Review: Officially, conductor Riccardo Muti holds the distinction of music director emeritus for life with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But after the 83-year-old maestro’s two-week season debut concerts at Orchestra Hall, it seems more apt to acknowledge him as the band’s artistic patriarch. When Muti’s on the podium, the CSO rises to its proper level. It glistens.
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‘The Happiest Song Plays Last’ at Goodman: Counterpoint of old guilt and quest for grace
Review: ★★★★★
It’s a pianistic happening as Evgeny Kissin treats adoring listeners to a musical bounty
Review: After the third encore in pianist Evgeny Kissin’s recital Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall, the hundreds of listeners still on hand switched into an insistent, stentorian applause. The Russian virtuoso came through with one last bonus, a thundering roll through Chopin’s Prelude in D minor, Op. 28, No. 24; and with that, another phenomenal exhibition was over. ★★★★★
Day in Rhineland: Muti, Chicago Symphony translate Schumann Third into vivid travelogue
Review: Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat isn’t known as the “Rhenish” for nothing. I felt very much like Schumann’s Rhine-journeying companion Thursday night, listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s radiant performance of the Third Symphony conducted by music director Riccardo Muti. ★★★★
‘Still Alice’ at Lookingglass: When dementia seizes a woman’s life, a family is measured
Review: In her play “Still Alice,” author and director Christine Mary Dunford employs a graphic metaphor to illustrate the disintegrating world of Alice, a victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Throughout the play, now in its world premiere run at Lookingglass Theatre, Alice’s kitchen appliances disappear one by one, until nothing remains – until the locus, the defining “here,” of this woman’s life is no longer there. ★★★★
Role Playing: Darrell W. Cox sees theater’s core in closed-off teacher of ‘Burning Boy’
Interview: The central character Larry, an English teacher, in David West Read’s “The Dream of the Burning Boy,” is a smart, inspiring mentor to the kids around him. But when they need him as consoling father-figure, after one of their classmates dies, Larry can’t engage their pain or embrace them emotionally. For Darrell W. Cox, who delivers a wrenching portrait of the teacher at Profiles Theatre, such a closed-off, deeply complicated soul is the touchstone of great drama.
Love, loss and broken souls framed in tangos: COT etches dolor of ‘María de Buenos Aires’
Review: Bittersweet remembrance with a tango pulse hangs over the surreal mindscape of “María de Buenos Aires,” the operatic love story created – perhaps the right word is insinuated – by composer Astor Piazzolla and poet Horacio Ferrer, and staged with bold, evocative imagination at Chicago Opera Theater. ★★★★
As dancing dame on high seas, Rachel York heads up motley tour crew of ‘Anything Goes’
Preview: Rachel York, slyly sinful Reno Sweeney in the Roundabout Theatre production of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” headed for Chicago, sees herself in the proud line of those indomitable dames of 1930s Hollywood.
With Muti back at helm, Chicago Symphony applies classic touch to Mozart, Beethoven
Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mozart-Beethoven concert Thursday night with music director Riccardo Muti felt like one long “aha!” moment. Here was the full measure of finesse, composure and pliancy the orchestra had expected to put on display for audiences in Southeast Asia with Muti at the helm, but in his absence never entirely achieved. ★★★★★
Alison Balsom, mistress of Baroque trumpet, will flash that golden sound at Logan Center
Preview: Alison Balsom, the British classical trumpet star who brings her blazing sound to Chicago in a concert with the Scottish Ensemble, knew which instrument had her name on it the first time she heard Dizzy Gillespie on a recording. She was 8 years old.
Youths at detention center set lives to music with aid of CSO musicians, praise from Muti
Report: The first time Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti visited the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, in September 2012, it was to offer a concert to more than 100 youths awaiting trial for serious crimes. For his return visit on April 14, the music was provided by juveniles with help from CSO musicians, and it was Muti who took a turn in the audience.
