Marcus Shields in the title role of Britten's "Albert Herring," presented by Northwestern University Opera Theater Thursday night at Cahn Auditoruim. Photo: Christina Walker/Pick-Staiger Concert Hall

The Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University is presenting Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring as its spring opera production. The staging opened Thursday night and is running through Sunday with alternating casts.

Premiered in 1947, Britten’s comedy is a not-so-gentle poke at English middle-class pretensions and moral hypocrisy in a provincial village. Led by the aptly named Lady Billows, the self-appointed guardians of Loxford are in a quandary. With the May Day Festival coming up, it is time to choose a May Queen, yet it seems none of the local maidens are virginal enough to wear the crown.

With no unspotted female candidates available, it is decided to choose a May King instead and the honor will go to Albert Herring—the shy, socially inept grocery clerk who lives with his mother, and of whom there is little doubt of his sexual innocence. Albert is dubious but his mother forces him to accept the title, mainly to get her hands on the 25-pound prize.

At the coronation luncheon, Albert’s friend Sid, the butcher’s assistant, spikes Albert’s lemonade with rum, setting off assorted mayhem with the boy running off to sow his belated wild oats. Albert’s disappearance throws the town into an uproar, and all mourn his apparent death. Ultimately, bedraggled yet triumphant, Albert returns and tells the assembled Loxford burghers of his sinful adventures. His mother and the officials are scandalized but Sid and his girlfriend Nancy congratulate the newly confident Albert on his independence.

The story is slight, but even with Britten’s rapier-like social satire, Albert Herring has a non-saccharine sweetness and timeless message of rising above one’s stifling social environment to assert personal freedom.

The first of two casts offered a respectable performance Thursday night at Cahn Auditorium in Evanston. The student singers inevitably lacked the seasoning and vocal gleam of professionals but the performance gained in strength as the evening progressed.

The principal problem Thursday was the lack of clarity to the words for several cast members. Even with the English text, far too much of the witty dialogue was lost in this highly conversational work, especially in the first act, with no supertitles available.

Marcus Shields was a largely admirable Albert. The young singer didn’t explore the comic side of the dorkish role, yet Shields showed a pleasant tenor voice, albeit sometimes stretched at the top. His Act 2 soliloquy needed more emotional charge, yet Shields rose to the final scene of Albert’s assertion of independence in fine fashion.

As his enabling friend Sid, Conor McDonald showed a strong baritone and rich personality, and Elisa Sutherland was a poised and affecting Nancy.

Kelsey Boesche etched a fine portrait of the petit-bourgeois battle-axe Lady Billows, though her enunciation often needed to be crisper. Katherine McGookey as Pike, Lady Billows’ housekeeper, was imposing in voice and clearly articulated. Emily Spencer as Albert’s mother was efficiently done if rather pallid in characterization.

Of the town worthies, there were two standouts. Ron Mitchell as the Vicar, Mr. Gedge, was excellent, with every word crystal-clear and  singing with a natural warm tone. As the police chief Superintendant Budd, Joseph Hubbard displayed a rich bass and was genuinely funny with his cockney accent and not-too-bright politeness.

Julie Tabash as Miss Wordsworth and Nathan Taylor as Mr. Upfold solidly rounded out the officials. As the children, Harrah Friedlander was  energetic if somewhat over the top as the starstruck Emmie, while Veronique Filloux as the shy Cis and Will Higgins as Harry underplayed effectively.

Conductor Christopher Zemliauskas showed clear sympathy with Britten’s relentlessly witty score and drew worthy playing from  the orchestra, bringing out Britten’s imaginative effects and musical rimshots.

Albert Herring will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday, with a second cast performing Friday and Sunday. 847-467-4000; www.pickstaiger.org.

Jaap van Zweden conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Wednesday night in music of Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams and Beethoven. Photo: Bert Hulselmans

The schedule for this week’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts has been reshuffled with all three concerts moved to midweek to prevent any unwonted unpleasantries between audience members and NATO summit protesters.

In recent seasons, Jaap van Zweden has become one of the CSO’s most reliable podium guests, and the Dutch conductor led a trio of taut, dynamic performances Wednesday night as part of the Afterwork Masterworks series.

The evening led off with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony. The composer’s String Quartet No. 8 is one of those rare chamber works that seems to acquire even greater depth when heard in transcription for larger forces, and Rudolf Barshai’s arrangement for string orchestra made a riveting impact.

