When composers look for musical inspiration, the past has always been a pretty good place to start — whether to pay homage or reactively wriggle from tradition’s vice grip.
The composers on this weekend’s Chicago Symphony concerts lean toward the former, two inspired by Greek antiquity and another by Classical-era convention. But no far-removed retrospective is this: Esa-Pekka Salonen is on the podium, consistently one of the CSO’s most forward-facing podium guests and serving the second half of a two-week residency with the orchestra. He brought with him Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte” and his own “Gemini” — the only CSO subscription concert this season to feature two living composers in one go.
If anyone is to flip the CSO’s formula, it’s the savvy Salonen, a sorely missed presence from Orchestra Hall since 2018. For the first time in this reviewer’s experience, the contemporary works on Thursday’s CSO program managed to sound more meticulously prepared than the headlining repertory work: Maurice Ravel’s choral-orchestral score to the ballet “Daphnis et Chloé.”
Even so, that “Daphnis” was no slouch. The CSO’s decadeslong rapport with their guest maestro was audible from the ballet’s opening bars, Salonen’s pinpoint beat coaxing a perfectly cohesive, so-soft-you-could-be-imagining-it whisper from basses and harps. Ravel’s woodwind writing, always ravishing but especially so in “Daphnis,” showcased standout playing by English horn Scott Hostetler and guest alto flute Kelly Zimba Lukic, visiting from the Toronto Symphony.
In the hands of principal Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, this “Daphnis” also featured the most stirring rendition of its famous flute solo I’ve yet heard — urgent at first, dying away, regaining its mettle and asserting its mind again. Like any masterful monologue, one felt invited inside the mind behind that desolate yet brave voice. What a privilege that visit was.
Prepared by associate conductor Cheryl Frazes Hill after the midseason retirement of former director Duain Wolfe, the Chicago Symphony Chorus sang masked and in appropriately reduced numbers; the choral part of “Daphnis” is primarily colorative, save an a cappella interlude near piece’s middle. The chorus still cut a mighty sonic presence onstage, albeit occasionally more ragged in blend and unity with the orchestra — as in the third mighty climax of “Lever du jour,” which came out as more of a roll.
Interpretively, however, this “Daphnis” was extra-resplendent with riches. The score challenges conductors to plot a path through Ravel’s ultra-decadent scoring of relatively scarce thematic material — leitmotifs repeat, repeat and repeat. But just because they come back again and again doesn’t mean they have to be played with the same sun-melted sentimentality. Salonen reminded us that Daphnis and Chloé are lovers, sure, but they’re also young. He lent an up-tempo, jockeying athleticism to “Dorcon’s Grotesque Dance,” a scene in which youths unite to bully Daphnis’s lumbering rival, and the bacchanal at work’s end was aptly, splendidly reckless.
One hopes Salonen will soon consider recording his take on Ravel’s most ambitious orchestral score — even if the honors go to the San Francisco Symphony, which he’s led as music director since 2020.
The French Impressionist’s music is, after all, close at hand for Salonen as both conductor and composer. Listen no further than “Gemini” — actually two pieces, “Pollux” and “Castor,” united under one work.
“Pollux” and “Castor” are, like their namesakes, divergent personalities: The former is dignified and striding, the latter a mercurial tumult of concerto-grosso-ish ensemble writing and complex meters. But “Pollux” and “Castor” are both united by returning motifs, most noticeably a syncopated percussion rhythm — apparently based on a bassline Salonen heard and jotted down on a napkin at a restaurant in Paris — and extended canons within sections. All eloquently attested to “Gemini’s” central thesis: Blood is thicker than most things, whether you like it or not.
Shaw’s “Entr’acte” was a wisely chosen strings-only breather before the maximalist main courses. Inspired by a minuet and trio from Haydn’s Op. 77 quartets, Shaw initially composed the work for string quartet in 2011, expanding it for string orchestra three years later. “Entr’acte” echoes that tried and true Classical form, the pulsing opening theme later returning after an eerie, sighing interlude.
But Shaw’s piece doesn’t place convention on a pedestal — quite the contrary. By borrowing the minuet and trio, she also gives it a playful shove, strings sometimes bowing soundlessly like socked feet shuffling on wood floors. CSO strings nailed “Entr’acte’s” pendulum swings between plushness and angularity, Salonen conducting them batonless and balletically. Assistant principal cellist Ken Olsen saw out “Entr’acte’s” end, playing the final ad libitum pizzicato chords with wistful poignancy.
During the work’s lengthy applause, Salonen appeared to search for Shaw — just shy of 40 and already a Pulitzer Prize winner for her 2012 work “Partita for 8 Voices” — in the audience. To no avail: a CSO representative confirmed she did not attend Thursday’s concert.
But in his scan of the audience, Salonen likely noticed plenty of even younger faces. As confirmed by a CSO administrator earlier this season, student attendees have been a core pillar of the CSO’s post-shutdown audience — a data point that tracks anecdotally most nights at Symphony Center, and which doesn’t appear to have been affected by the CSO’s quiet lifting of its vaccine mandate on May 17. Those demographics seemed even more pointed during Salonen’s residency. Last Saturday’s concert of Dessner, Stravinsky and Ravel skewed young, and at “Gemini’s” stomping conclusion on Thursday, a phalanx of about 20 or 30 attendees in my section — all seemingly under 25 — rose in a standing ovation.
After intermission, a bassoon teacher and his lanky student joined me in my row for “Daphnis.” As that piece bucked and heaved and tugged the sun up over its verdant horizon, the teen sat rapt, leaning forward as if in prayer. After its blindingly brilliant conclusion, he turned to his teacher and whispered, “That was really, really good.”
Glances toward the past might have inspired this program. But its spirit was nothing short of a roadmap for ensuring classical music’s long future. Long may it thrive.
Program repeats 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; tickets ($39-$250) and more information at cso.org
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.Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
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