A gay love affair in ’50s D.C. plays out to touching effect in ‘Fellow Travelers’
It would be easy to regard the story of a doomed 1950s gay romance that is “Fellow Travelers” as a period piece. Except for one thing: The fear and paranoia...
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Mozart, Haydn symphonies speak with warmth and grace at CSO
The music of Mozart and Haydn is rarely as simple as it looks, and indeed, much of it is riddled with enough traps to trip up unwary performers. Some try...
Recommended Chicago classical concerts for March 16-22
Lyric Unlimited – “Fellow Travelers”: Composer Gregory Spears’ and librettist Greg Pierce’s opera about a gay love affair, set during the Joseph McCarthy era in 1950s Washington D.C., has its...
Chicago Fringe Opera’s bare-bones staging of ‘Great God Pan’ brings more spills than chills
In its four seasons, the scrappy little storefront company Chicago Fringe Opera has ventured all over the map of contemporary American chamber opera. Subjects of its shows have ranged from...
With Levine gone, Ravinia bolsters its Bernstein blitz for 2018 season
Even as Ravinia prepares a summer classical season honoring the greatest American conductor of his generation — Leonard Bernstein — it has joined the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and...
Lyric Opera offers up a sweet celebration of Bernstein at 100
For all the larger-than-life fame Leonard Bernstein achieved on the podium, on television and in everything else this multifaceted musician did, Bernstein the composer was deeply torn between his need...
Kavakos offers impeccable Shostakovich with CSO, but gutsy passion in short supply
The abrupt severing of ties with conductor Charles Dutoit by orchestras in Chicago, Boston, Cleveland and New York, following bombshell allegations of sexual misconduct that broke earlier this year, has...
Recommended Chicago classical concerts for March 9-15
Chicago Sinfonietta: Continuing its 30th anniversary season, the orchestra under music director Mei-Ann Chen performs world and Chicago premieres of works by women composers: Florence Price, Jennifer Higdon, Reena Esmail...
Pianist Aimard illuminates works of genius from different musical eras
Normally when a pianist tackles Beethoven’s mighty “Hammerklavier” sonata, you expect that musical colossus to be the toughest piece on the program. Not when that pianist happens to be Pierre-Laurent...
Against all odds, a choir focused on new music prospers
In 2005, when Donald Nally co-founded a choral organization called the Crossing in Philadelphia, creating a professional chorus specializing in new music must have seemed like an esoteric notion doomed...