Civic Orchestra of Chicago brings vitality to Price, Walker, Kay and Dvořák at Orchestra Hall

Amid a Chicago orchestral landscape dominated by marquee ensembles, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago tends to exist in the shadows. That’s unfortunate, because this century‑old training orchestra—founded in 1919 by Frederick Stock, then music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—remains one of the city’s most earnest and quietly radical institutions. It’s made up of early‑career musicians, players straddling the line between their conservatory training and professional life. Many alums move on to orchestras across the country. Quite a few land seats in the CSO itself. Yet the Civic’s real gift to the city isn’t its alumni roster. It’s the opportunity audiences receive to enjoy adventurous music in Orchestra Hall at a steal: general admission tickets start at $5.

The Civic Orchestra has also become an artistically compelling proposition under the direction of principal conductor Ken-David Masur. Beyond the typical warhorses, Masur has steered toward Copland and Takemitsu, Lutosławski and Chávez. Its March 2 concert was no exception, pairing Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor with works by three Black American composers — Ulysses Kay, George Walker and Florence Price. It was an evening built around two, persistent questions: Who gets remembered, and why?

Dvořák’s answer, famously, was that America should look inward. In the 1890s, he urged skeptical audiences and composers to draw on Black and indigenous music as the foundation of a distinctly American voice. He followed his own advice, producing New World-inspired works that audiences still clamor for. The irony is familiar: Dvořák’s tributes to Black music became canonical while the music of Black composers remained obscure. Kay, Walker and Price are only now coming fully into the light. Putting them on the same program as Dvořák made that irony legible without belaboring it.

The concert’s first half was the stronger portion of the evening. It opened with Kay’s Overture to a Theater Set, a bold and rambunctious statement. Kay is a composer we deserve to hear more of, and this performance made that case without apology. Walker’s Lyric for Strings followed. Yes, it invites the inevitable comparison to Barber’s more well-known Adagio for Strings. Both works originated as slow movements from string quartets and were later expanded for string orchestra. Both have served as elegies and national laments. But the comparison only goes so far. Where Barber is overtly tragic, Walker is more ambivalent, even nostalgic. His piece moves between minor and sunnier turns, acknowledging grief but circling back toward something closer to consolation than collapse. Masur and the Civic’s strings had the measure of it. Phrases were shaped with care, and the blended sound had a stirring vocal quality.

Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America closed the first half. Price’s music can feel, at times, like it is still searching for its destination. This may be the particular challenge of abstract program music. Knowing how to begin a journey is not the same as knowing where it ends. Tonally, her writing is consistently beautiful. Her use of Black musical idioms is tasteful, and she draws from them with a pathos that runs quietly underneath. Ethiopia’s Shadow is tighter than some of her larger works and follows a program in three parts that traces, roughly, the arc of African American experience from slavery through adaptation. Elizabeth Kapitaniuk, first-desk clarinet, offered a dreamy solo in the opening movement. Cellist Somyong Shin brought an intensely felt quality to Price’s anguished line in the second. Winds, brass and percussion added dimension throughout.

The Dvořák Seventh Symphony which closed the program, was a different story. It is the least performed of the mature Dvořák symphonies, darker and more rigorous than the “New World,” and it demands a lot. The Civic Orchestra’s performance was uneven. Rhythmic precision felt optional in key passages before snapping back into alignment. Details blurred and sharpened by turns. Masur managed what was in front of him — he knows how to guide an ensemble through difficulty — but the execution could not always keep pace with the ambition.

What saved the evening was the playing itself. This orchestra is young and still forming, but there is something genuine in how they push through a piece. The strings especially gave Dvořák’s symphony weight and continuity. The wind playing was characterful. Even when things came apart slightly, they kept moving forward, finding ways to make the music breathe.

There is a particular pleasure in hearing music made by people who still have something to prove. These are players who have not yet settled into the routines of professional life, and that restlessness comes through. It can produce rough edges. It can also produce music that sounds like it genuinely matters to the people playing it. Monday night had that quality, and that is not nothing.

Originally published on Third Coast Review

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Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America