Articles in Classical + Opera
In tributes to ‘Tristan,’ Salonen and CSO lack forces and focus to embrace Wagner epic
Review: Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen once undertook total immersion in the music of Richard Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde,” an opera of lasting influence and extraordinary musical language, newly coined to express ecstatic, forbidden love and its all-consuming anguish. Today Salonen’s enthusiasm for exploring this operatic icon is undiminished. In addition to two concert performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra of “Tristan’s” mesmerizing second act, he led “Beyond the Score” performances that explored the controversy over Wagner’s musical nugget, the Tristan chord, and its breakthrough potential to lead the ear beyond traditional harmonic bounds. Neither effort proved entirely successful. Through Feb. 24.
2013 Summer Season: Grant Park Fest spins Chinese and Incan threads, jazz and modern
Report: Under the stars at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park, the Grant Park Music Festival kicks off its 79th free-concert summer season on June 12. Here’s what looks new and promising week by week.
Lyric Opera cobbles together heart and hilarity to create the perfect fit for ‘Die Meistersinger’
Review: ★★★★
CSO in Asia: At tour’s end, sense of triumph magnified by journey of maestro, musicians
Report: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra had come a long way, in every sense and under trying circumstances, to hear the Seoul Arts Center rocked by applause on the final stop of its Asia tour. In the quiet of an interview before the closing concerts, conductor Lorin Maazel, who had joined the fraught tour in Hong Kong to lead the CSO across China to this conclusion, its first ever visit to Seoul, described his thrown-together effort with the orchestra not merely as a challenge met, but as “an impossible task.” That the mission was accomplished as impressively as it was, Maazel said, bore witness not only to the Chicagoans’ musicianship but also to their collective professionalism.
CSO, Muti plan tributes to Verdi and Schubert in 2013-14 season, with two world premieres
Report: We offer our hot picks.
CSO in Asia: That purring sound is Muti’s ‘Ferrari,’ driven by Maazel, cruising China
Report: TIANJIN – Conductor Lorin Maazel has pretty much peaked out in his appreciation of the Chicago Symphony, even topping music director Riccardo Muti’s proud comparison of the orchestra to a Ferrari. Shortly after he caught up with the CSO to take over its Asia tour conducting duties from Edo de Waart, in Hong Kong, the grey eminence Maazel summed up the impression he drew from his first rehearsal with the orchestra: “About an hour into it, I thought to myself, ‘My God, what a sound!’”
CSO in Asia: Without fanfare, musicians give gifts of art and joy; see themselves richer
Report: Halfway into the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Asia tour, trombonist Michael Mulcahy was reflecting on a little concert he and four colleagues played for some children back in Taipei. Without hesitating a sixteenth note, Mulcahy declared that encounter with the kids and their parents, no more than 150 people, “the most magnificent thing that has happened to me on this trip.”
CSO in Asia: Lorin Maazel, maestro and guru, says little but it’s all music to happy campers
Report: As the sweatered and smiling 82-year-old Lorin Maazel climbed to his seat and settled into a high swivel chair atop the double-riser podium at Hong Kong Cultural Centre on Jan. 28, the conductor’s presence seemed to relax the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. What came next, in this first rehearsal together, was impressive not for what Maazel said, but for what he didn’t.
CSO in Asia: With a colossal effort, orchestra and Osmo Vänskä score Beethoven triumph
Review: Like an army advancing from a victorious engagement, a weary Chicago Symphony Orchestra arrived in Hong Kong Sunday after gaining a success against long odds at the Chiang Kai-shek National Concert Hall in Taipei. The CSO closed out the first leg of its Asia tour in Taiwan by doing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) the hard way: playing this indeed “heroic” work in a single late-afternoon rehearsal with conductor Osmo Vänskä, then coming right back to it for an intensely concentrated, razor-sharp performance before a packed concert audience.
CSO in Asia: Grace, true grit and Robert Chen prevail as star-crossed tour opens in Taipei
Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra presented the first concert in its troubled Asia tour here Jan. 25 with a performance that flew on a wing and a prayer. Make that one rehearsal and the grace of some sterling musicianship. Under the baton of Osmo Vänskä, an 11th-hour replacement for ailing CSO music director Riccardo Muti, the orchestra offered the well-filled Chiang Kai-shek National Concert Hall a generous program that made a big splash even if it didn’t entirely sparkle.
Holy cow! Frantic CSO, in Asia sans Muti, endures nail-biting days but tour stage set
CSO Asia Tour Report:The Liberty Times Taipei headline says “The great Chicago Symphony Orchestra breaks its normal rule and tours with two soloists; Taiwan’s music lovers gain the most.” The optimism is a welcome development for CSO leaders who raced against time to forge a solution when illness forced music director Riccardo Muti to pull out of the orchestra’s imminent Asia tour. Concerts begin Jan. 24 in Taipei and end Feb. 7 in Seoul.
