Gathering Note

Notes from the concert hall

  • A Mozart mashup

    Zach Carstensen
    Photo Credit: Chicago City Opera

    Small, storefront opera companies survive on agility, nerve and an unwavering commitment to their art form. They don’t pursue opera on a grand scale, which gives them a unique freedom. In Chicago, where “Off-Loop” theater has long flourished, Chicago City Opera recently demonstrated this spirit with a nimble, inventive double bill at the Fulton Street Collective in West Town. The pairing joined two compact Mozart Singspiels separated by nearly two decades: Bastien und Bastienne, written in 1768 when Wolfgang was a mere 12 years old, and Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario), composed in 1786 when he was 30. The Impresario satirizes the vanities and frictions of theatrical life; Bastien und Bastienne is a pastoral comedy of young love.

    Rather than staging them as separate pieces, the company’s creative team, led by director Alannah Spencer, combined them into a single dramatic experience. Spencer reworked Impresario’s German dialogue and many of its numbers into English and streamlined the comedy. Wisely, she retained the work’s two soprano arias in their original German as part of a transformation of this work into a battle  between two sopranos for the lead role in a small theater company’s upcoming performance of Bastien und Bastienne – and Impresario’s arias are their audition pieces. Valerie Beck’s Madame Herz secures the part, leaving Tracey Furling’s Mademoiselle Silberklang stuck as an embittered understudy. Meanwhile, tenor Matthew Peckham and baritone Ian Murrell try to keep the audition from falling apart.

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  • From the New World

    Zach Carstensen
    Photo Credit: Elliot Mandel

    Though Giancarlo Guerrero is barely into his tenure as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Grant Park Orchestra, he has already signaled how he intends to shape this institution. The 2026 season has leaned into American music, a nod to both the country’s 250th anniversary and the festival’s Depression-era mission of accessibility and civic purpose. The programming has been populist without pandering, and the pairings have been thoughtful. Florence Price, Gabriela Lena Frank, John Corigliano, and Christopher Theofanidis have all appeared on the season, while Michael Daugherty and Julia Wolfe are represented on its final program. On August 12, two works associated with American minimalism shared the bill with Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World.”

    Guerrero has also proved himself a practical conductor. Pritzker Pavilion is a generous civic space but a difficult musical one, with amplification and urban noise conspiring to drown out nuance. His performances have met those challenges head-on. He keeps tempos firm, textures clear, and the orchestra alert. 

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  • In and out

    In and out

    Zach Carstensen

    As August humidity settles over Chicago, the Rush Hour Concerts series at Holy Name Cathedral is drawing to a close. The format is simple: brief chamber music recitals designed to offer downtown-area workers an alternative  to their usual rush hour commute. For its penultimate program of the season on August 11, the series brought together violinist Eric Gratz, violist Joseph Skerik, cellist Haddon Kay, and pianist Victor Santiago Asunción. They presented a full nave audience with an inspired pairing of American composers: Caroline Shaw, who is securing a central place in contemporary concert programming, and Arthur Foote, a late nineteenth-century figure who faded into history and is now being reconsidered.

    Opening the concert with Shaw’s ten-minute piano quartet, Thousandth Orange, was a keen choice. Shaw, who made waves in 2013 when she became the youngest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music at age 30, writes works that bridge musical generations without compromise. Her growing presence on concert programs is not an exercise in tokenism; it reflects an authentic ability to capture the soul of classical tradition while sounding fresh and immediate.

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  • Five classical albums everyone should own

    Zach Carstensen

    A friend called me the other day with a question we’re debating soon: What are the five essential classical albums everyone should own?

    No other constraints. Just five records that belong in your collection, whether they’re on a vinyl shelf or bookmarked in a streaming app. It’s a useful question because it forced me to think about what the average listener actually needs when it comes to classical music. If you don’t listen to classical music often, what should you reach for when building a foundation? What makes a record worth returning?

    I’m less interested in naming the five greatest recordings than in choosing five albums that show a listener just how wide the possibilities of classical music can be. Some of my picks push the prompt’s boundaries. One is an outright cheat. But here they are.

    1. Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 – Carlos Kleiber, Vienna Philharmonic

    Beethoven is the non-negotiable cornerstone of Western classical music. Nobody matched his genius, command of form, or emotional force. There are 32 piano sonatas and countless string quartets, but when people think Beethoven, they think symphonies.

    This recording makes the cut, even if the pairing is uneven. The Seventh Symphony doesn’t do much for me. For me, the Seventh is essentially a long exercise in form and dance music, and half the time I hear it, I’m bored. It has its moments, but it’s far from his best work.

    The Fifth is the real event. It’s what most people picture when they imagine Beethoven: a violent struggle with fate that reaches inside you and demands attention.

    Kleiber’s direction is taut and driven, and the recording remains exceptional for its era. He also carries a legendary mystique. He kept his engagements limited and made relatively few recordings. It’s the kind of album a casual listener can enjoy, or a visiting friend can spot on your shelf and immediately respect.

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  • Rage and remembrance

    Zach Carstensen
    John Corigliano. Photo Credit: John Corigliano

    Giancarlo Guerrero leads the Grant Park Orchestra in two performances of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, paired with Mozart’s Requiem in a discerning program. Together, these two monumental pieces create a dialogue about mortality and loss. Though separated by two centuries, both works wrestle with the theme of untimely death: Corigliano’s symphony in its raw emotional immediacy, Mozart’s through the Catholic liturgical tradition.

