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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: Giancarlo Guerrero steps into new Grant Park Music Fest role with a pair of genial and dynamic programs
Talk about a perfect storm. On Wednesday, Giancarlo Guerrero's much-fêted debut as principal conductor and artistic director of the Grant Park Music Festival was dampened by relentless rain. Audiences scrunched under the Jay Pritzker Pavilion fringe, only to play musical chairs dodging the structure's many (and ever-changing) leaky spots. When they weren't doing that, seat shuffles and squabbles competed with the evening's violin concerto. But if Guerrero appeared unflappable onstage, it's because he's been there before. He made his sophomore appearance with the orchestra in 2014 under nearly identical circumstances, down to the solo string showcase and contemporary American opener. Despite the lousy weather, that appearance impressed festival musicians enough to fast-track Guerrero to the top of their director wishlist a decade later. While last week's storm never erupted into thunder, musical lightning struck twice here with yet another exuberant, water-resistant stand by Guerrero on Wednesday, followed by a masterful account of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 on Friday. Wednesday's concert included two harbor works: 'An American Port of Call,' by Virginia-based composer Adolphus Hailstork, and Leonard Bernstein's 'On the Waterfront' suite. Conducting with his pointer fingers rather than a baton, and sporting a new goatee, Guerrero led a sparky, whistle-clean run of Hailstork's eight-minute curtain raiser. But when the music dissipated into quietude — recalling a boat drifting far off from shore, surrounded only by blue horizon — Guerrero guided the music with expansive ease. Bernstein's 'Waterfront' benefited from the same balance of gusto and intuitive pacing. Patrick Walle's horn solo up top sounded suspended in time, before an increasingly feral orchestra jerked us back to street level. Amid the ferocity, the Grant Parkers always sounded whetted and clean, moving through the works' shifting meters with fearsome precision. In the final windup to the end, electric energy gave way to ringing, Mussorgskyan grandeur. Between the Hailstork and Bernstein, Jeremy Black returned to the festival as both concertmaster and featured soloist, offering up the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Even the brunt of the evening's downpour couldn't wash away the strong impression left by this filigree, soulful performance. Black's sound in the opening theme and balladic second movement was sugared but never treacly. Meanwhile, the Allegro molto vivace coasted along serenely, Black's bel canto phrasing and pristine intonation never betraying its finger-flying briskness. Promisingly, Guerrero's orchestral accompaniment was every bit as tasteful. Negotiating solo string balance in the park is always just that — a negotiation — but Guerrero hit the sweet spot of clarity and restraint. The orchestra was able to be a bit more gutsy under Friday's soloist, Pacho Flores. The Venezuelan trumpeter has a sparkling sound, which he dispatched with doting attention to phrase and line in Arturo Márquez's lively, if unseasonal, 'Concierto de Otoño' ('Autumn Concerto'). The work was specifically composed for Flores in 2018, taking unabashed advantage of not just the trumpeter's lyricism but his gatling-gun articulation, unflappable stamina and chameleon flexibility. (He traded four different horns across the 20-minute piece: C and D trumpets in the outer movements, then a flugelhorn and soprano cornet in the middle.) Flores also knows how to work a crowd. Rather than shooting to the stratosphere in his third-movement cadenza, he crawled to the bottom of his range — an amusing subversion of trumpet tropes. He then turned his bell directly at Guerrero and playfully pppththhed at him through his horn, prompting a teasing 'what gives?' shrug from the conductor. That said, it's hard to endorse Márquez's concerto beyond a mere virtuoso vehicle. The orchestral backing is often trite, cycling through the same progressions for what feels like minutes at a time. If the concerto's many flavors of theme-and-variation were engrossing at all, it was entirely thanks to Friday's soloist and orchestra, both playing with tempera-rich color and joie d'vivre. For pops-adjacent music under a more skillful hand, look to Flores himself. He opened and closed his appearance with two self-penned numbers: 'Morocota' (named for a $20 Venezuelan coin) and 'Lábios Vermelhos' ('Red Lips'). Originally recording both with guitar accompaniment for a 2017 Deutsche Grammophon release, Flores sang through his horn with a suave melodiousness that would have done the Rat Pack proud, with just a shimmer of vibrato where it counted. His lush orchestral arrangements would have been right at home in that milieu, too. At one point in 'Lábios Vermelhos,' section trumpets got in on the fun, with a sneering little interjection. Yet another short, Latin-inspired curtain raiser opened the concert: 'Baião n' Blues,' by Chicago composer Clarice Assad. A staple of the Carlos Kalmar years, Assad's inclusion in Guerrero's opening week bodes well for the new festival chief's attention to local composers. Ultimately, though, this performance had some of the same early-season jitters as last week's opener, with a scraggly opening and subdivision disagreement among the violins. 