Grant Park Orchestra treats Pritzker Pavilion audience to Rossini, Corigliano and Dvorak

GRAN PARK ORCHESTRA

AT MILLENNIUM PARK

After three weeks, the novelty hasn't worn off the PritzkerPavilion in Millennium Park.

Only a few scattered seats were empty at the Grant ParkOrchestra's concert on Saturday night, and picnickers takingadvantage of the mild weather stretched to the outer reaches of thelawn. Spectators lined the long walls from the edges of the pavilionnear Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive to hear German conductorSebastian Weigle lead a program that opened with the overture toRossini's "The Barber of Seville,'' continued with a suite from JohnCorigliano's opera "The Ghosts of Versailles'' and closed withDvorak's "New World'' Symphony.

The concert got off to a slow start, with the orchestra soundingmuch too well-mannered in the Rossini overture. Rather than tumblingover themselves as they tossed the effervescent melodies back andforth, they seemed to politely wait their turns, draining some of thelife from Rossini's good-humored score.

The Rossini was a deft bit of programming, a bow to the playwrightBeaumarchais, whose plays inspired both Rossini's "Barber'' andMozart's "The Marriage of Figaro,'' and who turns up as a characterin Corigliano's "The Ghosts of Versailles.'' Composed in 1991 andproduced at Lyric Opera of Chicago a few seasons later, the opera isa fantasy involving a play-within-a-play, and the main charactersinclude the ghosts of Marie Antoinette and Beaumarchais. Coriglianotitled his suite, drawn from the opera, "Phantasmagoria,'' and Weigleand the Grant Park players skillfully captured its evanescence andwistful high spirits.

Even the white noise of downtown traffic couldn't undermine themagical stillness at the heart of the music. Bits and pieces ofmelody danced to the surface only to melt and recede into a misty,indistinct background. When the music finally found some backbone,the explosions of jolly, disjointed minuets and marches were asendearingly raucous as children clattering through an old folks'home.

The Dvorak "New World'' Symphony was vibrantly colored. Weigle andhis players seemed to luxuriate in the tender, long-lined melodies inthe third and fourth movements, lingering over their arches withoutlosing the momentum.

I wandered across the lawn during the final movement of the Dvorakand found the orchestra's sound just as detailed as it had been in myseat closer to the pavilion.

The listeners were amazingly quiet, probably because theorchestra, though invisible from the lawn, sounded so close. At onepoint, a young woman and a little girl swayed and danced to themusic, their bodies forming black silhouettes against the warm brownwood of the pavilion's interior.

Summer in the city doesn't get much better than this.