The Chicago Chamber Musicians closed its season Monday evening at Gottlieb Hall with a rousing celebration of Robert Schumann’s bicentennial.  Schumann’s music will be easily heard in Chicago next season, and CCM gave its devoted audience plenty of reason to begin the anticipation.

I cannot in good conscience start this review of the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra’s May Orchestra Hall performance without disclosing several facts. My father is on its board, I on its “Young Associates Board”; I’m an alum of the organization, and most of my happiest memories from high school somehow involve the organization, is myriad programs, and its many remarkable students. Having disclosed this potential for bias, I still feel safe calling CYSO’s Sunday concert a resounding success.

With Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden in for Esa Pekka Salonen on this week’s subscription concerts, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra dusted off two war horses of symphonic virtuosity Saturday night at Symphony Center.

Violinist Christian Tetzlaff ripped into the Brahms Violin Concerto, its juicy double-stops ringing in octaves through the hall.  Though his tone weakened in the middle range, Tetzlaff danced in the upper register; the orchestra’s rich string passages kept the soloist grounded.  The middle adagio is a palette cleanser, almost lost between towering bookend movements.  The melody, introduced by Eugene Izotov’s oboe, is a lullaby not unlike that other famous Brahms tune.  Hardly soothing the audience to sleep, Tetzlaff turned inward with playing that sang, albeit intimately.  Galloping into the finale, Tetzlaff shrugged off every finger-twisting lick with ease, and drove the orchestra to a triumphant conclusion.

The Merit School’s Gottlieb Hall was the perfect setting for Sunday’s performance of the Avalon String Quartet; the intimate space cradled the Avalon’s lush and dynamic readings of three late works of Romantic giants.

The Quartet began with Schubert’s "Quartettsatz" in C minor, a single movement distillation of all the agitation, sweetness, and tension that the composer was capable of writing.  The Avalon employed aggressive and sensitive playing equally; the Quartet’s cohesion was quickly evident.