Review: Giancarlo Guerrero steps into new Grant Park Music Fest role with a pair of genial and dynamic programs

Chicago Tribune

6 hours ago

Talk about a perfect storm.
On Wednesday, Giancarlo Guerrero's much-fêted debut as principal conductor and artistic director of the Grant Park Music Festival was dampened by relentless rain. Audiences scrunched under the Jay Pritzker Pavilion fringe, only to play musical chairs dodging the structure's many (and ever-changing) leaky spots. When they weren't doing that, seat shuffles and squabbles competed with the evening's violin concerto.
But if Guerrero appeared unflappable onstage, it's because he's been there before. He made his sophomore appearance with the orchestra in 2014 under nearly identical circumstances, down to the solo string showcase and contemporary American opener. Despite the lousy weather, that appearance impressed festival musicians enough to fast-track Guerrero to the top of their director wishlist a decade later.
While last week's storm never erupted into thunder, musical lightning struck twice here with yet another exuberant, water-resistant stand by Guerrero on Wednesday, followed by a masterful account of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 on Friday.
Wednesday's concert included two harbor works: 'An American Port of Call,' by Virginia-based composer Adolphus Hailstork, and Leonard Bernstein's 'On the Waterfront' suite. Conducting with his pointer fingers rather than a baton, and sporting a new goatee, Guerrero led a sparky, whistle-clean run of Hailstork's eight-minute curtain raiser. But when the music dissipated into quietude — recalling a boat drifting far off from shore, surrounded only by blue horizon — Guerrero guided the music with expansive ease.
Bernstein's 'Waterfront' benefited from the same balance of gusto and intuitive pacing. Patrick Walle's horn solo up top sounded suspended in time, before an increasingly feral orchestra jerked us back to street level. Amid the ferocity, the Grant Parkers always sounded whetted and clean, moving through the works' shifting meters with fearsome precision. In the final windup to the end, electric energy gave way to ringing, Mussorgskyan grandeur.
Between the Hailstork and Bernstein, Jeremy Black returned to the festival as both concertmaster and featured soloist, offering up the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Even the brunt of the evening's downpour couldn't wash away the strong impression left by this filigree, soulful performance. Black's sound in the opening theme and balladic second movement was sugared but never treacly. Meanwhile, the Allegro molto vivace coasted along serenely, Black's bel canto phrasing and pristine intonation never betraying its finger-flying briskness.
Promisingly, Guerrero's orchestral accompaniment was every bit as tasteful. Negotiating solo string balance in the park is always just that — a negotiation — but Guerrero hit the sweet spot of clarity and restraint.
The orchestra was able to be a bit more gutsy under Friday's soloist, Pacho Flores. The Venezuelan trumpeter has a sparkling sound, which he dispatched with doting attention to phrase and line in Arturo Márquez's lively, if unseasonal, 'Concierto de Otoño' ('Autumn Concerto'). The work was specifically composed for Flores in 2018, taking unabashed advantage of not just the trumpeter's lyricism but his gatling-gun articulation, unflappable stamina and chameleon flexibility. (He traded four different horns across the 20-minute piece: C and D trumpets in the outer movements, then a flugelhorn and soprano cornet in the middle.)
Flores also knows how to work a crowd. Rather than shooting to the stratosphere in his third-movement cadenza, he crawled to the bottom of his range — an amusing subversion of trumpet tropes. He then turned his bell directly at Guerrero and playfully pppththhed at him through his horn, prompting a teasing 'what gives?' shrug from the conductor.
That said, it's hard to endorse Márquez's concerto beyond a mere virtuoso vehicle. The orchestral backing is often trite, cycling through the same progressions for what feels like minutes at a time. If the concerto's many flavors of theme-and-variation were engrossing at all, it was entirely thanks to Friday's soloist and orchestra, both playing with tempera-rich color and joie d'vivre.
For pops-adjacent music under a more skillful hand, look to Flores himself. He opened and closed his appearance with two self-penned numbers: 'Morocota' (named for a $20 Venezuelan coin) and 'Lábios Vermelhos' ('Red Lips'). Originally recording both with guitar accompaniment for a 2017 Deutsche Grammophon release, Flores sang through his horn with a suave melodiousness that would have done the Rat Pack proud, with just a shimmer of vibrato where it counted. His lush orchestral arrangements would have been right at home in that milieu, too. At one point in 'Lábios Vermelhos,' section trumpets got in on the fun, with a sneering little interjection.
Yet another short, Latin-inspired curtain raiser opened the concert: 'Baião n' Blues,' by Chicago composer Clarice Assad. A staple of the Carlos Kalmar years, Assad's inclusion in Guerrero's opening week bodes well for the new festival chief's attention to local composers.
Ultimately, though, this performance had some of the same early-season jitters as last week's opener, with a scraggly opening and subdivision disagreement among the violins. 'Baião n' Blues' already isn't Assad's most compellingly structured piece, but a more honed performance might have made a better case.
While Mahler sought to depict the world's natural beauty and bizarre juxtapositions in his music, he perhaps didn't anticipate contending with throbbing helicopters, the squeal of a coach's whistle, and hot rods sputtering down Lake Shore Drive on Friday.
The Grant Park corps rose above the usual downtown backing track with a fresh, focused Mahler 1. Guerrero cued the unearthly, whistling first bars with an ambiguous gesture that invited the orchestra to melt in freely. Offstage trumpets were piped through the crown of the pavilion stage, sounding mysteriously heaven-sent. When the theme arrived in the cellos, Guerrero maintained their levity and grace throughout the movement — and, in fact, throughout much of the piece, bringing an aerodynamic lightness even to the symphony's final cadence.
Because Grant Park 'does things a little differently,' per Guerrero, Friday's performance reinserted Mahler's discarded 'Blumine' movement. Through a complex change of hands, the only surviving manuscript copy of 'Blumine' ended up in in New Haven, Connecticut, where it was rediscovered as part of the Mahler renaissance of the 1960s.
If 'Blumine' is heard at all, it's usually as a standalone piece, for good reason: It's arresting but nearly always out-of-place amid the lustiness of the rest of the symphony. Friday's performance gave the same impression — gauzy and subtle, but stopping short of the richness and emotional abandon that would make a better case for its inclusion.
Elsewhere, other idiosyncratic touches intrigued and often convinced: more perky staccatos by oboist Alex Liedtke, orchestral accents like bitter twists of a knife in the funeral march, and a slower reading of the klezmer-band interludes.
In all, it endorsed Guerrero's warhorse chops as enthusiastically as his new-music acumen. Rain or shine, Grant Park is looking like a fair place to be under his baton.