Articles in Classical + Opera
The New Season: With Logan Center opening and fresh vision, UC Presents spreads wings
16th in a series of season previews: It’s shaping up as a banner season for the University of Chicago Presents, with many of its 2012-13 concerts slated for the new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and the Chicago premiere of Andre Previn’s Piano Trio No. 2 coming up in a series strewn with ensemble debuts.
Opening Carnegie Hall season, Muti and CSO match the celebrity sparkle of a packed house
Report from NYC: “Carmina Burana”
CSO and musicians reach tentative agreement; 3-year pact secures concerts, October tours
Report: CSO board’s approval due soon.
As CSO contract talks break down, musicians’ strike forces last-minute concert cancellation
Update: Talks resume with mediator.
Muti and the CSO launch season with a bang sparked by off-beat, over-the-top mix of works
Review: Symphony orchestra seasons typical open with some form of sizzle, maybe a mix of warhorse masterwork and superstar soloist. But music director Riccardo Muti went the opposite direction, kicking off the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new season Thursday night with a complete sleeper of a program, an evening of little-known works and with no soloist at all. It was terrific. ****
Chicago Opera’s stage magic is a bit rough, but fine singing delivers a charming ‘Flute’
Review: The Chicago Opera Theater production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” leaves one with two distinct impressions. For the most part, its young cast sings with stylistic savvy, fetching beauty and engaging spirit – all shaped with unfailing sensibility by conductor Steuart Bedford.★★★
CSO resident composer Mason Bates receives $250,000 Heinz award in arts and humanities
He receives prize Oct. 11 in Pittsburgh.
Chicago Opera picks another Queen for ‘Flute’ after visa flap dethrones new Irish sensation
Even queens get caught in red tape.
Ravinia favorite Misha Dichter’s double life revealed: The pianist’s a serious cartoonist
Report: Pianist Misha Dichter, who celebrates his 45th consecutive season with the Ravinia Festival on July 29, shares his passion for sketching in a new e-book.
Free outdoor simulcast of Paris Opéra Ballet proves Harris Theater, Pritzker dynamic duo
Review: The best antidote to Chicago temperatures in the nineties is this surpassingly cool prospect — free Millennium Park concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, where the sound is superb and the ceiling’s a canopy of stars. Cooler still was the addition of big screen video to this outdoor mix that a huge crowd enjoyed June 27, when the Paris Opéra Ballet’s exquisite production of “Giselle” was projected live via the big screen, from inside the Harris Theater, to the traditional classical-loving audience of the Grant Park Orchestra. ****
With a winning smile and no visible effort, violinist heats Glass like a modern Paganini
Review: No doubt the large crowd gathered June 23 at the Ravinia Festival’s Martin Recital Hall was drawn mainly by the prospect of seeing 75-year-old composer-pianist Philip Glass perform a program of his own music. And no doubt they came away delighted by the 90-minute sampler of Glass’ music through the decades and his affable flair for story-telling. But the brightest light on this evening was cast by the youthful, California-born violinist Tim Fain, who played – among other things — one prodigious movement from an unaccompanied suite that Glass has written for him. *****
With Muti again managing the house, CSO’s Bruckner Sixth becomes one splendid edifice
Review: One of the fascinations of this Chicago Symphony Orchestra season — which drew toward its close Sunday with the final performance of Bruckner’s Sixth in its sumptuous glory — has been to hear various conductors come into the same acoustical space of Orchestra Hall, stand in the same spot where music director Riccardo Muti stands, and ply their art with the same band of a hundred-plus that Muti conducts. ****
Capping second CSO season with Bruckner, Muti pledges Austrian-accented 6th Symphony
Exclusive Interview: When conductor Riccardo Muti recorded Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 in A Major with the Berlin Philharmonic 25 years ago, he came to the task steeped in the Bruckner tradition of the Vienna Philharmonic – a distinctively Austrian way of looking at this thoroughly Austrian Late-Romantic composer. Now, to close out his second season as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Muti says he will bring that perspective to the Bruckner Sixth on June 22-24.