Cast in five unbroken movements, the Eighth Quartet is outwardly about the devastation wrought by World War II, but, as always with Shostakovich, the atmosphere of brooding tragedy seems as much about the enemy within as without. From the dark desolation of the opening Largo, van Zweden led a masterful performance, as one might expect from the former concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The conductor drew knife-edged intensity in the frantic energy of the second movement, and the unsettling danse macabre expression of the ensuing Allegretto was atmospherically conveyed. Van Zweden drew a striking range of dynamic nuance in the concluding sections putting across the depth of feeling and bleak introspection. The playing of the CSO strings was first-class, with fine solo moments by Robert Chen’s plaintive violin and Kenneth Olsen’s melancholy cello.

Gene Pokorny

The evening’s centerpiece was Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto. Not played by the orchestra in 34 years, it offered a rare solo opportunity for CSO tubist Gene Pokorny. A member of the orchestra since 1989, Pokorny has long provided yeoman duty in a low-profile role, with an instrument whose presence is felt as often as it is heard.

The 12-minute concerto showcases the tuba’s bumptious and lyrical elements and Pokorny conveyed both delightfully, from his rounded, subterranean low notes to his jazz-like swagger in the cadenza and nimble agility in the finale. The central Romanza is one of VW’s most heart-easing inspirations — a virtual emblem of the English pastoral school— and Pokorny’s playing was as nuanced and expressive as any top-flight violinist or opera singer. The soloist received a hearty, well-deserved ovation from his colleagues as well as the audience. (And any musician who puts in his official bio that he is a card-carrying member of the Three Stooges Fan Club deserves applause.)

The evening closed with a notably energetic account of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. After a weighty and spacious introduction, the balletic van Zweden and CSO were off to the races with a fleet account of the opening Vivace. Likewise, the conductor took a more flowing tempo for the Allegretto that sheared off any ponderous quality, and a crackling pace for an exhilarating Presto.

I’m not sure van Zweden’s underlining of the brass in the whirlwind finale was an inspired idea — the rhythmic interjections are not that interesting in themselves and at times tended to swamp the strings’ dancing bravura. Still this was an exciting and magnificently played performance from van Zweden and the orchestra, some horn burbles in the opening movement apart.

The program will be repeated 8 p.m. Thursday. cso.org; 312-294-3000.

"Rotation of the earth" by Irish composer Irene Buckley was heard at Monday night's MusicNOW concert at the Harris Theater. Photo: Co Broerse

The final MusicNOW program of the season offered a contrasted lineup of five works Monday night at the Harris Theater, though the highly variable quality of both the music and presentation ended the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new-music series on a decidedly uneven note.

Both of the CSO’s composers in residence, Mason Bates and Anna Clyne, were represented. Written for Chanticleer, Bates’ Sirens (2009) for 12 voices seeks to depict the eternal mystery and sensual appeal of the sea sirens throughout history with three movements inspired by a trio of literary texts. Bates’ choral writing is rudimentary in places but mostly skillful and often imaginative. The extended central movement, inspired by Heine’s poem Die Lorelei, is the most striking with its pulsing, rhapsodic expression. Duain Wolfe led a capable if rather plain-spun performance with a dozen singers from his CSO Chorus, which didn’t seem to capture the haunting evocative nature of the music.

Gabriela Lena Frank’s Tres Homenajes: Compadrazgo from 2007 is scored for piano and string quartet. The “three homages” are tied together by South American inspirations most notably the concept of compadrazgo (camaraderie) manifested in different ways.

“Scherzo para Sipan” reflects the windswept northern plains of Peru with jumpy, motoric music, hard pizzicatos and aggressive piano chords. The middle section (“Adagio para Amantani”) paints the title island, situated in Lake Titicaca between Peru and Bolivia, and the stormy finale “T’inku” depicts the ritual fighting matches between two men from different villages.

The Adagio is the heart of the work, an introspective threnody that reflects Amantani’s austere landscape, with a long ruminative cello solo, played with great feeling and refined tenderness by Joshua Zajac. The work on the whole is characteristic of Frank, both in its hard angularity, impressionistic Latin-American coloring and a tendency to meander. Violinists Nancy Park and Hermine Gagne, violist Diane Mues, cellist Zajac and pianist Amy Briggs delivered an impassioned performance.

Irene Buckley’s Rotation of the earth was inspired by her viewing of Foucault’s pendulum in Paris and noting that its arc was not entirely even due to the earth’s movement. The young Irish composer’s electronic piece has a certain hypnotic quality, building with pulsing wavelike motions that grow in textural richness and asymmetric complexity before receding to silence. This is compelling music and Joshue Ott’s real-time projected visual improvisations — like a high-tech, digital Etch A Sketch — provided a colorful visual enhancement to Buckley’s music.

