Daniel Barenboim (1991–2006)

Daniel Barenboim was no stranger to the Chicago Symphony when he took the reins in 1991. He made his Orchestra Hall debut as a pianist in 1958, soloed with the group repeatedly in the 1960s, and directed his first subscription concert in 1970. After his conducting debut, Tribune critic Peter Gorner remarked that the orchestra "could not have sounded more glorious," while his colleague Tom Willis gushed, "Mr. Barenboim can conduct anything he likes and count on my listening." The profundity of Barenboim's readings were strengths in the late Germanic repertoire Chicago craved, but his aura faded before he became director as some listeners disliked the restlessness of his interpretations across the stylistic spectrum. Noting a distinct lack of precision, John von Rhein of the Tribune complained that he "seemed willing to sacrifice just about everything to surface dynamism, sweep, and lyrical underlining." This approach was far different from the disciplined, crisp, and clean Solti sound. By 1981, though, listeners had acclimated to Barenboim's unorthodox approach, with von Rhein observing that he "substitutes a fervent spontaneity for the clockwork virtuoso response that sometimes passes for making music." His infrequent guest appearances over the next several years, especially when he directed Mozart or Beethoven from the keyboard, reminded the city of his idiosyncratic style and sparkle.

Barenboim's positive aura shattered abruptly in 1987, when Solti announced his retirement. In a moment reminiscent of Claudia Cassidy's notorious attacks on several of the orchestra's conductors, writers for the city's major newspapers led a fierce campaign against Barenboim. Robert Marsh of the Sun-Times insisted that the orchestra should hire a distinguished American like Leonard Slatkin or James Levine, but the board and orchestra president Henry Fogel really considered only two choices: Barenboim and Claudio Abbado, Solti's former principal guest. Marsh and von Rhein openly supported Abbado while panning Barenboim's appearances. "If this is the future of the CSO," von Rhein groused, "this reviewer wants no part of it." Barenboim, who had directed the Orchestre de Paris since 1975, also raised the ire of those who felt he might be spread too thin after he accepted a position leading the Opéra-Bastille in 1988. To everyone's surprise, however, the leader of the Opéra fired the outspoken maestro just weeks before executive director Henry Fogel named him as Solti's successor. Fogel faced immense backlash in the press, while the players, who had supported Barenboim far more than the critics, welcomed his charisma on the podium and relaxed rehearsal demeanor despite his occasional erratic interpretations.

The dust didn't exactly settle in Chicago as controversy continued to follow the new director. In one of his first press conferences, he assured reporters that he planned to direct tremendous energy toward integrating the city's arts institutions, revitalizing the Civic Orchestra, and scheduling chamber concerts as part of the CSO season. He also supported the orchestra's engagement with contemporary music by continuing the composer-in-residence program with Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read Thomas and by enlisting the eminent Pierre Boulez as principal guest conductor. Despite these positive steps, critics wondered if Barenboim would ultimately fulfill his promises. In the summer before he began, he signed a ten-year contract with the Deutsche Staatsoper, guaranteeing that his schedule would remain as limited as Solti's. Then the orchestra went on strike, delaying his first season by several weeks. Barenboim stayed out of the fray, but the dispute gave relations between management and the musicians a sharp edge at the very outset of his tenure. The rift was slow to heal.

Like others of its caliber, the CSO faced significant financial pressures during Barenboim's tenure, such as declining audiences, rising guest artist fees, and the requirement of maintaining world-class compensation for the players. Management also announced in 1993 that it was embarking on a much needed $105-million renovation of Orchestra Hall. The acoustical changes generated substantial improvements, the stage itself and backstage accommodations for musicians were enhanced, and patrons heartily approved of other amenities like expanded lobbies and restrooms. Criticism of Barenboim's performances nevertheless continued in certain quarters. After a Mahler performance, for example, one CSO player claimed that he "ripped the engine out, took it apart, and then couldn't figure out how to put it back together again." Making matters worse, nationwide contractions in the recording industry and shrinking grant funding did not spare the CSO.

The orchestra hired Deborah Rutter (then known as Deborah R. Card) to steer the ship after Henry Fogel became president and CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League in 2003. With the help of longtime artistic administrator Martha Gilmer, who oversaw the immense tasks of the orchestra's programming and scheduling, she initiated innovative ventures designed to attract new audiences, such as "Friday Night at the Movies" and "Afterworks Masterworks." Rutter's internal controls on spending also led to a balanced budget by Barenboim's departure in 2006. During a period that saw orchestras in Houston, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh on the brink of financial collapse, the CSO emerged as a model of sound fiscal management.

