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Articles tagged with: Brahms

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 | 3,433 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.

Osmo Vänskä, subbing for Haitink, leads CSO in radiant Brahms symphony, Double Concerto

Oct 19, 2012 – 1:57 pm | 3,696 views
Osmo Vanska feature image

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. ★★★★★

Solemnity rules as Riccardo Muti guides CSO through musical perspectives on human spirit

Mar 16, 2012 – 4:31 pm | 3,123 views
Riccardo Muti music director Chicago Symphony 2012

Review: Riccardo Muti has given Chicago many reasons to celebrate his music directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, but perhaps the most perfect expression of his belief in art’s purpose comes in the current run of rarely heard works for chorus and orchestra by Brahms, Schoenberg and Cherubini. ****

Virtuosity on display, CSO and Zukerman burnish Brahms concerto, 2nd Symphony

Mar 9, 2012 – 5:02 pm | 18,614 views
Pinchas Zukerman featured image credit Paul Labelle

Review: Sometimes, in the course of a symphony orchestra season, it’s good just to hear the band dial up the core German repertoire and show what it can do. That’s exactly what the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and music director Riccardo Muti did March 8 in a sumptuous double dose of Brahms, the Violin Concerto with soloist Pinchas Zukerman and the Second Symphony. *****