Articles in Classical + Opera
Bruckner 9 was prelude of promise: Muti, CSO to open next season with Seventh Symphony
Review: When Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra open their 2016-17 season at Orchestra Hall in September, it’s going to feel very much like picking up where the current season ended, with one of the splendorous symphonies by the 19th-century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. To have just heard the Ninth is to look forward to next season’s opener, Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, with electric anticipation.
Julia Fischer takes Beethoven Violin Concerto to rare heights with Chicago Symphony, Muti
Review: Julia Fischer’s exquisite performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Riccardo Muti is one of the CSO’s don’t-miss concerts of this season. And happily, you have one more chance to hear it, on June 21 at Orchestra Hall.
Chicago Symphony unveils Fritz Reiner bust; honor overdue, says advocate Riccardo Muti
Report: The burning gaze of Fritz Reiner, who presided as sixth music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1953-62, is back in full daunting view at Symphony Center, where on June 14 the CSO unveiled a new bust of the conductor that will greet visitors henceforth in the center’s outer lobby.
Lawn awaits, stars have got you covered: Downbeat is coming up at Grant Park Fest
Preview: The Grant Park Music Festival is the nation’s only free, outdoor classical music series of its kind, one of the glories of Chicago’s summer. Each year the Festival presents ten weeks of lawn concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Here are the 2016 highlights.
Tour stop Ravinia 2016: Stars of country, rock, indie, R&B and jazz are headed this way
Preview: Chris Thile will take over as host of Prairie Home Companion when Garrison Keillor hands off the baton later this year, and the mandolin master was on hand for Keillor’s live broadcast concert June 11, kicking off Ravinia Festival’s starry summer lineup. Chicago On the Aisle takes a look at some of the top acts ahead.
Pianist’s CSO debut in Beethoven concerto spins spotlight in a mainly Mozart program
Review: For anyone who heard 34-year-old German pianist Martin Helmchen’s scintillating Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut June 9, the only question is surely this: When will the masterly pianist, a formidable presence in Europe since he won the Clara Haskil International Competition 15 years ago, return to Chicago not only to perform with the orchestra again but to play a recital in the Symphony Center Presents series?
Smorgasbord of Slavonic soul: North Shore Chamber Festival serves up delectable menu
Review: Sometimes, good things really do come in small packages. That’s certainly true of the North Shore Chamber Music Festival, a three-day, jewel-box series in Northbrook that remains too little known on the Chicago classical scene. The sixth annual installment opened June 8 with a captivating program titled “Slavonic Soul.”
With the Bard’s world as stage, Lyric’s Ryan singers, Civic Orchestra share a night of opera
Review: So much talent bound up in such great and joyous commitment. That was the resonant vibe at a Shakespeare-themed concert collaboration between the young professional singers from the Ryan Opera Center training program at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the pre-professional training ensemble run by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Tan Dun’s ‘Water Passion,’ Levine’s return highlight Ravinia’s summer classical lineup
Preview: The Chicago premiere of Tan Dun’s “Water Passion after Saint Matthew,” the return of conductor James Levine with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a multi-concert observance of the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed choral conductor Robert Shaw loom large among highlights of the 2016 Ravinia Festival.
Viols and countertenor a novel modernist mix in John Harbison’s reflective ‘Cross of Snow’
Review: A mix of early- and new-music enthusiasts gathered on May 22 in the quietly graceful Church of St. Chrysostom’s, nestled in the heart of Chicago’s Gold Coast, for the world premiere of a contemplative and compelling new work for four viols and countertenor voice by American composer John Harbison, presented by Second City Musick. A superb group of viols was joined by the outstanding countertenor Nathan Medley.
In a Stravinsky night Dutoit and CSO recapture the blaze of ‘Firebird,’ esprit of Symphony in C
Review: If it is impossible to know what it was like to be at the Paris Opera in 1910 and attend the premiere of “The Firebird” as part of a glittering production of the Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s vivid, voluptuous version of this now-celebrated masterwork, heard May 19, offered at least a strong suggestion.
