Philharmonic season ends with music director Rachleff in firm command
May 16, 2011
The Chicago Philharmonic has battled its way back from a crippling deficit and cash-flow problems that threatened its existence a couple of seasons ago. The orchestra remains in fine corporate fettle, artistically speaking, as proved by the strength and confidence of its playing at its 21st season finale Sunday evening in Northwestern University's Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, Evanston.
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Muti, Ma close youth festival with flair
May 15, 2011
From all parts of the Chicago metropolitan area they poured into Symphony Center on a rainy Sunday afternoon. They did so to honor an idea and to celebrate a festival dedicated to turning that idea into community-enriching reality.
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Muti's 'arrivederci' for the CSO subscription season has audience clamoring for more
May 13, 2011
Hard to believe, but Riccardo Muti's inaugural season as music director will conclude this weekend. The next time Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscribers will hear him will be in late September, unless they hop a flight to Europe to catch his late-summer festival tour with the CSO. So if you are holding tickets to the last subscription program of his May residency, which will have a final performance on Saturday night at Symphony Center, consider yourselves lucky.
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No 'hallelujahs' this Christmas unless 'Messiah' funding is found
May 11, 2011
For nearly 35 years, the free "Do-It-Yourself Messiah" concerts presented by the International Music Foundation have been as familiar a Chicago holiday tradition as the lighting of the huge Christmas tree at the former Marshall Field's (now Macy's) downtown department store.
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Double bill scores one hit, one miss for COT in season closer
May 8, 2011
Brian Dickie, Chicago Opera Theater's canny general director, is accustomed to making do with relatively little. When budget limitations forced him to postpone COT's scheduled production of Shostakovich's "Moscow, Cheryomushki," until April 2012, he came up with a way to take local opera in yet another intriguing new direction, on a penny-pinching budget.
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With tenor Bostridge, rare Baroque arias sound newly minted
May 8, 2011
Some recitalists present themselves as glittering bodies to be admired by their legions of fans. Ian Bostridge presents himself as a historical explorer. In his fascinating and far-reaching concert with the Canadian period instruments ensemble Les Violons du Roy, Friday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, the brilliant British tenor took his audience back to Europe in the early 18th century, when tenors began to supersede castratos as the superstars of opera.
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Muti's return to CSO leaves hall abuzz with the excitement of old music and new
May 6, 2011
Symphony Center promises to be a veritable beehive of music these next few weeks, and that can only mean one thing: Riccardo Muti is back with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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Hear Renee Fleming sing for free, and no jacket needed (unless it's chilly)
May 4, 2011
Chicagoans won't be hearing soprano Renee Fleming in any staged opera at Lyric Opera of Chicago next season, but they will be able to catch her as headliner of the company's free, preseason concert at Millennium Park.
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CCM sets adventuresome course for its silver anniversary season
May 4, 2011
It's tough being a pace-setting performing arts group, not least because you've got to keep dreaming up innovative things that help you stay ahead of the pack.
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Chapel acoustics clash with chorale's tribute
May 2, 2011
The retrospective concert of choral music and songs by the American composer Dominick Argento presented by the William Ferris Chorale on Saturday night at Loyola University Chicago's Madonna della Strada Chapel brought back memories. The chorus used to salute important American composers on a regular basis during the tenure of its founder and director, the late Chicago composer and conductor William Ferris, who would bring them to town as honored guests.
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Hubbard Street adds playful zest to CSO program
April 28, 2011
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra's annual collaborations with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago have not always displayed either the musicians or the dancers to optimum advantage. But their joint program Wednesday night at Symphony Center, presented as part of the "Afterwork Masterworks" series, proved a happy exception.
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Will new general director Anthony Freud bring bold artistic vision to Lyric Opera?
April 27, 2011
Lyric Opera's announcement last week of Anthony Freud's appointment as its next general director raises questions as to which directions the art form will be heading at one of the world's important opera houses in the remaining years of the decade.
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French Baroque treasure rescued in stormy 'Medea'
April 24, 2011
For opera companies, French Baroque opera is the final frontier. The rescue of this largely unknown repertory from obscurity owes much to the period instruments movement and its proliferation on recordings over the last 40 years or so. The long-neglected stage works of Jean-Philippe Rameau and Marc-Antoine Charpentier have been the chief beneficiaries in live performance and discs, many of the latter owing to the staunch advocacy of the French-based American conductor William Christie.
