Von Stade bids her Chicago fans a nostalgic adieu

May 11, 2010

Unlike those singers who keep performing well past their sell-by dates, Frederica von Stade is going into retirement in good vocal shape, head held proudly.

A mother's days of reckoning

May 10, 2010

There are any number of reasons why Jake Heggie's pocket opera "Three Decembers" should not work as well as it does.

CSO Review: Morlot still in the 'promising' category, but Chen's Tchaikovsky is the real deal

May 7, 2010

Over the last four seasons the young French conductor Ludovic Morlot has been doing admirable things as guest of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its MusicNOW contemporary series. Not great, but admirable. I'm still waiting for him to set Orchestra Hall ablaze with a demonstration of something truly extraordinary. Still, he's steadily making his way around the circuit of major world orchestras, a sign the managements know podium promise when they see it.

NU festival honors composer John Corigliano

May 6, 2010

Many Chicagoans will recall John Corigliano from his active collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the Georg Solti era, at which time Corigliano, as the orchestra's first composer in residence, gave contemporary music renewed prominence on the subscription series.

Beloved singer a fixture of Lyric Opera's early seasons

May 6, 2010

Giulietta Simionato, the internationally acclaimed Italian mezzo-soprano who became a beloved mainstay of the early seasons of Lyric Opera of Chicago, died Wednesday in Rome, seven days before her 100th birthday. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

Review: Ars Viva orchestra shows why its director is a major force in area music

May 3, 2010

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.

Graceful exit

May 2, 2010

"The time has come to think of other things," says Frederica von Stade, slyly paraphrasing the Walrus in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass." She is not, of course, thinking ships, sealing-wax, cabbages or kings. She's thinking retirement.

Pinnock transfers his mastery of Classical style to a chamber-sized CSO

May 1, 2010

Trevor Pinnock is the latest early music specialist the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has engaged to take charge of one of its periodic sorties into the chamber orchestra repertory. The British conductor and harpsichordist, who was making his CSO debut Thursday night at Orchestra Hall, managed the leap more adroitly than some of his colleagues from the historical brigade.

What can be done to make classical music more relevant to today's culture? Ask young musicians

April 29, 2010

Greg Sandow was in town last week to conduct a workshop on the problems facing classical music for the Institute for Cultural Policy at the University of Chicago. He lectures widely and maintains a blog on the subject at the invaluable Web site artsjournal.com. He's busy converting his blog entries into a forthcoming book titled "Rebirth: The Future of Classical Music." I can't wait to read it.

Name’s Bond. Jason Bond, circa 1649.

April 26, 2010

Francesco Cavalli was the Giuseppe Verdi of his day, a composer who had all of 17th century Italy singing. "Giasone" ("Jason"), the 10th of his more than 30 operas, was performed more frequently than any other opera of its time (it premiered in Venice in 1649). Evidently, its combo plate of heavy mythology mixed with lighter comic elements was just what the public of Cavalli's day craved.

Pinch-hitting Dutch conductor delivers again

April 24, 2010

Classical corner

April 23, 2010

Cameron Carpenter: The popular, boundary-busting organist performs selections from his upcoming Telarc recording. 8 p.m. Friday at First United Methodist Church, 516 Church St., Evanston. $25-$50, $10 for seniors; 847-864-6181

Giulini biography illuminates a poet of the podium with deep ties to Chicago

April 22, 2010

When Carlo Maria Giulini died nearly five years ago in his native Italy, at 91, the already diminished classical music world grew even smaller.

Travel woes lead to fest changes

April 20, 2010

This week's first Chicago Early Music Festival has been forced to make program changes because airport shutdowns in northern Europe have prevented several of its scheduled artists from arriving here. The travel delays are the result of the volcanic ash cloud that originated in Iceland.

Some worthy singing rescues Rossini rarity

April 19, 2010

When Chicago last heard Rossini's "Mose in Egitto," it was 1863, Abraham Lincoln was the nation's president and the show came to town courtesy of a touring Italian opera troupe. Nearly 147 years elapsed before Chicagoans would get to experience Rossini's biblical opera a second time.

Hubbard Street dancers get ‘Deep Down'

April 18, 2010

It's a red-letter week for dance in Chicago.

Chicago Opera Theater spring season nears

April 16, 2010

Chicago Opera Theater is going into its spring festival season with fingers crossed. Maybe a few toes as well.

Not too late for Chicago's early-music groups to shine

April 15, 2010

Chicago is celebrated for its world-class symphony orchestra and opera companies, but few people think of it as an important center of early-music performance.

Vivaldi, John Waters among Harris treats

April 14, 2010

The Harris Theater for Music and Dance at Millennium Park has announced a high-profile season of music, dance and theater performances for 2010-11. Thirteen visiting artists and ensembles, arranged in three subscription series, will share the season with the venue's resident performing arts groups.

