The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first in a set of three concerts Thursday evening was no ordinary program.
When Wolfgang Mozart’s milestone Requiem is on a program, it is usually the center of attention. But the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first in a set of three concerts Thursday evening was no ordinary program.
The orchestra began with its first-ever – and, it must be said, spotlight-grabbing – performance of the Symphony No. 9 by William Schuman (1910-1992), a once-celebrated American composer whose recognition has unfairly dimmed in recent decades. A rarely heard work of this kind is typically presented by American conductors like Marin Alsop or Leonard Slatkin, who are well-known as champions of modern repertoire from their native country.
But this program was led by the Chicago Symphony’s Italian music director, Riccardo Muti, who came to it in an intriguingly roundabout way via a suggestion over dinner from Steve Robinson, former general manager of WFMT-FM 98.7.
What grabbed Muti’s attention was the work’s sub-title, “Le fosse Ardeatine,” a reference to an uncommonly brutal incident during World War II that is infamous in Italy. Following the killing of 32 German soldiers and two civilians by the Italian Underground in March 1944, the Nazis took 335 mostly innocent Italians to the Ardeatine Caves, a quarry on the outskirts of Rome and shot them in the backs of their heads.
As Schuman explains in his elucidative accompanying notes, the composer and his wife visited the Ardeatine monument in 1967 and were obviously deeply affected. Although he does not try to in some way to re-create the events at the caves, the work nonetheless conjures the lingering grief and pain in a deeply moving way.
The three-movement work opens with a spare, ghostly melody in the first violins and cellos, becoming even more stricken and stark in the 12th bar as that same line a half-step higher is picked up by the second violins and violas.
