There is no busier musician looking after the needs of classical music audiences on the North Shore than Alan Heatherington.

As music director of three respected organizations – the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra, Lake Forest Symphony and Chicago Master Singers – the conductor has significantly raised the artistic level of each group. Thanks to the team efforts of his administrative officers and board members, the organizations are operating from a firm fiscal base, in contrast to the economic woes not-for-profits of comparable size are experiencing.

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Hungary and Finland share more than related languages. The leading 20th century composers of those countries shared a cosmopolitan aesthetic outlook that sought to transcend national boundaries even while honoring centuries-old folkloric traditions.

That was the rationale behind the pairing of Hungarian composers Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly, with the Finnish master Jean Sibelius, on a program last weekend by the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

Since the group's founding in 1995, listeners have looked to Ars Viva to take them on stimulating musical adventures of the sort they can't find anywhere else in the area. Music director Alan Heatherington is adroit at drawing musical connections between different cultures and styles. And since he is both a proficient conductor and an engaging program host, he is able to pull audience members into the experience with remarkable success.

With about 20 current and former members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra forming the core of his 79-piece orchestra, the performances bespeak a high degree of professional polish. Sunday's concert reflected well on the close rapport these players enjoy with Heatherington.

Kodaly's "Dances of Marosszek" served as a lively and colorful curtain-raiser, its gussied-up Transylvanian folk tunes affording the ensemble's fine principal players, the woodwinds in particular, a chance to shine.

Then it was down to more serious musical business with Bartok's Third Piano Concerto. The admirable Chicago pianist Lori Kaufman had studied the work with the famed Hungarian pianist Gyorgy Sandor, who played the premiere in 1946. She was fully inside the lyricism and coiled-spring rhythms of this late masterpiece, and the orchestra made much of the twittery nocturnal atmosphere of the slow movement.

From there it was a short hop from central Europe across the Baltic Sea to Finland. Of the three Sibelius works, the chief attraction was the infrequently heard Symphony No. 6, a sometimes somber and pastoral work whose modal tonalities, centered around the Dorian mode, help give the music its Nordic remoteness and mystery.

Heatherington is a committed Sibelian and he inspired an alert and bracing performance from his orchestra. Telling details such as the soft, floating chords for flutes and bassoons, the strings' running eighth-note patterns, the wild build-ups of brass and the chillingly detached ending were integrated into a coherent, convincing whole.

Of course a few more strings would have added more fullness to the sound, but the transparency and rhythmic point Heatherington elicited from the players were as welcome in Sibelius' "Finlandia" and his prayerful "Andante Festivo" (included as a bonus) as they were in the Sixth Symphony.

The season's remaining Ars Viva concert on May 1 will feature the Music Institute of Chicago Concerto Competition winner as soloist.

Three works of Jan Sibelius were performed Sunday afternoon by Alan Heatherington and the Ars Viva orchestra in Skokie.

There are not many conductors who can convincingly handle a program balanced between Finnish and Hungarian music but Alan Heatherington managed to do just that Sunday afternoon in a bracing and generous concert with his Ars Viva chamber orchestra.

In his informed and occasionally idiosyncratic verbal notes, the conductor noted that the national musics complement each other nicely though he really couldn’t pinpoint a thematic connection, apart from each country having a strange and inscrutable language (to outsiders) with some surface similarities. Ultimately, Heatherington said, he’d leave it to the linguists to determine any actual historical connection and let the music speak for itself.

And that it did quite winningly, the concert at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie leading off with music from Hungary by Zoltan Kodaly and Bela Bartok.

Characteristically, Heatherington opted, not for Kodaly’s popular Dances of Galanta but the composer’s darker-huedDances of Maroussek, supposedly inspired by folk music from the title district of Transylvania.  As Heatherington noted, this challenging music is a mini-concerto for orchestra, and the Ars Viva musicians were more than up to the task with fine solos in all sections, particularly Michael Henoch’s avian oboe, which theme then passes to flute and piccolo. Heatherington brought out all the pungent colors and febrile brilliance while keeping the whirlwind conclusion under taut control.

Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was written not long before the composer’s death and intended for the composer’s beloved wife, Ditta to perform, its unfinished final bars orchestrated by Tibor Serly.

The Third Concerto is a more lyrical and inward-looking work than Bartok’s previous essays in the genre, less technically demanding and aggressively percussive. The outer movements have moments of driving insistence. to be sure, yet the opening Allegretto is light-hearted and even whimsical at times.

Lori Kaufman proved an admirable soloist with a polished clear-cut style. The statuesque pianist was at her finest in the central Adagio religioso, with her phrasing of the spare, monastic notes evoking an almost ascetic expression, nicely contrasted with the luminous string playing elicited by Heatherington.

Kaufman’s playing in the bravura finale was vital and technically immaculate, while lacking the last bit of virtuosic fire and unbridled combustibility, though Heatherington and the Ars Viva musicians provided fizzing and fully committed support.

Sibelius is clearly a composer close to Heatherington’s heart as made manifest in his informed and affectionate introduction. He even provided an unlisted “bonus” to the program of the Finnish composer’s Andante festivo for strings, which received the finest performance of the afternoon, with beautifully rich and burnished playing. (With most of the violin section made up of Chicago Symphony Orchestra members, it’s no wonder).

Sibelius’s Symphony No. 6 is the composer’s least-played symphony, and it’s not difficult to understand why, in a work that lacks the immediate dramatic power and lyrical appeal of Nos. 1, 2 and 5.

Sibelius’s penultimate symphony is an elusive, equivocal work, an odd mix of Northern nature painting and fleeting stentorian brass passages, like cold spring water in a fjord. After the hushed coda Sunday one audience member loudly asked, “Is that the end?”

At time one wanted a bit more light and shade and dynamic delicacy but for the most part Heatherington proved a reliable guide, directing an evocative performance, pointing the brass writing robustly and balancing the rippling wind passages and restless string writing.

It was a bit of lily-gilding to present Sibelius’s Finlandia as a crowd-pleasing coda when the enigmatic symphony would have served well as an offbeat conclusion. Still, Heatherington directed a strong performance, one raspy horn apart, that avoided playing to the galleries while making firm dramatic impact.

The distance between Finland and Hungary is 1,050 miles and yet the two European countries, one extending beyond the Arctic Circle, the other land-locked in Central Europe, have many connections, including a similarity in their languages.

Alan Heatherington, music director and founder of the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra, is presenting a concert Sunday that will explore the musical connections between the two republics. The program begins with Kodaly's "Dances of Marosszek," Bartok's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Symphony No. 6 and "Finlandia" both by Sibelius.

The Ars Viva Symphony will present "The Hungarian/Finnish Connection" on Feb. 20. 

Pianist Lori Kaufman makes her debut with the Ars Viva Symphony on Feb. 20.

Soloist in the concerto will be Lori Kaufman, who is making her Ars Viva debut, and she herself has a strong connection with Bartok.

"His third piano concerto is a favorite of both of ours," said Heatherington. "She actually studied it under Gyorgy Sandor, the pianist who was a close friend of Batrok's and who gave the world premiere performance in 1946 shortly after Bartok's death."

"I was studying in New York at the time," Kaufman explained, when reached by phone in Singapore. "When Bartok died 1945, the orchestration for his third piano concerto was not completely finished. His student Tibor Serly finished the last 17 measures of the orchestral score. He based it on the piano sketches that Bartok had made for the piece."

Historic connections

The Sandor connection is only one facet of Kaufman's musical pedigree. She studied piano at Peabody Conservatory with Leon Fleisher, who studied with Artur Schnabel, who studied with Theodor Leschetizky, who studied with Carl Czerny, who became a student of Beethoven at age 10 and studied with him for three years. Czerny's most famous student was the composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt.

"Later I was traveling in Italy and I went for some coaching with Fleisher, who was teaching near Lake Como, where he had studied with Schnabel," Kaufman said. She also studied with him at a festival in Iserlohn Germany, where she was playing Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, one of Fleisher's specialties.

