On February 14, 2025, in a concert reprised February 15th and 16th, German Maestro David Afkham led The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and German guest violinist Christian Tetzlaff in a thrilling concert of diverse European masterworks at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago. Afkham, conductor and artistic director of the Spanish National Orchestra and Chorus, debonair in impeccable black tails, had the full measure of each score. The internationally renowned Tetzlaff was impassioned and exacting.
Richard Wagner’s brief, bright Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin, 1846-48, is a joyful introduction to a wedding procession. Powerful, celebratory with brassy fanfares and a feeling of festivity, it opens with terrific spirit after which cymbals deliver us into rhythm and familiar melody, a 4-minute development of 2 contrasting dramatic themes.
Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47, 1902-04, is a fiendishly complicated evocation of the very night of the opening concert: cold, dark winter shot with the crystalline sparkle of snow. Tetzlaff was a joy to watch and to hear, giving voice to melancholy, to praise of nature, dripping with emotion yet never saccharine. In the first movement a sense of theatricality reigns, amid which the violin builds in intensity. The purest of melodies lingers above a sweep of strings; a variety of motifs bring a change of mood. In the Adagio, a lyrical melody, lovely and enormous engages the spirit, flowing into the final Allegro, with violin passage work complex and sustained by the Orchestra, ending in a sense of longing.
In encore, Tetzlaff played the soft and tender Sarabande from J.S.Bach’s Partita in D minor for solo Violin No. 2, BWV 1004, 1717-20. While the Ciaccona from the Partita is much the most famous segment, this slow and expressive Latin dance was engagingly, subtly beautiful.
Arnold Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande, Symphonic Poem, Op. 5, 1902-03, is a long, colorful and demonstrative mathematically constructed piece, a showstopper of color and volume dynamics. The CSO, in large orchestral instrumentation, was deftly led by Afkham, through dense technicality and operatic intensity, delivering up sophisticated clarity in the widest range of sound.
Austrian American composer Schoenberg was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, often referred to as the inceptor of “modern music”. In the early hours of January 7, 2025, the horrific fires in Pacific Palisades, California incinerated the home of his son, Larry Schoenberg, also destroying the building behind the dwelling, which housed Belmont Music Publishers, an entity which has served since 1965 as a U.S. link for performers and scholars to access Schoenberg’s music. The fire decimated “the full range of (his) groundbreaking compositions…from early Romantic pieces to his revolutionary 12-tone works and transformative masterpieces.” Also lost were artifacts and books, manuscripts and correspondence- a tragedy.
Happily, most of Schoenberg’s original works are located at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, which granted access to The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association to view materials including a special exhibit on Pelleas and Melisande. The archive of Belmont Music is being digitally reconstructed at The Center in Vienna, a crucially important cultural transfer.
All photos by Todd Rosenberg
For information and tickets to all the great programming of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, go to www.cso.org
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