Articles by Lawrence B. Johnson
‘Bengal Tiger’ at Lookingglass: Man, beast change stripes, and God’s not in the details
Review: To be engulfed by the despair that sweeps over “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” is to be reminded of the spiritual nausea that seized Jean-Paul Sartre and other French existentialist playwrights who watched their own world getting blown to pieces in the 1940s. Lookingglass Theatre and director Heidi Stillman have turned Rajiv Joseph’s play into one of the peak stage experiences of this season. ★★★★★
CSO in Asia: At tour’s end, sense of triumph magnified by journey of maestro, musicians
Report: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra had come a long way, in every sense and under trying circumstances, to hear the Seoul Arts Center rocked by applause on the final stop of its Asia tour. In the quiet of an interview before the closing concerts, conductor Lorin Maazel, who had joined the fraught tour in Hong Kong to lead the CSO across China to this conclusion, its first ever visit to Seoul, described his thrown-together effort with the orchestra not merely as a challenge met, but as “an impossible task.” That the mission was accomplished as impressively as it was, Maazel said, bore witness not only to the Chicagoans’ musicianship but also to their collective professionalism.
CSO, Muti plan tributes to Verdi and Schubert in 2013-14 season, with two world premieres
Report: We offer our hot picks.
CSO in Asia: That purring sound is Muti’s ‘Ferrari,’ driven by Maazel, cruising China
Report: TIANJIN – Conductor Lorin Maazel has pretty much peaked out in his appreciation of the Chicago Symphony, even topping music director Riccardo Muti’s proud comparison of the orchestra to a Ferrari. Shortly after he caught up with the CSO to take over its Asia tour conducting duties from Edo de Waart, in Hong Kong, the grey eminence Maazel summed up the impression he drew from his first rehearsal with the orchestra: “About an hour into it, I thought to myself, ‘My God, what a sound!’”
CSO in Asia: With a colossal effort, orchestra and Osmo Vänskä score Beethoven triumph
Review: Like an army advancing from a victorious engagement, a weary Chicago Symphony Orchestra arrived in Hong Kong Sunday after gaining a success against long odds at the Chiang Kai-shek National Concert Hall in Taipei. The CSO closed out the first leg of its Asia tour in Taiwan by doing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) the hard way: playing this indeed “heroic” work in a single late-afternoon rehearsal with conductor Osmo Vänskä, then coming right back to it for an intensely concentrated, razor-sharp performance before a packed concert audience.
CSO in Asia: Grace, true grit and Robert Chen prevail as star-crossed tour opens in Taipei
Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra presented the first concert in its troubled Asia tour here Jan. 25 with a performance that flew on a wing and a prayer. Make that one rehearsal and the grace of some sterling musicianship. Under the baton of Osmo Vänskä, an 11th-hour replacement for ailing CSO music director Riccardo Muti, the orchestra offered the well-filled Chiang Kai-shek National Concert Hall a generous program that made a big splash even if it didn’t entirely sparkle.
CSO adds Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov, concertmaster Chen, maestro Vänskä for Asia
Report: Pressed to find a conductor for concerts in Taiwan on Jan. 25 and 26 that will open its Asia tour, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra late Saturday announced both a maestro and a double bonus for audiences in Taipei. Joining Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä in solo appearances will be the celebrated violin virtuoso Maxim Vengerov and CSO concertmaster Robert Chen, a native of Taiwan.
Report: Riccardo Muti, facing surgery, drops out of CSO’s Asian tour; Maazel steps in
Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing on sked
Writers’ chilling edition of ‘The Letters’ paints grim picture of a boss’s friendly summons
Review: ★★★★
When Beethoven speaks, a struggling pianist listens and everybody learns about the Titan
Preview: What if Beethoven could speak? Suppose that titanic composer just popped into the room where a young pianist was wrestling with a sonata and offered, on the spot, the ultimate master class. You might have something very like pianist-composer-Beethoven impersonator Bruce Adolphe’s “Leave It to Ludwig” – an entertaining stage show aimed squarely at youngsters but authentic and serious enough, even when it’s very funny, to illuminate the subject of Beethoven for adults as well.
Standing in for Muti as CSO readies for Asia, De Waart leads stylish bundle of Beethoven
Review: Concerts this weekend and next were supposed to be warm-ups for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Asian tour, launching later this month with music director Riccardo Muti. But with Muti laid low by the flu, the tour preview has a new man on the podium at Orchestra Hall – Edo De Waart, music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. To judge by Thursday night’s opening flourish, an all-Beethoven affair, De Waart will send the CSO on its way to the Far East — and presumably back to Muti’s stewardship – fiddle fit.