"He was very sweet indeed when he offered to sit backstage," she recalled. "He said that sometimes pianists feel intimated when they walk onstage and see him in the audience!"

Though this is Kaufman's Ars Viva debut, the Chicago resident has played chamber music frequently with Maestro Heatherington. "I became acquainted with Lori Kaufman through (CSO assistant concertmaster and Ars Viva concertmaster) David Taylor, who had done some recitals and chamber music with her," the conductor said.

"I also heard her play brilliantly in recital and chamber music with Ilya Kaler, (concertmaster of the Lake Forest Symphony, which Heatherington also conducts,) Since then," he continued, "she and I have collaborated on several recitals and chamber music concerts of our own, mostly under the auspices of the Lake Forest Symphony...

"I have always found her to be a supremely musical and wonderfully sensitive colleague whose playing is technically impeccable but truly inspired," he said. "She captures the hearts of all who hear her play. "

Kaufman's love for the piano began when as a child she crawled under the grand piano in her parents' home in a suburb of Detroit. "They were great classical music buffs," she said. "My father had a huge record collection. The piano was the first piece of furniture they bought, even though neither of them could play."

When her older sister was given lessons, little Lori would listen from her spot beneath the sounding board. "After she was finished practicing, I would climb up on the piano bench and play by ear everything she had just done," she said, adding, "So my mother thought I should probably get lessons too."

She was fortunate enough to study with Miriam Meckler, who was the mother and first teacher of internationally known pianist Ruth Laredo, and later with Marian Abramsohn. Though she played flute in her school's band, and also played harp and oboe, piano was her forte. "It was my natural habitat," she said. "I knew that is was a part of me, though it never occurred to me to be a music major in college."

Extensive studies

When it was suggested, however, it made sense and she headed to University of Southern California to study with John Perry, described by Kaufman as "a wonderful pedagogue." After graduation she enrolled at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where she studied with Fleisher and received the Lillian Gutman award. She received a career grant from the Seymour Obermer Foundation and won the Prix Mieville -Hory in Switzerland and several European prizes.

But she expressed reservations about the value of awards. "Competitions are very quirky. Sometime you can win one and nothing comes of it," she explained. "I entered many that I did not win, but every single one led to something else in my career."

That's why she urges pianists on the cusp of a professional life to have the courage to enter competitions. "But make a niche for yourself," she insisted. "Don't just prepare the competition repertoire that you recycle over and over again as you go from one place to another. Everyone does that. Play the music you like."

She also sees the world as a very small place and recommends learning additional languages. "I'm in China right now and there aren't that many people who speak English, so I am studying Mandarin," she explained. "I did a concert in Texas which led to an engagement in Mexico, where I will need some Spanish."

She speaks English, French and Hebrew, but also knows what she calls "rehearsal Italian and Spanish." It includes words such as "fast," "slow," and the request "May I have a little time here."

"That means I want extra time to do something beautiful," she explained, adding, that Heatherington always agrees. "He never says no. He has a great ear. I am so looking forward to play with Ars Viva."

See Dorothy Andries' review of Ars Viva's Jan. 30-31 concert at www.pioneerlocal.com.

"The Hungarian/Finnish Connection"

Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra. North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 20. $44 to $70, with discounts for seniors and youth.            
 (847) 673-6300  or visit arsviva.org

Ars Viva played an all-Mozart program Jan. 31 in the Music Institute of Chicago's Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston. It was a repeat of their previous concert Jan. 30 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

Fit they did and the music filling that beautiful space was exceptional indeed. The acoustics embraced Mozart's sparkling music and imparting a warmth not audible in drier hall.

The program began with one of the composer's greatest hits "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik." The person sitting next to me quietly hummed all the melodies, and it was all I could do not to join her!

The evening continued with two separate pieces for two soloists each. Flutist Lyon Leifer and harpist Margarite Lynn Williams played Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp. It was incandescent music, calling to mind the Dom Perignon slogan, "Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!"

That triumph was followed by Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, with Chicago Symphony Orchestra colleagues David Taylor, violin, and Charles Pikler, viola, whose pleasure in playing together was communicated immediately to the audience.

This was the only Monday evening program to be given this year by Ars Viva. The quality of sound that the orchestra produced in Nichols Hall was outstanding. If anyone is taking a survey, I vote that Ars Viva schedule a return to this beautiful space again next year.

If it’s late January and the lines are long at the box office, chances are somebody is playing Mozart.

Such was the case at Sunday afternoon’s imaginative concert by Ars Viva, one of Chicago’s many distinguished smaller classical ensembles, at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in north suburban Skokie. The classical music world faithfully celebrates Mozart’s birthday every Jan. 27th, and Ars Viva observed this year’s 255th anniversary with an all-Mozart program.

Music Director Alan Heatherington has attracted a sizable number of Chicago Symphony Orchestra players to his chamber orchestra. Two of them—David Taylor, Ars Viva’s concertmaster as well as CSO assistant concertmaster, and Charles Pikler, principal violist for both Ars Viva and the CSO—were soloists in a zesty performance of the Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat. Lyon Leifer, the ensemble’s principal flute, was soloist along with harpist Marguerite Lynn Williams in the Concerto for Flute and Harp. A deeply felt performance of the Symphony No. 29 closed the concert.

Founded in 1996 on the ashes of the Chicago String Ensemble, Ars Viva has a strong, loyal audience, and its concerts can feel like family gatherings. That was certainly the case on Sunday. The orchestra has launched a program for youngsters titled Music for Life in partnership with the Music Institute of Chicago. The aim is to expose children to live performance. The children come to Ars Viva concerts, listen to the first piece, then leave the hall to talk about what they heard.

It was touching that one of Mozart’s greatest hits, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, opened the program. This overly familiar work for string orchestra can be a humdrum affair for music lovers who have heard it countless times, in elevators and as a cell phone ringtone as well as in the concert hall. But with the children happily applauding after each movement, it was impossible not to hear the music with fresh ears. Ars Viva played it with loving care. Their phrasing was clean and crisp yet warm and supple. Their tone was pared down, but Mozart’s melodies bristled with color and energy.

The Concerto for Flute and Harp is Mozart’s sole piece featuring solo harp, and Williams made the most of its succulent melodies and virtuoso turns. Her tone was assertive and luminous, full of golden hues. Leifer’s flute was fleet and strong in the upper registers, though its lower register tended to disappear into the overall orchestral texture.

The Sinfonia Concertante is one of Mozart’s masterpieces, and Taylor’s violin brought a sweet tone and elegant, expressive phrasing to its lilting melodies. Picker’s viola was more matter of fact, though he and Taylor sailed in effortless unison during the work’s virtuoso passages.

Under Heatherington’s direction, the Symphony No. 29 was light on its feet, unfolding with a serene ease that allowed the music room to breathe. With first and second violins sitting opposite each other, we clearly heard Mozart’s musical conversation as melodies and motifs jumped from one section to the other. Despite a few bobbles, Ars Viva’s horns added a commanding sinew to the orchestral mix.

Looking into the early development of creative symphonic genius is a little bit like watching a runner in the early stages of a marathon.  It’s not quite the same transcendent experience as being at the finish line at the moment of victory, but the insight into how that genius developed can be a thrilling experience in and of itself.

Ars Viva, the Skokie-based professional orchestra that gleans heavily from the ranks of the Chicago Symphony, offered early works of Schumann, Schubert and Brahms in its concert Sunday under the baton of Alan Heatherington, a fascinating look at how three Romantic giants came to maturity under the all-encompassing shadow of Beethoven.

Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo, and Finale was written as part of a fantastically productive year of orchestral composition that produced his first two symphonies and part of the piano concerto, although the Rhenis, the pinnacle of his symphonic achievements, was still almost a decade away.  Heatherington’s interpretation was pleasant, if a little restrained at times for the mercurial Schumann, and highlighted fine wind playing in short interludes and a charming dotted-rhythm scherzo that recalled Beethoven’s 7th symphony.  Liberal use of sliding portamenti in the violins was a reminder of a generation of orchestral playing from the first half of the twentieth century that’s rarely heard today.