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Conlon serves Shostakovich suite to the max with CSO
April 22, 2011
The coincidence was striking. Only four days after the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Riccardo Muti had performed Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony in New York, it was back home at Symphony Center to present conductor James Conlon's own orchestral suite drawn from the Shostakovich opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."
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Chicago Bach Project off to a strong start with 'St. Matthew Passion'
April 21, 2011
Nobody undertakes lightly a performance of that pinnacle of German Protestant sacred music, J.S. Bach's "St. Matthew Passion." This musically formidable setting of Christ's suffering, death and burial requires top-notch vocal, choral and instrumental forces, and an inspired conductor at the helm, if Bach's epic Crucifixion drama is to become the great devotional experience the composer intended.
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Anthony Freud to become new general director of Lyric Opera
April 21, 2011
Chicago's great opera companies have been run by men and women of singular artistic vision, not all of them savvy enough in the ways of business to keep those companies thriving. In Anthony Freud, Lyric Opera of Chicago has hired what its board believes is both kinds of arts executive, a passionate opera lover who also knows how to keep subscribers content and balance the books.
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COT's 'Medea' gives the mythic sorceress a modern makeover
April 20, 2011
From the first production he put on at Chicago Opera Theater since becoming the company's general director in 2000 – Claudio Monteverdi's "Orfeo" – Brian Dickie has waged a valiant campaign to introduce local opera lovers to new repertory, new sound worlds and freshly contemporary concepts in staging.
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Muti, CSO feel the love all weekend at Carnegie Hall
April 17, 2011
The strategy behind Riccardo Muti's conquest of Carnegie Hall over the weekend could hardly have been better calculated.
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Riccardo Muti, CSO take New York by storm with 3-hour 'Otello'
April 16, 2011
NEW YORK – Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra came, saw and emphatically conquered.
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Under Gatti, French National Orchestra focuses on style, color
April 14, 2011
A great deal has happened with the Orchestre National de France in the more than 25 years since the Paris-based ensemble last performed in the Chicago area. Most of that has been for the good, as its concert Wednesday night at Symphony Center suggested.
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CSO festival highlights youth in music
April 13, 2011
Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti and creative consultant Yo-Yo Ma will partner with the CSO's Institute for Learning, Access and Training and 15 Chicago-area musical organizations to present a two-week celebration of the accomplishments of young musicians within and outside the city.
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Bach's 'Matthew Passion' gets rare Chicago performance during Holy Week
April 13, 2011
Among the great sacred choral masterpieces, J.S. Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" is an Everest only the hardiest of climbers may tackle. The German master's timeless setting of the Crucifixion story has become a Holy Week tradition in many parts of the Christian world, notably in the Netherlands where hundreds of professional and amateur orchestras and choruses throughout the country present it each year on Palm Sunday.
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Radio host was devoted to great singers of the past
April 12, 2011
Some of Andy Karzas' happiest memories of growing up in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood during the 1940s were when his father and uncle, who co-owned the Trianon and Aragon ballrooms, would let him slide across the shiny dance floors of those popular music halls.
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New opera strives to illuminate the enigma known as Van Gogh
April 12, 2011
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Vincent Van Gogh was an opera waiting to happen.
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Muti and CSO deliver a powerful Shostakovich
April 8, 2011
It's a good thing Riccardo Muti isn't superstitious, or he might have substituted another work for the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony on the program he conducted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Friday afternoon at a packed Orchestra Hall, just to be on the safe side.
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Triumphant 'Otello' marks Muti's return to CSO
April 8, 2011
After all the uncertainties of the past two months surrounding Riccardo Muti's health, the buzz of anticipation ran understandably higher than usual Thursday night at Orchestra Hall. The music director was conducting his first subscription concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since fainting and tumbling from the podium onto his face during a CSO rehearsal in early February. All seats had been sold out for months.
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Diversity rules in Chen's first year with Sinfonietta
April 7, 2011
A host of events during the 2011-12 season will introduce the Chicago Sinfonietta's new music director, Mei-Ann Chen, to the local concert public. These include a free preseason concert at Millennium Park, a multimedia performance marking the centennial of Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloe" and several world premieres.
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The maestro tackles a masterpiece: Muti discusses his CSO 'Otello'
April 6, 2011
This is the weekend when the lion of Naples meets the lion of Venice in the lion's den of Chicago.
