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.
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 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.
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.
Nothing brings fond holiday memories to mind quite like Christmas carols. The talented vocalists of the North Shore Choral Society will offer their renditions of See Amid the Winter’s Snow and the beloved Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. The rhythmic yet lyrical Gloria by Randol Bass is returning this year, which will also highlight the ESO brass section with its exultant fanfares.
Watch the holiday classic of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker come to life when the Evanston Symphony Orchestra joins forces with the Evanston Dance Ensemble. Not only is The Nutcracker one of the most popular ballets, but it is often performed during the holiday season due to its Christmastime setting. In fact, its music is often an introduction to classical music for audiences of all ages.
Even though Sibelius’ pieces such as Finlandia are more popular, his Symphony No. 1 is no less important. Sibelius premiered his Symphony No. 1 in 1899 and revised it in 1900.
Symphony No. 1 starts off its first movement slowly with a clarinet over a soft timpani roll and moves into a main theme in the strings. A contrasting theme is picked up by the woodwinds, then a standard development and recapitulation follow. The movement ends with two soft pizzicato chords in the strings.
√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.
