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Articles tagged with: Debussy

CSO’s ‘French Reveries and Passions’: Spirit and imagination set crown on a dream festival

May 24, 2015 – 12:09 am
Night falls on the final act of CSO's Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy. (Todd Rosenberg)

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.”

Conductor Tugan Sokhiev, in CSO debut, sets Russian stamp on Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony

Mar 23, 2013 – 5:57 pm
Ossetian conductor Tugan Sokhiev makes Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut March 2013 credit Todd Rosenberg

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. ★★★★

Subbing for Boulez again, Cristian Macelaru looks like conducting star on rise with CSO

Mar 8, 2013 – 6:02 pm
Cristian Macelaru

Review: Twice in the last two seasons the young Romanian-born conductor Cristian Macelaru has stepped into the same big shoes, replacing an indisposed Pierre Boulez on the podium of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. After the second look, on March 7, one can only join the applauding CSO musicians in saluting Macelaru as a star in the making. ★★★★

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. ****