Articles in Classical + Opera
Mozart and Beethoven shine in hands of CSO; dust sticks to erstwhile premiere from archives
Review: What was good was very good in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s concert with music director Riccardo Muti on Oct. 1 at Orchestra Hall. Then came the program’s bizarre second half, which recalled the previous week’s fare and left one wondering just how weird – and musically marginal – the CSO’s 125th anniversary season will turn out to be.
‘Marriage of Figaro’ at Lyric Opera: Stellar voices prevail in a farcical take on Mozart’s comic gem
Review: If Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” is inherently and effectively a bittersweet comedy that edges into farce, the new production directed by Barbara Gaines that opens the Lyric Opera of Chicago season reframes it as farce that edges into cartoon. This “Figaro,” conducted by the Hungarian Henrik Nánási in his American debut, fares best where a uniformly strong cast of singers is allowed to stand and deliver Mozart’s witty, touching, brilliant and wise arias and ensemble numbers. ★★★★
While the band played on, Chicago Symphony and its musicians hammered out a three-season deal
Update: The new deal is good through Sept. 16, 2018.
Shakespeare director Barbara Gaines modulates to Mozart at Lyric Opera, and sees second Bard
Interview: The first venture for the Lyric Opera of Chicago this season is also the first Mozart ever taken on by Barbara Gaines, artistic director at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. And in the poignancy – and the comedy – of “The Marriage of Figaro,” Gaines finds the Bard’s own sensibility, his empathy and his compassion.
Composer and architect connect as Kalmar illuminates Adams’ ‘Harmonielehre’ at Grant Park
Review: Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion, where the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus performed Haydn’s Harmoniemesse and John Adams’s Harmonielehre on Aug. 8, is one of the most striking structures in a city full of awesome architecture. The Frank Gehry-designed outdoor stage calls to mind a bullet hole in sheet metal, dynamic silver panels exploding outward in spontaneous, sweeping waves.
Grant Park Orchestra lets virtuoso banners fly with (quiet) indoor Bruckner Sixth Symphony
Review: Knowing that Bruckner outdoors at the Pritzker Pavilion stood no chance against the sonic assault from nearby Lollapalooza, the Grant Park Music Festival moved its July 31 and Aug. 1 performances into the Harris Theater. The festival orchestra’s account of Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, conducted by Christoph König, allowed the audience to appreciate just how good this ensemble really is.
As James Conlon epoch winds down at Ravinia, familiar fanfares of Mahler and rumble of trains
Review: Since becoming music director of the Ravinia Festival in 2005, James Conlon seems to have learned that a roaring Metra train, whose tracks pass near the Ravinia pavilion, can compete even with the great Chicago Symphony Orchestra. So on July 22, Conlon, now in his last season as leader of the orchestra’s summer residency, simply waited patiently at the podium with an amused smirk while, mid-Mahler, a train clattered into a station and eventually rumbled past.
From father to son, the sorrows of Catfish Row become cherished pleasure for Bobby McFerrin
Review: In “Porgy and Bess,” the 1959 film version of Gershwin’s musical, the singing voice of Sidney Poitier’s Porgy was dubbed in by Robert McFerrin, a Metropolitan Opera star and Bobby’s father. At the start of the Chicago Symphony’s Ravinia Festival residency, it was the younger McFerrin’s turn to take a serious run through an opera he literally grew up with.
Knights, Dawn Upshaw celebrate folk influence on classical music with ranging fare at Ravinia
Review: Composers have long been fascinated by folk music. From Josquin des Prez’s late 15th-century “Missa L’homme armé,” based on a popular French tune, to Donnacha Dennehy’s Irish music-inspired “Grá agus bás” from 2007, folk songs have often made their mark on classical music, either through direct transcription or simple inspiration. On July 5 at Ravinia’s Martin Theatre, the iconoclastic chamber orchestra the Knights, joined by the likewise singular soprano Dawn Upshaw, gamboled through some of the vibrant repertoire that has emerged from composers’ attraction to folk music.
Musical Stars and Stripes will fly all summer as Grant Park celebrates American composers
Preview: The season programming of a major orchestra may offer a preponderance of German, Russian, and French music, but at this year’s Grant Park Music Festival, Americans make a greater showing. Now in its 81st season, the free Festival in downtown Millennium Park embodies the exploratory spirit of composers who have sought to create an intrinsically American music.
Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony salute the Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup win with a rousing ‘Chelsea Dagger.’
Video: The Blackhawks’ victory parade ended a block away from Symphony Center in downtown Chicago, but Riccardo Muti was still in the mood to celebrate.
Grant Park Orchestra, led by ‘goalie’ Kalmar, heats up Beethoven to kick off festive summer
Review: Chicago’s getting everything right at the beginning of this summer season. The day after the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, the weather was picnic perfect at Millennium Park, where the free Grant Park Music Festival got underway. Thousands laid down their blankets on the great lawn at Pritzker Pavilion. Even the curse of the overture “Drip” – rained out two seasons running – was finally broken. Check out our top festival picks.
New York Aisle: Philharmonic tops off season with rare bounty of Honegger’s ‘Joan of Arc’
Review: From his earliest days as music director of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert has indulged New York audiences with an end-of-the-season extravaganza, This year’s offering was Honegger’s dramatic oratorio “Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher,” a work rarely performed if only because of the magnitude of forces, starting with adult chorus, children’s chorus, 11 sung roles, and two lead actors.
CSO’s ‘French Reveries and Passions’: Spirit and imagination set crown on a dream festival
Festival Review: It’s that time of the year when orchestras change their pace, kick back a bit and come a-bloom with new ideas in the spirit of the warming clime. Thus the New York Philharmonic celebrates its 50th season of Concerts in the Parks, the Cincinnati Symphony’s May Festival gets underway, the Boston Symphony is deep into its Pops concerts. But the place to be this season is in the Windy City, where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is midway through an extravagant multidimensional festival “French Reveries & Passions.”
Piano wizardry rules as Chinese star Lang Lang mixes Chopin, calendar’s worth of Tchaikovsky
Review: Pianist Lang Lang’s recital May 9 at the Civic Opera House was, at its best, a display of brilliance of a high order. Taken end to end, it was also a curious affair. To say this lionized, still infectiously youthful Chinese pianist – he turns 33 on June 14 — is a technical wizard may be understatement. Lang Lang is one demonic virtuoso for whom the most daunting technical demands seem more like expressive opportunities than hazards of execution.
Ravel opera rarity (an armchair sings) injects pure fantasy, great fun into CSO French fest
Review: It isn’t every Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert that ends with the conductor leading a gaggle of children across the stage like the pied piper. But there he was, Esa-Pekka Salonen, smiling ear to ear, a little child’s hand in his, marching the Anima-Young Singers of Greater Chicago into view for their ovation after a deliciously witty performance of Ravel’s one-act opera “L’enfant et les sortilèges,” an evident if unexpected hit at the CSO’s “French Reveries and Passions” festival.
Musical accent unmistakable, French pianist Tiberghien gives CSO fest pitch-perfect start
Review: The French pianist Cédric Tiberghien turns 40 years old on May 5, but it was he passing out the presents May 3 at Orchestra Hall. His recital, devoted largely to Ravel and Debussy as the official opening event of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s three-week festival titled “French Reveries & Passions,” was a veritable shower of musical gifts from a pianist making his Chicago debut and, incredibly enough, still just barely known in the U.S.
Famous trouser roles folded away, opera star von Stade channels a queen of Egypt (Texas)
Interview: Frederica von Stade broke through to opera fame in the ’70s for her boyish roles that showcased a slim physique and impish wit. Now composers and directors seek her out for a new genre — dames and dowagers such as Myrtle Bledsoe in Ricky Ian Gordon’s “A Coffin in Egypt,” now onstage at Chicago Opera Theater.
Bernard Haitink, venerable master of Mahler, reveled in wonders of Seventh Symphony with CSO
Review: Not only with respect to age is Bernard Haitink, at 86, the eminence grise among Mahler conductors today. His association with Mahler’s symphonies is as close and authoritative as it is long. That profound perspective was again evident on April 9 when Haitink led a poetic excursion through the Seventh Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
‘Carousel’ at Lyric Opera: The stars shine in this merry-go-round. Steven Pasquale is Billy Bigelow
Review: The opening of this “Carousel” has everything going for it as the new Rob Ashford production lays out in the plainest way possible what a high-stakes risk your average small town takes when the traveling circus rolls in. Handsome carney barker Billy Bigelow – every father’s nightmare – and scantily clad carnival owner Mrs. Mullin step out from her trailer together for a mutual smoke, and in those first raw minutes the best aspects of this effort are on display. ★★★
Conductor Edo de Waart, in a hero’s return, guides CSO to the classical heart of Brahms
Review: It was a little more than two years ago, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra gearing up for a major Asia tour, that Dutch conductor Edo de Waart stepped in for ailing music director Riccardo Muti to lead a ringing performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”). He subbed again last season for Vladimir Jurowski. On March 26 and 28 he was back on the CSO podium for scheduled concerts featuring Brahms’ Symphony No. 3. The result was a finely wrought performance that showcased the orchestra at its patrician best.