The maestro, meanwhile, proved to be a successful builder in his own right. He earned immediate critical acclaim as a dynamic leader of the Civic Orchestra, which had weakened under Solti, and took aspiring local conductors under his wing. More importantly, he set about finding replacements for critical positions vacated by retirements — an issue that Solti had treated with less personal investment. Two of his first significant hires offered a tremendous boost to the violins: Robert Chen as co-concertmaster (later sole concertmaster) and Yuan-Qing Yu as assistant concertmaster. He also addressed the departures of veteran wind principals — flutist Donald Peck, oboist Ray Still, and bassoonist Willard Elliot, all of whom had joined under Fritz Reiner and Jean Martinon. Barenboim replaced them with terrific young players who made his woodwinds the envy of directors everywhere: Mathieu Dufour, Alex Klein, and David McGill. But his hardest assignment was replacing principal trumpet Bud Herseth, who had been hired by Artur Rodzinski as principal trumpet in 1948 and retired in 2001. Barenboim finally found virtuoso Chris Martin in 2005. Though the process was slow and arduous, Barenboim had built an orchestra that could be fully responsive to his artistic vision — and one that remained as strong as any in the world.

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The portrait that emerges in the following pages reveals Barenboim's progression as a molder of the orchestra and finally its champion. Early in his tenure, Patner tended to agree with John von Rhein that the conductor's performances could be turbulent, both in quality and interpretation — the latter a consequence of his devotion to the mystical spontaneity associated with famed Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache. Over time, however, the orchestra defied natural odds as it felt one lightning strike after another, first with signature pieces of the late nineteenth century and then with Barenboim's stable of contemporary works and prized soloists, particularly pianist Radu Lupu. A trip to Argentina allowed Barenboim to return to his boyhood home as the leader of a great ensemble. Patner increasingly enjoyed these fresh experiences and reminisced with Barenboim about them at the end of his tenure.

By 2006, the orchestra sounded noticeably different than it had under Solti — softer around the edges and less driven. Patner's coverage was spotty near the end of Barenboim's tenure, but his friend Alex Ross's New Yorker commentary on the maestro's final concerts captured the city's general feeling: "I had an adverse reaction when I first heard the great Chicago orchestra under Barenboim, a decade ago. There was a crude and chaotic quality to the sound. [...] Now he no longer pushes so hard, for his personality has melded with the orchestra's. His musicianship is old-fashioned; he doesn't go in for glossy perfection, instead favoring sinewy textures, earthy rhythms, freely singing lines." Building enough trust between maestro and orchestra to change artistic directions requires real effort, and Barenboim worked for it. After his final concert, Ross noted, the audience applauded for fifteen minutes as he congratulated every one of the players: "Barenboim could not have made a more graceful exit."

Douglas W. Shadle

Early Weaknesses and Emerging Strengths

Lazy Mozart, Strong Carter and Brahms

Chicago Sun-Times,, May 13, 1994 Wednesday's Orchestra Hall concert — Barenboim's last before a tour to New York and Europe, and his last of the season — seemed a kind of temporary valedictory, summing up many of the music director's strengths and weaknesses. It opened with a genre in which Barenboim is a definite hit with audiences: a piano concerto casting him as conductor and soloist.

In January's performances of Mozart's popular F Major Concerto, K. 459, Barenboim piloted his Steinway concert grand as if it were a performance racing car. Wednesday, the analogy could have been made to a gas-guzzling Cadillac. His playing was automatic, lazy and unexciting.

With the aid of conductor Pierre Boulez and composer-in-residence Shulamit Ran, Barenboim has succeeded in introducing a steady diet of 20th century and contemporary music to subscription audiences.

The reprise of Elliott Carter's Partita, which received its world premiere here in February, showed the level of commitment he can get from the orchestra. They played this rhythmically complex 18minute score with the same attention and skill they bring to Mahler and Bruckner.

Brahms always brings out the best in Barenboim. His slow tempo choices, which can be wrong-headed in other works, acted as clarifying agents in the majestic Fourth Symphony. Every phrase was presented as a piece of the larger whole, and he injected the well-known passacaglia finale with drama and suspense. He rewarded the cheering crowd with a jaunty tour-style encore of Brahms' Hungarian Dance in G minor.

At Best as Beethoven Soloist-Conductor

Chicago Sun-Times, October 27, 1997 Georg Solti died last month on the cusp of his 85th birthday. He was scheduled to celebrate that milestone Saturday by conducting what would have been his 1,000th concert with the orchestra that he indelibly placed on the world cultural map.

Daniel Barenboim, Solti's successor as CSO music director, took the podium for the all-Beethoven program instead, serving as soloist as well in the composer's Third Piano Concerto. Saturday's program had a celebratory, even triumphant, air befitting the life of this most optimistic and forceful of the great conductors.

Beethoven was an essential part of the 28-year Solti/CSO legacy, and the Seventh Symphony was closely associated not only with the late music director laureate but with Barenboim's rival for succession, former principal guest conductor Claudio Abbado.

With the eyes of the gala benefit crowd upon him, Barenboim offered one of his most convincing performances of a large-scale classical orchestral work. Dispensing with pauses between the movements, he offered a reading that was fully aware of the dynamism of the Solti and Abbado approaches while bringing out the lyrical inner voices and solo passages he favors.

