Schedule:

A Gabriel Faure Centenary at Bennett Gordon Hall
Gabriel Fauré is one of those composers whose reputation exceeds familiarity with much of his oeuvre. As 2024 is the 100th anniversary of Fauré’s death, his music is receiving special attention—and easily living up to the spotlight. Is it overstatement to call Fauré a modest revolutionary? Where the German composers who dominated much of the 19th century, from Beethoven to Wagner, stormed the heavens in setting forth their Promethean passions, Gabriel Fauré helped forge a different, French pathway, with music that combines harmonic colorfulness, adroit textures, humane restraint, inquisitiveness, and sensuality.

Fauré can seem a pivotal composer, whose balance of classical forms and new openness paves a path to the more radical Debussy and to Fauré’s student Ravel. This program matches Fauré’s valedictory, timelessly serene Piano Quintet No. 2 to Ravel’s arrangement of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, which asks two pianists to investigate the musical conceptions behind the original’s ravishing surfaces, and also to the Venezuelan-born Reynaldo Hahn’s own Piano Quintet, an ingratiating work written in homage to Fauré that shines its light not only on a great master, but on a half-century of a school of uniquely French creativity.

Performers
Ricardo Castro, program curator and piano
RSMI Piano & Strings Program Fellows

Gates Open: 12:30 PM
Concert Starts: 1:30 PM

Tickets: Reserved Seats: $15

CSO + Marin Alsop with Abel Selaocoe at Pavilion
South African cellist-composer Abel Selaocoe joins Marin Alsop and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Four Spirits, which "takes the concerto format to thrillingly unprecedented places" (Bachtrack). Themes of ancestral wisdom, faith, and community permeate as the piece is put in perspective alongside Beethoven's monumental Fifth Symphony, with its distinct explorations of fate.

Performers
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop, conductor
Abel Selaocoe, cello and voice
Bernhard Schimpelsberger, percussion

Donor Gates Open: 4:30 PM
Gates Open: 5:00 PM
Concert Starts: 7:30 PM

Tickets:
Reserved Seats: $35–$95
Lawn Reserved Blocks: $45
Lawn General Admission: $17