Gathering Note - Notes from the concert hall

Hunger, guilt and violence drive a haunting Der Silbersee at Chicago Opera Theater

Kurt Weill and Georg Kaiser’s Der Silbersee (‘The Silverlake’) has never been an easy work to classify. Somewhere between play, opera, and political fable, this 1933 hybrid resists the tidy categories that make theatrical works digestible. Chicago Opera Theater’s recent production embraces this essential ambiguity and builds its strength from it. Billed as ‘A Winter’s Tale,’ the work unfolds in cold, clear light. What begins as biting social satire gradually thaws into something lyrical and unresolved. Weill’s score grows increasingly hauntingly melodic as the narrative spirals inward.

The history surrounding Silbersee matters. The premiere came less than three weeks after Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933. Germany’s political climate was already darkening. For both Weill and Kaiser, this would be their last production in the Weimar Republic before exile. Weill fled in March 1933 and eventually settled in the United States while Kaiser settled in Switzerland. It is a final artistic statement from two men standing at the edge of an abyss they could not fully see.

Klaus Mäkelä’s imminent arrival brings Sibelius, Lindberg and a thrilling Walton surprise to CSO’s 2026-2027 season

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming season has been announced, and there’s a lot I could say about it. Let’s start with the obvious: With the 2026-2027 season, we are one year closer to the official start of the Klaus Mäkelä era with the CSO. In many ways, it feels as though the young Finn is already ours. Over the last two seasons, he has spent an increasing number of weeks on the podium at Orchestra Hall. And even before this, Mäkelä seemed everywhere in the local imagination. He was simply all that anyone who follows the CSO could talk about.

With his arrival now imminent, I am struck by how undefinable his musical identity remains as a conductor. He is clearly a congenial partner for the orchestra. He favors the large orchestral staples that suit the Chicago sound.

Yet, there are hints of an interest that wanders beyond these well-worn tropes. Based on these hints, I even went so far as to bet my spouse that we would see Andrew Norman’s Play on the Chicago schedule for the upcoming season. Mäkelä has conducted it in Oslo, Amsterdam, and Berlin in recent years. It seemed logical he would bring the piece to Michigan Avenue.

Civic Orchestra of Chicago brings vitality to Price, Walker, Kay and Dvořák at Orchestra Hall

Amid a Chicago orchestral landscape dominated by marquee ensembles, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago tends to exist in the shadows. That’s unfortunate, because this century‑old training orchestra—founded in 1919 by Frederick Stock, then music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—remains one of the city’s most earnest and quietly radical institutions. It’s made up of early‑career musicians, players straddling the line between their conservatory training and professional life. Many alums move on to orchestras across the country. Quite a few land seats in the CSO itself. Yet the Civic’s real gift to the city isn’t its alumni roster. It’s the opportunity audiences receive to enjoy adventurous music in Orchestra Hall at a steal: general admission tickets start at $5.

The Civic Orchestra has also become an artistically compelling proposition under the direction of principal conductor Ken-David Masur. Beyond the typical warhorses, Masur has steered toward Copland and Takemitsu, Lutosławski and Chávez. Its March 2 concert was no exception, pairing Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor with works by three Black American composers — Ulysses Kay, George Walker and Florence Price. It was an evening built around two, persistent questions: Who gets remembered, and why?

Handel’s triumphal and somber sides shine at festival close

George Frederic Handel’s career was interwoven tightly with the British monarchy, a relationship that spanned the exuberant heights of national peace and the somber depths of royal loss. In an afternoon of starkly contrasting emotional colors, the final performance of the 2026 Handel Week Festival Orchestra and Chorus gathered musicians from across the Chicago area to bring this dual legacy to life.

On March 1, they offered a fitting finale to three weeks of programming that has animated Pilgrim Congregational Church in Oak Park. The event paired the brassy, triumphal optimism of the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate with the heartbroken beauty of the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline known informally as The Ways of Zion Do Mourn.

This is how festivals should end—with large, multifaceted works that allow for genuine artistic synthesis. For the most part, festival organizer Dennis Northway, his orchestra, and four soloists—Kimberly McCord (soprano), Michelle Wrighte (mezzo-soprano), Cameo Humes (tenor), and Noah Gartner (baritone)—delivered where it most mattered. The afternoon oscillated between triumphant and solemn registers; throughout, the chorus and quartet remained the focal point of Northway’s conception.

Marc-André Hamelin champions Ives’ sprawling Concord at Orchestra Hall

Canadian pianist and polymath Marc-André Hamelin has been one of a small handful of pianists pushing for a reconsideration of Charles Ives’ piano music, especially Sonata No. 2, better known as the Concord. Whether his advocacy earns the piece a coveted spot in the standard piano repertory remains to be seen. For now, though, Ives fans must grab their chances when they can to hear Hamelin play it.

One such opportunity arrived February 22, when Hamelin performed the Concord Sonata as part of Symphony Center Presents’ piano series. The Ives’ sat at the heart of the program he brought to Orchestra Hall. At nearly an hour, it swallowed the first half whole. The second half was more approachable: Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces) and Scriabin’s Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp major. The whole program gave Hamelin a stage to do what he does best — championing strange, difficult music with the kind of playing that makes you wonder why anyone ignores it.

