Gathering Note
Notes from the concert hall
Tag: Classical Music
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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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There is an old home video of Conrad Tao that captures the modest beginnings of a prodigy. In the footage, a very young Tao sits at the piano, pawing out “Mary Had a Little Lamb” one note at a time. He does not actually remember a time before playing the piano. “We had a piano…
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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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My colleague Louis Harris at Third Coast Review has written a lengthy profile of Chicago composer Stacy Garrop, whose music he loves. Garrop is one of many excellent contemporary composers who call Chicago home. Interestingly, when she listens to music, it’s not usually classical. “One of my approaches to that is I do listen to…
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Joyce DiDonato sings Neruda Songs this weekend with the CSO.
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The house lights at the Harris Theater rarely dimmed on an occasion as self-assured as “Icons and Innovators.” This program, held on May 2nd, was ostensibly a tribute to Joan Harris, the philanthropist whose fingerprints are all over the Chicago cultural map and the Juilliard School. It was a night of high ceremony, featuring video…
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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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Amid a Chicago orchestral landscape dominated by marquee ensembles, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago tends to exist in the shadows. That’s unfortunate, because this century‑old training orchestra—founded in 1919 by Frederick Stock, then music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—remains one of the city’s most earnest and quietly radical institutions. It’s made up of early‑career…