Brian Dickie

We paid!

We were back to winter today - a real soak!  But I think that it is now over and we will be back to gorgeous sprng again before long.

I had a most entertaining and stimulating afternoon down at the University of Chicago.  To have the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich Reinhard Marx, a Nobel Laureate Roger Myerson, and Kevin Murphy of the University of Chicago on a panel together is something of a special treat.  

Cardinal Marx has fun with his name.  He was the Bishop of Trier, oldest diocese in Germany.  Trier was the birthplace of Karl Marx.  And he has written Das Kapital: A Plea for Man - following the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.  He is a delightful amusing impassioned human being who charmed his audience this afternoon.

I am so fortunate to get around to hear these amazing people.......

Fun day!

As you all know by now I am coming to end of my 13 year stint at COT - a really wonderful time and a huge bonus to be in this exceptional city for an extended period.  I will be writing more about this in the coming weeks as I come to grips with a change in my life and look back on these happy and productive years.

Today was just a fun day - I had ny last auditions for COT this morning.  We heard two singers and hired them both!  What a way to go out!  But of course these are not my last auditions here in Chicago.  I will be back next April for Neue Stimmen.

After the auditions I was supposed to go out to lunch with a colleague.  But it was all a trap as I was dragged into our conference room which was all decked out with streamers and lanterns - a surprise farewell lunch party!  My lovely staff, colleagues, friends - they are all that - had also invited some "retired" special guests, young people who have moved on from COT in recent months and years to fame and fortune!!  That was so nice - and delicious too.  Excellent Indian take away!

I am actually leaving the office to my successor from Friday - an excellent idea so that he can feel unfettered by my presence, and our wonderful team can make the transition smoothly and happily without this ghostly spirit looking on.  And in any case I am off to London on Wednesday, to performances at Glyndebourne and Garsington, and also for a short break in Tuscany. I will be back in Chicago on June 26 to begin the complicated packing process.......but the blog will continue.  I am trying to decide what to call it!

This evening I was at an enjoyable "house warming" for the excellent law firm Baker and McKenzie who recently moved to fabulous new quarters on the top of the expanded Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tower.  They are on the 50th floor (and a good many on either side of it I fancy) with stunning views of the city and the lake.  They had some 300 people there - a lovely relaxed affair.  They are good people.

Tomorrow there is more fun to be had, including meeting Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich! More anon.....

The pleasure continues

I wrote last week about the likely popularity during Memorial Day weekend of the boat trips on the Chicago River organised by the Architectural Foundation.  Well the weekend is over but the trippers continue - here they were at 11 am today in the comparative cool.  Just in the 80s instead of the 90s.  Paradise!

This evening my dear friend and colleague Gerard McBurney, and Emanuel Ax are tracing the evolution of the piano concerto with the Civic Orchestra.  This will be a fun evening - ending with Emanuel Ax following his Emperor on Saturday with the Beethoven 4th concerto this evening.  What riches!

Just a reminder when you are feeling blue!

Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form (Plato)

Bobtail weather

Yes, we were up in the 90s again today and I made my way to my local Trader Joe's to buy milk.  This is a good 750 yards away and on the return trip I could not resist stopping off at my local ice cream parlor, the wonderful Bobtail, favorite of children of all ages.  I must introduce Emanuel Ax to it......

I indulged to the extent of two scoops of vanilla in a bowl, and a pint to take home. And I am now listening to the divine and late lamented Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's wonderful recording of Les nuits d'été with Nicholas McGegan and his Philharmonia Baroque. The CD also includes some stunning singing of Handel.  No surprise there. It is available from Amazon.  A CD to treasure.

Eight Steinways

For Piano Day at Orchestra Hall yesterday Steinway had provided no less than eight concert grand pianos. And they were all played together at the end by 16 pianists! 

But before this grand finale I enjoyed a series of mini events starting with a charming interview conducted by the CSO's Martha Gilmer with Emanuel Ax.  His infectious youthful enthusiasm for everything musical, his passionate emotional response to music communicated through the keyboard as well as in conversation, and his relentless inquiring nature makes him one of the most beloved pianists around.  And this youthful enthusiast is 63!  What a great idea to get this remarkable man to design this Piano Day!

But it wasn't just pianos.  The CSO has a beautiful new Harpsichord built for them by Paul Irvin.  And we were treated to a demonstration of it by young Mark Shuldiner who also happens to tune instruments for COT.

This was followed by one of America's most gifted young pianists, Jonathan Biss, playing Beethoven's Opus 7 sonata.  He is embarked on recording the complete 32 sonatas over the next ten years.  His remarks in an interview after his absorbing performance of the sonata revealed his deeply serious approach as well as the light charm of his manner.  Yes they are human beings too! 