'Baião n' Blues' already isn't Assad's most compellingly structured piece, but a more honed performance might have made a better case. While Mahler sought to depict the world's natural beauty and bizarre juxtapositions in his music, he perhaps didn't anticipate contending with throbbing helicopters, the squeal of a coach's whistle, and hot rods sputtering down Lake Shore Drive on Friday. The Grant Park corps rose above the usual downtown backing track with a fresh, focused Mahler 1. Guerrero cued the unearthly, whistling first bars with an ambiguous gesture that invited the orchestra to melt in freely. Offstage trumpets were piped through the crown of the pavilion stage, sounding mysteriously heaven-sent. When the theme arrived in the cellos, Guerrero maintained their levity and grace throughout the movement — and, in fact, throughout much of the piece, bringing an aerodynamic lightness even to the symphony's final cadence. Because Grant Park 'does things a little differently,' per Guerrero, Friday's performance reinserted Mahler's discarded 'Blumine' movement. Through a complex change of hands, the only surviving manuscript copy of 'Blumine' ended up in in New Haven, Connecticut, where it was rediscovered as part of the Mahler renaissance of the 1960s. If 'Blumine' is heard at all, it's usually as a standalone piece, for good reason: It's arresting but nearly always out-of-place amid the lustiness of the rest of the symphony. Friday's performance gave the same impression — gauzy and subtle, but stopping short of the richness and emotional abandon that would make a better case for its inclusion. Elsewhere, other idiosyncratic touches intrigued and often convinced: more perky staccatos by oboist Alex Liedtke, orchestral accents like bitter twists of a knife in the funeral march, and a slower reading of the klezmer-band interludes. In all, it endorsed Guerrero's warhorse chops as enthusiastically as his new-music acumen. Rain or shine, Grant Park is looking like a fair place to be under his baton.
Korea Herald
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Berlin Philharmonic to return to Seoul for three concerts
The Berlin Philharmonic will return to Korea after a two-year absence, this time under the leadership of Kirill Petrenko. For the first time, the orchestra will give three performances in Korea, Nov. 7-9. Korean pianist Kim Sun-wook, who debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2021, will join the orchestra in performing Schumann's Piano Concerto on Nov. 7 and 9. Also on the program for the two dates are Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll," Schumann's "Manfred" Overture and Brahms' Symphony No. 1. The Nov. 8 program will feature Leos Janacek's "Lachian Dances," filled with lively Czech folk influences; Bela Bartok's "The Miraculous Mandarin Suite," driven by bold percussion rhythms; and Igor Stravinsky's "Petrushka," one of the composer's three great ballets. All three concerts will take place at the Seoul Arts Center. In 2023, returning to Korea for the first time since 2017, the Berlin Philharmonic's concerts in Seoul sold out in just 40 seconds, demonstrating the orchestra's immense popularity in Korea. At that time, celebrated pianist Cho Seong-Jin, the orchestra's artist in residence for the 2024/25 season, joined the orchestra as the soloist for the second concert, performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. The November performances in Korea will mark the first leg of the orchestra's Asia tour, during which it will stop in major Asian cities such as Taipei, Shanghai and Tokyo. In Taipei, the orchestra will perform at the National Concert Hall on Nov. 12 and 13. On Nov. 15 and 16, the orchestra will take the stage at the Shanghai Oriental Art Center. In Japan, the orchestra will offer four concerts between Nov. 19 and 23 at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Minato Mirai Hall in Yokohama, and Muza Kawasaki Symphony Hall in Kawasaki, before returning to Suntory Hall on Nov. 23 to wrap up the Asia tour. Ticket prices for the Korean concerts range from 110,000 won ($80.26) to 550,000 won.