    Corigliano’s symphony is the kind of piece that yields considerably more live than on recording. The cumulative force of the orchestra in concert, including the third movement’s poignant cello solo, creates an experience that no recording can fully capture. It’s a work that needs the breathing room of live performance, the collective attention of an audience, and the spontaneity that comes from musicians performing in real time. Go if you can!

    Last fall the New York Philharmonic played Symphony No. 1, my thoughts on that performance and two additional concerts from roughly the same period are here.

    A recent performance of Symphony No. 1 by the Queer Urban Orchestra

  • Worthwhile reads: King Roger and American orchestras

    Zach Carstensen

    Here are two essays well worth your time if you’re looking for something excellent to read.

    The first is Garth Greenwell’s recap of his time at the Des Moines Metro Opera’s summer season. While most of the piece centers on King Roger and its distinctly queer presentation, it also dives into a larger question about what is possible in opera today. Greenwell argues that the Des Moines Opera stands completely apart from its peers — even giants like the Metropolitan Opera.

    For instance:

    “Often during the evening I thought to myself The Met could never. Could never commit so much to a niche, risky, unapologetically queer opera; could never be so transgressive; could never dare to bring its audience to such uncomfortable, exciting, transformative places. Could never trust its audience so much, could never—and this is the saddest thing I feel too often about the Met these days—trust theater enough. One of the remarkable things about the Des Moines production was how absolutely committed it was to opera as a theatrical experience; you never felt, as you feel almost always at the Met in recent seasons, that it was aspiring to be something else, something Hollywood, something IMAX.”

    The longer I sit with my own time in Des Moines, the more convinced I am that other companies could learn a thing or two from their administrative team. Hopefully someone, somewhere is taking note of their accomplishment beyond those who love the art form.

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  • American music, unequal light

    Zach Carstensen
    Photo Credit: Norman Timonera

    For the nation’s 250th anniversary, Chicago’s Grant Park Orchestra has spent its summer festival surveying the American classical music tradition. The ensemble’s music directors have long possessed an appetite for discovery, unearthing obscure or overlooked corners of the repertoire. But the American works that have graced the Pritzker Pavilion in recent weeks suggest that this adventurous orchestra can still find fresh terrain to explore.

    Wednesday evening offered a rich example of this. Guest conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson led a program that opened with William Grant Still’s Festive Overture, continued with Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, featuring pianist Michelle Cann, and concluded with Florence Price’s Third Symphony. Taken together, these works chart a Black American musical lineage in the first half of the twentieth century.

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  • The conductor I always rooted for

    Zach Carstensen
    Charles Sykes/AP

    A belated note on Marin Alsop stepping down as Ravinia’s chief conductor. It’s not entirely unexpected. Hannah Edgar dives deeper in her piece for the Tribune.

    The news isn’t a shocker. The maestro hits 70 this year and juggles commitments in the US and Europe. Could the shifting artistic leadership at the CSO be a factor in her decision? During the hunt for Ricardo Muti’s successor, Alsop was often rumored to have the inside track.

    I’ve been lucky enough to catch her conduct many concerts over the years, including a standout performance of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony with the Seattle Symphony while she was still at the Colorado Symphony. This was before the classical music world truly recognized her talent.

    That concert took place during a tense era for the Seattle Symphony. After over 20 years, Gerard Schwarz was seen as stale as music director. Alsop managed to ease, if not erase, the tension and dissatisfaction that had become evident in SSO performances. I wished then that the board would pursue Alsop. She would have been a perfect match for her musical interests and the vision she later brought to Baltimore.

    She was always one of the conductors I hoped would join a major US orchestra. Sadly, it never happened. But when she linked up with the CSO and Ravinia, the possibility felt more tangible than ever. 

  • Bacewicz meets Haydn

    Bacewicz meets Haydn

    Zach Carstensen

    What draws a critic to one performance over another is entirely subjective. For me, it is sometimes the chance to hear a specific performer; other times, it is the opportunity to encounter a piece that is new, recently composed, or uniquely relevant to a city’s cultural life. When a concert promises both a compelling ensemble and a thoughtful program, live performance approaches its best alchemy.

    That was certainly the case earlier this week at Holy Name Cathedral, during the latest installment of Classical Music Chicago’s Rush Hour Concerts. Throughout the summer, chamber groups present 45-minute, bite-sized recitals in the cathedral nave. It is a brief, accessible format that works surprisingly well. The July 7 program featured the ascendent Varo String Quartet performing two works: Grażyna Bacewicz’s String Quartet No. 4 and Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in C major, Op. 20, No. 2, from his celebrated “Sun” quartets.

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  • King Roger at the threshold

    King Roger at the threshold

    Zach Carstensen

    An immense censer hung motionless over the stage, illuminated by four standing candelabras and suspended above the pit orchestra. The scale of it was unsettling. For a long moment, those were the only visible objects. Then, one by one, members of the chorus filed stately into the Pote Theatre, their measured procession lending the scene a ritual air. The archbishop released the censer, and it swung ominously over the orchestra like a pendulum. Then the chorus launched the opening invocation: “Holy, holy!” King Roger and his wife, Roxana, entered. An altar rose silently and swiftly from beneath the stage, drawing the audience into a world of anxious mystery, where certainty begins to lose its grip.

    That sense of mystery lies at the heart of King Roger, Karol Szymanowski’s singular masterpiece. It is not a typical opera. Premiered in Warsaw in 1926, it focuses on interior transformation rather than external conflict. The plot follows a medieval king after he encounters a mysterious figure moving among his people like a prophet, preaching a gospel of sensuality and liberation. What follows is Roger’s slow unraveling: he is horrified by the collapse of his own convictions, yet also tempted by the stranger’s offer.

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