Zach Carstensen

Medea delivers an unforgettable experience at the Lyric

I had hoped to write something longer about Medea, which opened a week ago at the Lyric Opera. Time and circumstance have conspired against me, but this production demands to be acknowledged, even if briefly. Suffice it to say, the performance and production is not to be missed.

Luigi Cherubini’s Medea remains one of opera’s most unjustly neglected masterworks. A magnificent, proto-Romantic affair that bridges classical restraint with the full-throated passion that would define the nineteenth century. The score crackles with intensity, its dramatic architecture built on a foundation of inexorable tension that tightens with each scene until the inevitable, devastating conclusion. It’s a work that demands everything from its performers, particularly its title role.

Sondra Radvanovsky rises to meet those demands with a performance that can only be described as revelatory. She is one of the most dynamic, emotional singers on stage today, and her portrayal of Medea’s descent from wounded dignity to vengeful fury is nothing short of mesmerizing. Her voice carries the full weight of Medea’s rage and anguish yet never sacrifices beauty for dramatic effect. This is singing that cuts to the bone.

Equally crucial to the evening’s success is the presence of conductor Enrique Mazzola, a committed advocate for this work who understands its every contour. Under his baton, the Lyric Opera Orchestra played with a precision and fervor that matched the intensity unfolding onstage. The production itself serves the opera well, allowing the drama to unfold with clarity and power.

It all adds up to the most memorable opera experience for me of the last five years. If you have any opportunity to see this production before it closes, seize it. Performances of this caliber are rare, and Medea is an opera that deserves to be experienced in the theater, where its full power can be felt. The Lyric has given us something special.

Here is a roundup of critical opinions.

Jordan and Hadelich lead the Chicago Symphony through its repertoire sweet spot

Not long ago, while spending a week in New York, I found myself walking through Central Park after a concert by the New York Philharmonic, wondering which composers belong to which American orchestras. It is a parlor game without definitive answers – New York might claim Gershwin or Ives – but Chicago’s answer came to me immediately: Brahms. Or, more broadly, the music of Central Europe. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s history is inseparable from the great European Classical and Romantic traditions, shaped by towering figures like Fritz Reiner and Georg Solti. When the orchestra recently offered an evening of Kodály, Dvořák and Brahms – works squarely in its wheelhouse – the performance felt like a homecoming.

In Chicago, a new venue makes its case with Hickey’s audacious piano work Sapiens

Chicago has no shortage of performance spaces, but none quite like The CheckOut. Housed in a former 7-Eleven on Clark Street in Uptown, the venue opened its doors September 12th under the stewardship of Access Contemporary Music. In just two weeks it has already staked its claim as one of the city’s most intriguing cultural outposts. The inaugural festival gave a sense of the possibilities: two sold-out nights devoted to Arvo Pärt’s hushed mysticism, the Black Oak Ensemble channeling Studs Terkel’s working class ethos, chamber music turns from the Palomar Trio and Kontras Quartet, and, finally, Wicked Drawl—a band that refuses genre with a gleeful mash of cabaret, country, classical, and jazz.

Guarneri Hall becomes a lab for Conrad Tao’s digital experiments in Nova Linea Musica’s season opener

On Wednesday evening at Guarneri Hall, Nova Linea Musica opened its 2025–26 season with a recital by Conrad Tao, the pianist-composer who has become something of a shapeshifter in the classical music world. The Illinois native was back by popular demand. Last season featured one of his compositions, and this time he performed a program called “Echoes and Algorithms.” Nova Linea itself has doubled its offerings from last year, a modest sign that Chicago’s appetite for the new and the unexpected is holding steady.

Tao’s title proved apt. What he assembled was less a tidy recital than a set of experiments, blending piano, electronics, and computer interjections and blurring the distinctions between them. The pieces often felt more like commentary instead of argument, collisions more than resolutions. The evening explored the ongoing negotiations between technology and society, artists, and Tao himself.