San Francisco Chronicle
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Esa-Pekka Salonen and S.F. Symphony release new recordings on Apple Music
As Esa-Pekka Salonen reaches the beginning of the end of his tenure as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, his work with the institution is being further memorialized on Apple Music Classical. The music platform has released Salonen and the Symphony's performance of Jean Sibelius' ' Finlandia,' recorded live in concert March 14-16, for fans to stream. Three additional digital-only spatial audio recordings are set to release on the Apple Music Classical app in the coming months. Igor Stravinsky's ' Symphony in Three Movements ' will be made available on July 4, followed by Sibelius' Symphony No. 1 on Aug. 15, and Salonen's Cello Concerto featuring principal cello Rainer Eudeikis, which does not have a release date yet. They are all produced through SFS Media, the Symphony's audio-visual label. The Symphony began its partnership with Apple Music Classical upon its release in 2023, and Salonen and the orchestra have previously released 11 recordings through the platform, including compositions by composers Anders Hillborg, Elizabeth Ogonek and Ottorino Respighi. Apple Music Classical is available for free to most Apple Music subscribers and allows its users to make playlists, utilize optimal search features, and enjoy high-quality immersive audio. Salonen's final shows with the Symphony are nearing as the 2024-25 season draws to a close, but classical music fans have a few more opportunities to catch the conductor in person. He is scheduled to conduct Stravinsky's 'The Firebird' Friday, May 23, through Sunday, May 25, and his last scheduled performances will be of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, 'Resurrection,' on June 12-14. The Finnish conductor and composer took over the music director position from Michael Tilson Thomas in 2020 and announced his departure from the Symphony last spring. He attributed his decision to differences with leadership, stating that he does 'not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does.' Salonen currently has no plans to join the forthcoming season's lineup, not even to return for a guest appearance.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tickets on sale for Budleigh music festival's 20th anniversary
Tickets are now on sale for a music festival set to celebrate its 20th anniversary this summer. Budleigh Music Festival will return to East Devon from June 27 until July 5. The festival has become a key event in the classical music calendar, attracting internationally renowned musicians and enthusiastic audiences alike. This year's programme, under the artistic direction of Jason Thornton, features 20 concerts. The festival highlights include performances from celebrated pianist Sir Stephen Hough, the Band of HM Royal Marines Plymouth, and the London African Gospel Choir. The festival will also feature South American violin prodigy Guido Saint'Anna, the Armonico Consort, and a performance of Mahler's Symphony No.1 by One Piano Four Hands. The Bath Philharmonia will also perform with Zeynep Ozuska, and Sir Michael Morpurgo and cellist Clare O'Connell will present his version of The Carnival of the Animals. The festival will also showcase emerging talent, with performances from Lumas Winds, the Rhossili Duo, Bonnie Scott, and William Bracken. A choral workshop is planned for the opening day, culminating in a performance alongside the festival's children's choir. There will also be a day of family events, including a musical treasure hunt through the town, African drumming workshops, and sound bath and body percussion sessions. Kate Somerby, chair of Budleigh Music Festival, said: "We are incredibly proud to reach this significant milestone and to continue bringing outstanding classical music to Budleigh. "This year's programme features a spectacular mix of established international artists and rising stars, offering something truly special for our audiences. "As a charity, one of our aims is to make classical music accessible to young people who may not otherwise have opportunities to play and enjoy it. "Alongside our programme we will once again be offering those opportunities to young people, through our partnerships with local schools and groups like Future Talent, who nurture exceptional young musicians." For more details, visit the Budleigh Music Festival website.
