Tag: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
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Throughout June, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been celebrating American music for the nation’s 250th birthday. Current events and today’s political climate make for an unusual backdrop to such a survey. This is especially true for the program performed on Thursday evening, which at times painted an idyllic vision of the American idea — celebrating…
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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened its month-long celebration of America’s 250th anniversary with a program that traced a century of the nation’s musical lineages. The concerts to follow will feature an eclectic lineup, from pianist Conrad Tao and mandolinist Chris Thile, to Leonard Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety. But by uniting the voices of John…
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Thursday’s program for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was originally meant to spotlight the conductor and violinist Pekka Kuusisto, whose curiosity and range have made him a rare figure on international stages. His program would have traced a neat line between old music and the new works inspired by it. Kreisler’s Violin Concerto in C major,…
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Joyce DiDonato sings Neruda Songs this weekend with the CSO.
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The Chicago Symphony’s concerts this weekend are dedicated to Michael Tilson Thomas, who died on April 22nd at his home in San Francisco. He was 81. Like so many others, I became unmoored by the news. Not because I knew him personally, but because so many of the concerts I remember most vividly from the…
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The Chicago Symphony is often described as a product of the great German and Viennese tradition. That reputation has been earned. But Thursday’s concert suggested the CSO’s story is more complex and interesting than that tight refrain. The program opened with Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn and closed with Sibelius’s Second Symphony. Sandwiched…
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Some classical music works arrive on the concert stage like shy guests at a crowded party. They need a persuasive host to draw listeners in and reveal their charm, lest the room move on to flashier attractions. Not every work carries the inevitable triumph of a Beethoven symphony, for example. His ‘Eroica’ can survive a…
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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming season has been announced, and there’s a lot I could say about it. Let’s start with the obvious: With the 2026-2027 season, we are one year closer to the official start of the Klaus Mäkelä era with the CSO. In many ways, it feels as though the young Finn is…
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Klaus Mäkelä is back in Chicago for one program before taking the orchestra on a week-long tour of the Northeast. A performance at Carnegie Hall—featuring the same program he conducted this weekend, a survey of two heroic depictions in Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite—anchors the tour. This isn’t Mäkelä’s first journey to Carnegie…
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Anton Bruckner has never resonated with me the way Mahler has. I don’t seek out his symphonies with any particular enthusiasm. When the mood strikes, I’ll put on a recording and settle into my listening chair, letting the music unfold. Friends speak of transcendence; I’m still trying to find my way in. Yet even if…