There are inspired moments and it’s hard to resist the big, expansive tune at the end of the opening movement. The finale (“Blithesome spirit”) begins with sharp single notes by the violist, and again sets impassioned music and jagged fragments for the viola against brief echoes of the earlier lyrical moments, albeit here in a more formulaic vein.īrouwer’s style is tonal and her melodic writing falls easily on the ear. The second movement (“fair as the moon, bright as the sun”) offers a spring-like main theme, as the tempo quickens to another lyrical flowering and cadenza. The chimes return and the violist muses inwardly in a passage backed by solo harp. A new sweetly lyrical theme arises, played with expressive feeling by Rostad and emerging in sumptuous, silver-screen opulence in the orchestra. A traditional cadenza offers the violist a moment of pyrotechnical display as he surmounts the more jagged music. Much of the longish movement alternates between this material-angular fragments set against lyrical passages, often with unusual scoring featuring bells and twittering avian winds. A melodic secondary theme follows from the violist, which grows in ardency. The soloist enters immediately afterward playing an agitated solo figure. Though her music is rarely heard in Chicago, the prolific 80-year-old has built up a significant oeuvre, including a symphony, several orchestral works, dozens of chamber works and three concertos. Among the latter is the Viola Concerto, composed in 2010 and heard in its Chicago debut.Ĭast in the traditional three movements, the opening section (“Caritas”) begins with a brief ominous statement by the orchestra.
Happily, Grant Park’s revised program still featured the slated soloist Masumi Per Rostad, who instead performed Margaret Brouwer’s Viola Concerto Friday night at the Pritzker Pavilion.Ī Michigan native, Brouwer served for over two decades as head of the composition department at the Cleveland Institute of Music. (In a bit of serendipitous scheduling, Montgomery’s Banner was performed the same evening by the CSO at Ravinia.) Unfortunately, the work’s debut has been delayed until next summer.
Characters by Jessie Montgomery, new composer in residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This weekend’s program at the Grant Park Music Festival was to have featured the world premiere of The L.E.S. Masumi Per Rostad was the soloist in Margaret Brouwer’s Viola Concerto, performed with the Grant Park Orchestra Friday night.
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