United States Coleman, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky: Stewart Goodyear (piano), Grant Park Music Competition Orchestra / Valentina Peleggi (conductor). Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago, 29.6.2023. (JLZ)

Valerie Coleman – Umoja
Saint-Saëns – Piano Concerto No.2
Tchaikovsky – Symphony No.4

The Metropolis of Chicago’s Grant Park Music Competition has a ten-week schedule for the 2023 season that runs from 14 June to 19 August. The live performance on 29 June was notable for its inclusion of music by a recent composer and an occasionally carried out work by Saint-Saëns, in addition to a well-known Tchaikovsky symphony.

This system opened with Valerie Coleman’s Umoja, an orchestral piece for girls’s refrain. Primarily based on the composer’s 1997 track, it celebrates the Kwanzaa precept of unity. On this instrumental model of the work, Coleman used orchestral colours to help the piece. The construction is evident: Coleman presents her unique thought, affords a contrasting part denoted by clearly dissonant sonorities and reprises the unique materials with full orchestra in lush sounds that resounded on this outside milieu. Coleman’s voice is inviting, and for these unfamiliar along with her music, Umoja affords a superb introduction.

On the middle of this system was Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No.2, and the chemistry between visitor conductor Valentina Peleggi and soloist Stewart Goodyear made it convincing. Goodyear’s readability and excellent method have been current in every motion, and his articulated supply of the Bach-like textures in the beginning of the primary motion was outstanding. He constructed on that tremendous opening, and Peleggi supported him in her management of the orchestra. The acquainted second motion stood out for its virtuosity, because the solo traces within the piano had the suitable filigree that the piece requires. The interaction between piano and orchestra set this efficiency aside, because the second motion led on to Goodyear’s masterful execution of the Presto finale.

Peleggi gave a robust studying of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4 and delineated the timbre, tempos and quantity of every motion successfully. The primary motion had the drive that the piece must work effectively, and an analogous intention was a part of the transition from the third motion to the finale. Among the many particulars Peleggi introduced out are the contrasting sections which might be important to the piece: the distinctions she delivered to the rostrum have been exemplary in revisiting this acquainted work.

James Zychowicz