All these events were in the Grainger Ballroom.  But I then moved into the concert hall proper where a remarkable jazz piano duo Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes were showing us, to impressive effect, some other brilliant uses for the piano. 

And that was followed by the glamorous Valentina Lisitsa.  I suspect that she divides opinion - the audience loved her anyway.  There appeared to be the curious phenomenon of the other seven pianos on the stage reverberating with sympathy as she attacked Rachmaninoff and Liszt with vigor.

This was a good place to be yesterday with the temperature outside feeling like 97. Today it will be down in the 80s again!

Internet out!

My Internet service is down and out so there will be nothing about the CSO piano day from me this evening. iPhone comes to the rescue to tell you this.

Comcast tells me they will be back by midnight tomorrow. They say that means tonight! Either way I hope to be asleep. But it was wonderful anyway.

Off Topic - just for Sunday

If I may be excused - I can not resist showing you this great shot of three uncomfortable looking young men.  I am assuming that my readers have been following the Murdoch saga in the UK - Murdoch the proprietor of Fox News.  The gentlemen above are left to right:  the UK's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Jeremy Hunt the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport aka the Minister for Murdoch by some critics, and the Prime MInister David Cameron.

Photograph: Reuters Tv/Reuters

PS - A propos this read this piece in the Daily Telegraph

Late night.......

I am just back from the CSO concert with the magical and ever genial Emanuel Ax in top form with the Emperor Concerto, and the CSO his wonderful partner with David Robertson at the helm.  There was a full house, always good to see these days.  It made me wonder - do conductors fill houses?  Or maybe its composers and soloists......I suppose it depends.......

I will not labor too much further this evening.  But for your Memorial Day weekend entertainment you can do no better than to go to Alex Ross's blog - The Rest is Noise.  He has been having a good deal of fun this last week.  And now you can too.  More from me tomorrow - Piano Day at the CSO.

Memorial Day Weekend

The Chicago Architecture Foundation's "Chicago's Little Lady"

We have another long weekend, this time a statutory holiday - Memorial Day on Monday which signals that it is ok to wear white shoes.  And therefore no doubt to carry a white handbag.........well be careful not to wear them or carry one after Labor Day.  Actually we have had splendid white shoe weather for some days, and we had some in February as well. And late September can be gorgeous too.

We will no doubt be having more visitors to Chicago this weekend that natives leaving.  So the stores no doubt  are in for a busy time as well.  But the perfect trip for visitors to this magnificent city is one of the Architecture Foundation's boats on the river.  But book ahead - it is going to be popular relief from temperatures that may be rising into the 90s again.

I do not have visitors to town this weekend - I will be devoting much of my time to the piano.  Tomorrow evening Emmanuel Ax is playing the Emperor Concerto with the CSO.  And on Sunday there will be the huge fun of Chicago Piano Day. This is a marathon event which I will dip into and generally browse around.  This whole event is such a brilliant idea - good for Emmanuel Ax and the CSO.

Another hot one

Yes, these are for protection against the sun although they probably do the job with the rain as well.  But there was no sign of that as Chicago sweltered again.  But we are not tired of the heat yet.

I had a pretty quiet day in the office, and then set out for a quick bit of shopping up at 900 Michigan before going on for a drink with one of our finest  and most enthusiastic board members and his wife.  We then went on to the delightful busy Piccolo Sogno, a popular "Italian " haunt.  It is a splendid and crowded place - but I would not say it is a very good Italian restaurant, just a rather good Chicago one.  We had a lovely happy chatty evening.  It is very good to be with people who appreciate so much what COT has been doing.

I think that we are getting into the slow moving days of the summer.  Certainly the crowds were out this early evening at the Cheesecake Factory under the Hancock Tower.  As you can see below it was very busy at 6pm.  They are in for a bumper summer we hear.

Friends night at the MOB

"The Haydn Quartet" - Julius Schmid

Jane Glover had the brilliant idea of building a program around the four composer/string players who made music together in Vienna in the 1780s - Haydn, Dittersdorf, Mozart and Vanhal.  So this evening Music of the Baroque put on a delightful program - and they employed four of the principals of the orchestra to play concertos.  And what a show it was!

Johann Baptist Vanhal is hardly a household name.  He was the cellist of the quartet - and his charming Sinfonia in G minor opened the program this evening.  Barbara Haffner, MOB's principal cello, and also COT's, then showed off Haydn's C major concerto with considerable panache; after the intermission Collins Trier amused us with a Dittersdorf Bass concerto.  Last week it was a Tuba concerto, this week a double bass.  These low life concertos are all very well - but Collins did a fine job.

The best was last.  There is no argument, least of all from Haydn, that the greatest composer of this quartet was the Viola - W.A Mozart.  And the etherially beautiful Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola was quite splendidly delivered by the MOB's concertmaster Rob Waters, and the uncommonly fine Roger Chase - a really wonderful violist whom we are so fortunate to have in Chicago.  Here was a pair of musicians in perfect sync.  This is just the kind of music making that this evening was about.  Totally fulfilling it was - an unusually satisfying concert.

