The Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened its month-long celebration of America’s 250th anniversary with a program that traced a century of the nation’s musical lineages. The concerts to follow will feature an eclectic lineup, from pianist Conrad Tao and mandolinist Chris Thile, to Leonard Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety. But by uniting the voices of John Adams, Aaron Copland, and Wynton Marsalis in its opening program, the CSO is establishing a clear baseline for its audience: Here is how our country’s orchestral style has evolved under the talents of its artistic voices.
In Copland, one finds the midcentury ideal: a cultivated European training transformed into an expansive, distinctly American language. Adams marks the late twentieth century turn away from the more abrasive strains of academic modernism and toward a broader, more accessible musical vocabulary. Marsalis has spent much of his career arguing for straight-ahead jazz as a serious American art form, one deserving a place alongside the nation’s other notated traditions.
The task of drawing those disparate strands into a coherent evening fell to Marin Alsop. Alsop received an enthusiastic welcome back to Orchestra Hall. She has been Chief Conductor at the Ravinia Festival long enough that Chicago audiences have claimed her as one of their own. Her deeper credential, though, is her record as an interpreter of American music. She studied with Leonard Bernstein and has produced acclaimed recordings of his orchestral works as well as Samuel Barber’s. When it comes to this particular repertoire, Alsop is not guessing.
That experience made her an especially apt interpreter for John Adams’s new The Rock You Stand On, which the composer wrote for her and received its Chicago premiere Thursday evening in Orchestra Hall. The piece, about ten minutes long, is a kind of reunion with Adams’s earlier self. There’s a bounce here that recalls Fearful Symmetries and even, as the composer has suggested, something of a big-band spirit — a fitting, if unintended, nod to Marsalis’s work in the second half. But The Rock You Stand On is also unmistakably contemporary Adams: The textures form gradually, the form stays loose, the music thickens by accumulation. It has the concision of Short Ride in a Fast Machine without quite the propulsive charge. Alsop and the CSO gave it a clean, capable performance. Though it deserved a little more twitchy energy — more of the rhythmic volatility that distinguishes Adams at his best — the piece is a welcome addition to his catalog.
This jazzy undercurrent made it a natural companion to selections from Wynton Marsalis’s Symphony No. 4, The Jungle. To call The Jungle a symphony is to stretch the genre’s definition. A full performance runs well over an hour, and the work sits more comfortably in the space between a suite and a concerto grosso — specifically for jazz band and orchestra. On Thursday, Alsop led the CSO and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra through four of its six movements.
Because the movements operate as self-contained vignettes of New York City, omitting sections does not disrupt the piece’s spirit. “The Big Scream (Black Elk Speaks)” depicted indigenous struggle with weeping glissandi and restless, unsettled rhythms. “La Esquina” attempted to weave in Afro-Latin grooves, though it felt the least distinctive of the four, with Marsalis trying to evoke a community outside his core jazz vocabulary. “Us” offered a far more engrossing, sensuous portrait of urban intimacy, while “Struggle in the Digital Market” drove forward with machine-like energy before dissolving into a spectacular cadenza by Marsalis himself.
The CSO largely served in an accompaniment role, augmenting and supporting the Lincoln Center musicians. There were long stretches where the orchestra had little to do. Alsop functioned more as traffic manager than interpretive guide. Given the material, it was probably the right instinct, but it left the evening’s balance feeling off. The jazz musicians provided most of the heat. The concert’s one frustration was that the CSO’s considerable brass, wind, and string resources never quite got to show what they could do in tandem with the Lincoln Center players, rather than simply behind them.
Sandwiched between the Adams and the evening’s main event was Copland’s suite from Appalachian Spring. One hesitates to say too much about a piece this familiar. Copland was shaped by Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and the European cultivation shows. But the music has become so bound up with American identity that its origins are almost beside the point.
The CSO’s strings were fine under Alsop, warm and attentive to phrase. But what made the performance sing, though, were the woodwinds. In this score, Copland’s wind writing is where the American character actually lives — the fluid lines and spare solos, the famous “Simple Gifts” theme that is introduced with unassuming grace. Principal clarinet Stephen Williamson, principal oboe William Welter, and their colleagues are among the best in the business. They proved it here.
Originally published at Seen and Heard International
Around Chicago
Hannah Edgar, Chicago Tribune
“The Jungle’s” final movement, “Struggle in the Digital Market,” calls back to the anxiety of the opening, down to its swaggering rhythm and whinnying trombones. It mounts to a gnashing mass of sound which parts to leave Marsalis, playing alone. He then delivers what can only be described as a trumpet sermon: incandescent, wailing, otherworldly.
“The Jungle’s” sole recording, from 2023, doesn’t quite do it justice. Live, this great American symphony spills off the stage, as uncontainable and undefinable as its muse. It is ugly. It is beautiful. And yes, it is “us,” New Yorkers or not.
Lawrence A Johnson, Chicago Classical Review
Alsop elected to perform Appalachian Spring in the traditional ballet suite sans that section. The conductor is often at her most consistent in American music and Alsop led an idiomatic and sensitive performance that gave this beautiful score its due, drawing responsive and polished playing (a couple horn bloopers apart). The lonely, sweet-sad clarinet solos of Stephen Williamson—and later, oboe solos by William Welter— seemed to convey the very essence and heart of this music.
Debra Davy, Splash Magazine
The 10-minute piece was mesmerizing in its first CSO performance, sonorous and lush, with celesta, piano and harp, doubled flutes/piccolos, extensive percussive rhythms, (there were 6 drummers/percussionists on stage), brass, woodwinds and strings- in fact, a full complement of orchestral sound. It has an almost movie-score scope, dramatic and imagistic. As this reviewer’s guest murmured at conclusion, “If Jackson Pollock’s essence could be captured in music, this would reflect his complex webs of color and emotion”. Alsop unveiled the myriad exclamations, vivid melody, and beauty of form.
JLCO and the National Symphony of Romania perform “Struggle in the Digital Market” from The Jungle
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