Sir Andrew Davis, Lyric Opera music director, adds the Melbourne Symphony to duties
Will shuttle between continents.
In lightning-quick Beethoven 7th Symphony, van Zweden and CSO deliver a poetic thriller
Review: It’s one thing to hear a hair-raising orchestra performance on a CD, and quite another to experience it happening right in front of you, live, in the splendorous acoustics of a concert space. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s rocket-sled finale in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony on May 15 at Orchestra Hall, with conductor Jaap van Zweden, was one to send a writer combing his thesaurus for a higher form of wow. *****
Chicago Symphony nabs key player from Detroit to helm bass
Alexander Hanna, 26, was groomed at Curtis, Tanglewood and Verbier.
On the Lyric Opera stage, pianist Lang Lang lends Schubert, Chopin a tenor of virtuosity
Review: Lang Lang’s debut at Chicago’s 3500-seat Civic Opera House was quietly elegant, cogently argued and intensely focused. That is, until the abundantly gifted pianist gave himself over to some astonishing fireworks. With a technique like that, who can blame him? ****
Chicago Symphony plans Asian tour with Muti, and adds Mexico debut to fall Carnegie opener
Beijing, Mexico City, Seoul among stops.
Lang Lang, star pianist and global citizen, will bring Chopin, other friends to Chicago recital
Preview: When Chinese piano sensation Lang Lang steps onto the stage at the Civic Opera House for his recital Saturday night, it will be a special moment for everyone in the house – including the pianist.
From the Bard to Beethoven: Actor Simon Callow to return to Chicago in June with Symphony
‘Beyond the Score’ with Riccardo Muti
Handel’s early vengeance opera ‘Teseo’ shines amid Chicago Opera Theater’s vocal splendors
Medea’s very, very jealous. 4 stars!
Chicago Opera lavishes style on Shostakovich comedy about romance — and finding a flat
‘Moscow, Cheryomushki.’ 4 stars!
Conductor Charles Dutoit leads French lesson as CSO matches Impressionists with Dutilleux
Review: From the admixture of opulence and asceticism that constituted conductor Charles Dutoit’s program of French music with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this weekend, one might have taken away good lessons offered in a perhaps subversively gleeful spirit. ****
Jazz composer’s song-cycle for Dawn Upshaw tops Chicago agenda for Australian ensemble
Preview: It sounds like a perfect mix of guests for a dinner party, the composers queued up for the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s concert April 15 at Orchestra Hall. George Crumb and Anton Webern will be arriving together, so to speak, along with Schubert and Grieg – and a newcomer whose radical voice should give the affair a good jolt.
CSO debut: Pianist Lugansky shows Russian school still thrives with grand Rachmaninoff
Review: Sensational. That, in a word, was Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky’s debut April 5 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Charles Dutoit. The tall, assured pianist – one could only think of the young Van Cliburn – made epic poetry of Rachmaninoff’s formidable Third Piano Concerto in a performance that probed a deep vein of lyricism and simply transcended technical issues. ****
In a week to remember, pianist Mitsuko Uchida bridges the lyrical realms of Schubert, Mozart
Commentary: Pianist Mitsuko Uchida’s two appearances this last week at Orchestra Hall, in a recital of Schubert’s late sonatas March 25 and her current concerts playing and conducting Mozart concertos with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, resonate not like discrete encounters but rather like an epic testimonial to her phenomenal art.
Cultural twins, tied to Chicago and Poland, set to make their mark in the orchestra world
Receive management fellowships.
Surprise! Renée Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma spring serenade on lunch crowd at Thompson Center
Soprano and cello, burgers and pizza.
Solemnity rules as Riccardo Muti guides CSO through musical perspectives on human spirit
Review: Riccardo Muti has given Chicago many reasons to celebrate his music directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, but perhaps the most perfect expression of his belief in art’s purpose comes in the current run of rarely heard works for chorus and orchestra by Brahms, Schoenberg and Cherubini. ****
