Review: A clarinet concerto 35 years in the making crowns CSO's Ravel concert

Chicago Tribune

07-03-2025

Christopher Theofanidis's 'Indigo Heaven' was well, well worth the wait.
Chicago Symphony audiences expected to hear the American composer's clarinet concerto, written for CSO principal clarinetist Stephen Williamson, last season. Unexpected quadruple bypass surgery forced Williamson to postpone the performance to this week, in concerts conducted by Gustavo Gimeno.
But Williamson and Theofanidis have had 'Indigo Heaven' on their mind even longer. The two met in 1990, as students at the Eastman School of Music; in the intervening years, they cajoled one another about working on a concerto.
Like Lowell Liebermann's Flute Concerto No. 2 last season, 'Indigo Heaven' — named after a country Western novel by Mark Warren — is tonal, melodic and traditionally structured, with a moderato first movement, lyrical second, and zippy, mixed-meter third.
Of the two wind commissions, 'Indigo Heaven' may have the most staying power. Though Theofanidis has written concertos for just about every major instrument group — including, early on, for bassoon and saxophone — 'Indigo Heaven' stands among his most skillful and organic contributions to the solo repertoire. The string writing is lush and multidimensional, while winds and brass get copious opportunities to dialogue with the soloist. Several echoing figures enliven the orchestration — one ripples through the trumpets early on, while others are tossed between soloist and section clarinets. Even setting its craft aside, 'Indigo Heaven' is simply beautiful: I challenge a listener not to get chills during the flowering orchestral entrance in the second movement.
Williamson approached the solo part with his usual heart and generous creativity. The clarinet's opening statements, riffing over an easy tide in the orchestra, sound speechlike in their starting and stopping; Williamson played the section with a freedom that sounded nearly spontaneous. His cadenza before the third movement called back to that spirit, morphing from a searching line into the driving spirit of the third movement.
That said, for a woodwind concerto, 'Indigo Heaven's' solo part is very, very busy, occasionally to a fault. The clarinet's good-natured musings become agitated and even relentless, offering the soloist little respite.
That juice often wasn't worth the squeeze. During some serious soloistic pyrotechnics, particularly in the third movement, Williamson was covered by Theofanidis's thick orchestration. Nor did the solo part capitalize much on Williamson's stirring affinity for long, sustained lines. Even in the more lyrical second movement, it tended to scoot along to the next idea or phraselet — and quickly.
In yet another commonality with last year's Liebermann flute concerto, 'Indigo Heaven' made off as the concert's strongest performance — great news for the doted-upon premiere, less so for the 20th-century works that surrounded it. Trumpets sounded a bit harried within themselves and in their sections with the trombones in Samuel Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra. The all-Ravel second half — 'Rapsodie espagnole' and 'Daphnis et Chloé' Suite No. 2 — fared worse, with widespread ensemble issues much more conspicuous than the CSO's usual standard.
Still, Thursday had its singularly lovely moments. Samuel Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra opened with skillful shapeshifting from the winds. Wagner Campos, sitting in on bass clarinet as he has much of this season, played in his upper range with the birdsong clarity of a B-flat clarinet; tubist Gene Pokorny underpinned it all with a quiet held note so silky it sounded bowed.
Gimeno, making his mainstage CSO debut, made some engaging interpretive calls. He varied the many crests in the 'Daphnis' suite to give them some extra character — a visceral twinge in the one of the first big dissonant chords, and quick, walloping washes in the dash to the end. If Ravel's 'Rapsodie espagnole' was lacking some mystery at the outset, it got more oomph in a snappy 'Malagueña' and powerful 'Feria' sections.
That said, more trust and fluidity from the incoming Teatro Real chief would go a long way. Gimeno's beat was precise but overcautious; neither Ravel work got airborne as a result. Likewise, his Second Essay was tensile and exciting, but it tended to press on with obsessive consistency rather than allowing itself to wax and wane.
Between the Theofanidis and Ravel works, Thursday's program was practically a woodwind expo. With principal flute Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson out and Williamson's hands quite full for the concerto, the CSO's own Emma Gerstein and John Bruce Yeh subbed in superbly, Gerstein bringing soft shadings to the flute solo at the heart of the 'Daphnis' suite.
Among the many guests and subs fortifying the CSO for 'Daphnis's' mega-orchestra was E-flat clarinetist Jay Shankar, visiting from the Milwaukee Symphony. His two spotlights — a lyrical response to the piccolo in the beginning of the piece, and a prankish outburst near the end — were both uncommonly rhapsodic, making memorable artistic statements out of two short moments.
Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.
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Originally Published: March 7, 2025 at 1:01 PM CST