The Illinois Symphony Orchestra’s 2025-2026 season truly got underway Friday, Nov. 7. After debuting last month with the well-attended “Star Wars Greatest Hits” concert, the ISO seems to be settling into its temporary digs at the First United Methodist Church, 2941 S. Koke Mill Road, with its excellent acoustics and comfortable pews. The church has about half the seating capacity of the orchestra’s usual home, Sangamon Auditorium at University of Illinois Springfield, which is currently undergoing renovations. The relative intimacy of the venue extends to the lack of a large backstage area, meaning the musicians share the lobby with staff and audience members before the concert and during intermission, creating an odd but egalitarian mood.
As for the music, Friday’s concert provided a first half full of earthy, folk-tinged delights followed by a rendition of one of the most seminal and exciting works in the entire classical canon, all presided over with panache by ISO music director Taichi Fukumura.
Things got underway with a spirited version of Hungarian composer Bela Bartók’s six-part “Romanian Folk Dances” (1915) providing the evening’s first of several bursts of sonic adrenaline.
Next up was Miklós Rózsa Violin Concerto from 1956. Rózsa left his native Hungary as a teenager and ended up composing scores for many mid-20th century Hollywood movies such as Ben-Hur and Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound. It was at this point in the evening that acclaimed violin virtuoso Blake Pouliot took the stage to accompany the ISO, and his fiery playing imbued Rózsa’s music with a propulsive, almost violent fervor – it was one of the rare symphony concert experiences where it would not have seemed out of place for audience members to get out of their seats and start dancing.
“How can we imagine, or recreate, a free and equal society?” This was the question Maestro Fukumura put to the audience regarding Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” (1804), which constituted the concert’s second half. The symphony had originally been dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte – until his announcement that he had declared himself Emperor. Beethoven was reportedly so incensed at this undemocratic self-aggrandizement that he physically put a hole in the symphony’s score where Bonaparte’s name had been. In addition to its political edge, Fukumura had described Beethoven’s Third Symphony in an earlier interview as having “changed the idea of what a symphony can be – he made it much more of a philosophical statement.”
Friday’s performance of the symphony more than did justice to Ludwig’s vision. The musicians of the ISO gave their all to the melodic beauty of the composition, with special heavy lifting from an especially spirited flute section during the climactic fourth movement. After a standing ovation, the audience left the church exhilarated.
The next ISO concert will be the very popular annual “Holiday Pops in the Heartland” which will have two performances on Sunday, Dec. 14, at the Illinois State Library.
Scott Faingold is a journalist, educator and musician. He has been an instructor at University of Illinois Springfield, founding editor of Activator magazine, a staff reporter for Illinois Times and cohost of Old School Bleep, a music-centered podcast. He can be reached at scottfaingold@gmail.com.
This article appears in November 13-19, 2025.
