• Our Next Concert

    Tchaikovsky 4

    Sun., March 15, 2020, 2:30 p.m.

    Khachaturian

    Prokofiev

    with Irina Muresanu, violin

    Tchaikovsky

    Irina Muresanu

    Buy Tickets

     

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  • Young Persons’ Concert

    Sunday, May 19, 2019
    3:00 pm, ETHS

    Music by Rossini, Rodríguez, Vivaldi, Williams
    followed by Farandole by Bizet plus Music from Pirates of the Caribbean performed by Evanston District 65 orchestra students playing side-by-side with Evanston Symphony musicians

    FREE!
    Donations Requested

     

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  • ESO’s
    Share The Stage

    Share the Stage lets you sponsor a chair in the Orchestra. It’s our way of recognizing that the ESO Community is made up of Orchestra Members and Supporters.

     

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2019–2020 SERIES: GREAT COMPOSERS

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Musical Insights

Free Pre-Concert Preview Series!

Friday, March 13 at 1:30 pm

Enhance your concert experience with a sneak preview — Composers come alive and their passions take center stage when ESO General Manager David Ellis and ESO Maestro Lawrence Eckerling take you on an insider’s tour of the history and highlights behind the music.

Meet our soloist, Irina Muresanu, at Musical Insights. She and our Maestro Lawrence Eckerling and David Ellis will explore the March concert program in depth.

The Merion
Friday, March 13 at 1:30 pm,
The Merion Crystal Ballroom at
1611 Chicago Avenue at Davis Street, Evanston.
FREE and open to the public.
Please RSVP to 847-562-5318.

Light refreshments will be served and casual tours of newly renovated apartments will be available after the program.

Give the gift of music

Treat a friend or relative to the ESO

Give the gift of music by ordering directly from our website and purchasing a custom gift certificate in any denomination of your choice! Certificates may be redeemed for single ticket or season subscriptions for any of our concerts.

You will receive an electronic gift certificate or we can mail the certificate to you or directly to the recipient.

SHOP and Support the ESO!

Are you looking to buy a gift for someone at Amazon? Need to stock up on supplies from Amazon?

Amazon has a special program called Smile, where the company donates a small amount of your purchase to your designated charity. Once you select the ESO as your Smile recipient, just point your browser to smile.amazon.com each time you want to shop at Amazon and the Evanston Symphony will benefit. It won’t cost you a thing!

Thanks, and happy shopping.

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Concert Content Highlights

Whimsical Woodwind

√While little is known about Antonio Vivaldi’s inspiration or his method of composition for the Piccolo Concerto, it is clear that the popular Italian composer was incredibly prolific; he penned upwards of 500 concertos, and more than two-thirds of them were written for solo instruments. Originally intended for the “flautino,” a high-pitched baroque recorder equivalent to today’s piccolo, the piece exhibits several characteristics of the baroque concerto that Vivaldi made standard during the era.

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Not a Traditional Folk Melody

Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius composed Finlandia for orchestra in 1899, and it became an overnight sensation. The piece was a political protest supporting the freedom of the Finnish press which was increasingly being controlled by the Russian Empire. Finlandia is a tone poem, an orchestral composition inspired by what the title of the piece refers to. (In Finlandia’s case, nationalism.) The piece premiered in the composer’s native Finland and was performed under various names to avoid this censorship.

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A Centennial Celebration

Candide is based on the 1758 novella by Voltaire, which satirized the fashionable philosophies of the day, particularly the tortures inflicted by the Catholic Church on supposed heretics during the Inquisition. Noting parallels to the controversial activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which sought to root out Communism in the United States, playwright Lillian Hellman proposed to Bernstein in 1953 that they adapt the novella for the musical theater.

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Celebrating the Bernstein Centennial with Chichester Psalms

Although Bernstein is probably best known for West Side Story, the composer, conductor, and pianist composed many pieces of music throughout his life including Chichester Psalms, an orchestral work with choir and boy treble. The ESO will be joined by the North Shore Choral Society and William Lewis, boy solo, to perform this Bernstein masterpiece.

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