Home » Archive by Tags

Articles tagged with: Mendelssohn

Muti and CSO open with calm Mendelssohn, suppressed cry of pain from Shostakovich

Sep 21, 2019 – 2:19 pm
9/19/19 8:13:20 PM -- Chicago, IL USA
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, Conductor
Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Mendelssohn Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture
Grieg Piano Concerto
Scriabin Rêverie
Shostakovich Symphony No. 6

© Todd Rosenberg Photography 2019

Review: Riccardo Muti launched the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new season with a fresh revival of Shostakovich’s dark Stalin-era Sixth Symphony, which seemed relevant and contemporary under his command. Then Grieg’s Piano Concerto sparkled anew with Leif Ove Andsnes’ light keyboard touch.

Day in Rhineland: Muti, Chicago Symphony translate Schumann Third into vivid travelogue

Apr 26, 2013 – 12:32 pm
Riccardo-Muti-conducts-Chicago-Symphony-Orchestra-at-Orchestra-Hall-April-25-2013

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. ★★★★

CSO in Asia: At tour’s end, sense of triumph magnified by journey of maestro, musicians

Feb 7, 2013 – 3:00 am
Lorin Maazel conducts Brahms' Symphony No. 2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Beijing on 2013 Asia tour - credit Todd Rosenberg

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 in Asia: That purring sound is Muti’s ‘Ferrari,’ driven by Maazel, cruising China

Feb 5, 2013 – 5:07 am
Conductor Lorin Maazel smiles at the audience as he takes his final bow in Shanghai on Chicago Symphony 2013 Asia tour credit Todd Rosenberg

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: Lorin Maazel, maestro and guru, says little but it’s all music to happy campers

Jan 29, 2013 – 1:24 pm
Lorin Maazel joins the Chicago Symphony Asia 2013 tour in Hong Kong and everyone feels comfortable with the music they are making - credit Todd Rosenberg

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.