Franz Schubert was just eighteen years old when he composed his third symphony, but his ability to spin a clear and affecting melodic line was fully developed, something that would come to define his Lieder for voice and piano.  Ars Viva appropriately kept this in mind, even in the wild and energetic finale that was directly inspired by the Italian tarantella.  

When Robert Schumann, this time as a critic, declared a young Johannes Brahms to be the one “to give ideal expression to the times”- essentially annoiting him the heir apparent to Beethoven- Brahms felt tremendous trepidation about leaping into the symphonic seas.  His first symphony was 21 years in the making and wouldn’t be completed until he was 43, but earlier works serve as a prescient precursor for what was to come.  The Serenade No. 1, modeled after multi-movement party music of Mozart, was Brahms’ first foray into orchestral writing, and from its Pastoral-like opening to a first scherzo that alternates between mysterious minor-mode music and touching sweetness, it’s clearly the direct progeny of Beethoven. Ars Viva’s solo horn led a beautiful Adagio that may have been Brahms’ eulogy for Schumann, who died the year before it was written, and Heatherington built the last two movements to a very satisfying conclusion with blazing horns and soaring violins.

If you wanted to experience four of the five greatest Austro-German composers on Sunday, it was there for the asking—with a little fast driving. Music of the Baroque opened the first of its two performances of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in the evening and Alan Heatherington offered a late afternoon program of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. (For once, Beethoven was the odd man out.)

Characteristically for Ars Viva’s artistic director, the usual repertorial suspects were absent, with Heatherington programming three fascinating rarities of the familiar triumvirate at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

Brahms would go on to write greater works than his Serenade No. 1 in D major, but in many ways he never quite captured the freshness or charm of this youthful work. The Serenade amounted to a cautious dipping of the toe in the symphonic waters for Brahms and even with the unwieldy six-movement structure—and an outright crib from Handel—the serenade is a marvelous work, chock full of melody. The buoyant opening theme for horn is irresistible, and while the music is mostly on the lightish side, the expansive Adagio clearly points the way to Brahms’ great slow movements to come.

In addition to his informed and informal verbal notes, Heatherington always seems to find just the right tempos and approach for Brahms, and the Ars Viva members responded with a notably vibrant and energized account of this delightful score.

The playing was not as consistently polished as usual from this ensemble; while generally solid, Michael Buckwalter failed to emerge unscathed from the challenging writing for principal horn, and violas sounded tentative Sunday, wanting in definition.

The balance was made up by the nimble, rich-toned violins and some wonderfully evocative wind playing, particularly J. Lawrie Bloom whose clarinet captured the right al fresco charm of this music.

Likewise, the first half offered two lesser-heard works by Schumann and Schubert.

Were it not lacking a slow movement, Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale would likely be better known as the composer’s Symphony No. 5 (or some other numeral), rather than a semi-obscure torso. Still, as Heatherington noted, there is plenty of inspired music here even in its uncompleted form.

The conductor led a trim, buoyant and lightly sprung reading that kept the music in scale while bringing out the melodic invention, without any special pleading. The scherzo is particularly characteristic with its galumphing main theme and lyrical middle section. Heatheringon and the orchestra provided superbly committed and polished advocacy, with the finale—the finest of the three movements—notably fiery and exciting.

It’s misleading to speak of any Schubert works as “early,” for a composer who died at 31, yet the Symphony No. 3, one of many works written in a notably productive year, was penned at just age 18.

After the deceptively weighty opening chord, the symphony is a sheer delight, spirited and tuneful. Heatherington balanced the music deftly, giving dramatic emphasis when needed but allowing the effervescent melodic charm full rein as well. The woodwinds were again superb, bringing out the rustic Austrian flavor of the middle movements.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been soaking up a lot of attention this fall, given the hoopla over the arrival—and unexpectedly early departure due to illness—of Riccardo Muti for his first set of concerts as the CSO’s new music director.

But it’s been more than a few decades since the CSO was the only orchestral game in town. The area is blessed with a wide array of fine, less high-profile orchestras whose 2010-11 seasons are also getting underway. Among them is the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra, which opened its five-concert season Sunday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

Founded in 1995, Ars Viva is led by Alan Heatherington, one of Chicago’s most respected conductors whose gifts include infectious enthusiasm for the music at hand. Its members include many CSO musicians, and its sizable, loyal audience relishes the mix of familiar composers and unexpected repertoire that has become an Ars Viva specialty.

A bit of that mix was on view in Sunday’s program of works by American composers. Music lovers certainly know the music of Samuel Barber, but pairing his less-familiar Symphony No. 1 with the better-known School for Scandal Overture was a deft touch. The collection of Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story is not exactly a daring repertoire choice. But another excursion into Broadway and film music, an arrangement by John Williams of a suite from Fiddler on the Roof, was a welcome novelty.

As Heatherington explained in brief remarks, Williams wrote the suite last year for David Taylor, Ars Viva’s concertmaster as well as an assistant concertmaster of the CSO. For several years, said Heatherington, Taylor had badgered Williams, a frequent CSO guest conductor, for a suite from the score that Williams wrote for the movie version of the hit Broadway musical by composer Jerry Bock and librettist Sheldon Harnick. Williams’ score for Fiddler on the Roof included a lavish cadenza performed by Isaac Stern in the film’s soundtrack.

That cadenza was the main event of Williams’ brief suite, closing the work after a quick orchestral survey of some of the musical’s hit tunes. Taylor dug into his solo with impeccable technique, racing through its elaborate runs with astringent clarity but also relaxing into the bluesy languor of its slower sections.

The School for Scandal Overture showcased Art Viva’s lithe, transparent strings, so well-suited to Barber’s hectic, scurrying rhythms. But there was eloquent weight in the Overture’s more lyrical sections. One of Barber’s soaring themes brought to mind an immortal John Williams melody—heard in the film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial when the homesick alien and his young rescuer, Elliott, pedal across the sky on Elliott’s bicycle.

Barber’s Symphony No. 1 was full of richer, more complex color, especially from Ars Viva’s noble brass. Heatherington didn’t hype the drama in Bernstein’s West Side Story suite. The music had a deeply confident, cool stride rather than an arrogant, hard-edged swagger.

As published online

The Illinois Council of Orchestras knew what it was doing when it recently gave its cultural leadership award to Alan Heatherington. The vigorous music director of three area professional organizations, a dedicated music educator who finds fresh approaches to bringing young children and their parents into the classical experience – he is making a lasting impact on the musical life of northern Illinois.

The program Heatherington conducted with one of his orchestras, the Ars Viva Symphony, as the group's season finale on Sunday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, was emblematic of what sets him apart. New American music and old European music commingled happily, and a greatly promising young instrumental soloist got an opportunity to astonish the audience with his competition-winning prowess.

Matthew Lipman earned his berth on the solo roster by winning the first Music Institute of Chicago Young Artist Concerto Competition, in collaboration with Ars Viva. The 18-year-old, Juilliard-bound violist from Illinois, who studies with Roland Vamos in the institute's Academy program, was chosen from an initial pool of nearly 30 applicants.

William Walton's Viola Concerto (1929), an ingratiatingly lyrical work that turns up in concert not nearly as often as it deserves, showed off the splendid technique and musical sensitivity that left the competition judges slack-jawed.

Playing this virtuoso piece from memory, Lipman produced a warm, burnished, singing tone on a 1700 Goffriller viola loaned by the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation. His firm command of rhythm gave the score's jazzy syncopations their dancing feet, his exchanges with various instruments keenly judged. He grinned broadly at the end when the audience awarded him a robust ovation. Mark well Matthew Lipman's name: You'll be hearing a lot more of him in the years to come.