An evening on Navy Pier

The Chicago Shakespeare Theater has the most lovely position on Navy Pier - because of the view back to the city (above) rather than for the convenience of getting there.  But get there one can and this evening it was worth the effort big time - an epic performance of Timon of Athens  by Ian McDiarmid in the title role, and a wonderful ensemble in an immensely effective production set in 2012 by Barbara Gaines. 

This is Shakespeare's shortest play - shorter even than the "Scottish play."  We were out by 9:38 after a 7:30 curtain ( there is no actual curtain in the Shakes' most gorgeous theatre) - and we then repaired to the bar and had a nice drink with Timon himself.  The topicality of this play, and the resonances that Shakespeare (and Middleton?) have created for our world post 2008, is somewhat shocking.  Which all goes to show..............

Timon of Athens

Ian McDiarmid is in town to play Timon of Athens at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.  I will be there this evening - the first time I will have seen Shakespeare's rarely produced play.  Jane Glover, on her day off before the MOB concert tomorrow evening, will be joining me.  She is a passionate lover of, and considerable expert on, the plays of Shakespeare and never misses the many opportunities provided in Chicago. I hope that she will keep me up to speed about this play which is notoriously obscure.......

This one of the pleasures of our off season - time to indulge in these extra treats.

Street party!

The so called demonstration on Randolph by the Prudential Plaza building was a perfect example of what these events should be - a generally benign mood of mutual respect with everyone behaving impeccably. It appears that there were some more confrontational incidents yesterday but by and large everything seems to have gone smoothly. 

The mood today was of a street party in the beautiful afternoon sunshine.  It was cooler than the stifling 90 degrees of yesterday so possibly tempers were cooler as well.  The points have been made and it remains to be seen as to whether anything changes.  But I detect a slight turn in the tide......wishful thinking?  Probably!

Of course the police presence was overwhelming, outnumbering the "demonstrators" three to one.  They came from all over, some even from Philadelphia.  But as you can see below they really didn't have a lot to do.  There is a handful of other shots on my photosite added to the ones from Saturday. 

Britten and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

I am grateful to Alex Ross for this.  This is a measure of DFD's greatness as a human being and artist.

And if you are still not convinced, or even if you are - GO HERE!

A moving 80th birthday interview from 2005

I'm feeling hot!!

Oak Street Beach 11:30 am May 20 2012

Yes, well the temperature is 90 degrees - actually quite unusual for May.  But it is not so humid and is therefore quite comfortable.  As you can see the sensible people repaired to the beach.  Please note, there are not a lot of men around!

The NATO meetings seem to be passing off quite calmly although there has been a good deal of traffic disruption inevitably.  The security folks seem to be doing a brilliant job, low key and efficient.  And the demonstrators likewise are just getting on with it peacefully.  Much the most persuasive way to proceed.

I think that the majority is just staying out of the way.  And in the same spirit we have closed the office tomorrow and I imagine downtown Chicago will be pretty quiet.  Michigan Avenue was pretty quiet at noon today as you can see below.  I guess the stores are doing terrible business.  Bloomingdales appeared to be deserted. They will probably survive.........

Serene Saturday

I was very happy today to get away from our stresses, and those of the NATO troubles.  I had a delightful rather early lunch with Jane Glover who is here in Chicago for another programme with Music of the Baroque - in Evanston tomorrow and at the Harris on Wednesday.  The schedules for all have bee changed as a result of the NATO conference.  It has cost money........

We went to the excellent Fox and Obel bistro, and had a table overlooking the river.  This was all very simple and delicious - and something of a refuge from the goings on with police and demonstrators.  Jane has been commuting back and forth over the last three months - this is I think her third MOB programme in eight weeks.  And she had a gig in San Francisco as well.  She is complaining about jet-lag.......really not surprising.

Otherwise I avoided downtown which seems to have been somewhat tense, and certainly less benign an atmosphere than that created by the nurses yesterday.  So I returned to the safe haven of Lakeview where this gentle community's normal family activities continued.  The excellent Bobtail, on this extremely hot day, was doing cracking business.

Bobtail Ice Cream Bar, 2951 Broadway, 5:00 pm May 19 2012

Peace

The demonstration that I showed up to in Daley Plaza this morning was a peaceful civilized affair.  The primary organizers were the nurses in their Robin Hood outfits - and a good many other good causes tagged along. But the orderliness of the whole affair should not lull the 1% into thinking that this is a non-issue.  It is just that 99% of the 99% are civic minded and civilized, and working together to get the politicians and the 1% to get it.  Whereas I am not sure what 99% of the 1% are up to!

