In the News
Cristian Măcelaru, Decorated Maestro, to Lead Cincinnati Symphony
Javier C. Hernández, The New York Times
April 24, 2024
"The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which has a history of attracting top conductors, including Fritz Reiner and Leopold Stokowski, announced on Wednesday that its next music director would be Cristian Măcelaru, a Romanian-born maestro who has helped champion music education."
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Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra names its 14th music director
Janelle Gelfand, Cincinnati Business Courier
April 24, 2024
"He was attracted to the job partly because leading an orchestra that is a vibrant part of the community was important to him. 'Of course, the artistic product is at the forefront of what we do,' he said. 'But the institution is really a catalyst for unity in the community. It's so challenging but wonderful and, at the same time, exciting to be able to be part of an institution like the Cincinnati Symphony that has historically transformed the city of Cincinnati, especially in more recent years. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for me to be able to be involved in this community, to experience the vibrant arts scene that everyone talks about when they talk about Cincinnati.'”
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Courier, Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber announce 2023 CLIMB award winners
Nikki Kingery, Cincinnati Business Courier
October 5, 2023
The Cincinnati Business Courier and the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber have announced the winners of the 2023 CLIMB (Cincinnati Lifts Inclusion and Minority Business) Awards. The CSO is being presented a CLIMB award for our commitments to community engagement, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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Ode to Joy: How Louis Langrée Transformed the CSO
Rick Pender, Cincinnati Magazine
September 21, 2023
“He [Louis] sees the schisms in our society, and he’s always been focused on how you use music to overcome them by creating a more diverse audience and a more diverse orchestra. Louis has brought this orchestra closer to the people of Cincinnati because he understands the city. He made it his business to understand the culture of the city. He understands the power of music to unify. Music has the power to bridge divides, more than any other art form, because it creates a common language.”
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Louis Langrée Wraps Up a Quietly Transformative Era of Conducting
Joshua Barone, The New York Times
July 14, 2023
"And yet, at 62, Langrée has never been one of the world’s most famous or sought-after conductors. His career has been a steady climb of prestige and quality, quietly remarkable but undersung even as he has transformed ensembles: in Cincinnati, where he has been at the podium for a decade..."
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Classical Music and Opera This Fall: 59 Programs, Premieres and More
Joshua Barone & Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
September 8, 2022
“The Mahler seems to be a popular choice: You can… find it under the baton of Louis Langrée at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (Sept. 24-25)”
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Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra announces permanent endowment of diversity chief
Bill Cieslewicz, Cincinnati Business Courier
January 13, 2022
“The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday announced its first endowed administrative position in the organization's 127-year history. Board member Michael Cioffi, a partner at Blank Rome who manages the Cincinnati office, and his wife, Rachael Rowe, a partner at Keating, Muething & Klekamp PLL, made an undisclosed gift to endow and name in perpetuity the CSO's chief diversity and inclusion officer position.”
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The Marine Band will play familiar standards, but also new fanfares, at today’s inauguration.
Joshua Barone, The New York Times
January 20, 2021
“Mr. Boyer’s premiere, “Fanfare for Tomorrow,” is an adaptation of short work of the same title he wrote for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Fanfare Project in the early months of the pandemic. He described the piece as optimistic, a response to one crisis but also befitting Wednesday’s ceremony.”
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Steve Smith, The New Yorker
Goings On About Town, April 2021
“The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Louis Langrée, have provided online viewers with inventive programming and compelling performances throughout the long pandemic months, and the orchestra’s next two offerings continue this streak. The first is the world première of “A Body, Moving,” composed by Christopher Cerrone, presented alongside pieces by Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, and Gabriella Smith. Next, in “The Meta Simulacrum, Vol. 1,” the composer William Brittelle synthesizes material generated by a disparate array of pop musicians, jazz improvisers, and media artists into an evocation of an uncertain future.”
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FALL PREVIEW: Finally, a Lot of Classical Music and Opera to Hear This Season
Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
Fall Preview, September 21, 2021
“Even with the resumption of live performances, the pandemic’s impact on culture is far from over: Ensemble Intercontemporain’s fall residency with this orchestra, led by the inspiring conductor Louis Langrée, has been scratched because of travel restrictions. But other highlights of the Cincinnati season remain, including performances of Andrew Norman’s 2014 piano fantasia “Suspend” (Oct. 29- 30) and William Dawson’s 1934 “Negro Folk Symphony” (Jan. 8-9)
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Review: Beethoven’s Biggest Concert, Now With Heat
Joshua Barone, The New York Times
March 2, 2020
“Time travel may be impossible, but the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra offered the next best thing in a marvelous, if anachronistically lavish, re-creation at Music Hall here over the weekend.… in a year when celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth is all but inescapable, this was nonetheless a welcome, and informative, addition to the festivities.”
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Steve Smith, The New Yorker
Goings On About Town, October 2020
“In recent weeks, the music director Louis Langrée has rallied the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for a virtual concert series infused with finesse and diversity. The newest program includes “You Have the Right to Remain Silent,” a bold, stinging, painfully timely clarinet concerto by the Pulitzer Prize- winning composer Anthony Davis, with Anthony McGill, the New York Philharmonic principal clarinetist, as the soloist.”
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10 Classical Concerts to Stream in November
Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times
October 28, 2020
“The conductor Louis Langrée has a strong track record in the music of Schubert, whose “Unfinished” Symphony anchors this program. But this conductor and his orchestra will also branch out, performing a piece by Julia Perry (“Homunculus C.F.”) as well as the Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Davis’s “You Have the Right to Remain Silent.” This work, with its sardonic invocation of the Miranda warning, has been memorably recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Cincinnati’s performance boasts the acclaimed clarinetist Anthony McGill, of the New York Philharmonic, as one of the featured soloists.”
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FALL PREVIEW: 10 Months of Classical Concerts You Won’t Want to Miss
Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
Fall Preview, September 12, 2019
“Celebrations of Beethoven’s 250th are a dime a dozen, but this burnished ensemble is really going for it with a re-creation of the remarkable, epically long December 1808 concert that featured the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the “Choral Fantasy,” as well as other pieces. Louis Langrée conducts the two-part performance, four hours of music separated by a dinner break.”
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