After surviving a macro midterm where the True/False section felt like coin flipping, I rushed downtown for Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Riccardo Muti (Concert Note digital version)
Can you believe that Muti’s 84?! And he probably definitely counts bars better than I do.
I sat in the center front row of the Terrace—right behind the stage. That seat feels almost illicit, as if you’ve joined the orchestra. Muti’s expressions are right there in front of you; his every gesture, every cue, goes directly under your eyes. He is astonishingly clear. Every motion carries intention—he shakes for trills, marks beats for the horns, molds phrases with his hands. His precision and humor are inseparable. It’s a masterclass in detail. Honestly, that seat should cost more when Muti’s conducting—as a orchestra flute player myself I’d say he’s the best conductor one could hope for.
Plus, Muti once spoke about his tendency for no-bloating conducting style:
[Muti] fears that today’s celebrated maestros are more interested in conducting as a spectator sport than musical truth. “That is the problem today — the arms, the show on the podium.” He mimics a conductor whipping himself up into a frenzy with Tchaikovsky. “They are suffering through these ‘orgasms’! Sometimes they say, ‘Oh, he’s a dynamo.’ I’m sorry but a dynamo is something you have in a car.”
Source: The Times
Dvorka’s Symphony 9
Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” is very New-York-ish. In 1892, Jeannette Thurber—a New York philanthropist founded her national school of composition and invited the Czech composer to direct her conservatory. Dvořák accepted, crossing the Atlantic to a nation that soon celebrated him as both foreign genius and curious guest. He wandered Central Park, visited immigrant cafés, and absorbed the fascinating clamor of trains and harbor horns. The Symphony 9 he wrote soon after carried these impressions—not literal American tunes, as critics assumed, but what he called “the spirit of such melodies.” Years later he clarified that it was never meant as an imitation of America, but as a musical postcard home: impressions and greetings from the New World.
Read more about the Symphony in CSO’s concert program, where a digital version is available online. My friend (with probably credible source) says that there are good interns behind them.
There’s a very very very famous Karajan conducting Berliner Philharmonic version: does the following famous I-miss-home tune in the third movement ring any bells?