Carlos Kalmar - Photo: Oregon Symphony

John Von Rhein – Chicago Tribune

The standard orchestral fare — Spanish and French works written for the dance or later appropriated for the ballet — that surrounded the Cerrudo premiere didn’t promise much. But Kalmar, who was making his subscription series debut as a replacement for Esa-Pekka Salonen (who canceled for personal reasons), lifted them beyond the ordinary.

The Grant Park Music Festival’s principal conductor brought vivacity and color to three dances from Falla’s “El Amor Brujo.”

The sense of storybook fantasy in Ravel’s complete “Mother Goose” was heightened by the precision of detail as well as the shimmering refinement supplied by the woodwinds in particular. Voluptuousness and menace combined to potent effect in the same composer’s “La Valse,” that richly colored portrait of prewar Vienna on the brink of cataclysm.

Andrew Patner – Chicago Sun-Times & The View From Here

This is also an unusual week because an otherwise familiar Chicago podium figure was making his CSO subscription concerts debut.  Grant Park Music Festival principal conductor Carlos Kalmar was a last-minute substitute for Finland’s Esa-Pekka Salonen, who withdrew from these concerts for undisclosed personal reasons.  Kalmar, celebrating his 10th season at Grant Park this summer, is also music director of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra and took up the set program without changes.  The Three Dances from Falla’s El amor brujo (1915-1916) found the Uruguayan-born conductor at home rhythmically and harmonically.  Perhaps it was a general lessening of tension after the excitement of the dance work, but the complete Mother Goose ballet (1910-11) seemed slow going, albeit with beautiful solos from many section leaders.  The same composer’s La valse (1919-20) clearly speaks to Kalmar’s Viennese roots and training; he knows this work should not sound too “French.”  But the apocalypse came a bit early.  If you get going too quickly in this piece, all you can do is then go even faster, and that’s not its or Ravel’s point.

UPDATE: A Single Delight

Today was the last night for the concert with Carlos Kalmar conducting Falla’s Three Dances from El Amor Brujo and Ravel’s Mother Goose and La Valse, plus a special performance by Deep Down Dos – a dance group, who danced to Mason Bates’ Music from Underground Spaces. As usual, the CSO orchestra was fantastic: Falla’s pieces were lively with strong basses, while Ravel’s Mother Goose was everything a child could hope for – with the celesta tinkling away for that “magical”, fairy-tale feel, and the strings for all the romance found between imaginary princes and princesses.