Orchestra's gold a fine match for pianist's glitter

April 13, 2010

Local pianophiles were faced with a serious dilemma Sunday in downtown Chicago. Two major pianists, Lang Lang and Maurizio Pollini, were appearing in concerts in different venues at the same hour. Which one to attend?

CSO, Elder ride the war horses

April 10, 2010

British conductor Mark Elder, who is completing his two-week podium residency at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this weekend, knows a thing or two about breathing new vitality into familiar 19th century staples, as he has proved here on numerous occasions, most recently last year's Dvorak Festival.

Pianist battled his way back from crippling disease

April 8, 2010

When you hear Meng-Chieh Liu igniting the piano keyboard with his formidable sound and style, you would never guess he once battled a debilitating disease that left his body frail and paralyzed, and nearly cost him his life.

3 sopranos among Lyric's brightest rising stars from Ryan Opera Center

April 5, 2010

If Lyric Opera of Chicago were a baseball club instead of an opera company, you would praise it for its impressively deep bench. In fact, this year's pool of aspiring young professional opera singers who are members of Lyric's artist development program, the Ryan Opera Center, appears to be deeper than ever.

Mark Elder inspires CSO

April 3, 2010

English music can be a tough sell with the American concert public. Indeed, there were alarming numbers of empty seats on view at Orchestra Hall on Thursday night for the program of early 20th century English music Mark Elder directed to begin his two-week podium engagement with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

From radio to Radiohead, pianist bridges musical gaps

April 1, 2010

Christopher O'Riley is back in town this week doing what he does best: exploding the arbitrary borders others use to separate classical and popular music.

Salonen withdraws from CSO series

March 30, 2010

Conductors Carlos Kalmar and Jaap van Zweden will replace Esa-Pekka Salonen next month on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's subscription series. Salonen has withdrawn for personal reasons, according to an orchestra spokeswoman.

400 years young, ‘Vespers'

March 29, 2010

The glorious musical canvas that is Claudio Monteverdi's 1610 "Vespers of the Blessed Virgin" ushered in the Baroque era and with it the language of music we recognize today. The 400th anniversary of this sacred choral masterpiece is being celebrated near and far. We are greatly in debt to Chicago a cappella vocal ensemble Bella Voce for bringing it to us over the weekend in a spirited and moving realization. The final performance takes place Monday night at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park.

Jurowski wins big in his CSO debut, and so does his program

March 27, 2010

The most impressive Chicago Symphony Orchestra podium debut in many months? That's an easy one. Thursday night at Symphony Center, the young Russian dynamo Vladimir Jurowski came, saw and conquered, demonstrating a natural command and uncommon authority that have won him many admirers and glowing reviews throughout Europe and now in America. The only remaining question was, what took him so long to make it to the CSO?

Opera Theater puts innovation on calendar

March 25, 2010

Never mind that Chicago Opera Theater hasn't even raised the curtain on its 2010 spring festival season, which launches April 17 at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park. Building anticipation can only be good business, particularly in a dicey economy. With that strategy in mind, the company has released its schedule for spring 2011, along with a glimpse at what lies beyond.

U. of C. Presents sets its 2010-11 concert season

March 23, 2010

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, the early music group Fretwork, and the Emerson, Tokyo and Pacifica string quartets will highlight the 2010-11 season of concerts presented by the University of Chicago. All events will take place at Mandel Hall unless otherwise noted.

Dan Tucker, 1925-2010

March 21, 2010

Dan Tucker hailed from a family of newspaper people and worked his way up the ladder the traditional way at several Chicago dailies, beginning as a copy boy at the old Chicago Sun and ending up as a member of the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, a post he held from 1975 until his retirement in 1988.

Uchida brings grace to Mozart concertos

March 20, 2010

Ever since she began conducting Mozart piano concertos from the keyboard with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra six years ago, Mitsuko Uchida has won the affection of players and concertgoers alike. That fact has not gone unnoticed by management: The all-Mozart program this remarkably sensitive pianist is presenting this week at Orchestra Hall will be followed by another pair of Mozart piano concertos, also played and conducted by Uchida, in January.

Absurdist ‘Nose' stuffed with great fun

March 18, 2010

— Talk about missed opportunities. It is incomprehensible that the Metropolitan Opera did not earmark for movie theater or TV broadcast its company premiere of Shostakovich's satirical "The Nose." For if there's anything the Met has presented recently that cries out for visual documentation, it's this wildly imaginative new production by the famed South African artist William Kentridge.

CSO maestro-in-waiting Muti conquers New York

March 15, 2010

NEW YORK – Both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic were courting Riccardo Muti well before he tied the knot with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In fact the mighty Met tried to nail down the peripatetic Italian maestro for decades, while the philharmonic pitched its music directorship at least twice in recent years. As if to soothe wounded feelings, the CSO's future music director is enjoying a kind of pre-spring fling with his two former suitors before he settles into a permanent relationship in Chicago this fall.