Mäkelä’s heroic survey in Chicago

Klaus Mäkelä is back in Chicago for one program before taking the orchestra on a week-long tour of the Northeast. A performance at Carnegie Hall—featuring the same program he conducted this weekend, a survey of two heroic depictions in Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite—anchors the tour.

This isn’t Mäkelä’s first journey to Carnegie Hall with one of his orchestras. He has previously brought both the Orchestre de Paris and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to the storied venue, receiving mixed but always passionate critical responses. Hopefully this next foray into New York’s unforgiving critical landscape fares better.

Based on Friday evening’s performance, it should. Both works chosen by the Finnish conductor hold deep historical connections to the Chicago Symphony. Theodore Thomas led the U.S. premieres of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, and both “The Swan of Tuonela” and “Lemminkäinen’s Return” from Sibelius’s suite. And a few years ago, Mäkelä even programmed “The Swan” in one of his early guest appearances here. These scores clearly suit him.

Handel Week Festival opens in Oak Park with concerti and a Roman rarity

Each February for the past 27 years, Dennis Northway has convened musicians to perform the work of George Frideric Handel in Oak Park. Not the Messiah that appears with metronomic regularity each Christmas, nor even the Water Music or Royal Fireworks that surface on classical radio, but the unfamiliar catalog that gradually receded from public memory after Handel’s death. Even after relocating from Chicagoland to the Pacific Northwest, Northway has returned annually to sustain this unlikely tradition.

That there is a Handel Week Festival at all feels something like a miracle. The composer who once dominated European musical life now occupies a peculiar position: universally recognized for a single oratorio, largely unknown for everything else. Yet here, in the sanctuary of Pilgrim Congregational Church, the thread holds.

Valentine’s Day weekend brings enchanting, intimate Cendrillon to the CheckOut

On Valentine’s Day weekend, Chicago City Opera brought Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon (Cinderella) to the CheckOut in Lakeview, proving that you don’t need a proscenium arch to create magic. The CheckOut is a former 7-Eleven on North Clark Street, now revived by Access Contemporary Music and composer Seth Boustead as a venue for chamber music and new music events.

The experiment succeeded. The February 14 performance was nearly sold out, drawing a varied crowd of younger and older listeners. As the venue’s first opera, it felt like a natural extension of salon culture: exclusive in its scale yet welcoming and unfussy.

New and upcoming

Joyce DiDonato and Time for Three perform Emily — No Prisoner Be this week in Chicago. Kevin Puts composed this evening-length song cycle specifically for these artists, weaving together 26 movements that create a continuous, immersive journey through Emily Dickinson’s poetry. With Puts’ prior collaborations with both DiDonato and Time for Three, this promises to be something truly special. Ticket and concert information.

Oak Park’s Handel Week Festival kicks off this Sunday, February 15, at Pilgrim Congregational Church, just a few blocks from my house. I had no idea this festival existed until recently, and I’m genuinely surprised to find it practically in my backyard. Not sure what to expect from a mid-February dose of baroque music, but I’m counting on it to chase away the winter blues.

The same weekend Chicago City Opera presents Massenet’s Cendrillon at The Checkout. It’s a gem that doesn’t get performed as often as La Bohème or Carmen. Its melodies are accessible and moving, the story is timeless, and it’s a genuine treat for anyone who loves beautiful music.

At the end of the month, Klaus Mäkelä returns for what promises to be a concert you won’t want to miss. Mäkelä’s program pairs Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Legends with Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. His approach to Sibelius has divided critics, but having a music director genuinely invested in the Finnish master bodes well for Chicago. Just as Muti shaped the CSO’s lyrical sensibility, Mäkelä’s understanding of Sibelius may bring new shading to the orchestra’s collective sound.

Seattle Opera has announced its 2026/27 season. Staying true to its recent tradition of one concert performance per season, the company will present Léo Delibes’s Lakmé in concert. They’ll also stage Gabriela Lena Frank’s El último sueño de Frida y Diego, an opera that Lyric Opera of Chicago presents this spring. Seattle Opera’s latest concert performance was Strauss’s Daphne, reviewed by Lisa Hirsch here and Thomas May here. Meanwhile, San Francisco Opera’s 2026/27 season brings Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Wagner’s Das Rheingold, the latter launching a complete Ring cycle that culminates in 2028.

Hide the moon! Hide the stars!

Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for the first English edition of the play

After finally seeing Lyric Opera’s current Salome, I’m convinced more than ever that this isn’t just a fine opera, it’s riveting theater.

For this run, Lyric is using David McVicar’s darkly disturbing 2008 production for the Royal Opera House, and it works. The upstairs/downstairs staging pits Herod’s decadent elite against quarreling religious factions in a way that percolates with tension. My only quibble? “The Dance of the Seven Veils” felt a touch too abstract. But everywhere else—especially in Salome’s mad, final scene—McVicar’s vision hit its mark.