Old friend of the CSO, Charles Dutoit returns, this time amid shades of Stravinsky and Falla
Interview: Conductor Charles Dutoit’s relationship with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is old and close. But even more deeply rooted in the Swiss-born maestro’s artistic persona is the music, by Manuel de Falla and Igor Stravinsky, that he leads on consecutive May weekends back at the helm of the CSO. In a chat with Chicago On the Aisle, Dutoit recalls vividly the special circumstances of his early experiences involving both composers.
Muti to lead CSO Europe tour in January 2017; stops include new Hamburg hall, historic La Scala
This Just In: The following is a news release written by an arts organization, submitted to Chicago On the Aisle.
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Stops include grand opening week of Hamburg’s state-of-the art Elbphilharmonie and CSO’s first visit to Milan’s La Scala since 1981. More …
In three recipes for novel sounds, MusicNOW serves up appetizing concert-as-smorgasbord
Review: At its May 9 program at the Harris Theater titled “. . . Spring, Or Some Such Thing,” MusicNOW bundled three works for ensembles of fewer than 20 musicians — capped by Christopher Trapani’s flood- and hurricane-inspired song cycle “Waterlines” — into a nicely balanced, easy-to-digest dose of musical contemporaneity.
Haymarket Opera digs into Baroque treasury and finds sparkling Cavalli gem ‘La Calisto’
Review: Thanks to the adventurous Haymarket Opera Company, Chicago audiences experienced one of the jewels of early Baroque opera, Francesco Cavalli’s “La Calisto,” on May 6 and 8 in their own back yard. It was a pure, glistening delight. With a larger stage at their disposal after the move to the spacious Athenaeum Theatre, the company’s seasoned creative team offered a historically informed re-invention of sets and costumes inspired in part by surviving production books from the opera’s 1651 premiere.
Runnicles leads CSO in 2 probing reflections on death (and variations on another enigma)
Review: Rather than grand musical statements or virtuosic solo vehicles, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra program May 5 put the focus on quiet introspection, emotional nuance and both the glory and poetry of symphonic sound. All three of the featured works by Britten, Strauss and Elgar were mainstays of the standard repertoire, but guest conductor Donald Runnicles made sure they came off as more than merely routine.
Pianist Yefim Bronfman delivers a grand tour of fire and poetry in Prokofiev ‘war sonatas’
Review: Pianist Yefim Bronfman brought his traveling cycle of Prokofiev’s three so-called “war sonatas” to Orchestra Hall on May 1, and a mesmerizing, virtuosic portrait of the composer in wartime it was. The sonatas represent not so much a sequence of tone paintings of a shattered world as they do states of mind of a keenly attuned composer – one who had, with profound yearning, returned to the bosom of his mother country in the early 1930s after years of wandering in the West.
Bella Voce choristers, and an organ virtuoso, illuminate path back through choral history
Review: Chicago’s intimate chamber choir Bella Voce closed its 2015-16 season April 24 with an intriguing performance of Anglican choral works encompassing six centuries. One needed only to note the enthusiasm of the capacity audience gathered in Evanston’s St. Luke’s Episcopal Church to understand why Bella Voce has established itself as one of the pleasures of Chicago’s burgeoning choral music scene.
In concert, Muti and a well-rounded Falstaff bathe Verdi’s bittersweet opera in telling light
Review: Amid all its other virtues, and those are manifold, there is a refreshing, illuminating transparency and uncluttered purity in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert presentation of Verdi’s opera “Falstaff.” Its co-stars are baritone Ambroglio Maestri in the title role, at the head of a splendid cast, and CSO music director Riccardo Muti on the podium.
Chicago’s Joffrey, Cleveland Orchestra pair in scary matchup of Bartók’s psycho thrillers
Review: A metal and glass cage hovered behind the conductor’s podium for the Cleveland Orchestra’s newest collaboration with Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, a pair of works by Bartók staged with the intensity of Poe and Hitchcock. Nine Joffrey dancers and two fine singers shared space with the musicians at Cleveland’s Severance Hall, where music director Franz Welser-Möst and choreographer Yuri Possokhov presented their combined vision.