The one outright clinker of the evening, surprisingly, was Rapture by Anna Clyne. This 2005 virtuoso showpiece calls for amplified clarinet and electronics.  John Bruce Yeh delivered a tour de force performance of the bravura writing and Ott again provided striking projections.

But to put it kindly, this is not one of the gifted British composer’s more inspired efforts. Whether an accident or by design, the souped-up volume subjected the audience to a cochlea-damaging assault that was painful to experience. The six minutes felt interminable and the deafening fusillade of piercing musical screeches would likely find more effective utility as sonic water-boarding used to interrogate prisoners at Gitmo.

Yeh was heard to better advantage in the closing work, Lumens (2005) by Sean Shepherd.  Scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion, the music segues from lonely clarinet notes and aggressive piano fragments into jagged, halting quasi-serial momentum for the ensemble. After continuing in this vein somewhat longer than necessary, the music slows and the phrases grow longer before the hectic bustle returns. The work is about “gratitude,” says Shepherd and Lumens shows an intriguing and individual compositional voice. The ensemble delivered a rambunctious performance under conductor Cliff Colnot.

Like much else about the musical details, it wasn’t made clear whether the amplification for the Frank and Shepherd works were called for in the scores or whether it was done to boost the instruments’ presence. Whatever the case, it only succeeded in adding a raw overlay to the performances and  put a harsh glare around some fine string playing.

The CSO really needs to address the ongoing presentation deficiencies of this series, which were often little short of amateurish Monday night.  In addition to the season-long flimsy sheet that is supposed to be hip and take the place of traditional program notes, the low-fi audio quality of the video introductions made most of the composers’ comments virtually unintelligible.

That’s a disaster not only for harried critics on deadline but for anyone seeking basic information and background material on the composers and works being performed. Get with it, guys.

Igor Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat" was performed Sunday afternoon by the Rembrandt Chamber Players.

It has become trendy of late to program contemporary remakings of earlier classics with the works that inspired them, like Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires and Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

Such pairings usually employ similar musical forces for both selections (always a plus for musical groups pinching pennies), and they give the newer piece more visibility and audience appeal than it is likely to have had on its own.

The Rembrandt Chamber Players took just such a tack Sunday afternoon in Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston, coupling Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) with A Fiddler’s Tale, an updated, re-imagined version of the 1918 work by jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. It proved to be a fascinating and rewarding musical adventure.

Stravinsky’s unconventional music-theater creation, which he wrote while staying in Switzerland during World War I, offers a compelling twist on the timeless Faustian legend. It centers on a soldier and amateur violinist who trades his soul to the devil.
The compact work employs a highly unusual yet surprisingly compatible mix of seven instruments – violin, double-bass, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone and percussion. While rooted in the composer’s avant-garde neo-Classical aesthetic, with echoes of Petrouchka and other larger works written just a few years earlier, the ensemble often has the looser sound of a cabaret or dance-hall jazz band.

Foregoing the two actors and a dancer originally envisioned by the composer, the effective concert version relies on a narrator — here vividly performed by Chicago actress Barbara Robertson — to take all the parts and convey the story. The ensemble offered a unified, focused interpretation that captured the hybrid nature of this piece and its ever-changing moods and stylistic nuances.

Wynton Marsalis

Marsalis’ Fiddler’s Tale, a joint commission of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln and Jazz at Lincoln Center, shifts the action to the Mississippi Delta, with noted writer Stanley Crouch supplying the libretto. In this narrated take, a high-minded fiddler, Beatrice Connors, succumbs to empty promises of slick record producer, Bubba Z. Beals, another of the devil’s many guises.

Although Marsalis has long comfortably straddled the border of jazz and classical music, his heart and heritage are in the former, and it is his rich grounding in that form, with what he calls a “New Orleans twist,” that undergirds this 1998 piece.

There are several stand-out sections, worthy of being combined into a kind of jazz suite (something, it turns out, Marsalis has already done), including the wonderfully evocative Tango, Waltz, Ragtime, and the smoky, aptly titled closer, The Blues on Top.

Fiddler’s Tale incorporates all kinds of signature Marsalis jazz touches, such as the trumpeter’s use of a plunger mute to growly effect and even the inclusion of a whistle in the percussionist’s arsenal. But what is perhaps most surprising is how closely he hews to the original feel and color of L’Histoire, incorporating almost identical instrumental combinations and harmonic effects at times.

This piece puts big demands on its performers, expecting high-level classical musicianship but also an ability to loosen up and swing a little. These players had no trouble delivering the former and fared respectably with the latter, getting more into the groove as the performance progressed.

