Indianapolis Concerts

While classical music lovers have long cherished the classic opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth, the pastoral-sounding wind solos in Beethoven 6 and, of course, the “Ode to Joy” melody in Beethoven’s Ninth, Beethoven’s Seventh often lies under the radar.

Yet, upon its premiere in 1812, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was strikingly well-received. Not only did Beethoven assert that his Seventh Symphony was one of his best works, but critics and fellow musicians also celebrated the piece. Richard...

This Halloween, forget "Scream" costumes, zombie flicks and vampire novels and let orchestra music scare your socks off!

In the spirit of the approaching weekend of witchery, I chatted with a few ISO musicians about their favorite creepy concertos, haunting hymns and ominous overtures. Play some of these pieces as you're doling out candy or slathering carmel onto your apples!

"Berlioz’s "Symphonie Fantastique" features the Dies Irae tune, a hymn to the 
dead. We’ve played Paul Dukas’s...

The oboe exudes a smooth A. The hall is silent. The conductor strolls to the podium, shakes the concertmaster’s hand, and raises his baton. Suddenly, the sounds of two unison clarinets, against the soft, eerie backdrop of low strings, emanate from the woodwind section. For the first minute or so of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, the audience focuses only on the rich sounds of the clarinet.

In my completely biased opinion, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony has one of the most powerful openings of any...

Maybe I've been watching the World Series too much, but I see this weekend's Symphonic Hits Concert as a fast ball, right down the middle.  It's strong, it's exciting, and it doesn't pull any punches - no contemporary works, no difficult to understand rarity, just three masterworks from the heart of the ever popular Romantic repertoire.   We have an overture by Bellini inspired by Romeo and Juliet, THE quintessential Romantic piano concerto by Robert Schumann, and a fatalistic symphony...

This morning, my boss Jessica gave me the keys to the ISO’s archive room and told me to “have at it.” As I stepped into the tiny room tucked away in the middle of the Marketing and Communications floor and caught a glimpse of the treasure trove of old ISO photographs, music scores and random artifacts – including a cornet with the baseball stuffed in the bell about which I am quite curious and thus plan to explore in a future blog post – my history-dork senses were awakened.

As a lifelong...

If two years ago anyone had told me that the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra concert for which I would be most excited this season would be Mahler's First Symphony, I would have called them crazy. 

For most of my life as a classical musician, I could never bring myself to like or even understand Mahler's compositions.  Beethoven symphonies, Brahms sonatas, and even Strauss tone poems made sense to me, but these long, loud, and laborious Mahler works that call for an army of brass players and...