Chicago cultural weekend: Millennium Park

This year after opera season ended (watch for my season wrap-up this Sunday in the Enquirer) I decided to visit Chicago for a weekend as a cultural tourist. We got a good (for Chicago) weekend rate at the modern-esque Sofitel Water Tower, which is close to Michigan Ave. for those sudden urges to go shopping.

Visiting a free concert at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago’s new Millennium Park was worth the five-hour car trip, alone. It’s the only free outdoor classical music festival with a professional orchestra and chorus left in the country. It started in 1931 with free band concerts meant to lift the spirits of Depression-era Chicagoans. The Grant Park Concerts started in 1935 with 66 concert of symphonic and band music. Today, the festival presents 10 weeks of programs, still paid for (mostly) by the city.

Mainly, I was curious to see how music would sound in the spectacular Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion. Curling upwards from the theater like a festive birthday gift bow that has been caught by the wind, the stainless steel architectural wonder has become one of Chicago’s most important landmarks and a new reason to visit the city.

Question to Cincinnati’s movers and shakers: Could this idea, of hiring a signature architect to build an architectural icon for our orchestra work on the banks of the Ohio??

Besides the acoustics of the outdoor shell, I was also curious to see if anyone would show up to hear Bruckner, especially on a day in the 90s, with a heat index of 100 degrees.

James Palermo, the festival’s artistic and general director gave me a backstage tour before the show. Most of the backstage area is gray concrete block, with exposed heating and air ducts, because Gehry wanted to spend the real money on the exterior, I was informed. There was a beautiful choral rehearsal space, though, in warm wood of Douglas fir. The chorus has its own balcony, right over the orchestra.

The stage area has no right angles; it is all curves, with state-of-the-art lighting and sound system. Monitors feed sound out of the side walls to the orchestra, so the musicians can hear themselves. In addition, the orchestra is on risers that are meant to vibrate – so the violinists can actually feel the cellos and basses when they play.

The acoustical treatment, by Talaske of Oak Park, allows for acoustical adjustments – such as drawing curtains – to allow for changing brightness of sound. The idea, says Palermo – who, by the way, he did some of his training with our CSO in 1989 – is to produce perfect balance onstage, and reproduce it to the thousands of people in the pavilion and on the expansive Millennium Park lawn. Two systems are at work – one just for volume and another to add reverb to try to simulate the actual sound of a concert hall to the masses. A tall order – but would it work?

And what about those masses? As people began pouring into the area, Palermo noted that there’s easy access here – a train arrives directly underneath from Indiana, there are local commuter trains, and people pouring out of office buildings on foot. Since building the new theater, their attendance has more than doubled.

On average, they formerly had 4,000-5,000. Now, an average concert draws 10-11,000 -- even on weeknights. Last week, more than 12,000 turned out to hear Carmina Burana, literally hanging off the railings. (I must point out that Chicago has 3 million people and an overall regional population of 8 million.)

Frenchman Emmanuel Villaume led the Grant Park Symphony (whose music director is Carlos Kalmar, a frequent Cincinnati guest) on this night. The soloist was pianist Louis Lortie (also coming to the CSO this year) who treated the crowd with two Liszt blockbusters.

The orchestra consists of 25 players with the Lyric Opera, 25 local freelancers and the rest are national musicians with orchestras such as the LA Chamber Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony and the Met – who don’t have summer seasons.

Despite the record heat, the crowd came in droves, completely filling the lawn, the pavilion (which has patron seats in the front and the rest are completely open) and yes, hanging over the railings. By my eyeball, it was at least 9,000 – maybe more, on a Friday night.

Now for the sound. Lortie, a Canadian pianist, was playing Liszt’s Fantasy on Motives from Beethoven’s "The Ruins of Athens" (one of the splashiest pieces you’ve never heard) and the "Totentanz." His performance was powerful and extroverted, and he pushed the tempo and volume, sometimes at the expense of a few dropped notes. With all the ambient noise (sirens, traffic) one couldn’t hear much nuance. Still, it was a tour de force, as he performed great fistfuls of massive virtuosities, one after another. In the "Totentanz," his playing was most engaging, summoning power but never banging, and navigating fiendishly demonic passages.

The acoustics were mixed, starting out with a boomy bass and an uneven balance between piano and orchestra, which improved as the music progressed. (This is because engineers tweak the sound system as the concert is going on, Palermo told me earlier.)

Bruckner’s Seventh was exceedingly enjoyable, partly because Villaume is such a fine conductor and partly, perhaps, because the balance and sound quality seemed more settled. Villaume led with warmth and musicality, well-gauged tempos and a wonderful feel for the overall architecture. There were some beautifully phrased moments in the strings – I especially loved the simple beauty of the second movement’s landler, which reminded me of Mahler. The horns (including Wagnerian tubas) were round and glowing. I was less impressed with the winds; intonation was a bit off in the slow movement, and I thought phrasing might have had more color. Still, tackling Bruckner successfully was admirable for an ensemble that only plays together for the summer, and it speaks to the caliber of the average American musician these days.

We were out by 8:30 p.m., and decided to take one of those ubiquitous Chicago cabs to make our dinner reservation, at Bistro 110, close to the Water Tower. We had a lovely cool salad dinner, perfect in this heat. It’s a member of the Levy group of restaurants – more about that later, when I tell you about the Ravinia experience – and meeting up with maestro James Conlon!

For info: www.grantparkmusicfestival.com