St. Louis brilliantly reaffirms 'Klinghoffer' as a landmark American opera
June 21, 2011
ST. LOUIS – Year after year, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis attracts opera fans from all over North America to its spring festival seasons at the Loretto-Hilton Center here, and for good reason. Connoisseurs as well as lay listeners are lured by a combination of new and unusual repertory, including 22 world premieres and 22 American premieres to date, along with more standard fare. Everything is sung in English, upholding a tradition almost every other major U.S. company has abandoned.
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Kalmar, orchestra knock Grant Park festival opener out of the park, despite downpour
June 16, 2011
Perhaps they should have played Handel's "Water Music" instead.
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Grab your guitar and join in for Tuesday's citywide Make Music Chicago fest
June 15, 2011
The original plan was simply to throw a musical block party. But the idea quickly grew into something much bigger and far more ambitious – a daylong, anything-goes Chicago festival featuring live music of every variety, presented in public spaces and neighborhoods throughout the city.
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With Kalmar at helm, Grant Park looks to another summer of good music in a grand setting
June 14, 2011
When Carlos Kalmar gives the downbeat for the opening concert of the 77th Grant Park Music Festival on Wednesday night at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, a great deal more will be celebrated than merely the start of his first season in his new dual capacity as principal conductor and artistic director.
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Chorus musters honorable effort on behalf of Bach's towering B minor Mass
June 13, 2011
The North Shore Choral Society enjoys the distinction of being the oldest choral organization on Chicago's North Shore. Its longevity is exceeded only by that of the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, the oldest musical organization in the city, which was founded in 1872, 64 years before its rival community chorus came into being. Each has its own honorable part to play in the cultural life of the metropolitan area.
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Jascha Heifetz's vast recorded legacy lives on in hefty Sony omnibus
June 8, 2011
To Itzhak Perlman, he was, simply, "God." The greatest violin virtuoso of the 20th century. The violinist who almost singlehandedly defined the art of violin performance for an entire era.
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ICE is hot in season finale of MCA Stage series
June 5, 2011
The Museum of Contemporary Art and its director of performance programs, Peter Taub, deserve immense credit for entering into an ambitious and far-reaching collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble – ICE, for short. As the MCA Stage's first ensemble-in-residence, ICE is bringing young composers and performers together in ways that make audiences feel invested in the creative process.
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Haitink's Mahler 9th makes superb season finale for CSO
June 3, 2011
What Bernard Haitink has achieved in his music-making over the decades may be seen as a process of greater simplification, of distilling music to its purest essentials and projecting it with the utmost clarity, discipline and understanding. Less is always more with this master conductor, who, at 82, wears his elder statesman status with a grace and modesty batonsmiths many years his junior could learn from.
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Civic Orchestra, Chicago Youth Symphony have the 'Rite' stuff (and then some)
June 1, 2011
The young instrumental talent that is coming out of local music schools and conservatories is as amazingly good as you are going to find anywhere. Much of that talent is on display in the many youth orchestras that dot the metropolitan area – think of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras, the Midwest Young Artists ensembles, the Classical Symphony Orchestra and its Protégé Philharmonic, the Elgin and DuPage County youth orchestras, among others.
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Haitink's mellow mastery an ideal match for CSO's power
May 27, 2011
Slinging labels around is always dangerous, but it seems to me that in certain respects Riccardo Muti and Bernard Haitink are the yin and yang of today's leading symphonic conductors.
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A baton is passed and a legacy is celebrated
May 24, 2011
The Chicago Sinfonietta threw a grand retirement party for Paul Freeman, its outgoing founder and music director, as its season finale Monday night at Symphony Center.
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Strong cash reserves, vigorous fundraising, keep wolf from Lyric Opera's door
May 23, 2011
With big U.S. opera companies like the New York City Opera in financial extremis, and others cutting back their seasons as a result of recession-related shortfalls in contributions and ticket sales, Lyric Opera of Chicago continues to sing a happy tune.
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Lewis' Schubert recital a thing of rare beauty
May 23, 2011
Paul Lewis' ongoing cycle of late Schubert piano works here is notable not only for its remarkably thoughtful and beautifully finished pianism but also for its correcting the perception of Schubert as a composer of cheerful, cozy, Biedermeier salon works. Once the Austrian composer was diagnosed with syphilis, in 1822, the expressive nature and message of his music changed. Sorrow and melancholy became more evident, even in works wearing a sunny exterior.
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Martin's trumpet brilliance steals show at CSO
May 20, 2011
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra doesn't play enough French music, so it's usually left to French guest conductors to try to rectify the imbalance. The latest to do so is Ludovic Morlot, the gifted young music director-designate of the Seattle Symphony and a semi-regular at the CSO since his Orchestra Hall debut in 2006. The bookends to his all-Gallic program Thursday night provided the most interesting music, although there was no doubt who stole the show.
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Broadway's Mary Poppins to board Lyric's 'Show Boat'
May 18, 2011
Lyric Opera has announced additional castings for its new production of "Show Boat" next season.
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Paul Freeman bids farewell to the orchestra he made the most diverse in the nation
May 18, 2011
The same week that a historic changing of the guard took place in the Chicago mayor's office, the Chicago Sinfonietta is preparing to say goodbye to its longtime chief executive and to welcome his successor.
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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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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.