Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

@cincysymphony opened its slate of concerts for March 2025 with a thrilling pairing of perhaps the most majestic orchestral music by Ottorino Respighi and a vocal/orchestral swansong by Richard Strauss.Under the direction of Giancarlo Guerrero, outgoing music director of the Nashville Symphony, the orchestra opened with one of the most…

@uc_ccm concluded its Graduate Opera Series for the 2024-25 academic year with a spectacular production of one of Benjamin Britten’s most underrated masterpieces, his 1960 operatic adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.Directed by Robin Guarino, this production gave the opera a science-fiction flair to a story of quarreling…

@vaecinci concluded a fantastic 2024-25 concert season with a program of rarely-heard masterpieces by 6 giants of Russian and Ukrainian music under the title Voices in Exile.Under the direction of the Russian-American conductor Elena Sharkova, the concert opened with two short movements from Rachmaninov’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, sung…

@uc_ccm’s Philharmonia continued its slate of performances for spring semester 2025 with an adventurous and thought-provoking program titled Northern Lights, pairing two somewhat lesser-known concertos by Sergei Prokofiev and Alexander Scriabin with two rarely-heard early masterworks by Jean Sibelius.Qi Liang, the newest winner of CCM’s Piano Concerro Competition and student…

@mayfestivalcincy celebrated the art of communal music making with a rare treat gracing the stage of @musichallcincy – a full concert by the May Festival’s choruses in collaboration with the @cincyboychoir. With a program of mostly contemporary music, including a world premiere commission, it was wonderful and moving to see…

@cincysymphony closed out February 2025 with a concert featuring one of the greatest violinists working today, Gil Shaham, tackling one of the most under-appreciated concertos in the repertoire by Antonín Dvořák.Under the direction of John Storgårds, chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, England, the concert opened with the…

@uc_ccm’s undergraduate Opera d’Arte program celebrated its 30th anniversary with a fun and invigorating production of Engelbert Humperdink’s opera Hänsel und Gretel, under the leadership of director Kenneth Shaw and conductor Brett Scott. A more lighthearted take on the eponymous fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it featured a relatively…

Oh what a joyous day it is to officially welcome maestro Cristian Măcelaru (@cristian.macelaru) into Cincinnati’s classical music community as the newest music director designate of @cincysymphony with a program of music old and new, popular and obscure headlined by Antonin Dvořák’s New World Symphony.The concert opened with a vibrant…

@cincysymphony continued its slate of concerts for winter 2025 with a program pairing works by two giants of 20th-century music, Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy, under the direction of German-born guest conductor Jun MärklThe program opened with an invigorating, bouncy performance of what may be Strauss’s wittiest tone poem, Till…

@uc_ccm’s Philharmonia opened its spring 2025 semester of performances with a program titled Wishful Thinking, pairing two uniquely different orchestral takes on the theme of spring. The first came in the form of Schumann’s ‘Spring’ Symphony (No. 1, written in 1841). The Philharmonia’s performance was wonderfully ebullient and wistful, in…