Riccardo Muti faces the final stretch of his career in Chicago

Among the main cultural attractions of Chicago are usually the skyscrapers of the Loop, the collections of its Art Institute, the Field Museum or the Millennium Park.

But it would be unfair not to add his symphony orchestra.

Not only because of its historic home, the 1904 Orchestra Hall, designed by Daniel Burnham, responsible for the architectural revolution that Chicago experienced after the great fire of 1871, but also because of its distinctive musical tradition.

The Chicago Symphony, which was born at the end of the 19th century, has created a distinctive orchestral sound that, unlike so many Central European orchestras that rely on the low string, here the sound is sustained by the majestic attack of its wind section. metal.

It is the famous Chicago Brass, which is the hallmark of one of the best symphonic ensembles on the planet.

Each musical director that the Chicago Symphony has had has shaped that sound potential.

From its creation in the fifties, with Rafael Kubelík and Fritz Reiner, to its consolidation with Jean Martinon in the sixties, going through the legendary stage of Georg Solti in which it became almost visceral and that of Daniel Barenboim in which it was revealed more subtle. .

But for the current president of the orchestra, Jeff Alexander, the musical director of the ensemble since 2010, the Italian Riccardo Muti, has exploited a more uniform sound alloy.

"If the orchestra was already famous for its metal section, Muti has tried to make it so for all the others", he assured EL PAÍS last Tuesday in his office at the Symphony Center.

Muti himself prefers to speak of a more Mediterranean sound.

“Before, only the Chicago Brass was discussed,

now its wood and rope stand out.

I think the Chicago Symphony is in excellent shape and has a wonderful working environment," he acknowledged to this newspaper during an informal lunch at his hotel.

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This 2021-22 season, which the Illinois orchestra has been able to develop almost completely normally, will be the penultimate for Muti, who will turn 81 on July 28 in excellent shape.

Not even an untimely reinfection of coronavirus, in mid-June, has prevented him from recovering in time to lead the rehearsals of Verdi's

at the Orchestra Hall.

He has even brought back the traditional

, at the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Concert Pavilion inside Millennium Park.

A free and open-air symphonic event, which the Italian director established in 2010, after his appointment as head of the Chicago Symphony, and which he has repeated as a prelude and culmination of the season in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2018.

The program chosen, lasting just under an hour without a break, was ideal for showcasing the current sound and shape of the Chicago Symphony.

He opened it with Shostakovich's sardonic

and closed it with the

of Tchaikovsky.

Faced with the surprise caused by the programming of two Russian composers in the midst of the invasion of Ukraine, Muti responded with a declaration of intent: “I may not love Putin, but I still love Pushkin”.

Last Monday the concert began with a pompous version of the American anthem, which delighted the 12,000 spectators gathered there in a picnic atmosphere.

But aside from the slight amplification and the usual noises for the center of a big city, we heard a frankly exceptional concert.

Already the fanfare, which opens Shostakovich's

, showed the current verve of “Chicago metal”.

In the subsequent presto, we also heard that same impetus in the wood, with the clarinets, the flute and the piccolo, which was joined by the rope turned into a herd of buffalo.

Percussion was not far behind either, with a master class by the group's main percussionist, Cynthia Yeh, both on snare and bass drum.

Muti, moreover, provided an ideal biting tone in a composition written to help commemorate the October Revolution, a year after Stalin's death.

View of the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Concert Pavilion inside Millennium Park last Monday during a concert by Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony.Todd Rosenberg Photography (Todd Rosenberg Photography)

Tchaikovsky 's

kicked off with another flash of Chicago Brass.

A fanfare that rose even higher at the beginning of the recapitulation, and after a development where the Italian director stressed the flexibility of the

.

The entire movement was chiseled with amazing dynamics and exquisite sound planes from this virtuoso orchestra.

In the

, the young oboe soloist William Welter was not only an ideal interpreter of the beautiful cantilena, but also made the city of Chicago stop for a moment to listen.

could also be clearly appreciated.

, in the third movement, and the street music allowed the ensemble's wood to shine, with Jennifer Gunn's solo piccolo leading the way.

Muti reloaded the inks in the popular hubbub of the

, although without losing his composure.

She made it clear in the final coda with a slight

that facilitated the enthusiastic reaction of the public.

The concert ended with a short speech by Muti where, in addition to defending the importance of music to improve our society, he encouraged the audience to fill the Orchestra Hall again.

In the aforementioned meeting that this newspaper held with the president of the Chicago Symphony, Alexander highlighted two other facets of the Italian maestro.