Most at home in the two styles was the fine guest clarinetist, J. Lawrie Bloom, a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who displayed an affinity for the idiomatic flavor of L’Histoire as well, and violinist Yuan-Qing Yu. The spirited, technically secure playing of the symphony’s co-assistant concertmaster highlighted both works. In The Fiddler’s Tale, the playing of Christopher Martin, CSO principal trumpet, seemed oddly restrained. Also deserving note is Aaron Freeman, a Chicago comedian and public-radio commentator, who offered an involving, sometimes humorous turn as the narrator.

If Fiddler’s Tale does not fully measure up to Stravinsky’s older masterwork, it is nonetheless a captivating, skillfully constructed work that marries the jazz and classical worlds in a natural, convincing way.

Sunday’s program, including intermission, ran 2-½ hours, which was arguably a bit long. But these two similar yet different works make a compelling single program, and it’s only a matter of time before other groups seize upon this programming two-step.

Kirill Gerstein performed a wide-ranging recital program Sunday afternoon at Symphony Center.

With a cancellation by the originally scheduled Maurizio Pollini — and it being Mother’s Day — it was hardly a surprise that there were so many empty seats for replacement Kirill Gerstein’s Sunday afternoon appearance at Symphony Center. That was unfortunate  for the Russian-born pianist delivered a surprisingly memorable recital.

Gerstein, who at fourteen was the youngest student ever accepted into the Berklee College of Music, showed considerable promise as a jazz pianist but opted instead to concentrate on a classical career. It is obvious from both his repertoire choices and his performance approach that Gerstein still effectively straddles both worlds.

A two-time Gilmore Award winner — in 2002 a recipient of the Young Artist Award and in 2010 a recipient of its $300,000 Artist Award — Gerstein used some of his prize money to commission a piano piece from pianist/composer Brad Mehidau in a jazz style that would allow for layers of complexity that improvisation alone would not permit.

The result, a 25-minute piece called Variations on a Melancholy Theme, was premiered at Berklee in late March and was performed on the first part of Gerstein’s program.

As is true of the great examples of the form such as Bach’s Goldberg and Beethoven’s Diabelli variations, the real attraction is not the theme itself — usually borrowed, but in this case devised by Mehldau — but the imaginative transformations of the theme. Here there are fourteen variations and a coda.

The theme itself extends widely outward before turning back on itself which allows for a greater variety of harmonization and styles than it does for melodic permutations. There is little opportunity for modulation and the piece’s jagged and often ethereal approach to rhythm sounds more rooted in Scriabin than American jazz.

The overall effect comes across more like young Keith Jarrett or Chick Corea solo improvisations on steroids rather than a piece actually written down. And yet, the dynamic nuance and delicate touch that Gerstein exhibited with this work — even in its most expansive octave-imbued sections — owe more to the classical world than the jazz world.

The rest of the program consisted of works that spotlighted dance, especially the waltz. Gerstein’s take on Weber’s Invitation to the Dance was given one of the most delightful performances imaginable, and Liszt’s Valse caprice No. 6 from Soireés de Vienna (after Schubert) exuded carefree Viennese charm.

The gigue was the centerpiece with a mix of Busoni’s Giga, Bolero, e Variazione, a pianistic romp through Mozart’s Eine kleine Gigue, K. 574 and the fandango from Act III of The Marriage of Figaro. The dance form was also spotlighted in Bach’s English Suite No. 6 ,BWV 811, which opened the program.

The freedom that was displayed across the entire program was remarkable, no doubt a byproduct of Gerstein’s interest in jazz. The Bach particularly not only had a swing quality to it but the phrases breathed with an extraordinary sense of improvised inevitability. And yet, every line was clear.

Schumann’s Carnaval crowned the program. Rarely will one hear such such a perfect balance of humor and poignancy, with Gerstein colorfully bringing out numerous small details while never losing sight of the whole.

Clearly this is a pianist not only with extraordinary technique and musicianship but with that rarest of gifts, a delicate touch that can transform timbre. He also displays a compelling musical intellect with rarely a shortage of interesting ideas to communicate and a refreshing performance style placed at the service of the music rather than his own self-aggrandizing.

Gerstein’s encore — Earl Wild’s Virtuoso Etude No. 6 on Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm — seemed perfectly suited to bridge the two worlds he inhabits, cross-fertilizing classical virtuosity with the apparent freedom of jazz. Gerstein’s delightful fluctuations and nuances called to mind Gershwin’s own lively performing style.

Bruce Tammen led the Chicago Chorale in music of Bach, Schoenberg and Vierne Sunday afternoon at Rockefeller Chapel.

In addition to the main vocal performances presented by the Chicago Chorale Sunday afternoon at Rockefeller Chapel, the event also offered a great opportunity to hear the chapel’s newly-restored E.M. Skinner organ in repertory that fully exploited the instrument in all its glory.

