“The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s CSOtv Sessions series … created in response to the COVID-19 plague … first came into being this past fall,” writes Hedy Weiss in Monday’s (2/1) WTTW TV (Chicago). “The chamber music-scaled concerts … provide various combinations of the bravura musicians of the CSO an opportunity to perform works that their intense pre-pandemic symphony schedule rarely made possible…. Ensembles … gather on the stage of Chicago’s Symphony Center. There is no audience… The expert camera work of Todd Rosenberg, combined with fine lighting design, home in on these socially distanced players in ways that bring the individual artistry and complex interplay of the musicians into unusually close focus…. Episode #1 (running now through Feb. 12) [includes] the effervescent ‘Petite Symphonie’ for wind instruments and strings by Charles Gounod … Mozart’s Quartet for Flute and Strings in D Major, [and] Ravel’s ravishing String Quartet in F Major…. In addition to the CSOtv Series, there also are many free offerings, including a CSO for Kids series, concerts from the CSO archives, and a newly introduced series of concerts by musicians from the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.”
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