It was all rather impressive; this was was not a band of revolutionary terrorists, just ordinary Americans who care about their country and each other.  There is a gallery of photos on my photo site which I hope may illustrate the point.

It has been a glorious day here.  We are set for a great weekend possibly ending with a thunderstorm on Sunday afternoon. 

The passing of the greatest.......

Photograph: Jean-Regis Rouston/Getty

The greatest Lieder singer of my adolescence and twenties was Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose death at the age of 86 is reported today.  His recordings of Wolf, Schumann and Schubert can still remind me of my magical introduction to that repertoire - I was at so many of his appearances in London with Gerald Moore during the 1960s.  His passionate immersion had a profound effect on me and has, no doubt, greatly influenced my analysis and appreciation of fine singing.

And of course he sang opera too - his Mandryka in Arabella in Munich in 1961, with Lisa della Casa, Anneliese Rothenberger and Otto Edelmann was an unforgettable first opportunity for this 21 year old to see this ravishing opera.......wonderful memories!  Enough of that - but let us be grateful for the good fortune to have encountered such great artists.

Alex Ross has put it well, as he always does, on his blog post today.  And do listen to listen to his link to Der Leiermann from Die Winterreise which encapsulates the genius of DFD.

Obituary in The Daily Telegraph

Lichtenstein

I was able to get to the Roy Lichtenstein show at the Art Institute this afternoon.  It is a sensation, a revelation, and a must see.  And the joy of being a member is that there were so few others there that for once I could really enjoy it, taking my time, not having to line up behind rubbernecked gapers ruining the view!  Pure pleasure indeed.

My Paris and London friends will be able to see this tremendous exhibition in 2013 in the Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern respectively. Do NOT miss it.  I will certainly go again..........not just next week but next year!

But the Art Institute may have missed a trick.  Two decades or so ago in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts there was a Pop Art show (including much Lichtenstein of course) and I am told that their director of Development persuaded Kellogg's Pop Tarts to sponsor it - Cute idea!

By an odd coincidence on Saturday May 19 there opens, in that very same Montreal Museum, a retrospective of another great American pop artist Tom Wesselmann.  Funny that!

We have had another gorgeous day today.  The build up to the NATO summit has begun, and the demonstrators are out in peaceful but large numbers.  We are closing the office tomorrow and Monday and working from home.  But I may come out to do a little reportage!

But for the rest of this evening it is something completely different - Albert Herring.

Muddle

I had intended to go to the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Art Institute this evening before an "official" dinner at 7pm.  But they close at 5 - I thought it was 8, but that is only on Thursdays. Just careless of me. So I will be there tomorrow afternoon instead before nipping up to Evanston to see Northwestern's production of Albert Herring.

We had an uneventful board meeting this morning - all quite calm.  So that is that for me!  I have had the good fortune to work with so many wonderful dedicated board members over these last thirteen years.  And many have become good friends.  We have of course also had some stressful turbulent times.  But the unstinting support of these selfless people enabled us the do really valuable work over the years.  I am grateful to them.

The dinner this evening is with some enthusiastic and generous COT lovers who bought the opportunity to have dinner with me at the silent auction at our party in March.  It will be fun I think - the person who bought this chance and is bringing three friends is a very good sport so we should be in for a jolly evening!

Amazing Jaap!

This afternoon's concert by the CSO and Jaap van Zweden was a revelation for me.  Of course I have known about this conductor for some years, and my friend and colleague Michael MacLeod who runs the Hong Kong Philharmonic has just appointed him Music Director to succeed Edo de Waart.  Double Dutch as he put it!  It seems to me to be a remarkable catch.

Van Zweden was concertmaster of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw at a very tender age.  And hearing him conduct Beethoven's 7th symphony this afternoon made me think that he must at some point have some under the spell of the great Bernard Haitink.  But he is far from being a Haitink clone - he is unquestionably his own man.  But he has the discipline of Haitink and his feeling for the structure of a Beethoven symphony. His long experience in the Concertmaster's chair will have given him an intimate knowledge of the detail of the piece.   Whether Haitink was a mentor or not I have no idea - but the Concertgebouw is a destination for the greatest conductors of the day so he will have worked with the best.

We had a thrilling performance by this virtuoso orchestra - a magical mix of Haitink and Solti - that is my first impression of Jaap van Zweden!  More please!

Missing the CSO

I have not been to a CSO concert since they came back from their Russia/Italy trip.  They sensibly got out of town during our season but thats over now so its safe to return.

They have a concert today at the curious time (for a Tuesday) of 1:30.  And I am looking forward to seeing Jaap van Zweden in action for the first time........and hearing how Gene Pokorny deals with RVW on his tubby tuba.  And a little bit of Shosty to complete the programme which is billed as Beethoven 7!