Tag: cso

Showing Chicago To My Guest

One of the conference attendees (and my good friend) stayed at my house for the whole event and the weekend after, which was great for both of us, and we were each other’s moral support :). It was her second visit to Chicago, and this time, not only did I show her places in the city she hadn’t seen before, but also, I walked with her around Rogers Park and showed all the best local spots, because she and her family will stay with me in August.

An L-train turning
A bridge going up
Lunch at the Art Institute Member’s Lounge
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Two CSO Concerts

Just to note that I had some life during the past two weeks, not just conferences, papers, submissions, and millions of other things.

The first one was on April 13, a joint CSO/Joffrey performance. The first part was just CSO, but both pieces were extra special. The first was Chevalier de Saint-George’s First Symphony (and I am all into him since I learned about his existence, which, I hate to admit, happened fairly recently). The second one was Hayden’s Farewell Symphony, which, again, I knew nothing about, and I just thought that all Haydn’s symphonies are the same. The musicians didn’t have the candles on their music stands as they technically should for this piece, but they were still walking away until the last two violins were left. Below is not the CSO performance, but just to show what it looks like:

Then, after the intermission, we had the Joffrey on stage! In fact, they were warming up during the intermission, and everyone in the audience started taking photos 🙂

I especially loved the last piece, Le Bouef sur le Toit, by Darius Milhaud. Of course, below is just the music, without the ballet, and trust me, that was something worth seeing!

The second concert was Mahler’s Seventh on April 17. My neighbor, with whom we usually go, didn’t know what it was going to be, and it was a surprise for her that we would be sitting for an hour and a half with no intermission. But then she was absolutely taken away by the music :). Some works sound especially good when you listen from up close, because you feel like you are surrounded by music, and Mahler’s Seventh is one of them.

Shostakovich’s 11th

It was definitely not the first time I heard Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, but I guess it has been a while. Or it’s just how it feels these days. Usually, I leave the CSO uplifted, with the general feeling that “life is not so bad,” but the 11th Symphony left me feeling hopeless, especially the finale. Too many cultural references, plus too many parallels with today’s situations (more than one). After the last accord, when the audience exploded with applause, I felt almost insulted by this sound: how could anybody applause after hearing that?!

There was one interesting episode at DevOps Day. I met one person at the beginning of the day (he was a partner of one of the speakers). He approached me later in the day, asking my opinion about some abstract situation (and he told me that he was constructing this situation based on the previous responder’s feedback). After several clarifying questions, I finally realized which moral dilemma he was trying to solve. I told him: you do not need to ask me about the hypothetical situation; I have been in a similar situation for the past three years. And I hate myself for not doing enough years before. I hate myself for not doing enough now, for having my spoon being too small to scoop the water out before the people drown. And I feel guilty for “living a life” and worrying about a million non-critical things while some seriously evil things are happening all over the world…

At the end of our conversation, that person thanked me for sharing my opinion and said that he was sure I would have something to say. I asked him why he was so sure, and he said that he listened to my talk and knew I had opinions.

I don’t know why I feel this conversation is related to Shostakovich’s 11th, but somehow, in my mind, it is!

Last Week In Review

I had some events to attend every day of that week, plus trying to get six hours of sleep every day (hopeless), plus everything else.

Out of the six cultural events I attended last week, one was “above categorization” (the screening of the “20 Days in Mariupol), two were in the category “OK, but I won’t lose much if I didn’t attend,” and three were great.

The two were “The Fat Ham” in Goodman

and “Clue” at the CIBC theater.

The audience was ecstatic at both shows, so I guess I should attribute my ambivalence to “I am not in the mood for “just funny” things” these days.

The ones I loved.

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CSO Concert – Stella Chen

She is brilliant! It was so special to see her so close from our first-row seats, to see how the CSO musicians looked at her during her amazing solos, and to see David Chen nodding approvingly. And she enjoys what she is doing so much!

Classic Encounter At The CSO

Still filling in the blanks for last week :). On Thursday, my neighbor and I went to the CSO. The program featured four pieces related to the sea: Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest, and Korngold’s Suite from The Sea Hawk. A real gift, each piece is a gem.

