In Monday’s (1/28) Chicago Tribune, Nancy Malitz reports from Hong Kong, “The stormy ovation must have felt like a balm to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra that saw its physical fitness and mental toughness put to the test at the very outset of its 18-day Asia tour. But after a late-afternoon rehearsal of Beethoven’s epic Symphony No. 3 (‘Eroica’), followed just a couple of hours later by a performance for a packed house at Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek National Concert Hall on Saturday night, the CSO and stand-in conductor Osmo Vänskä got their payoff in explosive applause punctuated by stamping feet. With music director Riccardo Muti convalescing in Italy after hernia surgery, the orchestra had opened its tour Friday in Taipei with concertmaster Robert Chen, a Taiwan native, stepping up to play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. It was an auspicious beginning for the CSO’s high-wire act of four consecutive concerts—with two conductors and two different programs in two different concert halls—and just one rehearsal for each. … In what has become the CSO’s Asia relay, Vänskä hands off the baton Monday to conductor Lorin Maazel, who will lead the rest of the tour concerts.”
Posted January 28, 2013