With its 8,565 pipes in 132 ranks, it filled the cavernous space in a robust performance of Louis Vierne’s 1901 Messe solennelle, Op. 16, originally written for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. This is an idiomatically French mass which sparkles with elegance and clarity, and director Bruce Tammen and Rockefeller organist Thomas Weisflog negotiated the various elements with ease, maintaining a good balance throughout between voice and instrument.

The brief but substantial program opened with two a cappella works which the Chorale sang from the choir loft behind the audience.  The sound of these performances was clean and clear — actually better acoustically than similar music performed from the front of the church. As for the performance, it was straightforward with some fleeting intonation issues.

Bach’s motet Komm, Jesu, Komm (BWV 229) is a brief distillation of some the composer’s best sacred music.  With its insistent appeal at the start, and its dynamic counterpoint throughout, it comes to a satisfying conclusion with a chorale of breadth and generosity. The Chicago Chorale took a plain approach to the piece, with a clearly-defined structure and transitions neatly pointed.

Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden, heard here in its a cappella version, is an early work (1907), replete with tonality and emotion and experimentation. There are great blocks of choral sound expressing a very dark Christmas narrative that nevertheless resolves itself positively. The performance of this small masterpiece was cool and straightforward, not always doing full justice to the soaring and clashing extremes of the score.

Moving to the front of the Chapel, Tammen led organist and voices in the five contrasting sections of Vierne’s late romantic mass. Weisflog’s performance from the very first notes of his solemn entry at the start of the Kyrie was exemplary, and everything seemed to fall into place with the Chorale, which responded with polish and improved tonal purity.

The Gloria and Sanctus really showed off the dynamics of the organ and the excellence of the space, which was just as receptive to the more subtle details of the scoring for the various combinations of voice and instrument. At times the organ was orchestral, at other times quietly supportive. The climaxes were well managed and the gentler parts of the final movements were also treated with finesse. All things considered, the Chicago Chorale delivered a satisfying rendition of a charming Gallic masterwork.

Lang Lang performed a recital of Bach, Schubert and Chopin Saturday night at the Civic Opera House. Photo: Robert Kusel/Lyric Opera of Chicago

The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s regular season may have ended in March, but the house was filled to capacity Saturday night — not for opera by Verdi or Puccini but for Lang Lang in his debut appearance at the Civic Opera House.

The Chinese superstar pianist expressed an interest in performing at Lyric Opera and the house was happy to accommodate him. The venture reflects the company’s new emphasis on presenting nontraditional (for them) events — Broadway musicals in the off-season and Saturday’s piano recital —to attract new audiences to the Civic Opera House.

Based on that aspect, the evening was clearly a huge success, attracting a sold-out house of over 3,500 people and drawing a vast swathe of Asian and Asian-American music fans of all ages who are likely not regular Lyric Opera patrons.

A festive atmosphere prevailed Saturday, which never tipped over into a circus, due largely to the polite concentration of most of those assembled — some rude unmuffled coughers apart — and the meat-and-potatoes fare Lang Lang served up of Bach, Schubert and Chopin.

Natty in his wet-look suit, Lang Lang led off the evening with Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B flat, BWV 825. Lang Lang’s Bach proved masterful, a model of how to bring expressive detailing to these Baroque suites without sacrificing period style. The Prelude was light and airy, the Allemande went with a sprite-like playfulness, and in the Courante — as throughout — the pianist brought an ideal blend of clarity and grace to Bach’s contrapuntal writing.

The Sarabande was the highlight of the performance and one of the finest moments of the evening. Poised, affecting and iridescently hued, Lang Lang brought out the music’s wistful nostalgia, rendering the slow movement with a flexible rubato that made it seem like he was making up the notes as he went along.

Schubert’s epic Sonata in B flat major, D.960, was the largest work of the evening. To this vast canvas Lang Lang brought his characteristic stainless-steel arsenal as well as a remarkable concentration and wide expressive palette. There was a searching, almost otherworldly quality to the main theme of the opening Moderato, with the pianist starkly emphasizing the bass tremolos and violent oscillations that continually undermine its progress. All repeats were observed in this movement, yet Lang Lang paced it with great skill, leading the listeners through the dramatic ebb and flow.

His spacious tempo for the opening movement sacrificed a certain contrast with the ensuing Andante but here too Lang Lang’s playing was first class, combining assertive strength and lyric delicacy. The Scherzo brought us out of the darkness with a spring-like agility.

