Classical music is a world of love and death, often tangled together. In that world of love and death and passion, Robert and Clara Wieck Schumann and Johannes Brahms are, most likely, not the only love triangle to triangulate, but they are definitely one of the more intense. Tragic, passionate, dark: there are surely a lot of words to describe their triangle, which, as far … Continue reading Ghost Variations
French modernist composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his Quartet for the End of Time—Quatuor pour la fin du temps—while imprisoned by the Nazis in Stalag VIII-a in Görlitz, Germany (now Poland). It’s a shocking, almost unbearble history, a testament to Messiaen and to his fellow musicians, Jean Lanier, Henri Akoka, and Étienne Pasquier, and to the defiance of the human spirit. (You should read about the … Continue reading CSO Sessions Episode Eighteen: Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time
CSO Sessions Episode Seventeen is Mozart all the way through: his Gran Partita (also known as the Serenade No. 10 in B-flat Major, K. 361), written for winds (two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns—named Fred and Ethel, of course—two bassoons, four horns) and one bass. It’s very Mozart, and it’s played wonderfully, with charming turns from, in particular, the oboes and the clarinets. It’s … Continue reading CSO Sessions Episode Seventeen: Mozart’s Gran Partita
CSO Sessions Episode Sixteen, which disappears tonight, is an episode of contrasts: starting with melancholy and grief, moving from tenderness to clarion calls, and then to buoyancy. The program begins with a collaboration, and a very new piece: Amanda Harberg’s Hall of Ghosts, for solo piccolo and, in this performance, solo dancer. Jennifer Gunn’s piccolo, bright and lonely in the (almost) empty hall, brought a … Continue reading CSO Sessions Episode Sixteen: Harberg, Gabrieli, & Bach
The two pieces featured in CSO Sessions Episode Fifteen are, emotionally and technically, quite different, but they pair together well, frothy effervescence with intricate, emotional excitement. Composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery introduces Strum, written for string quintet—originally for two violins (here Yuan-Qing Yu and Simon Michal, half of the Michal brothers who performed the Chevalier de Saint-Georges for us), one viola (Weijing Wang), and two … Continue reading CSO Sessions Episode Fifteen: Montgomery & Beethoven
CSO Sessions Episode Fourteen is an episode of warmth, of tenderness and beauty, loving and friendly and sometimes slyly funny music performed beautifully into the wilds of unknown homes by musicians longing to be in packed halls once more. Cellist Katinka Kleijn and violist Sunghee Choi open Episode Fourteen with their rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s charming Duet with Two Obligato Eyeglasses for Viola and … Continue reading CSO Sessions Episode Fourteen: Florence Price & Beethoven
CSO Sessions Episode Thirteen, like Episode Twelve before it, brings with it two pieces, wildly different and yet, at the same time, both almost defiantly alive. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 starts the program off strong. Clarinet Stephen Williamson, in his introduction, tells us he himself wasn’t familiar with the piece: he’s delighted to bring it to us, and clearly enthusiastic … Continue reading CSO Sessions Episode Thirteen: Coleridge-Taylor & Bach
Episode Twelve is a little different than the bulk of the prior eleven CSO Sessions episodes: it’s got only two pieces, rather than an assortment, and both are warhorses of the classical music repertoire. Mozart’s Serenade for Winds in C Minor, K. 388 starts our program off, played exquisitely by eight members of the CSO’s justly-famed wind and brass sections: William Welter and Lora Schaefer … Continue reading CSO Sessions Episode Twelve: Mozart & Brahmas
One of the last things I did last year, back when we could still do things, was attend the 60th annual University of Chicago Folk Festival. It was fantastic, the musicians were incredible, and then COVID came along less than a month later, and everything went to shit. The Folk Festival has been a pretty big part of my life for more or less all … Continue reading Friday Night at the 61st Annual U of C (Virtual) Folk Fest
CSO Sessions Episode Eleven was, for me, interrupted by poor internet and was marked by cold seeping up through the floor, but its delicacy and vibrancy shone bright anyway. Charles Gounod’s Petit Symphonie for Wind Instruments begins the program. It is, as flutist Emma Gerstein tells us, scored for nine players: two oboes, two bassoons, two clarinets, two horns, and one flute. It was performed, … Continue reading CSO Sessions Episode Eleven: Gounod, Mozart, & Ravel
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