RECOMMENDED Following up on Bernard Haitink’s recent performances and live recordings of the Mahler Third and Sixth symphonies on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s own Resound label, Haitink and the CSO turn to the Mahler First Symphony in what is shaping up to be a Mahler cycle. There is no chorus, no singers, no “hammer of life” and such, though you do get a bizarre funeral march with the bass playing the universally known French children’s nursery rhyme “Frere Jacques” (“Are you sleeping, Brother John?”) in the upper register and the imitation of a cheap Viennese wedding band that Carmine Coppola used as his model for some of “The Godfather” music. Also included is “Neruda Songs” by American composer Peter Lieberson, settings of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s reflections on romantic love that he wrote for his wife, the great Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died of cancer two years ago. American mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor will be the first singer to perform the song cycle since Hunt Lieberson’s death. Ravel’s “Menuet antique” will open the program, the first of two weeks of Haitink concerts that will also travel to Carnegie Hall later in the month. (Dennis Polkow) Thursday, May 1 at Symphony Center
Scenes From A Season: An Inside Look at a Year with Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Walking out onto the stage last September, Muti was receiving his first applause at Orchestra Hall in over nineteen months. The celebrated Italian-born music director of the CSO, who had turned eighty two months earlier, was clearly moved. What made the acclamation unusual was that the hall was empty. The orchestra itself was providing heartfelt and sustained applause, greeting Muti…
A Positive Light: The Soul Children of Chicago Sing "O-o-h Child" at Chicago Live! The Chicago Live! concerts coincide with the last weekend of “State of Sound: A World of Music from Illinois” music exhibit. As a sendoff, the Soul Children of Chicago will sing “O-o-h Child” in tribute to this socially significant Chicago song. The thirty-piece choir has been rehearsing the song for a month and the pier audience will be encouraged to…