‘Dream of the Burning Boy’ at Profiles: Loss, loneliness and anger shroud a student’s death
Review: ★★★★
Riccardo Muti honors Boston Marathon victims with dedication at Chicago Symphony concert
Asks silence before Bach Mass
‘Big Fish’ star Butz calls the fanciful story-teller his dream role — and that’s no exaggeration
Preview: Norbert Leo Butz plays Edward Bloom, a Herculean story-spinner who supersizes his own legend in the musical “Big Fish.” We caught up with Butz at the Oriental Theatre, where the two-time Tony winner is trying this fabulist father-son story on for size. Butz talks about his role in the Broadway-bound musical, now in Chicago previews. We sneak a listen, too.
Adolph Herseth dies at 91; honored trumpeter was Chicago Symphony principal five decades
Burnished glory of Chicago brass
Opera stage resounds in Bach’s Mass as Muti brings personal authenticity to CSO account
Review: The decidedly Italianate, essentially operatic treatment of Bach’s Mass in B Minor offered this weekend by conductor Riccardo Muti and forces of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra may have little to do with the elusive question of Baroque performance practice, but it has everything to do with spiritual authenticity, conceptual integrity and musical wisdom. ★★★★★
Berlin Aisle: It’s magical Mozart when Rattle leads Philharmonic in concert ‘Zauberflöte’
Review: The Berlin Philharmonic delivered a concert performance of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” April 7, simultaneously broadcast in Europe, that seemed to waft in like a spring breeze. The concert’s now being edited for streaming to internet audiences via the Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, and there’s much to recommend it, including a delightful Papageno new to American opera lovers and a sneak peek at a Queen of the Night who makes her Met debut in 2014. Above all, front and center, was an orchestra such as you will rarely hear in an opera pit. ★★★★
Riccardo Muti, fit and jovial, pitches CSO’s agenda from Verdi to Canary Islands tour
Report: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced a bundle of developments at a press conference Wednesday morning, but the best news may have been the vigorous appearance and high spirits of music director Riccardo Muti.
Berlin Aisle: Deutsches Symphonie’s Sibelius, with Osmo Vänskä, sheds light on a treasure
Review: This is the story of a small world and a hidden gem. The jewel in question is the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, a beautifully balanced, virtuosic Berlin ensemble with a youthful look that plays in the shadow of the Berlin Philharmonic. Yet, with two such orchestras sharing the splendid Philharmonie concert hall, this city is simply twice blessed.
Role Playing: Chaon Cross turned Court stage into a romper room finding answers in ‘Proof’
Interview: The interpretive quest that led Chaon Cross to her fierce, blazing portrayal of Catherine, the brilliant but unmoored young woman in David Auburn’s “Proof” at Court Theatre, began in rehearsals with a lot of running around, getting under furniture and throwing things.
Conductor Oramo, bringing Nielsen to CSO, sees master builder’s hand in 5th Symphony
Preview: When Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo steps in front of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for concerts April 4-6, he will put the spotlight on Danish composer Carl Nielsen, a figure that has waxed and waned in the hearts of audiences and conductors alike over the last half century.
Fresh out of college, Stephen Anthony slides into ‘Catch Me If You Can’ — and it’s no con
Preview: There’s a connection you can’t miss between actor Stephen Anthony, recently graduated from Florida State University, and the con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr., whom he plays in the national touring production of “Catch Me If You Can” that opens April 3 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. They both bounce around the country, never staying long in one place, pretending to be somebody they aren’t and oozing charm all the way.
In contrasting Mozart concertos with the CSO, pianist Mitsuko Uchida blends depth, charm
Review: While it wasn’t quite the alpha and omega of Mozart’s numerous ventures into the piano concerto, the two works pianist Mitsuko Uchida performed March 28 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra did offer a telling perspective on a composer on top of the world and one who had seen all too much of it. ★★★★
Conductor Tugan Sokhiev, in CSO debut, sets Russian stamp on Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony
Review: While the Tchaikovsky symphonies hardly belong to the exclusive province of Russian conductors, the free-wheeling, hair-raising Fourth Symphony that Tugan Sokhiev led with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on March 21 simply may not be an interpretive option within the DNA of conductors from other parts of the world. ★★★★
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