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Articles tagged with: Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Orchestra for Peace honors Solti centenary; conductor left a prodigious recording legacy

Oct 20, 2012 – 2:00 pm
Sir Georg Solti conducting feature image credit Clive Barda London Records

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

Oct 19, 2012 – 1:57 pm
Osmo Vanska feature image

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

Oct 18, 2012 – 1:27 am
Yo Yo Ma discusses finer points of music with fellow cellists who are members of the Civic Orchestra credit Todd Rosenberg

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.

BREAKING NEWS: Haitink cancels CSO concerts; Minnesota maestro Osmo Vänskä subs

Oct 10, 2012 – 12:41 pm
Osmo Vanska

Haitink “indisposed,” program same

Opening Carnegie Hall season, Muti and CSO match the celebrity sparkle of a packed house

Oct 3, 2012 – 10:48 pm
Duaine Wolfe, director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus, listens from the back of Carnegie Hall as the CSO rehearses for the evening concert. Chicago Symphony Orchestra NY Mexico Tour October 2012 credit Todd Rosenberg

Report from NYC: “Carmina Burana”

CSO and musicians reach tentative agreement; 3-year pact secures concerts, October tours

Sep 24, 2012 – 8:55 pm
Upcoming concerts and tours can be salvaged if the Chicago Symphony management and musicians ratify their tentative contract. File photo of the Chicago  Symphony and music director Riccardo Muti. Credit Todd Rosenberg

Report: CSO board’s approval due soon.

As CSO contract talks break down, musicians’ strike forces last-minute concert cancellation

Sep 23, 2012 – 1:23 am
Chicago Symphony musicians' strike signs

Update: Talks resume with mediator.

Muti and the CSO launch season with a bang sparked by off-beat, over-the-top mix of works

Sep 21, 2012 – 5:50 pm
9/20/12 8:50:14 PM -- Music Director Riccardo Muti conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Dvorák's  Symphony No. 5  during the opening of the CSO's 2012/13 season at Orchestra Hall. Credit Todd Rosenberg

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. ****

CSO resident composer Mason Bates receives $250,000 Heinz award in arts and humanities

Sep 12, 2012 – 10:39 am
5/14/11 7:45:35 PM : Chicago Symphony OrchestraRiccardo Muti Music DirectorYoYo Ma Cello* Bates  The B-Sides, Five Pieces for Orchestra and Electronica* Schumann  Cello Concerto* Strauss  Aus Italien © Todd Rosenberg Photography 2011

He receives prize Oct. 11 in Pittsburgh.

Ravinia favorite Misha Dichter’s double life revealed: The pianist’s a serious cartoonist

Jul 28, 2012 – 3:13 pm
Misha Dichter drawing from A Pianist's World in Drawings credit Rosetta Books

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.

With Muti again managing the house, CSO’s Bruckner Sixth becomes one splendid edifice

Jun 24, 2012 – 11:30 am
10/3/07 9:59:04 PM-- Chicago Symphony Orchestra European Tour 2007.

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

Jun 19, 2012 – 9:07 am
Riccardo Muti closeup conducts Chicago credit_Todd_Rosenberg

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.

In lightning-quick Beethoven 7th Symphony, van Zweden and CSO deliver a poetic thriller

May 16, 2012 – 11:05 am
Jaap van Zweden credit Hans Vanderwoerd

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

May 14, 2012 – 11:46 am
Alexander Hanna featured image

Alexander Hanna, 26, was groomed at Curtis, Tanglewood and Verbier.

Chicago Symphony plans Asian tour with Muti, and adds Mexico debut to fall Carnegie opener

May 8, 2012 – 12:33 pm
Chicago Symphony 2012-2013 tour map credit Nancy Malitz

Beijing, Mexico City, Seoul among stops.

Conductor Charles Dutoit leads French lesson as CSO matches Impressionists with Dutilleux

Apr 14, 2012 – 1:51 pm
Charles Dutoit featured image credit Philadelphia Orchestra

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. ****

CSO debut: Pianist Lugansky shows Russian school still thrives with grand Rachmaninoff

Apr 6, 2012 – 5:07 pm

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

Mar 31, 2012 – 5:59 pm
Mitsuko Uchida featured image credit Hyou Vielz

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

Mar 29, 2012 – 8:49 am
Eska Laskus featured image

Receive management fellowships.

