Review: Grant Park Music Festival is lifted by an artist-in-residence and a poignant ‘Enigma Variations'

Chicago Tribune

16 hours ago

Everyone, it seems, needs to have an 'artist-in-residence' these days.
Though lofty, the title, as interpreted in recent seasons by the Grant Park Music Festival and the Chicago Symphony, tends to overpromise. It's becoming industry parlance for 'has at least two bookings with us a season' — significant for the artist and presenter, maybe, but mostly a blip for audiences.
Cellist Inbal Segev's residency with the Grant Park Music Festival, which concluded on Wednesday, felt closer to a fair billing. The Israeli-American cellist was here for just a week, but it was a packed one: a Pavilion concert on July 9 (playing Mark Adamo's 'Last Year,' a latter-day 'Four Seasons' inflected by climate change), a recital on July 13 which included some of her own music, and a masterclass on July 15, before concluding with another concert in the Pavilion on July 16.
In grand-finale spirit, Segev dusted off Anna Clyne's 'Dance,' a calling card of hers, for the occasion. Not that she needed to do much dusting: Guest conductor Courtney Lewis noted in comments to the audience that, since Segev premiered the concerto in 2019, she has performed about half of its 80 performances since.
That deep experience was manifest in Wednesday's performance. Like 'Masquerade,' another widely programmed piece by Clyne, 'Dance' dresses up centuries-old musical forms in 21st-century clothing — the placid round of the third movement, the striding ground bass of the fourth. But even amid more fervid movements like the second and fifth, Segev radiated calm confidence through their percussive chords and fingerboard-spanning dexterity. She often smiled encouragingly at Lewis, or, in the finale, at concertmaster Jeremy Black, with whom she swapped knotty, bluesy solos. Her coolheaded virtuosity soothed, even when the music didn't.
As an encore, Segev brought the same tranquil command to the Sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 3. Her sound was magisterial and rich, a full-bodied account — until the very end. On that final resolution, she quieted to a mere, otherworldly wisp, like a final wave from a distance.
Lewis and the Grant Parkers were every bit as unflappable in their accompaniment. Voices in the orchestra step forth to double the cello here and there — a tricky alignment in any acoustic. But from my vantage in the Pavilion seating area, these all converged impeccably, most especially the ghostly bowed vibraphone supporting Segev's harmonics.
Against 'Dance,' a frazzled 'Fledermaus' overture sounded like it might have gotten the short end of the rehearsal stick. Lewis's sudden, tensile beats left the orchestra guessing at subdivisions, nor did they give Strauss's beloved Viennese waltzes much freedom to bounce. Other gestures — scrunched shoulders, a finger to the lips to hush the orchestra — seemed patently superfluous for a group of Grant Park's caliber.
But if Lewis spent Grant Park's blink-and-you-miss-it rehearsal time preparing his poignant 'Enigma Variations,' that was a worthy tradeoff. Lewis cultivated an entrancingly variegated ensemble sound, adding new dimension to even Elgar's most familiar strains. The yin-and-yang themes of 'R.P.A.' seemed somehow connected at the hip, rather than starkly juxtaposed. Later, the seafaring variation which Elgar laconically titled '***' — spurring avid speculation about whose initials, exactly, he was redacting — gained might the same way an ocean storm does: gradually at first, then all at once.
Then, of course, there's 'Nimrod,' the piece's most famous excerpt. Strings played the opening with no vibrato, sounding for all the world like the stillness before daybreak. When the sun rose through mounting crescendos, the orchestra was bright but not blaring, the Grant Park brass offering sculpted support.
The final variation, named for Elgar himself, likewise refused to be weighted down. The opening scampered with tricksterish levity; later on, when the movement cycles through vignettes from earlier in the piece, Lewis balanced the orchestra so that they sounded like flotsam bobbing in '***'s' surf. Now that's how you play the 'Enigma Variations.'
A postscript: Inbal Segev's Grant Park week would have been even more packed, were it not for a day-of cancellation of her Monday recital repeat at the Columbus Park Refectory.
Festival spokespeople explained the performance, co-presented by the Chicago Park District's 'Night Out in the Parks,' was canceled due to noise-bleed concerns from a 'Bike Night' hosted on the adjacent parking lot, an event they say the festival learned about that morning. In truth, Columbus Park has hosted hundreds for Bike Night every Monday all summer, complete with food-truck vendors, signage and traffic cops.
The most generous read of the snafu suggests this was just an awkward breakdown in communication between the festival and the Parks District. It's worth noting, too, the Refectory building itself, where the concert was supposed to happen, was not double-booked, and was thus available on paper.
But the broader cluelessness here from Grant Park strikes at a deeper issue, one certainly not unique to this festival. What, exactly, are arts organizations hoping to achieve through neighborhood events if they don't know all that much about the neighborhoods in question?
The festival should take the fumble as a learning opportunity as its 'Night Out' partnership continues: July 17 at Olympia Park, July 24 at Indian Boundary Park, July 31 at Lake Shore Park, Aug. 7 at Jefferson Memorial Park and Aug. 14 at Lincoln Park Cultural Center.
The Grant Park Music Festival continues July 18-19 with Augustin Hadelich playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, 201 E. Randolph St. Free; more information and ticketed Pavilion seating at www.grantparkmusicfestival.com