“Conductor Eckart Preu says it’s okay to have fun with classical music,” writes Janelle Gelfand in Friday’s (3/24) Cincinnati Enquirer (Ohio). “And ‘fun’ is what drove him as he planned his first season as music director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra…. The Chamber Orchestra’s 2017 Summermusik season … [is] a crowd-pleasing mix of four traditional concerts, ‘Chamber Crawls’ in bars and ‘A Little Afternoon Musik’ in unexpected places. Besides Mozart and Beethoven, audiences can expect David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ and Walk the Moon’s ‘Shut Up and Dance.’ … It all reflects Preu’s unique personality: Funny, smart, sometimes irreverent and often refreshingly different…. Preu will also take a spin at a harpsichord … in a program of Venetian gems. The orchestra will [collaborate] with dancers from MamLuft&Co. Dance and Madcap Puppets…. ‘Summermusik’ has been a winning format for the small orchestra, which sometimes has added performances due to demand.” Says Preu, “What we do, expanding the format and pushing boundaries, is a way of trying to get new people in … who are looking for meaningful entertainment, primed to look for something different.”
Posted March 27, 2017
Eckart Preu photo by Mikki Schaffner