Amid a storm of obscenities, but with a flair, Steppenwolf pulls off a hysterical ‘Hat’ trick
Review: ★★★★★
Edo de Waart will replace ailing Riccardo Muti in Chicago Symphony’s Beethoven fare
Report: Flu sidelines CSO maestro
Your drama is waiting: Chicago Theatre Week offers citywide smorgasbord at savory prices
Report: Tickets will be $15 and $30.
Shakespeare and discounts at center stage, revamped Stratford opens for summer ’13
Report: 25 percent off thru Jan. 31.
Broadway in Chicago, riding high, sets stage for ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ in a spring season splash
B’way bound ‘Big Fish’ starts here
Role Playing: Kamal Angelo Bolden sharpened dramatic combinations to play ‘The Opponent’
Interview: A round of boxing lasts three minutes. That’s about how long it takes Kamal Angelo Bolden, as a spunky young boxer who’s all speed and dreams in Brett Neveu’s “The Opponent,” to redefine the phrase “physical theater.” But Bolden says his knockout performance in the ring at A Red Orchid Theatre was the easy part. The challenge was getting the dreamer right.
Bows of Holly: In Chicago theaters, abundance rejoices in lavish spread of holiday shows
Shows of the season: A roundup
‘The Quality of Life’ at Den Theatre: Four lives battered by death, struggling to find peace
Review: In the face of death, two couples with radically different world views are grappling with a shared reality and an age-old question: To be or not to be – alive or together. That’s the double push and pull of Jane Anderson’s witty, provocative and surprising play “The Quality of Life,” offered in a taut, fine-spun production at The Den Theatre. ★★★★
Portrait of a physics star as earthly genius bursts from concise frame in bio-drama ‘QED’
Review: ★★★
Conjuring ghosts and dreams, Lyric Opera’s new ‘Werther’ lifts the spirit of a melodrama
Review: One is so torn watching tenor Matthew Polenzani’s vocally resplendent performance in the title role of a new production of Massenet’s “Werther” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. While you’re sitting there beguiled by Polenzani’s authoritative, richly modulated sound, something deep inside is spurring you to bolt from your seat, rush onto the stage and just shake that determinedly miserable character he’s playing. ★★★★
Role Playing: In wheelchair, Jacqueline Grandt explores paralysis of neglect in ‘Broken Glass’
Interview: Except when she crashes to the floor, Jacqueline Grandt spends the full length of Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass” at Redtwist Theatre in a wheelchair or resting in bed. Yet every night, Grandt says, she leaves the theater physically exhausted.
Amid roar of dreams and smell of a gym, two fighters match painful jabs in ‘The Opponent’
Review: ★★★★
‘Wasteland’ at LifeLine: Alone in earthen cell, G.I. battles twin demons isolation and fear
Review: ★★★★
Decidedly duo recital by Weilerstein, Barnatan launches Symphony Center chamber series
Preview: Ask cellist Alisa Weilerstein about the recital she plays Oct. 28 at Orchestra Hall, and she will quickly note that the best thing about the program is that it’s actually a duo recital for two equally important voices – and that she’s lucky to be teamed up with Israeli pianist and longtime collaborator Inon Barnatan. Their concert opens the chamber music portion of this season’s Symphony Center Presents series, which also offers four more chamber concerts, nine solo piano recitals and two performances by visiting orchestras.
Deep cuts leave souls bleeding in Redtwist’s close perspective on Miller’s ‘Broken Glass’
Review:★★★
Orchestra for Peace honors Solti centenary; conductor left a prodigious recording legacy
An Appreciation: The birth centenary of any great contributor to human affairs gives us pause. But the Oct. 21 concert by the World Orchestra for Peace at Orchestra Hall, honoring the 100th anniversary of Sir Georg Solti’s birth, has personal relevance for me. At the same time Solti commenced his musical directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in September 1969, I began my professional career as a music critic, at The Milwaukee Sentinel. There’s more to that connection than mere coincidence.
Osmo Vänskä, subbing for Haitink, leads CSO in radiant Brahms symphony, Double Concerto
Review: Orchestra Hall was packed for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s all-Brahms concert Thursday night, and one had to believe much of that audience had signed up because the scheduled conductor was favorite guest maestro Bernard Haitink. But when Haitink became “indisposed,” Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vänskä stepped in – and, with two brilliant soloists and the CSO at peak form, delivered an evening of Brahms to remember. ★★★★★
CSO extends consultancy with Yo-Yo Ma; cites record gifts and ticket sales, but higher costs
Report: Yo-Yo Ma’s high profile creative consultancy with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been extended another two years through 2015, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA) announced Oct. 17 at the organization’s annual meeting at Symphony Center. In its financial tally for fiscal 2012, the CSOA reported that contributions rose a record 11.6 percent to $28.2 million, but total expenses outpaced that growth slightly.