Sharing the first half were Copland's rousing "Fanfare for the Common Man" (whose thunderous drums could have been heard as far away as Kankakee) and John Corigliano's "To Music," a 1995 orchestral fantasy based on the Schubert song "An die Musik." The serene consonances that begin the piece are disrupted by strident brass fanfares that eventually are quelled by Schubert's melody, which is quoted in its unadorned state in the final pages.

Heatherington – who can now add solo baritone to his familiar side-roles as Bernstein wannabe and stand-up comedian – ended with an honest, direct and unfussy account of Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in C minor, the same work with which he had concluded Ars Viva's first season in 1987.

Playing this Romantic warhorse with essentially an enlarged chamber orchestra actually benefited the work: Music that often can sound thick and muddy took on a welcome leanness and clarity that made up for the lack of weighty sonority. Observing the exposition repeat in the opening movement, Heatherington kept all four movements moving within judicious tempos, urgently so in the finale. His handling of transitions was especially good, although he needed to rein in the four horns more in the big tutti pages.

The orchestra, which includes personnel from the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera orchestras, dug into their instruments with much the same finely disciplined energy and commitment their music director displayed on the podium. The various instrumental solos were nicely taken, not least those of concertmaster David Taylor and principal oboe Michael Henoch.

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Matthew Lipman performed Walton's Viola Concerto Sunday with Alan Heatherington and the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra.

Local audiences heard two significant debuts by young string soloists this past week. And, surprisingly, neither were violinists.

One was the Russian cellist Pavel Gomziakov, who made a sensational U.S. debut in Haydn’s C-major concerto last week with Trevor Pinnock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (and can be heard again Tuesday night).

And the other was Matthew Lipman. Just turned 18, the violist is the first winner of the Music Institute of Chicago’s Young Artist Concerto and Aria Competition. The young man turned in his own hugely impressive performance Sunday in Skokie in what was, in essence, his professional debut, with Alan Heatherington and the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra.

As the loquacious conductor noted Sunday, it’s rare for a violist to best out three violinists and two cellists in a juried competition, but in his terrific account of Walton’s Viola Concerto, the young man from Crete-Monee High School showed he is the real thing.

Displaying the relaxed poise of a seasoned professional, Lipman showed himself fully in synch with the work’s shifting moods, encompassing the searching introspection of the opening Andante and tackling the mercurial middle section with fine clarity and rhythmic precision.

The myriad challenges of the central movement were surmounted with ease and technique to spare, Heatherington and the orchestra providing playing of whirlwind vivacity in support. The reflective nostalgia and edgy restlessness of the closing movement were surely and sensitively etched by Lipman as well.

One might quibble that some of the solo work could have used a bit more bite and intensity, but this was an auspicious debut by a young musician who clearly has the potential for a successful career. Matthew Lipman performed on a remarkable 1700 Gofriller instrument made available by the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation.

The afternoon began with a stately yet muscular account of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, which managed to be spacious and gleaming while avoiding rhetorical overkill.

Alan Heatherington

Heatherington’s introduction to John Corigliano’s To Musicmay have been longer than the work itself, yet any attempt to make classical music less forbidding to new and younger audience members should be applauded. Besides it’s hard to fault the conductor’s verbal notes when done with such engaging humor, knowledge, and clear love for the repertoire—including singing, in an admirably even baritone, a stanza of Schubert’sAn die Musik (Max Reger arrangement), which Corigliano utilizes in the coda.

The ensuing performance gave this offbeat miniature first-class advocacy, the Ars Viva strings conveying the pensive Barber-like rumination of the opening theme. The antiphonal brass, placed in the balcony of the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, provided the necessary contrast in the more complex and dissonant middle section, before Schubert’s song appears to bestow consoling solace at the coda.

After the interval Heatherington was presented with the Cultural Leadership Award by James Setapen of the Illinois Council of Orchestras, for his work promoting music to young audiences, as well as his longtime professional associations with Ars Viva , the Lake Forest Symphony, and other organizations.

But despite the many words said Sunday, it was the music that spoke most eloquently. Heatherington’s affinity for Brahms is well known and the afternoon closed with an urgent, tautly dramatic account of his Symphony No. 1. Most chamber orchestras sound thin in this repertoire but with its CSO-heavy string section, Heatherington and the Ars Viva members delivered a fiery and propulsive performance, a fine close to the concert and Ars Viva’s season.

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What could be a better birthday treat for a conductor than a concert program of personal favorites?

For Alan Heatherington, the freshly turned 64-year-old selected works exclusively from Johannes Brahms, his most admired composer, Sunday afternoon in Skokie. The program included his “favorite piece of music in all the world,” the Violin Concerto in D Major. To have a soloist of Ilya Kaler’s caliber at his side, it appeared the veteran maestro was exercising a little birthday self-indulgence.

While the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra concert at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts was certainly lighthearted, the guest solo appearance of the Moscow-born Kaler was serious musical business.

Kaler boasts an enviable line of significant recordings on the Naxos label and he’s also the only violinist on the planet who can hold up gold medals from each of the world’s main concerto competitions: the Tchaikovsky, Paganini and Sibelius. His superb performance Sunday afternoon certainly lived up to all the street cred.

The performance of the Brahms Concerto, a work Kaler has played since he was 16, was surely one of the finest musical solo offerings heard this year. It is hard to think of a single moment where a note was not played without the fiercest intensity or a resounding lyrical touch. His is a magnificent bold tone that comfortably filled a hall with underwhelming acoustics, and he eased into each treacherous transition fearlessly.

His cadenzas, written by Brahms’ dear friend Joseph Joachim, were kinetically charged and crowd-seducing. Even as the house lights dropped for the slow movement, Kaler delivered a refreshingly alert Andante, untarnished by any excess sweetness. The final movement sizzled. A Bach nugget and a swelling rendition of Happy Birthday completed the encores. (That you can catch Mr. Kaler in free concerts at DePaul University, where he currently teaches, is thievery.)

The tuneful Symphony No. 3 was nearly as memorable despite some timing issues and intonation miscues. Yet there was much to love in the tragically sweeping opening bars or the cosmic awakening at the beginning of the Andante. Horn player Michael Buckwalter punctuated the mysterious Poco Allegretto with a fine solo, and the closing Allegro was big and powerful even for Brahms’ most pastoral symphony. Heatherington made a convincing case for admiring this work all over again.

Lesser known but equally absorbing were the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a. It was almost amusing to hear citations of dainty Classical themes wistfully transmute into Brahms’ unabashedly lush and heavy sound worlds. Glancing across the orchestra you could spot many of the area’s best musicians like timpanist Robert Everson, clarinetist John Bruce Yeh and violinist David Taylor, all of whom made stellar contributions.

Ars Viva concerts feature, for better or worse, mini-lectures delivered on stage between pieces. Heatherington was charming and professorial as he regaled the audience with personal and historical anecdotes, but over thirty minutes of emceeing felt excessive for a symphonic concert. While these talks are built into the orchestra’s mission, it is a mild nuisance not to immediately hear more music after such excellent performances.

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Playing well is only part of presenting a memorable concert. The right notes are important, of course, as are proper tempos and dynamics. But a truly excellent experience of music has much more. Subtlety, grace, charm — those elusive qualities that cannot be quantified, but infuse a performance as certainly and seductively as a fine perfume floats on the air.

Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra opened its season Oct. 25 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie and in every way demonstrated those lovely intangibles. It didn't hurt that music director Alan Heatherington was conducting an all-Mendelssohn program. That composer's music is nothing if not graceful and charming, as well as strong and vivid.

The afternoon opened with Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Elizabeth Joy Roe as soloist. Roe is a Glenview native, graduate of Glenbrook South High School, who 10 years ago at age 17 played with Ars Viva as the winner of the Steinway Competition. In the ensuing decade she attended The Juilliard School on full scholarship, earning both a bachelor's and master's degree in piano performance. She remained in New York City, concertizing regularly there and throughout the country and is now a Visiting Artist and Professor at Smith College in Massachusetts.

Her bravura technique was evident from the first flurry of notes, but she also had a delightful ease at the piano. At one moment she could have been in a fierce piano competition, but then as the mood softened, her manner suggested that she was in a parlor, playing for music-loving friends.