The finale can often seem a bit lightweight after the bleak desolation of the opening movements, but Lang Lang brought a hollow feel to the gamboling main theme and the aggressive drama of the latter section had an edge of desperation that felt just right. We’ve heard some first-class Schubert playing in Chicago in recent months from Mitsuko Uchida and Paul Lewis but Lang Lang’s searching performance seemed the deepest and most satisfying of all.

Photo: Robert Kusel/Lyric Opera of Chicago

Chopin’s 12 Etudes, Op. 25, made up the second half. More than most, Lang Lang’s terraced expressive range and architectural grasp made a kind of unified large-scale tone poem out of these dozen virtuosic studies. The pianist brought both intimate poetry and edge-of-the-seat bravura to Chopin’s miniatures, and there were countless felicities like the flowing undulations of No. 1 in A flat major and the liquid cascade of the right hand in No. 2 in F minor. The jaunty off-kilter bustle of No. 3 in F major and the jazzy syncopation of No. 4 in A minor had a decidedly Chinese feel in Lang Lang’s hands.

The pianist brought rapt tenderness and nobility to No. 7 in C-sharp minor, and the most bravura Etudes — the flying octaves of No. 10 in B minor, the whirling tempest of No. 11 in A minor — were thrown off with a fire, power and faultless technical command that were quite sensational.

From an artistic and pubic relations standpoint, the evening was a great success but there were logistical issues having to do with the large screen over the stage projecting a real-time image of Lang Lang’s hands on the keyboard. Such video enhancement is probably inevitable in a venue the size of the Civic Opera House. Yet while the overhead vantage point made one appreciate Lang Lang’s technical prowess even more, the projection would likely have been more successful had it been better executed.

Instead of having the camera aligned so that the keyboard was parallel with the horizontal side of the rectangular screen, the director opted for a slightly angled vertical perspective. That may have provided a “cool” raked image but it also meant that Lang Lang’s hands were often out of view during key moments, as with the bass tremolos in the Schubert sonata. Also, all the fussy zooming in and out eventually became a distraction. Even while concentrating intently on the live performer, it’s hard to prevent being drawn to the large screen and consequently beset by extraneous thoughts (“Why is he zooming out now?”).

The immediate, thunderous standing ovation brought Lang Lang back out for a few brief words (“Good evening. It’s a great pleasure for me to play my first recital at the Lyric Opera of Chicago”) and two encores. There was more Chopin with the Etude in E major, Op. 10, no. 3, limpid and intimate, shorn of sticky sentiment with a bust-out bravura in the middle section. And the pianist closed with a flame-throwing rendition of Liszt’s La campanella thrown off with a speed, power and hairpin dynamic curveballs that few, if any, can equal.

In a hall built for voices, audience members compared notes about the piano sound at intermission. From the left center aisle near the front Lang Lang’s Steinway emerged clear and tangible but lacking in brilliance at the top end and with the bass turning somewhat diffuse. While clearly not a concert-hall acoustic, the sound was acceptable and largely allowed Lang Lang’s vast range of color and dynamics to project with sufficient impact.

Ton Koopman conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Thursday night at Symphony Center.

This is one of those split-assignment weeks for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Half the musicians are playing youth concerts and the other half were on stage at Symphony Center where guest conductor Ton Koopman led a program for smaller forces Thursday night. But with Yo-Yo Ma appearing in his second concerto performance in five days, it’s unlikely that many audience members felt greatly shortchanged.

Ma has long shown equal facility with Baroque and Classical music and Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D major was one of his earliest successes in performance and on disc.

If last week’s fresh and spirited performance of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B minor largely showed the popular cellist at his best, Thursday night’s Haydn at Symphony Center proved more of a mixed bag.

Ma is an old hand in this repertoire and it’s clearly music he loves and enjoys performing, even playing along with the orchestra in the extended introduction. Yet while he takes an aptly Classical view, at times his tonal palette seemed over-refined to the point of lacking a firm presence. One can admire the hairpin dynamic turns in running passages but much of the barely audible hovering about sounded mannered when a more straightforward approach would have served the music better.

The Adagio was more successful with Ma’s burnished, singing tone more in synch with the score and the Rondo offered the right blend of light virtuosity and galant high spirits, albeit with more imprecise attacks and errant intonation than one expects from this artist. Despite the virtues of Ma’s performance it felt a bit pallid and self-regarding, next to the spell-binding take on the same work by the young Russian Pavel Gomziakov in a spectacular CSO debut a year ago. Koopman and the orchestra provided alert accompaniment though this was very much a soloist-led performance.

CSO programming tends to neglect Haydn symphonies, so it was a nice touch that Koopman preceded the concerto with an early Haydn work in the genre, No. 6 in D major, Le Matin.

