Chicago Classical Review

Last season the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra made an ill-advised feint toward more “populist” offerings, with half of their programs made up of light classical, pops or film music. Fortunately, the southwest suburban orchestra is back to serious classical rep this season, apart from a program devoted to music of the inexplicably omnipresent Joe Hisaishi in February. 

Yet the 2026-27 season has handed the IPO another challenge. The closing of Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights earlier this year means that the school’s fine Ozinga Chapel was no longer available, leaving the IPO an orchestra without a country or, at least, a regular concert venue.

Hopefully, the new owners of that property will find a way to allow the IPO to return at some point. Meanwhile the orchestra is splitting its concerts between a Frankfort high school and Governors State University, where it opened the season Saturday night.

GSU is close to Monee and looks even further south on paper than it is in travel time. Still, that extra 45-minute trek south means a long drive on Harlem Avenue, taking two different expressways, and another drive east—something many of the IPO’s Palos-Orland patrons appeared to pass on with the season-opener much more sparsely attended than usual.

The evening led off with Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila Overture, which also served to spotlight the dry and rather muted acoustic of GSU’s Center for the Performing Arts. Music director Stilian Kirov led a vigorous reading of this perennial curtain-raiser that— if not the fastest or most thrilling ever—was vital and well played with admirably fluent and accurate strings in the whirling main theme.

It’s been a good fortnight for music of William Walton on local stages. Klaus Mäkelä led blazing concerts of Belshazzar’s Feast a week ago in the first CSO performances in a half-century. And the IPO did their part with a performance of the English composer’s Viola Concerto, with Matthew Lipman as soloist.

The young soloist is carving out a major career yet he has always returned to his area roots to appear with the IPO. Lipman’s first teacher was the orchestra’s late, longtime principal violist Matthew Mantell, and Lipman did his mentor proud with an extraordinary performance of Walton’s concerto Saturday night.

One could hardly imagine a more communicative or beautifully played performance of this somewhat elusive 1929 work. The soloist played with a consistently full, sweet tone in the framing movements, drawing a warm, oaky, burnished tone from his 2021 custom-made Zygmuntowicz instrument. In the motoric central Vivo and fast sections elsewhere, Lipman’s passagework was immaculate, the young violist making the technical challenges look easy. 

But primarily he brought a sweet-toned, soulful quality to the inward, contemplative music that dominates this work. The quiet ending of the first moment was spoiled by a perky electronic pop tune from a clueless patron’s cell phone. Fortunately, no such calamity happened in the coda of the finale with Lipman sensitively conveying the melancholy, introspective essence of the long diminuendo as the music faded away to silence.

Kirov and the IPO sounded a bit too deferential to their soloist in the opening movement. The orchestral playing grew more assertive and incisive with each movement though exposed passages revealed errant wind tuning and wan horn playing.

Brahms’ not unfamiliar Symphony No. 1 closed the program. Kirov is often at his best in these cornerstone romantic works, bringing freshness and urgency, and so it proved again, even if the variable playing of the IPO musicians was less polished than it can be.

The opening movement began in arresting fashion, the pounding timpani and strings well blended and duly imposing with Kirov leading a purposeful, well-paced reading. The conductor led the Andante as an open-hearted idyll yet one that would have benefited from more polished oboe playing and fewer instrumental fluffs.

The finale wasn’t helped either by less-than-majestic horn solos and ensemble lapses elsewhere. Yet Kirov and the musicians still built the tension surely and inexorably to a duly exciting coda that almost made up for the rough edges en route.

After intermission Andrea and Richard Gibb were presented with the Leo and Ann Michuda IPO Award for Lifetime Service for their longtime support of the orchestra. Both gave short, gracious speeches with Richard Gibb sharing the award with the IPO musicians, the orchestra’s supporters and audience members.

The Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra performs Bizet’s Symphony in C, Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite and Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst 7:30 p.m. November 21 at Lincoln-Way North High School in Frankfort. ipomusic.org

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