By Bryant Manning, Chicago Sun-Times
November 18, 2009
The Berlin Philharmonic at Orchestra Hall might have been the hottest ticket in town Monday night, but you wouldn't have known it from the bustling Harris Theater as Music of the Baroque gave its second subscription concert of the season. Just up the street from where the traveling Germans were settling in, Nicholas Kraemer led a breezy and often-hilarious night of wildly inventive period works by Vivaldi, Jean-Fery Rebel and Telemann.
In a program titled "Earth, Wind and Fire," the Music of the Baroque Orchestra focused on the earth's natural elements portrayed in music, with violinist Elizabeth "Libby" Wallfisch as soloist in the mother of all Mother Nature odes, "The Four Seasons."
Kraemer has observed that Vivaldi's omnipresence in our contemporary life has erased from memories its once-radical ideas. Today it helps when a couple of eccentric interpreters can make it new again. While Wallfisch is hardly a firebrand fiddler, she is musically aware to her core. Whatever tired conceptions of this war horse there are, she challenged them. The dazzling presto in "Summer" and swashbuckling allegro in "Winter" weren't singled out for her own showmanship, but instead these movements formed around one inseparable ensemble. Kraemer, who played harpsichord in addition to conducting, would read Vivaldi's own programmatic "poetry" before each work, producing several laughs in the process.
At several points in "Autumn," theorbo player Daniel Swenberg, Kraemer and Wallfisch all cracked huge grins as they conversed during the famous opening, a reminder that period specialists of the Baroque era, where so many rules weren't yet established, often have
more fun than their Romantic counterparts. This was a "Four Seasons" for the parlor instead of the stage.
The program wisely divided up the three works throughout, with fragments of each piece appearing before and after intermission. This paced the program well and offered sharper contrasts between the music. Almost 300 years on, the opening bars of Rebel's "Chaos" from "Les Elemens" still hold plenty of shock value. Its famous diabolical chord sent a shiver throughout the hall before Kraemer coaxed piercing woodwinds from the balcony. Other than these moments, this abbreviated performance of "The Elements" lacked the certain bite that usually makes this music so memorable.
Telemann's "Wassermusik" featured the frilly recorder stylings of Kaye Clements and the piquant flute articulations of Mary Stolper. The orchestra sounded beautifully echoic and full-bodied in Harris' cavernous theater, lending a distinct dreamlike glow to Telemann's 10-movement suite.
