Biography
Stravinsky’s Firebird has been a Boulez touchstone in Chicago, memorably recorded with the CSO in 1992 for Deutsche Grammophon, and Thursday night’s performance of the complete ballet brought an even deeper, multi-hued experience.
Granted, the opening depiction of the Enchanted Garden was rather fleet and literal, but once flutist Mathieu Dufour stole in with the Firebird’s theme, the performance began to unfold in all its iridescent splendor. The benefit of presenting the entire ballet rather than just the greatest-hits suites is that one can encounter the audacity and brilliance of Stravinsky’s original scoring as well as the innumerable beauties of the non-excerpted passages and transitions.
Read full biography ↓
Boulez downplayed the bombast of Kashchei’s Infernal Dance effectively while still making audience members jump with the whipbrack power of those sudden chords. Even by their standard, the CSO strings were golden and gorgeous in the Princesses’ Round and Berceuse, and Dufour, oboist Eugene Izotov, clarinetist John Bruce Yeh, and concertmaster Robert Chen all made glorious contributions. Only the dismal horn playing of Dale Clevenger was a blot on an otherwise evocative, beautifully colored performance.deeper, multi-hued experience.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.