Chen leads Chicago Sinfonietta, vocal forces through exuberant, sensual ‘Carmina Burana’
Review: The singular community spirit of Chicago Sinfonietta was on proud display March 23 at Orchestra Hall in a stylish, disciplined and roundly entertaining performance of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” conducted by the organization’s music director, Mei-Ann Chen. Featured with Chen’s chamber-size ensemble were two Chicago choruses, both prepared to a fare-thee-well: the choir of Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts and the Anima Young Singers of Greater Chicago.
Chicago Bach Choir’s vivid ‘St. John Passion’ was forged from the stuff of lasting memories
Review: One can come away from a profoundly affecting musical experience with any number of dominant feelings: enlightenment, exaltation, transcendence, solemnity among them. After hearing the Chicago Bach Choir and Orchestra perform its namesake’s “St. John Passion,” I walked out into the brisk spring night air with a singular sense of privilege. The performance conducted by John Nelson on March 20 at the Harris Theater surely belongs among the concerts that will endure in memory.
Prelude to a fête française: CSO concert fare anticipates big Gallic do, or has it started?
Review: Although it was not billed as such, the March 19-21 concerts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma and conductor Charles Dutoit made it seem as if the French-focus “Reveries and Passions” festival, coming in May and June at Symphony Center, is already underway. Allons-y!
In two iconic figures of classical music, Muti reveals more to treasure in concert with CSO
Review: Who knew that a big middle-period work by Beethoven and a Tchaikovsky symphony would add up to a completely new concert experience? But such was the exhilarating sum of a Chicago Symphony Orchestra program that paired Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor conducted by CSO music director Riccardo Muti.
Violinist Shaham turns to brisk Baroque Bach, recast in modern frame of super-slow videos
Review: After hearing Bach, there are melodies that linger in the memory, as if the brain is sorting bits to savor in pursuit of its own afterglow. But after listening to the Bach of Gil Shaham at Orchestra Hall in a world premiere collaboration with video artist David Michalek, there are images that linger, too.
Muti advances campaign for Scriabin as CSO delivers many-splendored Second Symphony
Review: Riccardo Muti’s season of advocacy for the symphonies of Alexander Scriabin must be reckoned a blazing success, even with one work remaining for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director to conduct when he makes his final appearances of the season at Orchestra Hall in June. Scriabin’s Second Symphony, currently featured in CSO concerts that continue through March 3, makes the point of musical merit as well as that of historical neglect.
Klezmer opera ‘The Property’ melds nostalgia, renewal in music awash with Old-World charm
Feature Review: “The Property,” a new vest-pocket opera that burst onto the Chicago scene Feb. 25, is the sweet-spirited musical brainchild of a 28-year-old Minsk-born Polish composer Wlad Marhulets, who makes a living these days tooling music for films in L.A. Marhuletz came to the Lyric Opera by way of klezmer madness — not a disease, rather an exhilarating state of mind. Through March 5.★★★
Lyric Opera staging of Weinberg’s ‘Passenger’ casts intimate light on life, death at Auschwitz
Review: The first impression of “The Passenger” by the Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg, whose Holocaust-inspired 1968 opera has been circulating the globe since its belated 2010 world premiere, is that of a major composer in his prime. Conducted with searing authority by Andrew Davis, the illuminating Lyric Opera of Chicago presentation of “The Passenger” seemed familiar right away. Weinberg was typically referred to as a lesser-known member of Shostakovich’s inner circle, but in fact he was on top of his world. ★★★★
Snatched from oblivion, post-Holocaust opera ‘The Passenger’ makes a rescue stop at Lyric
Report: “The Passenger,” a late-blooming 1968 opera by the Polish-born Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg, will have its Chicago Lyric Opera premiere as part of a whirlwind of introduction in Austria, Poland, England, the U.S. and Spain. Director David Pountney and author Zofia Posmysz talk about why.