That was also the only time this season when we had tickets for a pre-concert Classic Encounter with Terry Hemmert.

As usual, it was a great discussion, this time with Clarinet John Yen, and they played the sciences from the Sea Hawk on the screen. A side note – as a part of the cost cuts, I guess, they stopped serving food and only served wine and cookies (and they gave you a drink token at the entrance). Just to know for the future to eat before going there 🙂

More Cultural Activities

Thursday at CSO. A very French concert 🙂 The legendary Jean-Yves Thibaudet (not as young as in the pictures, but magnificent!). Conductor Stephane Deneve. All-French program: Boulanger (a woman composer who died young, I never heard of her!), Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel. It appears to be my last concert of this CSO season: the Sunday concert was unfortunately postponed, and I exchanged all the rest of my tickets for the. next season since I will be out for the second half of June).

Friday: “English” in Goodman Theater. Full house. The audience laughed and cried. The program said that there would be a play discussion after the show, but there was no announcement, so we left. There was still enough to process, even without a discussion.

From the Goodman website:

“English Only.” Four adult students in Karaj, Iran are studying for the Test of English as a Foreign Language—the key to their green card, medical school admission or family reunification. Chasing fluency through a maze of word games, listening exercises and show-and-tell sessions, they hope that one day, English will make them whole. But it might be splitting them each in half.

Saturday

On Saturday, I allowed myself to have a day of complete relaxation. I know that the description that will follow won’t sound like a relaxation to many people, but it definitely was for me.

For the first time that week, I had breakfast at home with Boris, and we took time, and talked, and I was not running anywhere. Then I took a train to the look to meet one of my peers with whom I wanted to talk but didn’t have time before or during the conference. I gave her a mini-tour of the Loop while we were walking to the CAC building, where her actual tour was about to start.

Then I returned home, and we had lunch. Then, we did a couple of small house projects and headed to the CSO. It was the first time that I booked a pre-concert dinner at the Thomas Club on the 9th floor of the Chicago Symphony Building -and we both loved it! Everything: the view, the ambiance, the food and drinks, and the service was just perfect!

As for the concert, it was something I never heard before! Both the CSO and the Jazz in Lincoln Center Orchestra were on stage, and the performance they gave together was smashing!

Both Shostakovich and Prokofiev’s pieces are more than well-known to us: most of them were often on the radio in the Soviet Union, but their interpretation was so unusual that we could hardly recognize them. Two hours of pure joy 🙂

Elijah At CSO

On Thursday, I went to listen to Mendelssohn’s Elijah in the CSO: I needed to replace two matinee concerts for which I was going to take my mom and which I couldn’t make because of my schedule changes. I hadn’t heard Elijah before and was slightly unsure how the two-and-a-half hours of oratorio would go with my mom (and with me, for that matter).

And it turned out to be two-and-a-half hours of such joy that it was almost difficult to keep being joyful 🙂

Mom loved it and said that she never thought Mendelssohn would write something like that :). As usual, she did find things to complain about, but that was minor.

The CSO has an Instagram post about this concert; you can scroll to see the pictures of the singers, but unfortunately, you can’t hear them. I didn’t find any recordings with this particular cast; if I will find it, I will add a link here.

I wondered why it was performed in English, and then I learned that its premier was in English and that there were both English and German versions from the start.

After a questionable Aida last week, it was such a delight! The impeccable voices, the moving music, and all the performers united by the great masterpiece – it couldn’t be better!

CSO and Forte

The only outing Boris and I had in Chicago this week was going to the CSO on Thursday (and going to dinner in Forte before that). It was really-really great (I mean the concert, but the dinner was also good :))

Jakub Hrusa really impressed me, and Gil Shaham was great as usual!

With a different conductor, but the same piece, the same orchestra, and the same Gil Shaham 🙂

When he was called for an anchor, he shared a story from the beginning of the pandemic, when composer Scott Wheeler wrote a piece about isolation, and sent it to him. Gil Shaham performed this piece for his anchor; it is called Isolation Rag :))

I captured this moment of Mr. Chen chatting with the youth during the intermission. He always gets engaged with the audience, and this time, I saw him signing the program for one of the teens, and later, I saw them passing us on the way to their seats showing the happiest smiles!