She watched Heatherington carefully, and their synergy was palpable. He told the audience in advance that this was his favorite piano concerto and he appeared to smile though the whole piece. Roe stretched the tempos in her solo passages, giving a sensitive, heartfelt performance. Of special note was the glowing sound of the Ars Viva brass section, which was in absolutely top form.

It is unusual, almost unheard of, for a program to open with a concerto, but Ars Viva has developed a unique program for young audience members. On Sunday, about 25 children listened to the first piece on the program and then were taken to rooms on the second floor, where they talked about the program with teachers from the Music Institute of Chicago and engaged in activities related to the concerto they have just heard.

The balance of the program included the composer's Symphony No. 2, after intermission the Overture from his oratorio “St Paul,” and finally Symphony No. 5 (“Reformantion”). The orchestra included 45 players, just about the size of Mendelssohn's own Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Ars Viva is made up of some heavy-hitters, past and present, from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, such as violinists David Taylor and Nancy Park, Ars Viva concertmaster and principal Violin II respectively, flutist Walfrid Kujala, and timpanist Patricia Dash. In fact, on the stage Sunday, 28 players were CSO members or regular substitutes, the balance being some of the area's top freelance musicians. Under Heatherington's baton they played not only with conviction and skill, but also with grace and charm, giving the audience two hours in an oasis of beauty and order.

The slender, sparkling gown worn by soloist Elizabeth Joy Roe must be mentioned. It began with silver sequins on the bodice, graduating to pale blue and eventually to deep aqua at the bottom of the skirt. It was as dazzling as her work at the keyboard.

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On stage at the start of Sunday’s Ars Viva concert, Alan Heatherington delivered the grim news to the audience. It wasn’t yet halftime and the Bears were already down 28 to 0. “You made the right choice,” said the chamber orchestra’s music director.

It may not have a good night for Chicago football but it was for fans of Mendelssohn, as Ars Viva opened its season with a program marking the composer’s 200th birthday year at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

Mendelssohn has not wanted for recognition in this anniversary year—or in non-anniversary years, for that matter—but Heatherington and the Ars Viva musicians served up a notably generous program that largely avoided the usual Felixiana.

Heatherington’s breezy and informed verbal program notes provided witty and interesting insights into various aspects of the composer’s life and career, from the tortuously nonlinear numbering of his symphonies to Mendelssohn’s “packrat” tendencies, including his stowing of 7,000 letters.

But, of course, it was Mendelssohn’s music that was the main course. The thematic leitmotiv for much of the program was Mendelssohn’s journey from Judiasm to Lutheranism. The fact that the composer was a devout converted Lutheran is infrequently commented upon, but his religion is manifest in a great deal of his (largely unperformed) organ and choral music, as well as the fitfully heard Symphony No, 5, Reformation.

His second symphony to be written but unpublished in Mendelssohn’s lifetime, the Reformation is a work the composer came to dislike, yet as the vital and brilliant advocacy of Heatherington and Ars Viva demonstrated, it’s a rich and characteristic work, fully in Mendelssohn’s mature style.

The Reformation is Heatherington’s favorite of all five Mendelssohn symphonies and his affection was apparent in the conductor’s alert yet sensitive direction and myriad of touches. Without neglecting the dramatic element, rhythms had an idiomatic lightness and buoyancy throughout. The conductor drew string playing of great delicacy in the first movement’s Dresden Amen as well as piquant wind contributions in the scherzo. The Andante had the apt somber reflection, and Heatherington and the players provided a finale that was stirring while avoiding bombast, the chorale Ein feste Burg delivered with brassy splendor.

Heatherington’s sure touch in Mendelssohn was also evident in the overture to the oratorio, St. Paul. One of the composer’s most popular works in his lifetime, Paulus has long since been shot out of the canon, though as this rich and eloquent account of the overture showed, this is a work in need of exhumation.

Sunday’s concert looked to be a marathon program on the Ars Viva website, with Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony on tap as well as the Reformation. Actually, Ars Viva presented just the opening Sinfonia, three orchestral movements, of the sprawling Lobgesang symphony (No. 2, but really No. 5—never mind).

Shorn of the choral sections, the three movements don’t really make a satisfying whole, ending with a heart-easing Adagio. Still, the music is well worth hearing, and made a fine, offbeat bonus. Ars Viva played with great polish and verve in the majestic opening and brought glowing lyricism to the Adagio. One couldn’t help noticing the strong thematic similarity of the central Allegretto’s theme to the finale of Schumann’s Second Symphony, composed just a few years later.

The most familiar part of the program was Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto, as spirited and irresistible a burst of youthful musical vivacity as exists in the repertoire.

Elizabeth Joy Roe made her debut with Ars Viva as a teenager a decade ago, and her scintillating rendition of Mendelssohn’s concerto was a highlight of the concert. Roe brought ample bravura to the knuckle-busting outer movements as well as conveying the lyric tenderness, with a musing, Impressionistic quality in the transition to the Andante.

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The Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra is taking measures to deal with the recession. At the group’s season finale Monday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, music director Alan Heatherington said that for 2009-10 the orchestra will eliminate its Monday-evening concert series for at least one season. The five-concert Sunday-afternoon series will remain as is.

Fortunately, there was no belt-tightening in evidence on Monday. Heatherington knows precisely what he wants and has the leadership skills to bring his musical ideas alive through a solid ensemble that includes numerous Chicago Symphony players in key positions. And he brings his audience repertory they can’t hear anywhere else, certainly not at this level.

One of Ars Viva’s missions is to introduce listeners to promising young competition winners from the Chicago area and Midwest. It did so again Monday with Tracy Wong, the 13-year-old winner of the 2009 Chicago Steinway Piano Concerto Competition, as soloist in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

A junior high school student in her native Cincinnati, Wong is a petite wisp of a girl. Yet she summoned enough power to dispatch this formidable concerto with assurance, barring a few slips of concentration and fingers along the way. There’s musical talent here that bears nurturing.

The dryish acoustics didn’t much flatter the robust sonorities Heatherington worked to elicit in Liszt’s “Les Preludes” and Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” Symphony, although the sound was clear and immediate enough.

That said, each episode of the Liszt warhorse was vividly characterized.

The evening’s high point was the symphony Hindemith extracted from his 1934 opera. The Ars Viva players dug into the piece’s bustling polyphonic lines and majestic chorales with due vigor and intensity, ever quick on the rhythmic uptake. Passing technical blemishes were of little import.

The first Rachmaninov piano concerto is very much with us this week. Pianist Denis Matsuev will perform the work in Orchestra Hall at 8 p.m. Thursday, when the National Philharmonic of Russia makes its Chicago debut in an all-Russian program under founder and conductor Vladimir Spivakov.
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Type talks; the choice of a typeface gives an immediate indication of what is to be said.  Consider Ars Viva. This symphony orchestra, named Illinois Orchestra of the Year for 2008, consists of many players from the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera orchestras. And its name is written in an unusual manner. The Ars is rendered in Gothic letters, with curlicues and embellishments. The Viva is printed in clean modern type, followed by an exclamation point. Music director and founder Alan Heatherington was obviously in the Viva mode Sunday night for the first of the orchestra's two back-to-back concerts at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

The program was a musical adventure that took us from Milhaud's "La Creation du Monde" (The Creation of the World), to Bizet's Symphony in C, a vast work written when he was but 17 years old. In between was Frank Martin's Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, a piece conductor Heatherington said few, if any, of the orchestra members had ever played.

Milhaud's Monde:

Imagine a saxophone intoning music depicting the dawn of the earth. Darius Milhaud gave the lion's share of the melodies to that instrument, which was rising in prominence during the jazz age, when he began composing. Milhaud was one of Les Six, an affiliated group of 20th century French composers including Poulenc, Honneger, Durey, Tailleferre, the only woman, and Auric, who among other things composed the film score for "Roman Holiday."

