"The News" by JacobTV (above) will be presented at 6 and 9 p.m. Friday at the Park West. Photo; Mark van Vugt

Brace yourself for The News.

Created by Dutch avant-garde composer JacobTV, this electronic “reality opera” will be presented by Fulcrum Point at the Park West Friday night. The News mixes two live singers and nine instrumentalists with an array of sampled video speeches and dialogue from various news programs and talking heads in a free-form riff on media, politics and fame. Click here for a preview. Performances are 6 and 9 p.m. at the Park West. Go to fulcrumpoint.org or call 312-726-3846.

For those looking for a more traditional evening, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has returned from its tour of Russia and Italy, with Yo-Yo Ma featured in back-to-back programs. This weekend, Ma will be solo protagonist in Dvořák’s evergreen Cello Concerto. Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto will also lead the CSO in Moncayo’s Huapango and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2.  Concerts are 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. cso.org; 312-294-3000.

Cecelia Hall stars in the title role of Handel's "Teseo" at Chicago Opera Theater. Photo: Liz Lauren

Chicago Opera Theater’s short spring season is already coming to a close but with two home runs in a pair of Chicago premieres, aficionados need to head over to the Harris Theater in the next week.

COT’s production of Handel’s rarely heard Teseo offers a virtual seminar in Baroque opera staging with a visually striking design, faultless cast and three hours of terrific music. There are three more  performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday, 3 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. May 2.

And tonight is your last chance to catch the company’s delightful production of Shostakovich’s operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki, an unlikely all-singing, all-dancing romantic comedy about the joys of the postwar Soviet housing shortage, boasting an engaging populist score and energetic young cast. chicagooperatheater.org; 312-704-8414.

UPDATE: With its two scheduled performances nearly sold out, Haymarket Opera Company has added a third, late-night performance Saturday at 10 p.m.

The Haymarket Opera Company will present the second and final production of its inaugural season this weekend with La Descente d’Orphee aux Enfers (The Descent of Orpheus to the Underworld).

Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s concise chamber opera is well suited to the new period-instrument company, intimate in scale yet with much attractive music. Marc Molomot and Carrie Henneman Shaw star as the doomed lovers Orpheus and Euridice, Peter van de Graaff tackles the double roles of Apollo and Pluto, and Craig Trompeter leads the ensemble.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Mayne Stage, 1328 W. Morse. Call 773-381-4554 or go to haymarketopera.org.

The CSO is currently touring the West Coast, but there are still plenty of worthy events taking place this weekend.

Two Russian stars team up Sunday night. Violinist Vladimir Spivakov and pianist Olga Kern will partner in Brahms’  Violin Sonata No. 3, Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, Franck’s Sonata in A Major and Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, a work written for and dedicated to Spivakov. Concert time is 8 p.m. at Symphony Center. 312-294-3000; cso.org

Also the acclaimed Fauré Quartet will appear at Mandel Hall 7:30 p.m. Friday night with a program featuring Mahler’s Piano Quartet movement, Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 and Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1. 773-702-8068; chicagopresents.uchicago.edu

Peter Serkin

At a time when the vocal recital has largely vanished from Chicago, and most instrumental programs tend to concentrate on the safe and familiar, it’s heartening to know that there are still some musicians willing to trod the repertorial path less taken.

Peter Serkin returns to Chicago Friday night with a bracingly smart and well balanced program for the University of Chicago Presents series. Beethoven’s epic Diabelli Variations is the main work, prefaced by music of three 20th-century composers Serkin has long championed. The evening will begin with Stefan Wolpe’s Toccata in Three Parts, Toru Takemitsu’s For Away and Charles Wuorinen’s Adagio.

Concert time is 7:30 p.m. at Mandel Hall. 773-702-8068.

Franz Joseph Haydn

There’s plenty of high-profile events to choose from this weekend: Riccardo Muti’s return to the CSO with Orff’s Carmina Burana; the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center Friday at the Harris Theater; and Joshua Bell’s recital Sunday at Symphony Center.

But don’t overlook Music of the Baroque’s program of Haydn and Handel led by Nicholas Kraemer. The ensemble’s principal guest conductor has revealed himself as one of our very finest Haydn conductors, able to put across the wry wit and rhythmic curveballs in especially winning fashion. The program couples Haydn’s Symphony No. 31 (Horn Signal) and No. 98 with Handel’s Concerto a due cori in F Major (Judas Maccabaeus) and Concerto grosso in D Major, Op. 6, No. 5.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Sunday at First United Methodist Church in Evanston and 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Harris Theater. baroque.org; 312-551-1414.

Manfred Honeck

The Austrian team of conductor Manfred Honeck and pianist Till Fellner is striking considerable sparks at this week’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts. Fellner’s take on Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 offers an ideal mix of Classical poise and Romantic bravura, and Honeck’s taut Dvořák (Symphony No. 8) delivers bracing virtuosity without neglecting the Czech composer’s rustic charm.

There are two more performances 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. cso.org; 312-294-3000.

Following last week’s exhilarating Berlioz performances, Sir Mark Elder and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra present another Shakespeare-inspired program Thursday night. Readings from Henry IV will be interstitched with Delius’s The Walk to the Paradise Garden, Elgar’s Falstaff, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.

Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday, 1:30 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. cso.org; 312-294-3000.

