Candillari\u2019s debut sticks out at an orchestra maddeningly aloof to contemporary music on its mainstage. That may be changing. After announcing the disappointing \u201cpause\u201d of its MusicNOW series<\/a> last year, CSO president Jeff Alexander told the Tribune that the organization is pivoting to include more living composers on its full-orchestra programs. (MusicNOW was, effectively, a chamber series.) This season, the first to fully reflect that shift, includes 16 new works \u2014 though, it must be noted, just one of those is a premiere.<\/p>\n Will the new strategy go down easy with CSO audiences? Candillari\u2019s program certainly offered a blueprint for success. Widely programmed across the country, Carlos Simon\u2019s music is emotionally immediate and well-crafted \u2014 populist enough to be a safe programming choice, but not short of sophistication<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cFate Now Conquers,\u201d a five-minute curtain raiser from 2019, follows that winning formula. The strings fire off energized linear passages \u2014 sometimes handing them off in fast volleys, sometimes overlapping in dense thickets. Underneath them, woodwinds and brass hint at the long, short-short dirge theme from Beethoven\u2019s Seventh Symphony. (Reference to a canon mainstay, however subtle? Check.) It\u2019s the kind of new music all but engineered to go off well at the CSO \u2014 though it would have helped had the strings played it with the assurance and guts the score demands, a slight languor hanging over the section like a fog.<\/p>\n Step two in this new-music master plan: Loop in CSO musicians with an avid following. Piccolo player Jennifer Gunn is an anchor of the orchestra\u2019s woodwind section whenever she appears, as dazzling as she is reliable. She last soloed with the orchestra as recently as 2019, in a double-header of piccolo concertos by Vivaldi and Ken Benshoof.<\/p>\n But solo opportunities for woodwinds, brass, percussion and some strings \u2014 namely bass<\/a> and viola<\/a> \u2014 are still few and far between enough for audiences to take note. Whenever someone like Gunn steps into the limelight, you can bet much of the flute-playing populace is boosting the box office, no matter what\u2019s on the menu.<\/p>\n Often treated as a spiky accent in orchestration, the piccolo takes on a thoughtful, almost Debussyian demeanor in Musgrave\u2019s \u201cPiccolo Play.\u201d Originally written with piano accompaniment, the Scottish composer, now 97, expanded the accompaniment to string orchestra in 2022. Gunn debuted that version herself in August of that year, when Chicago hosted the National Flute Association.<\/p>\n Gunn embodied all the expertise one would expect as this version\u2019s originator. Her sound was rounded and lyrical, glassily pristine in the high register but with a pleasant woodiness in its middle and low register. The pointillistic semi-cadenza of the fourth movement (entitled \u201cLes Papillons,\u201d or \u201cThe Butterflies\u201d) was a marvel of intricacy and agility. The sixth movement, \u201cLe Bruit de Guerre,\u201d is inspired by Manet\u2019s 1866 painting of a young fifer; Gunn played its final invocation of the \u201cDies irae\u201d plainchant with fearful desolation, her vibrato like the fluttering of a nervous heart.<\/p>\n During bows, musicians and conductors sometimes hold up their score, directing applause to the piece or composer. At her curtain call, Gunn smiled and waggled her instrument \u2014 a tribute to the small yet mighty piccolo.<\/p>\n If pivoting from Musgrave to \u201cStabat Mater\u201d gave Candillari any stylistic whiplash, she didn\u2019t show it. The conductor cultivated a nonpurist yet transparent tone in the CSO strings, if not always smoothing their blend with the onstage box organ.<\/p>\n Jennifer Johnson Cano\u2019s hearty, potent voice has rightly made her a go-to mezzo soloist at the CSO. On Friday, I occasionally wanted more straight-toned purity where Pergolesi\u2019s orchestration begs for it, including in the vocalists\u2019 very first entrance. But Cano\u2019s presence and tone \u2014 particularly in a stark, standout \u201cFac ut portem\u201d \u2014 were otherwise well-suited to Orchestra Hall and the ensemble.<\/p>\n Giulia Semenzato, her soprano colleague, might have overcorrected in the opposite direction. After a strong, bare-hearted \u201cCuius animam gementem,\u201d she quieted to the vanishing point in \u201cVidit suum dulcem natum\u201d and seemed to retreat behind her sheet music from that point on. A Baroque specialist, Semenzato may have learned the hard way that Orchestra Hall does soloists no favors if they don\u2019t project.<\/p>\n End to end, Candillari was this program\u2019s bedrock. She conducted the whole concert without a baton, a move that has backfired<\/a> for guest conductors in the recent past. But her beats \u2014 graceful yet energized, and dense with expressive intent \u2014 left no room for ambiguity. An expansive vocabulary of contours and cutoffs made for an especially intimate Barber\u2019s Adagio for Strings well, the ensemble satiny and well-balanced.<\/p>\n It might be too late to catch Candillari at work by the time you read this. Her CSO engagement is just two nights, as short as subscription cycles go. Until the orchestra gets wise and invites her back for a longer cycle, a friendly reminder: St. Louis is just a four-and-a-half-hour drive.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/CTC-L-ENT-CSO-PICCOLO-01.jpg\")
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs with conductor Daniela Candillari, Jennifer Gunn, piccolo; soprano Giulia Semenzato and Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano at Symphony Center in Chicago on Oct. 3, 2025. (Todd Rosenberg)
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/CTC-L-ENT-CSO-PICCOLO-03.jpg\")
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs with conductor Daniela Candillari, Jennifer Gunn, piccolo; soprano Giulia Semenzato and Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano at Symphony Center in Chicago on Oct. 3, 2025. (Todd Rosenberg)<\/p>\n