Surprise! Renée Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma spring serenade on lunch crowd at Thompson Center

Mar 19, 2012 – 5:17 pm
Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma jam on 3-19-2012 at James T. Thompson Center Chicago  credit Nancy Malitz

Soprano and cello, burgers and pizza.

Solemnity rules as Riccardo Muti guides CSO through musical perspectives on human spirit

Mar 16, 2012 – 4:31 pm
Riccardo Muti music director Chicago Symphony 2012

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. ****

In a bold CSO debut, English conductor meets twin challenges of Mahler and Schoenberg

Mar 2, 2012 – 7:29 pm
Thomas Nott Featured Image Michelle DeYoung Stuart Skelton Chicago Symphony 2012 credit Todd Rosenberg

Review: Stepping in to pinch hit for Pierre Boulez may not be the least stressful way to make one’s conducting debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Subbing on short notice to take over Boulez’s rare pairing of Mahler’s song-symphony “Das Lied von der Erde” and Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto – that’s quite a debut.****

Riccardo Muti, Chicago Symphony unleash alternative energy of Mason Bates, Anna Clyne

Feb 14, 2012 – 9:01 pm
Clyne_Anna_Bates_Mason_featured image credit_Todd_Rosenberg

Feature: Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances in California and at Carnegie Hall will introduce new works by young resident composers Feb. 14-19 and Oct. 4.

Chicago Symphony’s 2012-13 plans highlight Wagner, Stravinsky and waterway themes

Feb 6, 2012 – 7:38 pm
Riccardo Muti Orchestra Hall credit Todd Rosenberg

Complete season highlights, details.

In Orff’s earthy ‘Carmina Burana,’ Muti guides CSO and vocal force to Fortune’s throne room

Jan 27, 2012 – 7:14 pm
CSO Muti Carmina Burana featured image

Review: Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with the Chicago Children’s Choir conducted by Riccardo Muti. Maria Grazia Schiavo, soprano; Max Emanuel Cencic, countertenor; Stéphane Degout, baritone. Through Jan. 28. *****

Honeck and the Chicago Symphony recall Dvorak on native soil with a dancing Eighth

Jan 20, 2012 – 1:03 pm
Honeck_Manfred_cr_KunstlerSekretariatamGasteig Featured image

Review: If Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony is a yearning postcard “From the New World,” his Symphony No. 8 in G major is redolent of a composer happily settled on native ground. The Eighth is decidedly of the Old World, as conductor Manfred Honeck and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra so generously demonstrated Jan. 19 at Orchestra Hall. ****

Like composer on the podium, Salonen leads Chicago Symphony in brilliant Mahler Sixth

Dec 17, 2011 – 10:30 pm
Salonen_Esa-Pekka_featured image credit_Snezana Vucetic Bohm

The Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen shares a peculiarity of temperament and genius with Gustav Mahler. Like Mahler in his time, Salonen today stands among the most important conductors in the world. And again like his great forebear, Salonen would really rather be composing than be saddled with the responsibilities of music director for any orchestra you could name. Even one that might be looking for someone to succeed James Levine in Boston.

French conductor Stéphane Denève scores a triumph in Chicago Symphony debut

Nov 11, 2011 – 1:40 pm
Stephane_Deneve featured image

Review: The French conductor Stéphane Denève made a thrilling debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night. Denève, who turns 40 this month, is going to be an international force, and his concert with the CSO amply demonstrated why. *****

Bernard Haitink charms Chicago Symphony with twin beauties from Schubert and Mahler

Oct 21, 2011 – 5:42 pm
Bernard Haitink Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Review: Conductor Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra summoned performances of exceptional clarity in Schubert’s chamber-size Fifth Symphony and Mahler’s grand-scaled Fourth Symphony. *****

Chicago Symphony MusicNOW opens season with ping-pong balls and rhythms a-tumble

Oct 19, 2011 – 5:34 pm
Music Now

Review: MusicNOW, the contemporary series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, began its 2011-12 season alive with the music of ping-pong balls, marimba, country fiddle and eerie vocals. Composers converged from Dublin, Connecticut, Minnesota and London to hear their works performed.