In the spotlight was Peter Brusen, who usually plays bassoon in the orchestra, and the mellow sound of his saxophone gave a warm, pillowy atmosphere to the piece. No wresting life out of chaos here. Instead, the ensemble of just 17 players performed rather like a combo, handling the jazzy, lively elements of the score as if they were playing Gershwin.   The orchestration resembled "Rhapsody in Blue," with lots of emphasis on the wind instruments and brass. Some of the music was eerily identical, though there is no evidence that the two knew each other's music.

Windy city:

Ars Viva didn't have to look far for soloists in Martin's Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments. From its own ranks were flutist Lyon Leifer, trombonist James Gilbertson, French horn player Michael Buchwalter, bassoonist William Buchman, and oboist Michael Henoch, supplemented by clarinetist John Bruce Yeh and trumpeter Chris Martin. All except Leifer and Buckwalter are CSO members.

Melodies flowed between the seven players with tremendous grace. Phrases began as solo lines and were then augmented by additional instruments, until full, fresh harmonies filled the concert hall. At times the piece resembled a film noir score from Hollywood's golden years, when a host of European composers were living, writing and teaching in Southern California.

'Carmen' prefigured:

Symphony in C was written in the first half of Bizet's very short life. Like Mozart and Schubert, he died in his thirties. But this work is pure joy, and Heatherton seemed delighted to be conducting the work. It is straightforward classical music by a master of melody. Think of his operas -- "Carmen" with all it memorable arias, and "The Pearl Fishers," with its sublime duet. Again the wind instruments bewitched us, coupled with significant work by the brass section. The strings also sang out --cellos suddenly sounding almost like bag pipes, and violas played pizzicato. The highlight of the piece had to be the final movement, Allegro vivace, when the violins took off in a mad kind of perpetual motion, with music straight out of the bullfight scene in "Carmen."

Ars Viva can and does do everything. Heatherington and his players happily veer off the beaten track and take their audience to wondrous corners of the classical music world. close

One of the central attractions of concerts by the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra -- which draws roughly half of its players from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra -- is hearing symphonic repertory that doesn't turn up all that often on the CSO's subscription programs.

Such was the case with Ars Viva's season opener conducted by Alan Heatherington on Sunday at Skokie's North Shore Center for the Performing Arts.

The music director gathered works from the first half of the 20th Century by composers with next to nothing in common beyond the fact that their surnames begin with "S." One of Sibelius' first and most enduring successes, the patriotic tone poem "Finlandia," shared the bill with Richard Strauss' touching valedictory, the "Four Last Songs." Dmitri Shostakovich's cheeky Symphony No. 9 completed the bill.

Soprano Talise Trevigne, the soloist in the Strauss songs, was the evening's prime discovery. The San Francisco Bay Area native, 31, has been attracting attention on the West Coast as Rossini's Rosina and Verdi's Violetta and this year sang the title role in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" with the San Francisco Lyric Opera. This month she made her Chicago-area debut with the Chicago Master Singers.

Trevigne commands a lyric-coloratura soprano of striking freshness and beauty, lighter than that of some singers who take on this music: We heard Sophie, not the Marschallin, delivering Strauss' swan songs. She has the radiant high notes and creamy timbre one expects from a Strauss soprano and the ability to float long, arching phrases over a lush orchestra.

As yet Trevigne hasn't the full measure of the songs' spiritual depth and rapturous inwardness, qualities that registered more in her facial expressions than her voice. But her singing was gorgeous and musically sensitive. She received worthy support from the orchestra, even though it nearly covered her a couple of times.

If Trevigne can resist the temptation to take on too much too soon, she could have a fine career ahead of her. I look forward to hearing her again.

"Finlandia" unfolded in majestic waves of melody, anchored by the dark, solemn sonority of low brasses and double basses.

The Shostakovich was the polar opposite in mood. Some Russian conductors treat this jocular, Haydnesque symphony as an essay in dark, subversive humor, a poke in the eye of the composer's Stalinist oppressors. But Heatherington chose to play it straight, which is to say lightly and briskly, with full but not exaggerated appreciation of its energetic high spirits.

The Ars Viva players gave him everything he asked for, particularly the expert first-chair soloists, including bassoonist William Buchman, piccolo player Walfrid Kujala and trumpeter Barbara Butler.
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Conductor Alan Heatherington is also a violinist, and a special connection is evident when he conducts a violin soloist. Sunday night at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, he conducted his Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra in the opening of its 11th season with the Chicago area orchestral debut of 27-year old Hungarian violinist Kristof Barati.

And what a debut. Barati chose Niccolo Paganini's Concerto No. 1 in D for Violin and Orchestra, which he polished off barely breaking a sweat.

The concerto began with a long orchestral introduction concluding with a series of exclamatory chords. When Barati started to play, the sound was incredibly sweet and rich, but before we could sink into it, the music began to tumble furiously off his bow, emitting sparks.

Barati's fingers flew up and down the strings with amazing dexterity. And the sound was sublime, rippling and darting in every direction.

The final Allegro is the most familiar part of the work, and the violinist vaulted from one bold passage to another, always maintaining an exceptional purity of tone.

The orchestra played in championship mode as well. John Bruce Yeh's clarinet and Lyon Leifer's flute deftly executed sonic gymnastics right along with the soloist.

The night concluded with Brahms Symphony No. 2, a poignant work of pastoral beauty and peace. The wind section was packed with stars, including Yeh and his CSO colleagues oboist Michael Henoch and bassoonist Dennis Michel, as well as the terrific trumpet duo of Barbara Butler and Charles Geyer. Combined with the Ars Viva strings, there was an arresting depth of sound in the hall.

   

By Delia O’Hara
One of these days, 17-year-old Jeremy Jordan of Chicago will have to decide whether he wants to be a musician or an immunologist. But for now, Jordan, a newly minted member of both the National Honor Society and the National Merit Scholars, is one of two young pianists in the spotlight this weekend at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

The other pianist is Christine Yoon, 15, of Arlington Heights, a giggly middle-schooler until she sits down at the piano, when she transforms into an assured and focused artist with passion and skills far beyond her years.

Jordan and Yoon will perform this weekend at two concerts as part of Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra's Young Artist Showcase. Playing with this excellent North Shore orchestra -- more than half of the musicians also play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra -- has for eight years been the cherry on top of the already sweet honors for one young musician among the winners in the Steinway Concerto Competition, sponsored by a local piano retailer, The Beautiful Sound.

This is the first time that two young people have been chosen to share Ars Viva top honors, the first time "it was impossible to choose one contestant over another for first place," says Alan Heatherington, Ars Viva conductor and musical director.

The prestigious Steinway Competition, which is held in the fall, has two contests with subdivisions that feature pianists as young as age 7. One calls for a 10-minute solo piece, the other requires entrants to perform an entire concerto, which may have as many as three movements, according to Howard Chung, director of the Steinway concert and artists program for The Beautiful Sound.

The concerto competition "is so much work," Chung says.

The store awards cash prizes to the winners, Chung says. In addition, all the winners of the solo competition record their performances for WFMT radio; the station broadcast the most recent recordings in February. And the top three concerto finishers get to audition for Heatherington, for the chance to play with Ars Viva.

That is no small thing.

"Ars Viva is one of the best orchestras in Chicago," says Chung. "These are concerts for rising stars."

Heatherington agrees that Yoon and Jordan are in good company with past winners, who have gone on to win other important competitions in the United States and abroad, and to study at the top music schools.

Jordan, a junior at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School, the first Chicago resident to win the Ars Viva competition, was "technically impeccable," Heatherington says. Jordan was the first contestant ever to choose a concerto by a 20th century composer, Prokofiev's Concerto No. 1, says Heatherington, who also praised Jordan's "breadth of musical understanding and command of the music."

Yoon, a student at South Middle School in Arlington Heights, played Saint-Saens' Concerto No. 2, and "displayed levels of intensity and maturity in her playing that are the signs of a brilliant artist in the making," Heatherington says. "There is not a hint of mechanical playing. Rather, there is an uncanny communication of beauty."

