Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

@qqcincysymphony continued its concert offerings for April 2025 with a wonderful program headlined by one of the most popular symphonies in the repertoire, Ludwig von Beethoven’s Eroica.Under guest conductor Case Scaglione, music director of the Orchestre national d’Île de France, the orchestra opened with a seldom-heard jewel of a work…

@cincysymphony opened April 2025 with a thrilling program headlined by one of the true masterpieces of early 20th-century German orchestral music, Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie.Under the direction of guest conductor Donald Runnicles, the orchestra opened with a vibrant reading of one of the most uniquely obscure pieces by an equally…

@uc_ccm concluded its Opera Series for the 2024-25 academic year with a gorgeous performance of Nico Muhly’s chamber opera Dark Sisters, a showcase for six of the finest sopranos of our generation.Inspired by the events surrounding the most infamous raids on compounds controlled by the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, Stephen…

@kentuckysymphony and @nkusota joined forces this afternoon for a wonderful performance of what may be the most popular opera in all of Western classical music, Georges Bizet’s Carmen.First performed in March 1875, only three months before Bizet’s untimely death at the age of 36 and based on a novella by…

@cincysymphony thrilled a near-capacity audience at @musichallcincy with a program featuring one of the most popular of all Russian symphonic works, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s suite Scheherazade.Under the direction of guest conductor Keitaro Harada (@khconductor), former CSO associate conductor and incoming music director of @daytonphilharmonic, the orchestra opened with a thrilling performance…

What a fantastic celebration of Robyn Lana’s 30-plus years as founding artistic director of @cincinnati_youth_choir. With a program titled Roots and Wings, the choir’s six ensembles explored a diverse sampling of the more than 80 works Lana as commissioned during her tenure.Standout highlights included dynamic performances by CYC’s flagship ensemble,…

@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…