Part of a trio of Morning, Noon and Night symphonies (Nos. 6-8), there’s not much programmatic painting in the work, apart from the brief opening sunrise passage but ample buoyant melody and rhythmic curve-balls in typical Haydn style. Koopman didn’t always bring out the musical wit with a smile, but he led a lithe and engaging performance. Mathieu Dufour seems to be away more weeks than he’s here, so it was good to finally have him back to breeze through the showy flute obbligato passages, and Robert Chen and John Sharp served up equally stylish violin and cello solos.

Most people likely came to hear Yo-Yo Ma Thursday, but the offbeat second half of the program provided the greatest musical interest with a bracing confection of rarities.

In his first CSO stand in six years, the bearded, energetic Dutchman — a justly celebrated organist and harpsichordist as well as conductor — drew vital, historically informed yet unpedantic performances.

Pietro Antonio Locatelli left us relatively few works yet his five-minute overture Introduttione teatrale in G major opened the second half in galvanic style with Koopman drawing a bristling, whipcrack performance.

“Chaos,” the prologue from Jean-Fery Rebel’s ballet The Elements still sounds startlingly modern. A clear inspiration for the opening section of Haydn’s The Creation, Rebel employs grinding dissonances and jarring timpani attacks to depict the universe’s metaphysical disorder before water, air and earth (flutes, bassoon and strings) are brought into tonal alignment. Koopman and the CSO served up an evocative performance that powerfully put across the originality and imagination of Rebel’s music.

It was a nice bit of programming top-spin to have the evening close with an early Mozart symphony.

There aren’t many Mozart symphonies left unplumbed by the CSO, but Koopman managed to dig one up with No. 20 in D major, K.133, heard in its first CSO performance.  Written at 16, the concise work doesn’t display the individuality shortly to come, but is crafted with the young Mozart’s usual polish and panache and its lively Haydnesque spirit deftly fit the program. Koopman and the orchestra delivered an ebullient reading with more inspired flute work by Dufour, and the airy joviality of the finale was especially nicely done.

The program will be repeated 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Narek Hakhnazarayan will be the cello soloist Saturday night. cso.org; 313-294-3000.

Joseph Lim, Tracy Cantin and Kiri Deonarine in Act 2 from Mozart's "Le nozze di Figaro," performed with the Civic Orchestra Monday night at Symphony Center. Photo: Todd Rosenberg

There can be no higher praise for a concert performance of an isolated opera scene than that it leaves you disappointed not to be hearing the remaining two acts.

Such was the case Monday night at Symphony Center, when the Civic Orchestra collaborated with Lyric Opera music director Sir Andrew Davis and singers from the Lyric’s Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center in a pair of complete acts from Mozart and Puccini operas.

And while the final act of La boheme had its moments, it was Act 2 of Le nozze di Figaro that was the clear highlight of the evening, and left one wanting more. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that so stellar was the vocalism and spirited portrayals of the principals that any regional American opera house would be lucky to field this group of gifted young singers for their next Figaro production.

In their opening remarks Monday night, CSO association president Deborah Rutter and Lyric Opera general director Anthony Freud indicated that future collaborations between the Civic and the Ryan Center were in the works, which is welcome news indeed.

Leading the Figaro cast were the personality-plus Susanna of Kiri Deonarine and the delightful Cherubino of Cecilia Hall. Blessed with a flexible, bright-toned soprano and engaging stage presence, Deonarine appears born to play the role of Figaro’s vivacious fiancee.

Fresh from her triumph in the title role of Handel’s Teseo for Chicago Opera Theater, Hall was just as dynamite in another trousers role, as the hormonally gifted page. Gracefully androgynous in elegant jacket and pants with her hair pulled back, Hall served up a gorgeous Voi che sapete, was genuinely funny in the comedy and etched such a vivid characterization of Cherubino that sets and costumes were irrelevant.

As the Countess, Tracy Cantin got off to a shaky start with a wavery, hard-toned Porgi amor, but soon improved and did well in the ensembles, with her secure top notes cutting through with ease.

Joseph Lim was a wonderfully vivid Count, hot-tempered and incisively sung with crystal-clear enunciation. Figaro doesn’t have much to sing in Act 2 but Evan Boyer proved a fine valet with his hearty manner and ample baritone. J’nai Bridges (Marcellina), David Govertsen (Bartolo), John Irvin (Basilio) and Will Liverman (Antonio) rounded out the closing ensemble.

Act 4 from La boheme proved more of a mixed bag.

Cantin, a first-year Ryan member, was more consistent as the doomed seamstress, Mimi. The Canadian soprano sang with luminous tone and delivered an affecting performance with a tender rendition of her reprise of the opening phrases of Che gelida manina.

