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Articles tagged with: Beethoven

It’s a pianistic happening as Evgeny Kissin treats adoring listeners to a musical bounty

Apr 28, 2013 – 11:34 pm | 3,128 views
Pianist-Evgeny-Kissin-at-Orchestra-Hall

Review: After the third encore in pianist Evgeny Kissin’s recital Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall, the hundreds of listeners still on hand switched into an insistent, stentorian applause. The Russian virtuoso came through with one last bonus, a thundering roll through Chopin’s Prelude in D minor, Op. 28, No. 24; and with that, another phenomenal exhibition was over. ★★★★★

Day in Rhineland: Muti, Chicago Symphony translate Schumann Third into vivid travelogue

Apr 26, 2013 – 12:32 pm | 3,583 views
Riccardo-Muti-conducts-Chicago-Symphony-Orchestra-at-Orchestra-Hall-April-25-2013

Review: Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat isn’t known as the “Rhenish” for nothing. I felt very much like Schumann’s Rhine-journeying companion Thursday night, listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s radiant performance of the Third Symphony conducted by music director Riccardo Muti. ★★★★

With Muti back at helm, Chicago Symphony applies classic touch to Mozart, Beethoven

Apr 19, 2013 – 3:30 pm | 8,252 views
Riccardo Muti conducted Mozart's "Prague" Symphony and Beethoven's 4th Symphony with a classically-sized Chicago Symphony Orchestra April 18, 2013 credit Todd Rosenberg

Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mozart-Beethoven concert Thursday night with music director Riccardo Muti felt like one long “aha!” moment. Here was the full measure of finesse, composure and pliancy the orchestra had expected to put on display for audiences in Southeast Asia with Muti at the helm, but in his absence never entirely achieved. ★★★★★

CSO in Asia: At tour’s end, sense of triumph magnified by journey of maestro, musicians

Feb 7, 2013 – 3:00 am | 2,540 views
Lorin Maazel conducts Brahms' Symphony No. 2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Beijing on 2013 Asia tour - credit Todd Rosenberg

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 in Asia: That purring sound is Muti’s ‘Ferrari,’ driven by Maazel, cruising China

Feb 5, 2013 – 5:07 am | 4,100 views
Conductor Lorin Maazel smiles at the audience as he takes his final bow in Shanghai on Chicago Symphony 2013 Asia tour credit Todd Rosenberg

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: Lorin Maazel, maestro and guru, says little but it’s all music to happy campers

Jan 29, 2013 – 1:24 pm | 3,431 views
Lorin Maazel joins the Chicago Symphony Asia 2013 tour in Hong Kong and everyone feels comfortable with the music they are making - credit Todd Rosenberg

Report: As the sweatered and smiling 82-year-old Lorin Maazel climbed to his seat and settled into a high swivel chair atop the double-riser podium at Hong Kong Cultural Centre on Jan. 28, the conductor’s presence seemed to relax the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. What came next, in this first rehearsal together, was impressive not for what Maazel said, but for what he didn’t.

When Beethoven speaks, a struggling pianist listens and everybody learns about the Titan

Jan 12, 2013 – 4:27 pm | 2,184 views
Leave it to Ludwig at Chicago Shakespeare Theater 2013

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

Jan 11, 2013 – 7:21 pm | 5,851 views
Edo de Waart credit Amsterdam Concertgebouw

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.

‘Variations’ at TimeLine: Seeking the solution to Beethoven’s obsession with a trivial waltz

Sep 18, 2012 – 11:56 pm | 6,355 views
Juliet Hart, Janet Ulrich Brooks and George Lepauw in Chicago premiere of 33 Variations by Moisés Kaufman at TimeLine Theatre 2012 credit Lara Goetsch

Review: ★★★

In lightning-quick Beethoven 7th Symphony, van Zweden and CSO deliver a poetic thriller

May 16, 2012 – 11:05 am | 4,610 views
Jaap van Zweden credit Hans Vanderwoerd

Review: It’s one thing to hear a hair-raising orchestra performance on a CD, and quite another to experience it happening right in front of you, live, in the splendorous acoustics of a concert space. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s rocket-sled finale in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony on May 15 at Orchestra Hall, with conductor Jaap van Zweden, was one to send a writer combing his thesaurus for a higher form of wow. *****

Chailly lifts his quick baton, and Beethoven’s symphonies emerge from the veil of tradition

Jan 6, 2012 – 4:31 pm | 12,284 views
Riccardo Chailly Decca Beethoven featured image

CD review: Conductor Riccardo Chailly’s new recording of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, may finally be the document that changes the way we think of these seminal works – and the way the next generation of conductors approaches them. *****

Review: Pacifica Quartet pairs Shostakovich and Beethoven, showing them as peers

Oct 31, 2011 – 5:37 pm | 1,468 views
PacificaPerformingD

Review: The Pacifica Quartet offered a stunning reminder in its concert Sunday at the University of Chicago that the quartets of Shostakovich stand shoulder to shoulder with Beethoven’s as exemplars of the form, great and deeply personal expressions. *****

Amid Beethoven and Shostakovich quartet cycles, Pacifica to glimpse both at University of Chicago

Oct 27, 2011 – 10:17 am | 2,530 views
PacificaPortraitC

The Pacifica Quartet has been playing complete cycles of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets and Shostakovich’s 15 in international venues over the last couple of years. Violist Masumi Per Rostad talks about the enduring importance of both composers.