In Friday’s (2/25) Chicago Tribune, John von Rhein writes, “One of the great benefits local audiences derive from Esa-Pekka Salonen’s annual residencies with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is the opportunity to chart the fascinating directions in which the Finnish conductor is going as a composer. … Wednesday night’s Afterwork Masterworks program, which launched the multi-faceted Finn’s two-week residency at Symphony Center, had as its centerpiece his 2008-09 Violin Concerto, a work co-commissioned by the CSO, New York City Ballet and Los Angeles Philharmonic, which premiered it in 2009. Salonen wrote the half-hour concerto for the American virtuoso Leila Josefowicz, and it is her astonishing musical gifts and distinctive personality that shape its four movements from the inside out. This music begins as if in mid-thought and it ends with a sudden harmonic twist, as if the old were signaling the start of something new.” The program, led by Salonen, closed with Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 and will repeat over the weekend with Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun added.
Posted February 25, 2011
