Samuel Wigutow

Samuel Wigutow reviewed 23 classical music and opera performances for ChicagoCritic.com, 2012–2014, including Lyric Opera of Chicago productions and Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts.

Gala Benefit Evening at the Ravinia Festival

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In short, although none of the repertoire here was completely first-rate (the Mozart overture excepted), and despite my reservations about Joshua Bell’s playing, this was a highly engaging evening of music, and the performance of the Dvořák was beyond reproach. James Conlon clearly has an exceptional rapport with this ensemble and often brings out its best; I, for one, would gladly welcome him as a frequent guest during the regular CSO season at Orchestra Hall.

All-Beethoven Program at Ravinia Festival

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The opening performance of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture at the CSO concert he presided over at Ravinia on Thursday evening gave barely a glimpse of the heights to which his conducting would rise at its best over the course of the program. The orchestra played especially well for him, with clean articulation and a good deal of alertness, but the piece – part of the incidental music written to Goethe’s play of the same name, but perhaps not Beethoven at his most inspired – never quite came alive, between the at-times wooden phrasing (especially in the woodwinds) and lack of passionate abandon; the somewhat restrained tempo did not help matters, either.

Emerson String Quartet at Ravinia Festival

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The venerable Emerson String Quartet opened their Monday-night program at Ravinia with what is arguably the greatest piece for string-quartet by the greatest master of the genre. Op. 131 is part of the series of five quartets that together represent Beethoven’s last major achievement – he was dead within a year of its 1826 completion. Composed in seven movements instead of the usual four, it is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to create a string quartet of symphonic sweep, and the result is at once dazzling and overwhelming: by turns melancholy, mischievous, serene, and tragic. If one can follow the many diverse threads brought together over the course of these seven movements, it is an experience not quite like any other.

Juilliard String Quartet at Ravinia Festival

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The esteemed Juilliard Quartet must be America’s longest-running major chamber ensemble, with a career stretching all the way back to 1946. Today’s lineup is, of course, much younger, although Joel Krosnick has been the quartet’s cellist since 1974. And however one feels about their interpretative sensibility, it cannot be denied that these are serious-minded, virtuosic musicians.

Zukerman ChamberPlayers at Ravinia

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I relished the chance to hear Zukerman at Ravinia, joined by colleagues previously unknown to me but clearly trained in a similar tradition (cellist Amanda Forsythe and pianist Angela Cheng), especially given the program’s pleasing repertoire and the interpretative impact to which the virtuosity and musical warmth on display was joined.

Rusalka

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…how Wagnerian this music is (for the late Dvořák of the “New World” Symphony and the “American” Quartet, at any rate). However, even if many passages and harmonic turns here could seemingly have come straight from Tristan und Isolde, this music is more sweet and less decadent than Wagner can often be, and there are frequent interludes of Czech folk dance and folk song.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)

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As Barber’s preeminence among his output seems to have been established by a nearly unanimous consensus since its premier, more or less agreed to by Rossini himself, casual opera-goers who are given the chance to get regularly re-acquainted in the theater with this alone among the composer’s vast output may safely assume that it is that most worthy of such attention. And of course it is a delightfully sparkling, lyrical, and mischievous work, even if the music may not quite erase memories of Mozart, whom it often evokes and to which it ultimately yields the last degree of poignancy and memorability – it is hard not to enjoy this lovely opera.

Otello

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Verdi’s masterful scoring was for the most part beautifully served in the Lyric Opera’s current production. The Lyric orchestra often makes up with warmth and style what it may lack in absolute virtuosity, and it is generally at its most impressive in the later Romantic repertoire, where color is so important. While more incisive articulation may perhaps have been welcome at points, there was little to complain about, and much to commend, in its performance of Otello under French conductor Bertrand de Billy, who is making his Lyric debut with these performances

Mozart Magic: Ravinia Festival

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If anything, the orchestral playing grew even more pointed and lively in the Concerto for Three Pianos, an earlier work which, like so much of Mozart’s earlier output, is disarming in its inspired combination of craftsmanship and charm; if anything, the slow movement is even lovelier than that in the later Paris Symphony, although the finale, written in the tempo of a minuet, is somewhat underwhelming and low-energy for a Mozart finale.

Fray Plays Mozart at the CSO

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David Fray

I was highly disappointed that at seemingly the last minute, pianist David Fray chose to substitute for Mozart’s glorious Piano Concerto No. 25 in C the relatively overplayed Concerto No. 20 in D minor. While, like all of Mozart’s late piano concertos, this work is on a very high plane, it arguably lacks some of the scintillating magic of the others; at times it even begins to sound like Mozart is writing in rote-tragic mode. In fairness to Mozart, this evening’s performance did the work few favors. After an expressively wooden orchestral introduction,

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