Week 45 Ravinia 03

A
MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64
INTERMISSION
MAHLER Symphony No. 7
James Conlon conductor
Sarah Chang violin

B
MAHLER Symphony No. 8 in E-flat Major, (Symphony of a Thousand)
James Conlon conductor
[Redacted] Symphony Chorus
Chicago Children’s Choir
Milwaukee Symphony Chorus

C
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
INTERMISSION
DVORÁK Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70
James Conlon conductor
Jorge Federico Osorio piano

Monday
off

Tuesday
11-1:30 rehearsal

Wednesday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (A)

Thursday
11-1:30 2:30-5 rehearsals

Friday
off

Saturday
2-4:30 rehearsal
7:30 concert (B)

Sunday
12-3 rehearsal
5 concert (C)

Last week ran the gamut. Haitink and Lang Lang – it’s hard to think of them as part of the same profession.

Haitink’s Mahler 6, excellent as it was, served more to bring to mind the sort of performances we used to give here regularly. Kudos to Andrew Patner for making the same point with more eloquence.

Apparently the Gala concert went beautifully, not to mention on time and on budget, a healthy change from the not so distant past.

The Sunday concert was a weird amalgamation of the Schreker Chamber Symphony, part of Conlon’s earnest Breaking the Silence series, and Lang Lang playing a couple of warhorses, the entire lurid spectacle projected onto huge screens. As my attention inevitably wandered, I caught sight of audience members in the center section craning their necks to look at the screens rather than focusing on the stage straight ahead.

The high point of the week had to come during rehearsals for the Schrecker, when a colleague, asking for an emphatic cutoff from Conlon, made an unfortunate word choice and instead asked the Maestro if he could ‘whack us off’. Fortunately that sort of thing doesn’t happen too often.