Alan G. Artner

In the last 50 years, Gustav Mahler became more popular in concert halls than Ludwig van Beethoven. A film, Luchino Visconti's "Death in Venice," played a part in the process....

Everything about Tuesday night at the Pick-Staiger Concert Hall was unusual. The European Union Youth Orchestra and music director Vladimir Ashkenazy collaborated with the Northwestern University Symphonic Choir plus local...

Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B Minor is so imposing a monument bringing together so many different styles of music that performances always are an occasion. Sunday night's sold-out performance...

Only the music of John Cage could have led to a performance as peculiar as the one that closed Friday night's concert in the Fine Arts Building's eighth-floor studio of...

The sextet known as eighth blackbird assembles some of the most satisfying programs of contemporary music in Chicago. This week it has outdone itself with a pair of concerts assembled...

Among the rarest kinds of concert is one that transforms the unusual into the extraordinary. That was the kind Tuesday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Called...

The drive among classical music producers is to make a highly formal, disciplined occasion seem for listeners as casual and relaxed as possible. The assumption is that severity in programming,...

Student and semi-professional performances usually make up in dedication what they lack in precision and refinement. And so it was Monday night at Orchestra Hall, when Jay Friedman led the...

Peter Serkin's piano recital Friday night at Mandel Hall had all the thoughtfulness and technique to turn a most challenging program into a vital occasion. Such was its impact on...

We often hear that the time-honored chamber recital needs to be revamped in order to communicate with 21st-Century audiences. But then along come artists perceived to be hip whose offerings...