Bernard Holcomb also characterized well as Rodolfo, particularly in the dramatic latter moments. Unfortunately, the tenor appeared vocally miscast, dry of tone and under-projected, with a voice that sounded two sizes too small for the role.

Liverman showed a penetrating baritone as Marcello, Lim was a fine virile Schaunard and, as Colline, Boyer’s expressively sung Vecchia zimarra was a highlight. All four of the boys entered into the hi-jinx with relish as well as acting sensitively in the more dramatic moments. Emily Birsan brought a sweet tone to Musetta’s prayer.

The orchestra took a largely supportive role throughout the evening but Davis turned them into a crack pit orchestra to the manner born. Some minor ensemble slips apart, the Civic musicians played with notable weight and richness in the Puccini and refined tone and nimble agility in the Mozart.

The Puccini performance wasn’t helped by a loud, repeated noise midway through the act, which continued for several minutes. (A CSO spokeswoman said Tuesday it was due to a faulty amplifier in an upper balcony house speaker.) The singers, Davis and orchestra all kept their professional composure and soldiered on until the disturbance abated.

The evening led off with Davis leading the Civic in a notably elegant and deftly pointed rendition of Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours, with the players bringing fizzing brilliance to  the final galop.

The concert was dedicated to the memory of Florence Boone, who passed away earlier this week at 93. A longtime supporter of both the Lyric Opera and Chicago Symphony, Boone’s leadership was said to be instrumental in helping to save the Civic Orchestra when it was threatened by financial problems in the early 1990s.

The Orion Ensemble presented the world premiere of "Livingston 8 -- A Fantasy" by Miguel de la Cerna Sunday night in Evanston. Photo: Cornelia Babbitt

Virtually since the birth of jazz in the early 20th century, Darius Milhaud, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and a host of other composers have tried to merge this most American of musical forms with classical music. Many of these efforts have come off as stiff or forced, but some have produced important if still not fully accepted works like Leonard Bernstein’s Mass and even a few masterpieces, like Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

The latest composer to take on this challenge is Chicago jazz pianist Miguel de la Cerna, who is best known for his arrangements for singers such as Dee Alexander, Oscar Brown Jr. and Bobby Wilsyn.

The Orion Ensemble presented the world premiere of his resulting creation, Livingston 8 – A Fantasy, Sunday evening in Nichols Concert Hall at the Music Institute of Chicago in Evanston. The 16-minute cross-genre work, scored for piano, violin, cello and clarinet, was commissioned by the five-member, all-female chamber ensemble. The group has made versatility and creative programming like this hallmarks of its 19 years together.

Named for de la Cerna’s childhood telephone prefix, Livingston 8 draws on the jazz, gospel, blues and funk that he heard growing up on Chicago’s South Side as well as the music he has performed and experienced in his own notable career.

But this piece is no mere pastiche. He has created an ambitious, complex work tinged with these personal musical influences but very much possessing its own language solidly rooted in a modern classical style.

While this music is certainly accessible, it never kowtows to the listener. Breezy motifs and appealing, bluesy chords run through this piece, but they are embedded in a tightly interwoven, at times faintly dissonant score. In some ways, this piece is reminiscent of Astor Piazzolla’s small-ensemble works, which fuse tango and classical music but always possess their own evocative, sometimes wistful sound.

But unlike Piazzolla’s superbly constructed gems, the structure of Livingston 8 is more elusive and unwieldy, with little in the way of a forward-thrusting musical narrative. Indeed, at times, the work seems a bit repetitive, and ends in an oddly abrupt way.

Perhaps the biggest criticism is the surprisingly limited role of the piano (skillfully performed by de la Cerna), which provides a firm rhythmic and harmonic foundation but little more. As a solo toward the end — one of the piece’s highlights — makes clear, the instrument needs to be more prominently featured.

Ideally paired with the premiere on the second half was Timofei Dokshitser’s pared-down arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue for clarinet and piano. While it has an obviously thinner sound than the better-known orchestrated versions of this classic, it nonetheless captures the work’s essential spirit. Pianist Diana Schmück and clarinetist Kathryne Pirtle offered a technically sound performance, but this stylistic mélange could have benefited from a looser, jazzier approach.

Opening the program was a rich, multilayered interpretation of Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 15, with Stephen Boe substituting for the Orion’s usual violist, Jennifer Marlas.

The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Ganz Hall and 7 p.m. May 13 at Fox Valley Presbyterian Church in Geneva. orionensemble.org; 630-628-9591.

Kyle MacMillan is the former classical music critic of the Denver Post. He is a regular contributor to Opera News and has also written for such publications as Symphony and Chamber Music magazines.