Both now happen to take lessons next door to each other at DePaul University's School of Music, where Jordan studies with Regina Syrkin and Yoon has studied with Eteri Andjaparidze since January.

"When I entered the competition, the thought of winning didn't enter my head," Jordan says. As for the choice of Prokofiev, he says, "My teacher suggested this piece. I had never heard it." He liked it, though, because it is difficult. "It was a challenge. I thought it would make me better."

Seeing Jordan and Yoon perform in concert this weekend offers audiences the chance to see a couple of dedicated and talented pianists near the beginning of their careers. In addition to showcasing these two remarkable young musicians, Ars Viva will take its own star turn with Sibelius' Symphony No. 5 in E-flat, Op. 82. close

With an embarrassment of orchestral riches downtown, it is easy to overlook the many fine ensembles that dot the suburban expanse. With solid programming and polished performances, Alan Heatherington's Ars Viva is perhaps the best of that bunch.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the orchestra draws most of its musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. These busy players' willingness to moonlight for Heatherington is a testament to their respect for the maestro.

Sunday's fare for the group's season debut at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts strayed from the beaten path, but the faithful fans were unfazed, responding with gusto to the three works presented as well as Heatherington's spoken commentary. There were a fair number of vacant seats, almost certainly because of the addition this season of Monday night concerts to Ars Viva's traditional format.

Vaughan Williams' "Five Variants on 'Dives and Lazurus,'" the first of two English works from 1939, reflects the composer's preoccupation with English folk song. Breaking new ground was never his aim, yet he had an admirable flair for string choirs, a talent Heatherington brought to the fore in a performance that glowed with nostalgic warmth.

The meat of the program was Britten's "Les Illuminations," a vocal setting of poems by Arthur Rimbaud, sung with sensitivity by soprano Michelle Areyzaga. The French text seems to have inspired the composer to dip into his palette of Gallic hues, and Heatherington's strings expertly negotiated the piece's quicksilver mood changes.

It is hard to believe these two British works were composed the same year, so different are their respective sound worlds. Areyzaga proved a fine interpreter of the work. If her French vowels were not the last word in authenticity, her burnished tone and nimble athleticism carried the day.

Local music lovers have reveled of late in Lyric Opera's superb "Carmen," and Heatherington gave them a chance to hear a fresh take on Bizet's evergreen tunes with Rodion Shchedrin's "Carmen Suite" from 1967. Much more than a pops concert medley, the work exploits the contrasting colors of lyrical strings and a busy percussion section.

The melodies are adorned and fragmented imaginatively, but at times the cleverness is undone by froth and flash. Still, one could not imagine a more persuasive performance, with a fine balance struck between milking the gags and respecting the source material.