On the one hand, his commitment to contemporary music, having worked closely with various composers and composers-in-residence, such as Anna Clyne and Mason Bates.

"He has proven to be a true promoter of new music and more than once I have heard a composer claim that he knew his score better than he knew himself."

On the other hand, he has renewed and rejuvenated the ensemble, with up to 25 new additions since 2010. Among them, the first Spaniard of the ensemble in its entire history stands out: the principal trumpeter of the Chicago Symphony, the Galician Esteban Batallán.

The story of this 38-year-old musician almost embodies a musical variant of the American dream:

a young JONDE trumpeter who discovers his instrument's idol, Chicago Symphony soloist Adolph Herseth, inside a Mahler recording.

He aspires to one day be his successor and that dream comes true, in 2019, when he is selected by Muti to fill that position.

"Actually, I did not have the opportunity to meet Herseth, because he died in 2013, although I met him in a corridor of the Orchestra Hall ten years before and I was speechless," he confessed to EL PAÍS, last Monday, after a rehearsal .

Today Batallán plays the same trumpet that Herseth played, and considers the orchestra's collection of brass instruments to be another distinctive element of the Chicago Brass.

He aspires to one day be his successor and that dream comes true, in 2019, when he is selected by Muti to fill that position.

"Actually, I did not have the opportunity to meet Herseth, because he died in 2013, although I met him in a corridor of the Orchestra Hall ten years before and I was speechless," he confessed to EL PAÍS, last Monday, after a rehearsal .

Today Batallán plays the same trumpet that Herseth played, and considers the orchestra's collection of brass instruments to be another distinctive element of the Chicago Brass.

He aspires to one day be his successor and that dream comes true, in 2019, when he is selected by Muti to fill that position.

"Actually, I did not have the opportunity to meet Herseth, because he died in 2013, although I met him in a corridor of the Orchestra Hall ten years before and I was speechless," he confessed to EL PAÍS, last Monday, after a rehearsal .

Today Batallán plays the same trumpet that Herseth played, and considers the orchestra's collection of brass instruments to be another distinctive element of the Chicago Brass.

He confessed to EL PAÍS, last Monday, after a rehearsal.

Today Batallán plays the same trumpet that Herseth played, and considers the orchestra's collection of brass instruments to be another distinctive element of the Chicago Brass.

He confessed to EL PAÍS, last Monday, after a rehearsal.

Today Batallán plays the same trumpet that Herseth played, and considers the orchestra's collection of brass instruments to be another distinctive element of the Chicago Brass.

Riccardo Muti conducts the Chicago Symphony's prelude to Verdi's 'Un ballo in maschera' last Tuesday at Chicago's Orchestra Hall.Todd Rosenberg Photography (Todd Rosenberg Photography)

But perhaps Muti's greatest contribution to the Chicago Symphony has been his forays into the music of Giuseppe Verdi.

Already in January 2009 he captivated the city with an impressive version of the

later published on the orchestra's record label, and where he showed "the summary of almost all possible positive qualities of a great conductor", according to Andrew Patner, the reviewer for the

.

From then on, Patner became Muti's go-to critic and often appeared on his WFMT radio show to chat with him.

The transcript of his interviews and the compilation of all his criticisms, from 2009 until his untimely death in 2015, which were published in the posthumous book

(The University of Chicago Press, 2019), allow to know in detail his first years in Chicago.

For example, his interest in opera in concert version, which encouraged him to program a series of Verdi titles, since 2011, beginning with

, which also released the orchestra label.

In the book, Muti explains to Patner that he is not against stage directors, although he had problems with some very famous ones, but against their musical ignorance and “especially in Verdi, where each chord is not there just to produce a sound. , but also has a dramatic meaning.

Today he is convinced that this tyranny of orchestra conductors will end in one or two generations: "The public will get tired and try to understand what that world of the past was like in order to create it in the present with intelligence and a modern vision," he assured. Muti, last Tuesday, at the aforementioned informal lunch.

In Chicago he has directed three more Verdi operas apart from

, such as

(2013),

(2016) and

(2019).

I asked him why he didn't include

, which was the composer's favorite opera, and he explained that he had conducted it at Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra and that it works worse in a concert version.

He has now chosen to finish that project in Chicago with

, which he considers a very sophisticated title.

“It includes not only unbridled amorous passion, but also greater compositional refinement, with delight in the use of counterpoint.