Illuminating interpretations grace ‘CSO Lite' performance

March 12, 2010

This was to have been the week the Chicago Symphony Orchestra would give the downtown premiere of resident composer Osvaldo Golijov's "Pasion Segun San Marcos" in tandem with Bach's "St. John Passion." The plan was to contrast two very different settings of the Passion text — one devout and austere, the other riotously colorful — separated by nearly three centuries.

Collective

March 12, 2010

Eleven Chicago arts institutions will join later this year and in 2011 to present a 14-month showcase of significant works created under, and in response to, the political dictates of the former Soviet Union.

3 other super stagings

March 11, 2010

Lyric Opera has not skimped on elaborate, high-concept productions when the works cry out for such treatment and/or when the director-designer team believes that is the most theatrically viable way to bring them to life on the Civic Opera House stage. Here are three such lavish stagings from recent seasons:

Handel Week Festival uncovers ‘Rodelinda'

March 9, 2010

For 11 seasons, Handel aficionados have turned to performances at the Handel Week Festival in Oak Park to satiate musical cravings no other organization in the Chicago area is satisfying in quite the same way. Using some of the city's best professional singers and instrumentalists, artistic director Dennis E. Northway has introduced audiences to important works that have been shamefully neglected locally.

French orchestra bland but proves clean, solid

March 8, 2010

To judge from the programs the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France persists in bringing to Chicago, you would think its repertory is limited to the most standard Gallic fare, which one knows has not been the case since Myung-Whun Chung took over as music director in 2000.

Dutoit's steady hand keeps Russian epic in check

March 6, 2010

Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11 ("The Year 1905") is a programmatic symphony evoking a massacre of unarmed workers by soldiers in czarist St. Petersburg in that year, a key event in modern Russian history. It has always divided the composer's admirers. Is it an artifact of socialist realism designed to suck up to the Soviet cultural apparatchiks? A coded indictment of Stalinist tyranny? A film score without the film? Or is it something deeper and more complex?

Former CSO oboist still vibrant, many years later

March 4, 2010

The great principal oboe players of America's top symphony orchestras tend to enjoy long and productive tenures: Think of the Boston Symphony's Ralph Gomberg (37 years on the job), the Cleveland Orchestra's John Mack (36 years) or the New York Philharmonic's Harold Gomberg (34 years), Ralph's brother.

Lyric ‘Figaro' a chestnut made new through excellence

March 2, 2010

It's amazing how an infusion of superior singing can freshen even the most venerable opera production.

Noseda, early Rachmaninov piece make CSO debuts

February 27, 2010

Suddenly, it would appear, everything's coming up Rachmaninov. Never mind that the big Rachmaninov anniversary won't arrive until 2013, when the music world will pay its respects to the 140th anniversary of the great Russian composer's birth and 70th anniversary of his death. The fact remains that a composer long denigrated by critics and scholars but forever beloved of musicians and audiences, has become such a staple of our concert life that every season is, in a sense, a celebration.

New director at CSO: Beginning of Muti era

February 26, 2010

The Riccardo Muti era at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra officially began Thursday at Symphony Center, as the CSO's 10th music director announced plans for his first season. He did so with a combination of relaxed good humor and expressions of serious concern for the role symphony orchestras, and classical music in general, can play in today's troubled world.

A hip soiree in Hades

February 22, 2010

As if to answer those critics who have been lamenting the dearth of daring at Lyric Opera of Chicago in recent seasons, the company is flaunting its regained theatrical mojo with a terrific new production of Hector Berlioz's "The Damnation of Faust."

Tilson Thomas, CSO a powerful pair in Stravinsky program

February 20, 2010

Igor Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex," which forms the centerpiece of Michael Tilson Thomas' absorbing all-Stravinsky program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this weekend at Orchestra Hall, stands alone among the composer's neoclassical works.

New director looks to partnerships with Grant Park Music Festival this summer and beyond

February 17, 2010

Like the mythic god Janus, the Grant Park Music Festival this summer will look backward and forward at the same time.

Opera of the mind

February 14, 2010

If the late, great Danny Newman were still filling the Lyric Opera subscription brochures with his inimitable prose, he might have heralded the company's new production of "La Damnation de Faust" thus: "Take a delirious, high-speed roller-coaster ride to heaven and hell! There's nothing to lose but your soul!"

Chicago Symphony, Tilson Thomas a brilliant pair

February 13, 2010

One thing that makes Michael Tilson Thomas so welcome on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription series, apart from his skills at the podium, is his programming. You can depend on his concerts to be fresh, imaginatively conceived, even surprising. Such is the case with the programs he is presenting over the next two weeks at Orchestra Hall.

Chicago Sinfonietta seeks Maestro (or Maestra) Nation's most diverse orchestra seeks singular leader

January 21, 2010

Few decisions weigh more heavily on a classical music organization than determining who its next music director is going to be, particularly when that group has a special mission to fulfill. The Chicago Sinfonietta is wrestling with just such a decision.