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COT's dazzling 'robot opera' poses provocative new questions
April 3, 2011
Our wondrous technology could conceivably evolve to the point that it will enable us to shed this mortal coil and achieve a kind of digital immortality. But is living beyond the corporeal world really worth it if we've left our souls, our humanity, indeed other people, behind?
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With Muti in the house, Masur leads CSO with calm assurance
April 1, 2011
It's the weekend of the two conducting "Ms" at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the one you won't see — not quite yet, anyway — and the one you will.
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A master of lyricism, gone, not forgotten
March 30, 2011
A phrase that recurred in reviews of Lee Hoiby's music, and in the obituaries that followed the distinguished American composer's death Monday in New York, at 85, was "unabashedly lyrical." That bit of faint praise always puzzled me. Why should a composer feel embarrassed, or be made to feel embarrassed, just because writing singable, tonal, accessible melody is his or her natural creative inclination? Was Schubert "unabashedly lyrical"? Was Rachmaninov?
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Restored Muti eager to prove he's healthy
March 29, 2011
For Riccardo Muti, recent weeks have been a time of travail and triumphs not so far removed from those that stock the rough-and-tumble plots of his beloved Verdi operas, works that are his central musical preoccupations at the moment.
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Cue the robots – opera for the digital era arrives at COT
March 27, 2011
If technology should ever allow us to achieve a kind of digital immortality, what effect will this have on our loved ones, not to mention the moral and social order? That's just one of the Deep Questions posed by Tod Machover's sci-fi fantasy, "Death and the Powers, the Robots' Opera," which, in its Midwest premiere, will launch Chicago Opera Theater's spring festival season Saturday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance.
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Dutoit concludes CSO residency with a fine flourish, with help from Evgeny Kissin
March 25, 2011
Some critics have observed that while Charles Dutoit's concerts are seldom, if ever, disappointing, few add up to truly extraordinary experiences either. Yet one had no hesitation in putting the concert he directed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night, concluding his two-week residency at Symphony Center, in the latter category.
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Alice Clevenger, 1961-2011
March 24, 2011
Those who knew her well remember Alice Clevenger as a clever and energetic wife and mother who was also a skilled musician dedicated to her instrument, the French horn.
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Lyric names permanent, interim chorus directors
March 24, 2011
Lyric Opera has named Martin Wright, artistic director of the Netherlands Opera chorus, as its new chorus master, beginning with the 2012-13 season.
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It was girl power all the way at MusicNOW finale
March 22, 2011
The focal point of the season finale of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW contemporary series, Monday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, was for many in the youngish crowd the world premieres of chamber works by the CSO's resident composers, Mason Bates and Anna Clyne.
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Crowe and Bicket redeem iffy Baroque Band concert
March 20, 2011
Lyric Opera this month introduced the delectable English soprano Lucy Crowe to local audiences as Iole, the captive princess in Handel's "Hercules," which, in Peter Sellars' splendid production, has its final performance of the season Monday at the Civic Opera House.
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CSO and soloists shine under Dutoit, but Penderecki piece is dull
March 18, 2011
In this topsy-turvy season at the Chicago Symphony, the orchestra and audience both crave the kind of stability and continuity an old friend like Charles Dutoit can provide. The Swiss-born conductor has enjoyed an association with the CSO that goes back nearly 29 years, and familiarity, in this case, has bred respect all around.
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Bates, Clyne bringing fresh vibe to CSO's new music series
March 16, 2011
Their personalities could not be less alike. He's talkative and outgoing, a hip, freewheeling musician who's perfectly at home whether he's talking Boulez or playing DJ in a San Francisco rock club. She's shy and serious, speaks in a soft British accent and is known around Symphony Center for the colorful knit caps she's given to wearing.
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Second time's the charm for 'Carmen' at Lyric
March 13, 2011
If you weren't around for it, or simply skipped going to "Carmen" last fall when Lyric Opera presented its opening run of performances of the Bizet staple, you are in luck.
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Stars come out to honor Joan Harris in her namesake theater
March 11, 2011
From near and far they came to honor a most uncommon woman, cultural leader and arts patron.
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Variety is spice of Ravinia's 2011 festival summer
March 9, 2011
Fortunate we are to live in a metropolitan area that doesn't send musical innovation, variety or quality on summer vacation.
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Harris Theater throws its visionary namesake a gala birthday bash
March 8, 2011
Timing is everything, sometimes.