CSO adds Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov, concertmaster Chen, maestro Vänskä for Asia
Report: Pressed to find a conductor for concerts in Taiwan on Jan. 25 and 26 that will open its Asia tour, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra late Saturday announced both a maestro and a double bonus for audiences in Taipei. Joining Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä in solo appearances will be the celebrated violin virtuoso Maxim Vengerov and CSO concertmaster Robert Chen, a native of Taiwan.
Report: Riccardo Muti, facing surgery, drops out of CSO’s Asian tour; Maazel steps in
Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing on sked
When Beethoven speaks, a struggling pianist listens and everybody learns about the Titan
Preview: What if Beethoven could speak? Suppose that titanic composer just popped into the room where a young pianist was wrestling with a sonata and offered, on the spot, the ultimate master class. You might have something very like pianist-composer-Beethoven impersonator Bruce Adolphe’s “Leave It to Ludwig” – an entertaining stage show aimed squarely at youngsters but authentic and serious enough, even when it’s very funny, to illuminate the subject of Beethoven for adults as well.
Standing in for Muti as CSO readies for Asia, De Waart leads stylish bundle of Beethoven
Review: Concerts this weekend and next were supposed to be warm-ups for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Asian tour, launching later this month with music director Riccardo Muti. But with Muti laid low by the flu, the tour preview has a new man on the podium at Orchestra Hall – Edo De Waart, music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. To judge by Thursday night’s opening flourish, an all-Beethoven affair, De Waart will send the CSO on its way to the Far East — and presumably back to Muti’s stewardship – fiddle fit.
Battling flu, Riccardo Muti flies home to Italy; De Waart to lead 2nd week of CSO concerts
Report: Asian tour with Muti stlll a go
Edo de Waart will replace ailing Riccardo Muti in Chicago Symphony’s Beethoven fare
Report: Flu sidelines CSO maestro
Laughter storms the high C’s as Second City, Fleming and Stewart skewer opera at the Lyric
Update: Show inspires June spin-off
Lyric Opera’s gingerly, droll ‘Hänsel & Gretel’ offers dreamy – and scary – fun for families
Review: ★★★★
‘Rite of Spring’ and a young piano sensation sparkle in CSO concert ablaze with surprises
Review: There was the ice-cracking shock of a sudden Russian spring at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall on Wednesday night, and I am not solely referring to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” which was on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s program. Freshness abounded in the performance of 21-year-old Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. ★★★★★
Conjuring ghosts and dreams, Lyric Opera’s new ‘Werther’ lifts the spirit of a melodrama
Review: One is so torn watching tenor Matthew Polenzani’s vocally resplendent performance in the title role of a new production of Massenet’s “Werther” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. While you’re sitting there beguiled by Polenzani’s authoritative, richly modulated sound, something deep inside is spurring you to bolt from your seat, rush onto the stage and just shake that determinedly miserable character he’s playing. ★★★★
Decidedly duo recital by Weilerstein, Barnatan launches Symphony Center chamber series
Preview: Ask cellist Alisa Weilerstein about the recital she plays Oct. 28 at Orchestra Hall, and she will quickly note that the best thing about the program is that it’s actually a duo recital for two equally important voices – and that she’s lucky to be teamed up with Israeli pianist and longtime collaborator Inon Barnatan. Their concert opens the chamber music portion of this season’s Symphony Center Presents series, which also offers four more chamber concerts, nine solo piano recitals and two performances by visiting orchestras.
Lyric to present first opera in mariachi style, tale of the Mexican experience in America
“To Cross the Face of the Moon”
Orchestra for Peace honors Solti centenary; conductor left a prodigious recording legacy
An Appreciation: The birth centenary of any great contributor to human affairs gives us pause. But the Oct. 21 concert by the World Orchestra for Peace at Orchestra Hall, honoring the 100th anniversary of Sir Georg Solti’s birth, has personal relevance for me. At the same time Solti commenced his musical directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in September 1969, I began my professional career as a music critic, at The Milwaukee Sentinel. There’s more to that connection than mere coincidence.
Osmo Vänskä, subbing for Haitink, leads CSO in radiant Brahms symphony, Double Concerto
Review: Orchestra Hall was packed for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s all-Brahms concert Thursday night, and one had to believe much of that audience had signed up because the scheduled conductor was favorite guest maestro Bernard Haitink. But when Haitink became “indisposed,” Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vänskä stepped in – and, with two brilliant soloists and the CSO at peak form, delivered an evening of Brahms to remember. ★★★★★
CSO extends consultancy with Yo-Yo Ma; cites record gifts and ticket sales, but higher costs
Report: Yo-Yo Ma’s high profile creative consultancy with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been extended another two years through 2015, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA) announced Oct. 17 at the organization’s annual meeting at Symphony Center. In its financial tally for fiscal 2012, the CSOA reported that contributions rose a record 11.6 percent to $28.2 million, but total expenses outpaced that growth slightly.
Global opera fans, your elixir awaits: The Met launches seventh season of live HD
Preview: I’ll take mine with popcorn
BREAKING NEWS: Haitink cancels CSO concerts; Minnesota maestro Osmo Vänskä subs
Haitink “indisposed,” program same