Most impressive was his work as soloist-conductor in the C minor concerto. This is what Barenboim does best. His luxurious romantic playing is so deeply felt that it persuades both players and audience of its old-fashioned agenda.

Celebrating a Great Trumpeter

Adolph Herseth's 50th Anniversary

Chicago Sun-Times, June 9, 1998 Sunday afternoon at Symphony Center, a full house gathered to pay tribute to Adolph "Bud" Herseth, the trumpet-besotted boy from Bertha, Minn., whose only experience had been "college band, dance band, Navy band" when Artur Rodzinski hired him 50 years ago to be the principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It is, as Herseth is fond of pointing out, the only job he's ever had and, despite a 77th birthday next month, a job he has no intention of leaving anytime soon.

Herseth's credentials as a soloist and technician have never been in question. But it is his loyalty to the role of an orchestral player and his devotion as a mentor to generations of brass players worldwide that Herseth has always regarded as his greatest accomplishments.

The Bible says that the angel Gabriel will blow a trumpet to announce the Day of Judgment; accordingly, the orchestra billed Sunday's international trumpet reunion as "Gabriel's Children." Players had flown in from as far away as Japan, former Chicago colleagues came out of retirement, and jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval even offered a double high C.

Herseth played proud papa in the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, offering both sharply etched calls and dreamy, slow cantilena lines.

Music Director Daniel Barenboim has called the straight-talking Herseth the "conscience of the orchestra" and its "moral musical center." Barenboim's offering of a repeat performance of Beethoven's "Emperor" piano concerto (heard Saturday night) as a part of Sunday's program made clear the high regard he has for his senior colleague.

As wonderful as the Beethoven was, and as much as Herseth had wanted a work from the standard repertoire on the program ("That's what I do," he explained), the crowd was eager for the various brass summits to be scaled. And they were not disappointed.

Doc Severinsen may be as sparkly in his dress as Herseth is staid, but the two were an eloquent and hilarious match in "Side by Side," trading jazz and popular riffs. And when Herseth offered two of his favorite classical excerpts from Mussorgsky and Scriabin, Severinsen shot back a few bars of Mahler of his own.

Taking on Signature Pieces

More Elegant and Restrained "Ein Heldenleben"

Chicago Sun-Times, December 18, 1998 This week's Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts under music director Daniel Barenboim take the peculiar inwardness of musical heroism as their theme and argue its case with loving eloquence.

Richard Strauss wrote his autobiographical Op. 40 tone poem Ein Heldenleben ("A Hero's Life") in 1898 when he was not even at the midpoint of a lengthy and productive career. Having tackled Dons Juan and Quixote, Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Germany's Till Eulenspiegel, the composer told the novelist Romain Rolland, "I do not see why I should not compose a symphony about myself; I find myself quite as interesting as Napoleon or Alexander."

Barenboim led an interpretation more elegant and restrained by half than his previous outings with a work that has become a staple, even a signature, of his repertoire. Avoiding the arbitrary tempos of his past readings, Barenboim sculpted a performance that matched the work's story. Concertmaster Samuel Magad thrives in this piece's understated romanticism and his refined solos met with strong applause.

Herseth Triumphs in Mahler Fifth

Chicago Sun-Times, March 8, 2000 Saturday night, now-and-forever Chicago Symphony Orchestra principal trumpet Adolph "Bud" Herseth flubbed some notes in the orchestra's otherwise exquisite performance of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony at Carnegie Hall. And in Monday's New York Times, a reviewer suggested that the 78-year-old Herseth might start thinking about retirement.

So Monday night, in the third and last performance of the orchestra's Carnegie residency, all eyes and ears were on Herseth in Mahler's Symphony No. 5, a signature work for this trumpet god in his 52 seasons with the Chicago Symphony.

One Chicago wag suggested that the crusty Herseth had pasted a photo of the New York critic to his music stand. Whatever the explanation, and even with music director Daniel Barenboim picking an almost intolerably slow pace for the Mahler, Herseth showed that when the chips are down, his chops can't be touched. From the symphony's opening solo trumpet calls to his leadership of the various chorales and fugues to his daring rides-above-the-tempest-tossed passages of Sturm und Drang, the orchestra's unofficial captain was in full command.

The Carnegie audience demanded not one but two solo bows, the latter coming when, in a move reminiscent of the To Tell the Truth quiz show, the trumpet section began to stand as a group and then took their seats, leaving Herseth alone for his deserved ovation.

Lightning Strikes with Radu Lupu in Berlin

Everyone Knew It Was Something Extraordinary

Chicago Sun-Times, April 24, 2000 On paper, the pair of programs that Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra brought to the Berlin Easter week Festtage ("Festival Days") this weekend did not seem particularly adventurous. Nor was anyone predicting any musical fireworks with the presence of two outstanding but cerebral pianists as soloists in those staples of the classical repertoire, the Brahms piano concertos.