Funny side of Sinfonietta
REVIEW | Bassoonist dressed like Elvis
While PDQ Bach and Victor Borge may still loom large, classical music and humor have long been seen as the perennial odd couple. On Monday night at Orchestra Hall, the Chicago Sinfonietta made a convincing argument that silliness abounds in the hallowed tradition of composition if you look hard enough. It doesn't always take a musicologist's ear to get the jokes.
Guest conductor Michael Morgan introduced and delivered goofy works by Jacques Ibert, Michael Daugherty and Darius Milhaud for the orchestra's entertaining second program of the season, "Laughter." Morgan is no stranger to Chicago, being a former assistant conductor of the CSO under Sir Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim. Now an orchestral and educational leader in the California Bay Area, Morgan is an ideal advocate for the Sinfonietta's mission of musical excellence and outreach.
For an organization that programs many of its concerts around themes of ethnic diversity, the Sinfonietta also excels when it focuses on less visible composers regardless of race. Michael Daugherty's "Dead Elvis" won't enter any chamber music canons anytime soon, but its abundant absurdity and cacophonic wit proved to be a thoroughly comical listen. Lyric Opera Orchestra bassoonist Lewis Kirk dressed as the King himself, and by throwing himself into the role of bassoon rock idol, earned several laughs on its own. The crowd acknowledged the hilarity when the Presley hit "It's Now or Never" popped up in a deadly serious Latin hymn. There was no denying that Elvis is always alive.
Sillier still was Jacques Ibert's six-movement "Divertissement" (1929). Morgan noted that this music is a precursor to the cartoon compositions of Carl Stalling, whose scores for Disney's "Silly Symphonies" would later appear in Warner Bros. "Looney Tunes." The wry quotations of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" and bloated exaggerations of Johann Strauss had nothing on the flimsy instrumentation jumbled together in different keys and styles.
More satisfying, Milhaud's "Le Boeuf sur la toit" highlighted its roots in a Charlie Chaplin silent film score and showcased barroom antics as a policeman is decapitated by a ceiling fan. The jovial repeating trumpet theme kept a nearly sold-out crowd's toes tapping and heads bobbing.
The program's second half was devoted entirely to Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4, "Italian," which nicely counterbalanced all the winking joviality in the first. Whether it was the well-executed elation of the famous opening bars or the Germanic heft in the final movement, this sturdy performance was no laughing matter.
Bryant Manning is a locally based free-lance writer.