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Dream cast, bold concept, close Lyric Opera season on a spectacular note
March 6, 2011
This isn't just a brilliant conclusion to the season. The new production of Handel's "Hercules" at Lyric Opera of Chicago goes well beyond that.
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'Hercules'
March 5, 2011
The Lyric Opera of Chicago premiere of Handel's "Hercules," this weekend at the Civic Opera House, brings together some of today's foremost Handel singers in a boldly updated staging by Peter Sellars that promises to send shock waves of recognition pulsing through the theater.
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Salonen, CSO scale majestic heights of Bruckner symphony
March 4, 2011
In a 2007 interview with the Guardian newspaper, Esa-Pekka Salonen revealed that, as his conducting career blossomed, it released a side of him "that had always wanted to conduct Bruckner." But because he still thought of himself as "a hard-nosed, avant-garde person," this "ultimately became something of a crisis."
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Summertime, and there's good music for everyone at Grant Park Festival
March 2, 2011
Compelling programming that is several cuts above the norm, along with an interesting artists roster, explain why the Grant Park Music Festival has become the place to be for Chicagoans in search of hot-weather musical diversion every summer in the heart of downtown. The Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park is a classy experience all by itself. And it's all free for the taking.
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Pianist Evgeny Kissin's Liszt recital a superb fusion of virtuosity, poetry
February 28, 2011
The splendid all-Liszt recital by Evgeny Kissin Sunday at Orchestra Hall pointed up a couple of interesting coincidences. When Liszt was Kissin's age, he too was a virtuoso pianist famous the world over, even though he had already retired from active concertizing by the age of 40. Kissin, who – astonishingly enough, given his youthful appearance – will turn 40 in October, sounds as if he could go on delighting audiences forever.
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New Salonen concerto a tour de force for virtuoso Leila Josefowicz
February 25, 2011
One of the great benefits local audiences derive from Esa-Pekka Salonen's annual residencies with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is the opportunity to chart the fascinating directions in which the Finnish conductor is going as a composer.
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Ars Viva Symphony adds spice, variety to listeners' classical music diet
February 23, 2011
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.
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Young Japanese conductor named first Muti apprentice at CSO
February 20, 2011
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association announced Saturday that Sean Kubota, a 29-year-old conductor from Japan, has won its First International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition and Apprenticeship.
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Mezzo Joyce DiDonato dazzles in sold-out song recital at U. of C.
February 19, 2011
Not only is she the leading Rossini singer of her generation, Joyce DiDonato has few if any peers as a song recitalist. It did not require more than a few selections into the concert she gave as her Chicago recital debut Friday night in the University of Chicago's Mandel Hall to remind you of that fact.
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Andsnes' commanding Brahms lifts Muti-less CSO concert out of the ordinary
February 18, 2011
So many twists and turns have been packed into the Riccardo Muti saga over the last three weeks as to make this one of the most momentous months in the recent history of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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Russian baritone wows fans in variable recital
February 17, 2011
The Siberian-born baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky commands the recital stage not so much by his musical versatility or interpretive depth as by sheer vocal and physical presence. For his concert Wednesday night at Orchestra Hall, the tall, hunky, white-maned singer sported a black greatcoat with sequined lapels. And he was in magnificent voice, his deep-burgundy instrument evenly and easily produced, firmly supported throughout a wide range.
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Where's Muti? Look to his classical plans for Symphony Center in 2011-12
February 16, 2011
Riccardo Muti has been maintaining a distinctly low profile in Chicago this week.
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Muti explains his absence, looks forward to CSO return
December 15, 2010
At the other end of the phone, Riccardo Muti sounded relaxed and affable, like a man on top of the world. Which, in a manner of speaking, he is. Surely he must realize his absence has made Chicago's heart grow fonder.
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Muti knocks debut out of park
September 19, 2010
The official launch of the Riccardo Muti era at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra called for a lot more than a nice little concert in the park.
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Nally steps down from Lyric chorus post
July 27, 2010
Donald Nally, chorus master of Lyric Opera of Chicago since 2007, will leave the company following the 2010-11 season to concentrate on non-operatic choral conducting and new music.
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Back to nature with Haitink, CSO
June 12, 2010
Much as Bernard Haitink loves Chicago, you didn't catch him wearing a Blackhawks jersey while leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the Stanley Cup-winning team's goal chant song, "Chelsea Dagger," at his concert Thursday night at Orchestra Hall. Not his style. After all, another triumphant local team was being celebrated on this occasion, along with another victorious hero: a guy named Beethoven.