Twenty years ago when British early music conductor John Eliot Gardiner was on top of his game and reputation, he was ignored by the CSO, so it seems odd now that he has become “Sir John” that he is now getting what the orchestra is calling his “long-awaited” CSO debut. No shit. Gardiner has conducted his own period instrument ensemble, the English Baroque Soloists, at Orchestra Hall on numerous occasions as recently as last year, but that was early music. This bizarre program—on modern instruments, mind you—moves up Gardiner’s repertoire by a couple of centuries and includes the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto performed with pianist and musicologist Robert Levin, whose version of the Mozart “Requiem” the CSO performed a couple of years ago and who recorded his rather dry versions of Mozart piano concertos with Eliot’s longtime English early music rival Christopher Hogwood. Also on the program is the Schumann Third “Rhenish” Symphony and a Shostakovich Chamber Symphony that is a transcription of his Eighth String Quartet made by Rudolf Barshai. (Dennis Polkow)
Thursday, March 6 at Symphony Center
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