Union threatens Lyric Opera with strike
August 13, 2011
The union representing the principal singers, chorus members, dancers, actors and production staff at Lyric Opera of Chicago has sent a letter to its members warning them to "be prepared for an opening night strike" on Oct. 1, when the company is scheduled to open its season with a gala performance of Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffmann."
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Philharmonia Baroque handles 'Orlando'
August 13, 2011
Despite ongoing, well-meaning efforts, Chicago has yet to establish a period instruments orchestra that can rival the best national and international brands. So visits here by such ensembles as the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra can be inspirational, showing local musicians what can be done with applied talent and perseverance.
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Five-pianist concerto makes an enjoyable premiere at Ravinia
August 11, 2011
This is the week when the Ravinia incarnation of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra gets down with the worlds of pop and crossover.
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Conductor McGegan brings Handel's Orlando to Ravinia
August 10, 2011
Of the conductors who bestride the realms of modern and period orchestral performance, Nicholas McGegan may truly be said to command the best of both worlds. Players in modern orchestras welcome his refreshingly nondogmatic approach to obtaining the results he wants, while members of the period-instrument ensembles he directs appreciate the many insights into the Baroque and Classical styles he brings to their collaborations.
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Tweets, texts not for everyone in arts world
August 8, 2011
Like performing arts organizations everywhere else, the heavy hitters of classical music in Chicago are desperately seeking new ways to connect with wired younger audiences and lure them into concert halls and opera houses to fill vacant seats.
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For Ryan Center diva and divo wannabes, it's 'Lyric-palooza'
August 8, 2011
The Grant Park Orchestra went underground over the weekend when it presented its annual vocal showcase for members of Lyric Opera's professional artist development program, the Ryan Opera Center. A large, enthusiastic audience Friday at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance was treated to a classical alternative to Lollapalooza just across the way. Call it Lyric-palooza.
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Mahler cycle gets choral kick in finale
August 6, 2011
For his contribution to the worldwide observance of the centenary of Gustav Mahler's death, James Conlon ended at the beginning. Which is to say the music director wrapped up his Ravinia cycle of the Mahler symphonies Thursday night with a vividly dramatic account of "Das klagende Lied" ("The Song of Lamentation"), the first Mahler score the composer found worthy of preservation.
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Bryn Terfel's artful song recital captivates at Ravinia
August 4, 2011
Bryn Terfel can command a stage whether he's thundering as Wotan, king of the Wagnerian gods, in "Die Walkure," or singing a lullaby from his native Wales.
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He's the hottest young composer around. But catching Nico Muhly isn't easy.
August 2, 2011
Nico Muhly apologized for missing our phone interview. By an entire day, as it turned out.
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Singers, CSO deliver thrilling 'Tosca'
August 1, 2011
Riccardo Muti may claim the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as his prized operatic "pit band" during the downtown season, but the privilege of employing the orchestra in concert guise during the Ravinia season reverts to its summer music director, James Conlon. These Conlon-led opera performances are invariably among the highlights of the hot-weather months here, giving the CSO a chance to kick back in repertory it doesn't get to play very often.
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Epic 'Kullervo' brings bracing gust of icy Nordic air to Grant Park
July 30, 2011
"Kullervo" represents a side of Jean Sibelius' output few American listeners know. Completed in 1892 and based on the Finnish mythology known as the Kalevala (a source of inspiration throughout his life), this early, five-movement work is less a symphony than a series of symphonic poems, with a cantata embedded in the middle. Because Sibelius forbade performances during his lifetime, the piece had to wait until 1958, the year after his death, to receive its premiere.
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Muti book a compelling saga of a rich life lived in music
July 27, 2011
As he approaches his 70th birthday on Thursday, Riccardo Muti is entering a phase of his international career in which consolidation is the keynote. After a half-century in music, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director feels the time has come to focus on priorities.
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Conlon, CSO rock Ravinia with Rachmaninov rarities
July 23, 2011
Rachmaninov can always be relied upon to lure warm bodies into concert venues, especially in the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. True to that formula, James Conlon trotted out one of the composer's greatest hits, the "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini," to provide a glittering finish to his concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Thursday night at Ravinia.
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For Grant Park chorus master Bell, it's 10 productive years -- and counting
July 19, 2011
Amid a hectic transatlantic schedule that has Christopher Bell shuttling each season between engagements in the United Kingdom and Chicago, he looks forward to the balm of summers spent working with his Grant Park Chorus. This year he is celebrating his 10th year as its director, and the milestone finds him brimming with all the enthusiasm of a proud parent.
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Voigt bows out of Lyric's 'Ariadne'
July 18, 2011
Soprano Deborah Voigt has withdrawn from the title role in Lyric Opera's revival of Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" and will be replaced by Amber Wagner for all six performances beginning Nov. 19 at the Civic Opera House.
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Obscure operetta a Turkish delight
July 17, 2011
Chicago Folks Operetta has never met a forgotten operetta it doesn't like. Or so it would seem. Last summer the enterprising troupe treated "Arizona Lady," a singing-cowboy rarity by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kalman, to its belated American premiere.
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Dohnanyi, Ax and the CSO produce Brahmsian splendor at Ravinia concerts
July 17, 2011
With a couple of exceptions, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's residency weeks at Ravinia this summer are not notable for blockbuster events. Even so, festival audiences heard two really extraordinary concerts over the weekend, when Christoph von Dohnanyi returned to the Highland Park pleasure dome to conduct the CSO in two all-Brahms programs.
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Lisztomania: Bicentenary calls for celebration but also shucking of prejudices
July 12, 2011
Will the real Franz Liszt please stand up?
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At Ravinia, Voigt falls short of past vocal glories
July 10, 2011
One of the inalienable rights of being an operatic diva is being able to call your musical shots just about anywhere. Take Deborah Voigt, for example.
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It's 'Liszt Vegas' as superstar Lang Lang wows Ravinia crowd at CSO summer opener
July 9, 2011
It seemed only fitting that Ravinia's summer-long celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of the 19th century's most eminent showman of the piano, Franz Liszt, should get its orchestral baptism by today's most eminent showman of the piano, Lang Lang.
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Glass ceiling not a barrier to rising young conductor Alondra de la Parra
July 5, 2011
With so many gifted women conductors of almost every nationality shattering the glass ceiling in recent decades, it's no longer a novelty for female musicians to hold major leadership positions with symphony orchestras, opera companies and schools of music, here and around the world.
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Bell fiddles up a storm at Ravinia; Mahler soars at Grant Park
July 3, 2011
By happy coincidence, Chicago's two major summer classical music festivals were celebrating 100th anniversaries over the weekend. For the Grant Park Music Festival, it was the 100th anniversary of Gustav Mahler's death. For Ravinia, it was the centenary of the founding of Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, which sent its Summer Festival Orchestra and one of its star alumni, violinist Joshua Bell, to Highland Park.
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Wagner's mighty 'Ring' comes full cycle in San Francisco
June 28, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO – The everlasting work is done, to quote Wotan, the power-hungry king of the gods, in Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ("The Ring of the Nibelung").
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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 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.