the gentle plucking of strings by the orchestra. And from there it was on to a beautiful theme of notable yet delicate speed – full of powerful bowing, a forceful exclamation, and an absolutely golden tone. A powerful blast of timpani flipped the mood, with Batiashvili joining the full orchestra in conversation and moving to a rapid-fire finale.

The second half of the concert began with Mussorgsky’s “A Night on Bald Mountain,” brilliantly orchestrated by his friend, Rimsky-Korsakov, who outlived him. The work made extravagant use of the percussion section, from its wild opening with the clash of cymbals and pounding of timpani, to the stormy sound of what suggested a wild cavalry led by Satan. Gaffigan (who moves like a dancer) fully captured the high theatricality of the work, as did the orchestra, with notable clarion calls from the brass, a thrilling use of the strings and winds, and then the calming sound of church bells, a dreamy riff on the harp, and a marvelous turn on clarinet by John Bruce Yeh. From there it was on to a dreamy ending.

Closing the concert was Tchaikovsky’s widely familiar but ever rapturous “Romeo and Juliet, (Fantasy-Overture),” which at one time the composer planned to expand into an opera, though that never happened.

While I confess that this evocation of Shakespeare’s play will never have the same impact of Prokofiev’s stunning ballet score for the story, there is still an undeniable beauty to be found in Tchaikovsky’s 21-minute work. It grabs hold with its mournful opening, and then moves on to a passage of great speed and fury, a beautiful, dreamily romantic theme, and a shift to a tragic, pounding intensity.

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