Gathering Note

Month: September 2026

  • O Earth, outgunned and outmanned

    In Hugo Wolf’s setting of Goethe’s poem, Prometheus has little interest in the authority of Zeus. He has made his own way, stealing fire and giving it to humanity, and now he stands before the god with open contempt. Wolf’s music gives the confrontation a rough, unsettled energy, as if the titan is still measuring…

  • Hahn leads the charge

    Hahn leads the charge

    Musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra returned to Orchestra Hall on Thursday, September 17, to open their new season. Many subscribers are no doubt waiting for next week, when music director designate Klaus Mäkelä begins his fall residency. But the opening night program, led by Petr Popelka, with soloist Hilary Hahn, was hardly negligible. The…

  • Sticking around

    Earlier this year, I experienced Des Moines Metro Opera for the first time. It is a smaller company, born in the same era and with a similar mission to Chicago Opera Theater and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and one that occupies a particularly brave space in Iowa and the larger Midwest cultural landscape. Last…

  • Something to hear this fall

    Something to hear this fall

    Every fall, as Chicago’s classical music season begins to take shape, the question arrives in one form or another: What should we hear? It is a reasonable question. There is too much music to hear everything, and the start of the season comes with an abundance of possibilities. Hannah Edgar has offered her choices for…

  • In the company of devils

    Jason Moy began Ars Musica Chicago’s Friday-night recital, “Angels and Demons,” with a warning – of sorts. Baroque Italian musical life, he noted, was full of characters: schemers, libertines, religious zealots, assassins and virtuosi with sharp elbows. The remarks set the tone for a surprisingly lively evening of music from an era that can seem…