New York Times
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Making Sparks Fly at the New York Philharmonic
To judge by its marketing materials, the New York Philharmonic is uncomfortable with its leaderless state, created by the gap between the departure last summer of the music director Jaap van Zweden and the arrival of Gustavo Dudamel, who takes over in 2026. Dudamel's likeness is already splashed all over Lincoln Center, as if the mere promise of him were the orchestra's best hope for selling tickets. But the parade of visiting conductors passing through Geffen Hall has had its own rewards, shaking the ensemble from its routine and injecting a vital note of unpredictability. Week by week, the orchestra sounds different. The energy in the hall fluctuates. And when a firebrand soloist joins a smoldering conductor, sparks fly. This was the case on Wednesday in an electrifying concert that drew tumultuous ovations. The Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa teamed up with the flamboyant violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who shredded the Stravinsky Violin Concerto — and more than a few bow hairs — on a program that opened with the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery's sumptuous 'Chemiluminescence' and ended with a glowing reading of the Symphony No. 1 by Brahms. The previous week had featured another ferociously expressive soloist in another world premiere when the cellist Alisa Weilerstein performed a Thomas Larcher concerto, 'Returning Into Darkness,' on a program bookended by Mendelssohn and Schumann. There, it was Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider who conducted, drawing chiseled playing from the orchestra that brought out the wit in selections from Mendelssohn's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and the intricate flow of Schumann's Second Symphony. Under Hrusa, the collective sound seethed and simmered. Larcher's one-movement concerto grows out of a single gesture, a swooping glissando across multiple octaves on the solo cello. On a string instrument, glissando results from the player's finger sliding up or down the fingerboard, drawing an elastic line through all available pitches. Because it blurs the distinction between individual notes, it evokes extra-musical sounds: sirens, moans, the lowing of a wounded animal. In 'Returning Into Darkness,' the swooping lines that recur in the solo cello part, interspersed with bouts of frenetic activity, convey a state of emotional emergency and a certain neurotic rootlessness, unmoored but also unwilling to commit. A similar fluidity governs the ensemble sound, which swells and tapers like a swarm of insects that can build to menacing proportions. Moment by moment, Larcher's command of color and Weilerstein's forceful performance were compelling, though over the course of 25 minutes, the constant slaloms induced little more than emotional whiplash. High glissandos also made an appearance in Montgomery's 'Chemiluminescence' for string orchestra, where they function like sonic will-o'-the-wisps glinting through the oceanic churn. This nine-minute piece wears its neo-Romantic heart on its sleeve from the first strains, reminiscent of Strauss's 'Metamorphosen,' that proceed in tender, halting motion. Ardent melodies in the violas, then cellos, are nearly submerged in the luscious ensemble. A choppy section whips up rhythmic excitement before leading into an ambiguous ending with gleaming violins undercut by a restive repeated figure in the lower strings. From Kopatchinskaja's first double-stopped notes on Wednesday, it was clear that glossy tone and full-bodied violin-ness would be a low priority in her reading of Stravinsky's neo-Classical Violin Concerto. And a good thing, too: The rough, scratchy sounds she drew from her instrument with punishing bow strokes suited the abrasive brilliance of the first movement, in which Stravinsky sets the soloist and individual wind players in gleeful competition against one another. In the inner two movements, Kopatchinskaja allowed brief glimpses of a more songful side, including a memorably tender duet with a solo bassoon. But her approach to the score is that of a character actor unconcerned with favorable optics. When the drama demands it, Kopatchinskaja is more than happy to dig for ugly sounds including squeals, rattles and the kind of fuzzy whistles called wolf tones that can result from competing sound oscillations inside a string instrument and which players usually work hard to avoid. The entire last movement, played with toneless fury at dizzying speed, might have been called 'Dances With Wolves.' Dressed in a gown that paid homage to the folklore-inspired costumes worn in Ballets Russes' 'The Rite of Spring,' Kopatchinskaja crouched, bobbed and weaved in what sometimes looked like a sacrificial dance of her own. At the final, explosive note the audience sprang to its feet. Kopatchinskaja's first encore lasted all of 90 seconds: a Dadaistic miniature, 'Crin' by Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, in which she vocalized a virtuosic stream of nonsense while performing acrobatics up and down the fingerboard. She followed it with a cadenza that she wrote, distilling themes from Stravinsky's concerto along with ghostly echoes of Bach; it ended in a vertiginous pas de deux with the orchestra's concertmaster, Frank Huang. In duet, their wildly different sounds — his impeccably polished, hers raspy and urgent — came together in an unexpectedly moving demonstration of how much diversity can fit into classical music and how much of it seems to be thriving at this institution, even, and perhaps especially, in this season's no-man's-land between leaders.
