Monthly Archives: February 2018
CSO’s Upcoming Season
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 2018-2019 catalog arrived, along with a letter suggesting that due to my attendance habits I would benefit financially from a subscription. When I received the same catalogue last year, I considered subscribing for this current season, but in the end didn’t. That reluctance caused me to miss out on this past […]
Mitsuko Uchida’s Schubert Sonatas
Sunday matinees at Symphony Center are becoming a bit of a weakness of mine. This past weekend’s event was a recital by the legendary pianist Mitsuko Uchida. Recently, I’ve been investigating classical Viennese composer Franz Schubert, and coincidentally Dame Uchida was doing an all-Schubert program – three sonatas for solo piano. It was the combination […]
Violin Grasshopper
I’m acquainted with a seven-year-old who has been playing the violin for a few months. I’ve talked about my passion for the violin with him and his dad on several occasions – once I even helped them through a broken string crisis. So we’re kind of violin buddies. On Thursday, his dad asked me if […]
Transcendent Etudes
Daniil Trifonov won the Grammy in the best classical solo album category this year for his two-disc recording of some of Liszt’s magnificent etudes for piano entitled Transcendental. I was fortunate enough to see the young Russian play at Symphony Center last year, and, knowing nothing about him, instantly became a fan – his technique […]
Ryan Libel 