Pittsburgh’s GDP places the city in the mid-20s in terms of American cities ranked by economy size, but the arts groups here punch well above that weight class largely thanks to strong foundation support.
Below are my choices for the top classical concerts to attend and write about in April.
1. The Artemis Quartett has all the credentials of a great string quartet as well as the chops to back them up. I’m especially taken with their recordings on Spotify. At 7:30 p.m. April 8 in Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland, Chamber Music Pittsburgh presents the Berlin-based quartet in a program featuring Barber’s famed “Adagio,” Britten’s Quartet No. 2 in C Major and Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, “Death and the Maiden.” This last work is one of the all-time great works of chamber music, especially that devil-may-care finale.
Tickets: $42-$50 at chambermusicpittsburgh.org
2. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has a pair of classical subscription series concerts. I’m especially interested in the April 5-7 concerts. Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 has a main tune that can be heard in each of the four movements, giving the listener something to keep an ear on throughout the work. It starts out as a somber affair but is transformed by the end to a jubilant fanfare. French conductor Emmanuel Krivine makes his PSO conducting debut in Heinz Hall, and the program also includes Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” and Blacher’s “Orchestra-variations on a Theme of Niccolo Paganini.”
The following weekend concludes the orchestra’s season-long Rachmaninoff piano concerto cycle with Garrick Ohlsson performing the fourth concerto as Leonard Slatkin conducts. Those concerts finish with one of the most overrated works in classical music: Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.”
Tickets: $20-$98 at pittsburghsymphony.org
3. There’s nothing so farcical as the plot of a comic opera, and Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” is no exception, with its core message centered on the foibles of May-December marriages. From April 27 to May 5, Pittsburgh Opera presents “Don Pasquale,” set in 1950s Hollywood, in the Benedum Center, Downtown. It’s the final production of the opera’s season. The curtain rises at 8 p.m. April 27.
Tickets: $14-$160 at pittsburghopera.org
4. Handel’s “Messiah” is most often played at Christmas, but Handel actually composed his masterpiece for an Easter service. On April 13 at 3 p.m., the early music ensemble Chatham Baroque will combine musical forces with Pittsburgh Camerata to present the “Messiah” on original instruments at the time it was intended to be performed. The concert takes place at Shadyside Presbyterian Church, 5121 Westminster Place, 15232.
Tickets: $25-$30 at pittsburghcamerata.org
5. Music groups are increasingly championing social causes, sometimes placing more emphasis on the concerts’ message than quality of performance. Not so with the Clarion Quartet, a group made up of Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra string players. The quartet’s mission is to explore “Entartete Music,” or works deemed degenerate by Nazis and banned in the years leading up to the Holocaust. On April 29, the Clarion Quartet performs a program of Mendelssohn and Weinberg works at 7:30 p.m. in the Kresge Theater at Carnegie Mellon University.
Tickets: Free but registration required at cmu.edu/cfa/music/concerts
Jeremy Reynolds: jreynolds@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1634; twitter: @Reynolds_PG. Mr. Reynolds' work at the Post-Gazette is supported by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Getty Foundation and Rubin Institute.
First Published: March 28, 2019, 12:00 p.m.