True to its artistic mission, and indeed its name, the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra on Sunday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie, presented a concert that combined music old, new and rarely heard. It's a program formula music director Alan Heatherington has explored for some years… The new work was "Lisel Mueller Songs," a world premiere by the Chicago composer Max Raimi, who also happens to play viola with the CSO and Ars Viva… From Mueller's wonderful Pulitzer-winning collection, "Alive Together," Raimi chose four poems to be sung by mezzo-soprano and orchestra… His music is as accessible as Mueller's poetry is accessible… The vocal writing [was] so well crafted that Julia Bentley, the admirable soloist, had no trouble making each word register clearly… The "old" on the Ars Viva bill was represented by Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. It was refreshing to hear this war horse done with Classical-style forces such as one might find under authentic-performance auspices… The seamless solos by Ars Viva's principal woodwinds proved a further asset… Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3 ended the program in a full blooded reading that included a wistful waltz, a sprightly scherzo and a high-stepping polonaise. Concertmaster David Taylor dispatched the bravura violin solo with debonair panache. This was Ars Viva at its crackling best.
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Alan Heatherington's efforts to inject new vitality into the all-too-predictable concert experience have proved a great success from the viewpoint of the players as well as his growing North Shore public. The Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra's season finale Sunday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie found the music director in his element. Once again he proved a loquacious program host as well as a compelling conductor, and his ensemble—made up of some of the finest players from the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera orchestras—outdid itself for him. He began with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Concerto Grosso (1985), which he aptly called "a 20th Century response to the spirit of Handel…" From the Zwilich, the conductor leapt backward some 60 years to Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3. The pianist was another in a series of outstanding young local soloists whom Ars Viva showcases each spring—17-year-old Deborah Hong of Northbrook, winner of the Steinway Society of Chicago Concerto Competition … Ars Viva really came into its own with Schubert's "Great" C Major Symphony. Working from an authentic new edition of the score, Heatherington opted for much the same size of forces Schubert had in mind… This amounted to a refreshing, clear-eyed re-examination of an old favorite. How good to hear this music without the ponderous heaviness big symphony orchestras almost invariably bring to it. With such able conducting and resilient playing, Schubert's "heavenly length" did not seem at all protracted, even with every repeat observed.
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In its season opener under music director Alan Heatherington, the orchestra and soloist David Taylor polished reputations already high with their performances of the "Coriolan" Overture, the Violin Concerto in D Major, and the so-called "Dance" Symphony, No. 7 in A Major… This was a pared-down orchestra of only 34 players, about the normal size in Beethoven's time. Given the professionalism of these players, the result was a transparency and buoyancy of sound rarely heard from the jumbo orchestras of our time…[David Taylor's] technique of course was superb, most notably in the Heifetz cadenzas… Here that added up to splendid music. In the 7th Symphony -- like the concerto, a storehouse of irresistible tunes -- Heatherington made the most of his orchestra's athletic leanness. Its playing was live and alert. In the melancholy second movement, which is often done like a dirge, he took Beethoven's allegretto marking literally; the grief was there, but had the steady pulse of underlying health. The Scherzo skipped along like a champion jumping rope. The finale seemed a combination dance and march, a triumph with no losers.
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Soprano Elizabeth Kainz and baritone Lauri Vasar are singers who belong together, musically if not otherwise. Sharing the stage Sunday with the Ars Viva! Symphony Orchestra under Alan Heatherington, they showed wonderfully matched voices, personalities and musicianship. Beyond that, the all-Mozart program was tailored to their special talents. Both clearly reveled in the 12 arias and duets they sang (13 with the encore the audience demanded). All those elements in combination turned "An Evening of Mozart" into a glittering festival. What distinguished it most was a feeling of effortless enjoyment on the part of all the performers. Kainz and Vasar have big, free-riding voices and notable skill as actors. The orchestra played with its usual polished elegance. And the music, Mozart in top form, was the sound of perfection.The program, at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, was neatly packaged. Vocal selections were from "The Marriage of Figaro," "Don Giovanni," "Cosi fan tutte," and "The Magic Flute." The orchestra provided an overture for each group, the first three with their own overtures, the "Flute" group paired with music for "La Clemenza di Tito." This was an ideal showcase for Kainz and Vasar. It's hard to say whether they were more delightful alone or in combination... Heatherington and his fine orchestra gave the "Prague" symphony the buoyant, eager sound of musicians who love what they're doing.
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Striking a balance between playing music that an audience wants to hear and playing music an audience needs to hear is ever a delicate business for orchestras, particularly when the overall level of listener sophistication may not be especially high. But Alan Heatherington has perfected that art to a fine science with his Ars Viva ensemble, as witness the group's season-opening program Sunday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie. Of course, it helps that he is one of Chicago's most able conductors, with some of the area's best instrumentalists at his disposal. Musicians enjoy the challenges he presents them and so, apparently, do his audiences. Subscriptions have more than doubled over last year, a clear sign that the public appreciates his imaginatively conceived concerts and trusts him to execute everything at a high level... Many contemporary composers seem to have forgotten that the violin is essentially a lyrical instrument; Polifrone is not one of them. The soloist sings almost without interruption in the three movements of the new concerto... I would recommend the Polifrone to violinists who complain that nobody is writing any late 20th Century concertos that are grateful to perform or that audiences will enjoy at first hearing. Certainly Sharon Polifrone argued its musical merits with absolute skill and dedication, while her Ars Viva colleagues supported her to the fullest... [Heatherington] transformed his chamber orchestra into an elegant sonic facsimile of a Gallic ensemble for Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin but reserved the evening's best performance for Schumann's wonderful if rarely heard Overture, Scherzo and Finale.
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Conceptually nonlinear though it may have been, the season-closing program of Ars Viva... once again demonstrated the easy camaraderie and close musical rapport between Alan Heatherington and his all-star chamber orchestra. Made up largely of Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera Orchestra members, Ars Viva under Heatherington's direction showed why they have quickly earned a reputation as one of the area's finest musical ensembles. Heatherington could also have success in stand-up comedy judging by his wryly witty extemporized introduction to Smetana's "Vltava" (or "Die Moldau"). The popular excerpt from "Ma Vlast" received a wonderfully fresh and unhackneyed performance... In Rachmaninoff's beloved war-horse [Piano Concerto No. 2], the young pianist certainly demonstrated a world-class technique and brilliance to burn... Rex Martin... proved a capable soloist [in the Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto] projecting this characteristic blend of English pastoralism and bumptious good fun with flair... [In the] Symphony No. 7 of Sibelius... the Ars Viva musicians' playing was superb. Heatherington ensured that the climaxes had the proper austere majesty and he elicited especially fine string playing, with the violins having a sheen and richness no longer extant at the post-renovation Symphony Center.
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We are constantly told the importance of getting American music assimilated into the concert repertory, yet how many American conductors are willing to use the power of their positions to make it happen? Alan Heatherington is one conductor who takes that objective seriously, not in any didactic sense but simply because he loves this music and wants his audience to love it, too. He proved as much with the program "Music of America" performed by his ever-enterprising chamber orchestra, Ars Viva... Neither Copland score turns up with any regularity at the Chicago Symphony, so one was doubly grateful to encounter them both here. Heatherington played the familiar suite from "Appalachian Spring" in its unfamiliar original version for 13 instruments. The lean, transparent scoring lets you hear how each piece of the musical jigsaw puzzle fits into place; it also makes every player, in effect, a soloist. The Ars Viva musicians were equal to the task, responding with luminous sound in the opening pages, wending their way alertly through the tricky dancing meters of the fast music... Tucker's open-hearted lyricism made a nice foil to the drypoint neo-classicism of Stravinsky's "Dumbarton Oaks" Concerto... Both scores were appreciatively played.
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Very few orchestras have their own choruses, but Ars Viva... music director Alan Heatherington also conducts the New Oratorio Singers, and... the two groups combined to pack a powerful punch. The presentation was the Bruckner "Requiem," a vast work which is rarely heard... It is a wonder this lovely work is not done more often... Music director Heatherington gave program notes from the stage. He was particularly eloquent when speaking about Richard Strauss's "Metamorphosen" for 23 solo strings, written when the composer was 80... The performance by the Ars Viva's strings was sublime and beautiful.
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Alan Heatherington returned to his former musical haunts for the first concert of Ars Viva's new season Sunday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie. The opening program found the music director exploring that area of the repertoire with which local audiences have long associated him--music for string orchestra... Heatherington likes to engage his audience in fresh discovery as much as he likes to stretch his players. He began with one of Gould's final works, his 1993 "Stringmusic," which won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1995. Composed for Mstislav Rostropovich, the five movements include a heavy Slavic "Tango," a somber and enigmatic "Dirge," a Mahlerian "Ballad" and a jubilant hoedown, titled "Strum," complete with strenuous fugato ending with a loud pizzicato snap. A good foil was Elegy, a concert piece Gould wrote as "a personal comment" to the score he composed for the 1976 NBC television movie "Holocaust." The composer never lost his popular touch, even in his serious works, and this brief, simple blues for strings (encored at the end of the program) has the sweet accessibility one associates with his best music. Heatherington's strings, a bit scrappy sounding early on, really distinguished themselves in the program's neo-classical works, Ben-Haim's Concerto for String Orchestra (1947) and Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1925). The German-born Ben-Haim, who died in 1984, was the leading Israeli composer of his generation. His string-orchestra concerto, written on the eve of the creation of the new Israeli state, is an appealing, expertly crafted fusion of Western classical and Middle Eastern vernacular styles. At times the music echoes the rhythmic angularity and harmonic astringency of Bartok. At other times it veers off into stylized Sephardic chant. Bloch's First Concerto Grosso is much better known, one of the key masterpieces of the early 20th Century's rush to pay homage to J.S. Bach. With David Schrader presiding decisively and dexterously at the piano, Heatherington wrung every last ounce of sonority, fervor and polyphonic drama from this invigorating score. The performance was Ars Viva at its best.
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Ars Viva began its season with concerts for wind and string ensembles, later progressing to chamber-orchestra dimensions. So, it's fitting that Alan Heatherington's supremely flexible, moveable musical feast ended its second season in full symphony orchestra guise Sunday night at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. It's heartening that Heatherington and his superb core of the area's best musicians seem to be gathering a loyal audience... The 18-year-old Ching-wen Hsiao was protagonist in Tchaikovsky's not unfamiliar Piano Concerto No. 1. The young musician brought a piquant delicacy to the Andante and pounced on the barnstorming passages like an uncaged panther... Heatherington's reading of Dvorak's Symphony No. 8 blended bucolic charm and fiery energy in near-ideal fashion... The contrasting expression of this evocative music was skillfully brought out, and the Ars Viva brass whipped up plenty of excitement in the finale. The concert led off with a lively and incisive rendering of Mozart's concise Symphony No. 32.
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Alan Heatherington's Ars Viva Orchestra demonstrated its bona fides once again Sunday night in Skokie as one of Chicagoland's very finest chamber orchestras. Forming a sharp contrast with the lighter string Serenades of Elgar and Dvorak was Robert Lombardo's "Threnody" for octet, performed in a newly revised version. Lombardo's angular string lines rove widely and venture into dark tonal regions, yet, directed and played with great sensitivity as here, this music achieves a spare yet moving and transcendent eloquence. Elgar's nostalgic Serenade was well-turned by the Ars Viva string players, Heatherington drawing out the composer's uniquely English brand of wistful yearning in the Larghetto, with a knowing, idiomatic hand. In Dvorak's more broadly spun Serenade in E Major, Heatherington and his players provided one of the most outstanding renderings of this much-performed work heard in years. Faultlessly paced by the conductor, the Ars Viva musicians' seamless ensemble and richly committed playing evoked all the bucolic charm and pastoral lyricism of this music with consummate skill. The famous Waltz was elegantly turned, and in the long-breathed Larghetto, Heatherington's finely judged, hairpin rubato drew out the deeper vein of feeling in Dvorak's long arching lines. A terrific performance.
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It's one thing to gather 48 of the area's best orchestral musicians on one stage, quite another to get them to play Beethoven and Brahms like the big boys downtown. But that is pretty much what the conductor achieved in a concert that framed Beethoven's Emperor Concerto with Brahms' Tragic Overture and Symphony No. 1... Having a hand-picked orchestra with splendid players such as David Taylor, Robert Morgan and Lyon Leifer manning first-chair positions helps, of course. But the C-Minor Symphony also demands a conductor who can keep a firm hand on matters architectural while fleshing out Brahms' heroic sprawl with subtle details of phrasing, accent and rubato. A few wrong entrances did nothing to lessen the impact of a performance that put the Chicago Symphony's current brand of thick, shapeless Brahms well in the shade.
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Chicago's musical life has a new kid on the block, and he'll be able to take care of himself just fine. Ars Viva, an orchestra and chorus made up of superb and seasoned local musicians, gave its inaugural concert in Evanston Sunday and met a challenge set by its own director: to bring audiences in each concert "something old and something new," a musical treasure of the past paired with a new work by a living composer. Alan Heatherington, artistic director and conductor, hoisted these colors proudly.
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