Verdi is not afraid to show the influence of

French or Mozart, with the

character of Oscar that seems inspired by Cherubino and even with solutions taken from

, but from the beginning another approach and colors are revealed that will not be found in later creations”, he assured during the aforementioned lunch .

Tenor Francesco Meli (standing left), baritone Luca Salsi (seated center), soprano Joyce El-Khoury (standing center) and Riccardo Muti (standing on the podium), last Tuesday at Chicago's Orchestra Hall.Todd Rosenberg Photography (Todd Rosenberg Photography)

Muti's respect for what is written in the libretto and the score has led him not only to turn to the critical edition, prepared by the musicologist Francesco Izzo in the University of Chicago Press and Ricordi series, but also to refuse to change anything in absolute to satisfy the current revisionism.

A controversial issue in relation to this opera, which had to be set in colonial Boston due to the imperative of censorship, is the expression “dell'immondo sangue de'negri” (“of the filthy blood of blacks”) made by the judge , in the fourth scene of the first act, to condemn the black fortuneteller Ulrica, and which is usually suppressed today in all theaters.

Muti has not accepted this change.

“Even at La Scala in Milan they have come to change that phrase for political correctness,

but we must not change anything so that the next generations will know the abomination that has been done for centuries.

We don't solve the problem by changing,” he stated over lunch.

And he added the curious case that the singer who represented the judge was the young African-American tenor Lunga Eric Hallam: "I explained to him during the rehearsal that that expression had been used in the opera to highlight the judge's intolerance and he was convinced."

The last performance of

, last Tuesday at Chicago's Orchestra Hall, began with a prelude full of plasticity and dynamism.

Muti extracted with astonishing clarity from the Chicago Symphony those novel colors that Verdi uses to combine the fidelity of loyal servants, the betrayal of conspirators, and the passion of Riccardo, Earl of Warwick and Governor of Boston.

To give life to a complex love and political plot that culminates in the Count being assassinated during a masquerade ball at the hands of Renato, his faithful secretary.

But where Amelia is placed in the middle of both, as Renato's wife and lover reciprocated by the count.

The opera includes something of a magical mystery, with the character of the fortune teller Ulrica, and the perfumed touch of the

to which the page Oscar refers.

The cast worked like clockwork in the first act, although the most convincing were the interventions of the soprano Damiana Mizzi as Oscar, in the ballad

, and especially the Russian

Yulia Matochkina as Ulrica, with an impressive Satanic invocation

at the beginning of the second frame.

There was also a brilliant intervention by the Chicago Symphony Choir, with the New York Metropolitan choral director, Donald Palumbo, as guest conductor.

And glimpses of the Chicago Brass, like the end of the first frame, in which we hear the admirable intensity with which tuna player Gene Pokorny led the final ritornello of the

.

General view of the Orchestra Hall stage, with Riccardo Muti, soloists, the Choir and the Chicago Symphony during the concertante version of Verdi's 'Un ballo in maschera', last Tuesday in Chicago.Todd Rosenberg Photography (Todd Rosenberg Photography)

The second act was the best of this concert version of

.

Muti raised the expressive intensity

Amelia and Riccardo's duet, attending to the very difficult dynamic indications of the score.

We heard it in the

, which sounded with an ideal sweetness and lightness, but where there was also some expressive debauchery in the declaration of mutual love with all the harmonic charge that Verdi has in a very short period of time.

And the psychological evolution of the final part was admirable, where Renato's accusations are mixed, the clemency that Amelia asks for and the jokes of the conspirators.

The cast revealed their quality even in minor roles, such as rebel leaders Samuel and Tom, sung by African-American bass-baritones Alfred Walker and Kevin Short.

The two leads were tenor Francesco Meli as Riccardo and soprano Joyce El-Khoury as Amelia, although both had their breakout performances in the third act.

The Lebanese-Canadian soprano highlighted her lyrical virtues in the aria

with the beautiful solo of the cellist John Sharp and the Italian tenor faced with a generous mix of

and musicality the romanza

.

However, the best vocal moment of the evening was performed by the baritone Luca Salsi, who next week will lead the cast of

at the Teatro Real, singing Renato

with dedication and flexibility .

Here he had the attractive flute solo of Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, but also with the enthusiasm of the public that covered his end with applause.

This last Verdi de Muti at the head of the Chicago Symphony ended presciently with Riccardo singing

.

But the Italian conductor has another full season left to say goodbye as head of this wonderful orchestra.

And he says that, despite everything, he will continue to be linked to her, since in 2024 he will direct his next European tour, which hopefully includes a stop in Spain.

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