Fall highlights from Chicago’s 25/26 classical music season

Labor Day has passed, taking with it the last illusions of summer leisure. What follows, as reliably as the shortening days, is the arrival of a new classical music and opera season. Chicago’s 2025–26 offerings promise the usual abundance of repertoire and revivals, along with a handful of events that seem more like occasions than routine schedulings.

Conrad Tao and Catalyst Quartet, Nova Linea Musica – September 10; December 3

In its second season, Nova Linea Musica continues to make the case that contemporary music deserves a place not at the margins but at the center of Chicago’s concert life. The opening recital belongs to Conrad Tao, a pianist who has built his career less on institutional endorsements than on his own iconoclastic instincts. Tao programs like someone unwilling to pander: a premiere by the Chicago composer Chris Mercer, a piece of his own, and music by Jürg Frey and Ben Nobuto suggest he’s more interested in probing the present than reassuring the past.

Experience Handel’s Water Music on the Chicago River

After last year’s debut, Music of the Baroque is bringing back The Chicago Water Music to the Chicago River on Wednesday, September 10th. Dame Jane Glover will once again lead the ensemble from aboard the “Bright Star” as it travels from Ogden Slip to Merchandise Mart, but this year comes with an ambitious new twist: a citywide singalong.

The program follows the same winning formula: highlights from Handel’s Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks, plus choral favorites, but adds “Hallelujah, Chicago,” inviting the entire city to join in singing the “Hallelujah” Chorus from Messiah.

Music of the Baroque’s Theodora is free to view for a limited time

In the lead up to Music of the Baroque’s emerald anniversary season, they are making last season’s performances free to view for a limited time. This week, Handel’s Theodora is on offer.

Handel’s Theodora isn’t one of his most frequently performed works, but those who know it tend to hold it close. Premiered in 1750 and largely overlooked in its day, this oratorio trades the grandiosity of Messiah for something more poignant and intimate. It tells the story of a Christian martyr and her Roman lover, not with bombast, but with music of startling tenderness and quiet strength. Music of the Baroque’s performance invites a fresh hearing of a work that Handel himself considered one of his best.

Catch it while you can.

Berkshire Record Outlet calls it quits

An unfortunate email arrived in my inbox yesterday from the folks who run Berkshire Record Outlet:

Dear fellow music-lovers,

The time has come to announce our closure within the next sixty days. In the interim, we have a backlog of new and restocked titles that we plan to offer you via our usual updates, in preparation for the subsequent sale of the entire inventory to a consortium of wholesalers.

With one exception, we’re all well past retirement age, and the challenges of running a niche business in the year 2025 are more than this near octogenarian is willing to confront. In short, after fifty-one years, we bid you farewell.

Thank you all for your patronage.

Best wishes,

Joe Eckstein

A second look at The First Homosexuals at Wrightwood 659

Summer Listening: Beethoven, Haydn and Rush Hour Concerts

We are deep into Classical Music Chicago’s Rush Hour Concert season now, and this series continues to prove itself as one of the best deals for classical music lovers in a city starved for a decent chamber music scene. For those who haven’t been able to attend in person, I’ve pulled together a few standout performances from this season’s YouTube archive.

While these recordings offer a wonderful glimpse into the series, nothing quite matches the immediacy and warmth of experiencing live chamber music in an intimate setting like St. James Cathedral . The good news? There are still several concerts left in the season, including the Chen Quartet’s July 29^th performance premiering a new work by Augusta Read Thomas and the season finale on August 19^th featuring Dvorak’s Serenade for Winds. Two excellent opportunities to discover why Rush Hour Concerts are such an essential part of Chicago’s summer classical music landscape.

In the meantime, if you’re catching up, don’t miss Matthew Lipman’s lyrical take on Brahms’s two viola sonatas or the Kontras Quartet’s engaging performances of Ives and Terry Riley—both are well worth your time.