The Orion Ensemble presentd a program of Beethoven and Schubert trios Sunday night in Evanston.

The Orion Ensemble offered an intriguing mix of repertoire on its program of trios Sunday evening at the Music Institute of Chicago in Evanston.

Beethoven’s familiar and lavishly dramatic Ghost Trio in D Major, Op. 70, no. 1, closed the program. But the opening two works — Beethoven’s Clarinet Trio, Op. 11, and Schubert’s String Trio in B-flat Major — provided the evening’s unexpected pleasures. In the slow movement of Beethoven’s Op. 11, the main theme had the kind of long, lyrical line we usually associate with Schubert. And Schubert’s trio, in turn, had some of the abrupt, mercurial flights and sharp harmonic shifts more typical of Beethoven.

Performed by pianist Diana Schmuck, clarinetist Kathryne Pirtle and cellist Judy Stone, the Beethoven Clarinet Trio got the evening off to a high-energy start. This is the Orion’s 19th season (Schmuck and Pirtle along with violinist Florentina Ramniceanu founded the group), and the players are entirely comfortable with one another. In the opening movement, they dug into Beethoven’s amiable main theme with gusto, Pirtle’s clarinet sounding mellow yet merry, Schmuck’s piano sending out invigorating, pointillistic sprays.

The sound throughout the piece was elegantly balanced, even when the musical conversation included highly contrasting voices. In the Adagio, the piano’s short phrases glistened above the low, expressive cello line and the clarinet’s lustrous melodies. In the final movement, a theme and variations, the three were responsive listeners, each vivaciously seizing and ceding the spotlight.

The balance was less even in Schubert’s trio, which featured Ramniceanu and guest violist Roger Chase along with Stone. Ramniceanu played with a bright, powerful tone, and she was fleet-fingered and confident in the mercurial first movement. But occasionally her aggressive sound overpowered the other two players.

In Beethoven’s Ghost Trio, however, that assertiveness served the music well. The slow second movement sounded appropriately haunted. Each player seemed absorbed in a separate vision — the violin halting and breathless as if transfixed by an unnerving force, the cello searching, while the piano maintained a strong but unsettled presence. When the robust finale arrived to break the tension, we sighed with relief.

The program will be repeated 7 p.m. Nov. 27 at Fox Valley Presbyterian Church in Geneva and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 30 at Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall in Chicago. orionensemble.org; 630-628-9591.

Arvo Part's "Berliner Messe" was performed Saturday by the Chicago Arts Orchestra and City Voices.

One of Chicago’s lesser-known small musical organizations, the Chicago Arts Orchestra has been performing since 2005 under musical director and conductor Javier Jose Mendoza. The ensemble has been especially active in unearthing and premiering sacred and secular 18th-Century musical gems from Latin America and Spain.

Chicago Arts Orchestra also performs standard classical repertoire during their brief season, and Saturday evening’s concert at the Athenaeum Theatre contained mostly well-known works of fairly recent vintage. For the major piece on the program, Arvo Pärt’s Berliner Messe, they were joined by William Chin’s choral group, City Voices.

Mendoza opened their program with the Barber Adagio for Strings and comparisons were inevitable. With persistent intonation issues in the upper strings, the performance emerged as static.  The long lines of the piece as well as the theater’s dry sonics exposed the string orchestra unkindly.  One mitigation here as throughout the evening was the solid contribution of the two cellists, Rebecca Zimmerman and Thomas Ems.

Eric Ewazen is a contemporary American composer noted for his brass music especially, but for this concert the Chicago Arts Orchestra took on his three-movement Sinfonia for String Orchestra (2001). The music was by turns ebullient, lyrical and fairly complex, but uneventful and conventional.

The orchestra had warmed up enough for a performance of the youthful yet more interesting Simple Symphony of Britten. This always fresh-sounding (1934) work poses challenges, especially in the “Playful Pizzicato” second movement and in the dynamic “Frolicsome Finale.” Mendoza and his instrumentalists brought some humor and swagger to these parts and the third movement “Sentimental Sarabande” showed off the lower strings nicely.

The music of Arvo Pärt formed the second half of the program with his Berliner Messe the highlight of the evening.

The bell-haunted Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten (1977) received a performance that could have used more atmosphere but in the context of the program was thoughtfully chosen. At the beginning of this piece Mendoza gave the second of only two brief comments from the stage, a refreshing departure from performance conventions lately, allowing the music speak for itself.

The Cantus was an excellent lead-in to Pärt’s Berliner Messe, a masterpiece of the composer’s tintinnabulation technique. Written originally for organ and chorus for the 1990 “German Catholic Day,” this version pits the small chorus against a string ensemble. The piece is short but liturgically complete and is particularly rich in Medieval and early Renaissance vocal textures which abound throughout but especially in the fourth movement  Veni Sancte Spiritus is the heart of the piece where the vocal lines dip, rise and hover around a simpler chordal, almost foreboding  string drone.  A more dynamic Credo precedes a long stretched-out Sanctus followed by an unearthly but brief Agnus Dei, which concludes the Mass on a note of expectancy.

The City Voices attacked the music with energy, but seemed hampered by the unreverberant space. The ensemble was still  able to deliver a solid performance of a major 20th-century choral work that merits repeated hearings.

The Chicago Arts Orchestra returns to their specialty, 18th Century Latin American and Spanish music, for their next concert on February 25th at a venue to be announced.