Minnesota Orchestra, led by Osmo Vänskä, to embark on four-country Europe tour in August
This Just In: The following is a news release written by an arts organization, submitted to Chicago On the Aisle.
MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA EMBARKS ON FOUR-COUNTRY EUROPEAN TOUR, AUGUST 18-27
Led by Music Director Osmo Vänskä, the Minnesota Orchestra …
In music and movement, Mark Morris troupe touches tangled hearts of ‘Dido and Aeneas’
Review: Mark Morris ranks among this country’s greatest living choreographers. And one of the works that helped him achieve that standing is “Dido and Aeneas,” an unusual adaptation of English composer Henry Purcell’s celebrated 17th-century opera, which the Mark Morris Dance Group presented April 5 at the Harris Theater in a spellbinding visual tableaux of nuanced emotional power and hushed intensity.
CSO Chorus joins city salute to Shakespeare with tragedy, comedy from Berlioz and Verdi
Preview: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus help to observe the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in April with performances of two major works under the baton of CSO music director Riccard Muti – Berlioz’s dramatic symphony “Roméo et Juliette” and a concert version of Verdi’s last opera, “Falstaff.” The demands the two works place on the chorus, says director Duain Wolfe, could hardly be more different.
Tenor Javier Camarena gives a debut of note, make that a generous bouquet of high C’s
Review: He premiered in 2004 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in his native Mexico, popping off Tonio’s nine high C’s in Donizetti’s “La fille du régiment.” Ten years later, onstage at the Met in Rossini’s “Cenerentola,” he rocked as the third singer since 1942 to be granted an encore. Thus Javier Camarena’s appearance at the Harris Theater was hotly anticipated.
Mälkki’s return to Chicago Symphony podium shows why Finnish conductor’s star is on rise
Review: Expectations were running high for the Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki on her return March 30 to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which she first guest conducted in 2011. And put simply, she delivered. She led a fresh, enthralling interpretation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” infused with apt doses of wonderment and exoticism.
World premieres by Jeffrey Mumford, Kahil El’Zabar set in Fulcrum Point ‘Proclamation!’
This Just In: The following is a news release written by an arts organization, submitted to Chicago On the Aisle.
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FULCRUM POINT CELEBRATES AFRICAN-AMERICAN ARTISTS WITH PROCLAMATION! THE BLACK COMPOSER SPEAKS AT PROMONTORY, IN ONE PERFORMANCE …
Conductor Delta David Gier to step in for John Nelson March 11 at Chicago Bach Project
This Just In: The following is a news release written by an arts organization, submitted to Chicago On the Aisle.
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MAESTRO JOHN NELSON IS SUFFERING FROM PNEUMONIA, AND THIS PHYSICIANS HAVE ADVISED AGAINST AIR TRAVEL
GLEN ELLYN, …
Salonen, embracing history and the present, leads CSO anniversary concert to celebrate
Review: Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen’s recent concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra came as a multifaceted, indeed exhilarating reminder of the CSO’s grand legacy and at the same time pointed up the orchestra’s undiminished prowess as well as its still-rising arc of achievement.
Baritone Hvorostovsky, in poignant recital, rewards ardent fans with profound singing
Review: The excitement surrounding Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s solo recital presented by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, on Feb. 26, was palpable even blocks away from the opera house, in an enormous din of anticipatory chatter in the parking garage elevator – much of it in Russian as that sizable Chicago community turned out in droves. The celebrated Siberian baritone did not disappoint.
‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Lyric Opera: Raising tragedy quotient in fusion of music, theater
Review: For the authentic meaning of music-drama, as an ideal melding of theater with the emotional accentuation of words buoyed by music, look no further than the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s riveting and vocally splendid production of Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.” ★★★★
