Gathering Note

Notes from the concert hall

Category: Chicago

  • “Let the door be shut and bolted”

    Esa-Pekka Salonen joins the CSO for a two-week residency focusing on Bartók. In week one, Salonen pairs the Concerto for Orchestra with his own Sinfonia Concertante for organ and orchestra, while in week two Bluebeard’s Castle shares the stage with Beethoven’s Second Symphony. As of this afternoon, there are still ample tickets available for Bluebeard’s…

  • Summer festival season is here

    The summer festival season starts in earnest tomorrow with the commencement of the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 6 week long festival. This year’s festival marks the 30 year anniversary of Toby Saks’ affiliation with the festival. She founded the series, played an integral part in recruiting top-shelf talent for the festival, and after this summer…

  • There’s another election to vote in…

    One of the Gathering Note’s occasional contributors — Ozni Torres — needs your help.  He is a finalist in Chicago Classical Music’s “public critic” contest.  Oz introduced me to classical music in college.  He was a valuable tutor in those early years.  His review is the first one, a insightful, fair assessment of Ricardo Muti’s debut as music director…

  • The Muti era begins

    I’m back from a short visit to Chicago. While I was there I had the chance to hear Maestro Muti lead the Chicago Symphony in their first subscription concert of the season. The buzz around Muti and the CSO is intense. Banners with Muti’s mug hang on just about every light pole in the Loop.…

  • J. S. Bach Lived at the Bach Week Festival

    love and other drugs 1080 Sunday, April 26th, at Evanston’s Music Institute of Chicago, was the concluding day for this year’s Bach Week Festival, although really a weekend. The first concert was held on Friday and was a harpsichord affair. The concert on Sunday seemed to have representative works from the rest of Bach’s oeuvre,…

  • Bach Week Festival Kicks Off Strong

    For the past 36 years, there has been a heralding of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach in the Chicagoland area. Spanning a full week and comprising as many as four programs, the Bach Week provides Bach fans with the opportunity to hear wonderful renditions of his best music in intimate and immediate settings. This…

  • Perlman & Friends Show What Mentoring Can Accomplish

    watch whole movie of big mommas: like father, like son On April 19, as part of Symphony Center Presents, world-renown violinist Itzhak Perlman graced the large stage of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, without the orchestra. He was there to perform chamber music and he brought along no less than eight of his talented mentees from…

  • Baroque Band Serves ‘Messiah’ for One

    Handel’s Messiah has been a personal favorite for a long time. At any time of year, I have no trepidation giving up two and half hours of my life to experience the wondrous sound and spiritual world that Handel created. Needless to say, when Baroque Band announced the ambitious plan to perform this masterpiece with the ensemble’s customary…

  • Big Boned Bach at the CSO

    This past weekend at Symphony Center, culminating in tonight’s performance, was a veritable orgy of orchestral music from that greatest of composers, Johann Sebastian Bach. It is hard to imagine a time when his music was not well-known and virtually memorized, but such a time existed right after his death. Thank God for Felix Mendelssohn…

  • Glover Delivers the Kitchen Sink

    unstoppable the movie The Music of the Baroque continued its series of concerts this year with a celebration of the deaths and lives of various composers. Or at least the anniversaries thereof. Music Director Jane Glover spared no expense in creating this concert, having to contract many performers for the minutest of roles. She also…