CSO Audio Program Notes

Mussorgsky, shaken by the passing of his friend, the artist Victor Hartmann, turned his grief into music, composing his lavishly evocative 10-movement suite inspired by Hartmann’s sketches. Riccardo Muti leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Ravel’s iconic orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition. 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition winner Eric Lu joins the CSO in Mozart’...

The 2022/23 season will mark 70 years since Sergei Prokofiev’s death. Riccardo Muti conducts Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, composed in 1944, which ranks among his greatest achievements. Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 has grandeur and intensity that foreshadows the mature symphonies of Beethoven. The overture to Rossini’s Journey to Reims gathers several of the composer’s buoyant and picturesque themes. Ti...

A new season begins as dazzling pianist Yefim Bronfman joins Riccardo Muti and the CSO in Brahms’ unabashedly vigorous and stirring First Piano Concerto. Tchaikovsky’s joyful Second Symphony quotes folk melodies from Ukraine. The program opens with the U.S. premiere of a long-lost and recently discovered score by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a British composer of African descent. Ticket holders are in...

History supplied Verdi with the subject matter for this gripping drama. It is based on the true story of King Gustav III of Sweden, who was assassinated during a masked ball in 1792. Combining political intrigue, a love triangle and a fortune teller’s mysterious prophecy, the opera also contains radiant choral writing and richly scored dance music. Riccardo Muti leads a concert performance featuri...

By turns majestic, lyrical and iconoclastic, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto has been a signature work for Anne-Sophie Mutter ever since it propelled her to fame as a teenager. Riccardo Muti presents it alongside Brahms’ First Symphony, another 19th century landmark whose moods come in vast waves, from brooding, restless melancholy to ecstatic joy. Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conve...

James Gaffigan leads a program etched in vivid colors, including Tchaikovsky’s seductive portrait of Shakespeare’s immortal lovers, Mussorgsky’s windswept Night on Bald Mountain and Saint-Saëns’ riotous Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah. Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Stephen Yaness in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will...

Hear how Greek and Roman mythology have captivated composers with tales of betrayal, love and heroism. In Daphnis and Chloe, Ravel uses ravishing orchestral colors and a wordless chorus to depict this pastoral romance. Salonen finds inspiration in the epic struggles of the twin half-brothers Castor and Pollux, depicted in his two-piece orchestral composition, Gemini. Opening the program is Carolin...

Esa-Pekka Salonen takes listeners on a voyage through astonishing terrains, from Ravel’s exquisite setting of Perrault’s fairy tales to Stravinsky’s 1940s “war symphony,” with its allusions to marching soldiers and tanks. Completing the program, Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto introduces a 2021 concerto by Bryce Dessner partly inspired by Anne Carson’s essay The Anthropology of Water. It is a re-...

Hear the sounds of bravery, battle and romance in Strauss' exuberant Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), led by Karina Canellakis. Kirill Gerstein performs Schumann’s only piano concerto, a work that brims with joy and melody. Augusta Read Thomas’ Brio is a study in agility and motion, building to a full-throttle, sparkling intensity. Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featu...

Lithuanian-born Julian Rachlin showcases his singular versatility as a violinist, violist and conductor. He joins CSO Associate Concertmaster Stephanie Jeong in Mozart's effervescent Sinfonia concertante before leading a performance of Tchaikovsky's sweetly melancholic Souvenir. Taking to the podium, Rachlin bookends the program by conducting works by Mozart and Beethoven. Ticket holders are invit...

Riccardo Muti presents two groundbreaking pieces by the first African American composers to have symphonic works performed by major orchestras. William Grant Still’s Mother and Child is a gentle, lilting work inspired by a painting by Sargent Johnson. Florence Price’s expressive Third Symphony gives a powerful voice to the African American experience. The first half includes Beethoven's Fourth Sym...

Riccardo Muti leads a world premiere by Jessie Montgomery, the CSO’s new Mead Composer-in-Residence. Raised on New York’s Lower East Side, Montgomery writes music that is “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). CSO Principal Bass Alexander Hanna is the soloist in Bottesini’s bravura concerto before the program ends on a joyous note with Beethoven’s homage to nat...

Steeped in fateful march rhythms, bittersweet lullabies and a series of thunderous hammer blows, Mahler’s Sixth Symphony is an impassioned, searching statement. New York Philharmonic music director Jaap van Zweden returns to lead the CSO, whose “musical DNA is closely intertwined with Mahler” (Chicago Tribune), in this tour de force. Please note: there will be no late seating for this concert, and...

In his CSO debut, Klaus Mäkelä leads a journey through two Russian masterworks: Stravinsky’s sumptuous fairy-tale ballet The Firebird, and Prokofiev’s imaginative Second Violin Concerto, featuring Swedish phenom Daniel Lozakovich, also making his first appearance with the CSO. The program opens with Anders Hillborg’s Eleven Gates, a kaleidoscopic score that the Los Angeles Times calls “hugely ente...

Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes brings his “effortless command and penetrating clarity” (The New York Times) to Britten’s Piano Concerto, a glittering score composed during the lead-up to World War II. Riccardo Muti frames the program with Richard Strauss’ contemplative “Dreaming by the Fireside,” from his opera Intermezzo, and Schumann’s triumphant Fourth Symphony. Ticket holders are invited t...

Riccardo Muti leads the world premiere of Orpheus Undone by the CSO’s former Mead Composer-in-Residence Missy Mazzoli, whose works are celebrated for their raw emotional authenticity. Also on the program are works by two late-Romantic titans. Bruckner’s awe-inspiring Second Symphony is a perfect companion piece to Mahler’s intimate Rückert-Lieder, sung by Elīna Garanča, whose voice “is one in a mi...

Anna Rakitina, in her CSO debut, leads a Tchaikovsky celebration. The dynamic Alisa Weilerstein is the soloist in the Rococo Variations, Tchaikovsky’s graceful homage to the 18th century, and the Pezzo capriccioso, a mercurial, one-movement gem. Capriccio italien is a bustling portrait of Italian life, while selections from The Nutcracker highlight the composer’s gift for creating wondrous dance t...

Jane Glover leads an enchanting program of Baroque and Classical masterpieces. “Dazzling virtuoso” (The New York Times) Paul Jacobs performs one of Handel’s sparkling organ concertos, and the CSO’s Principal Oboe William Welter makes his first CSO solo appearance with Mozart’s expressive Oboe Concerto. Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Laura Prichard in Orchest...

Distinguished conductor Herbert Blomstedt conducts Bruckner’s most popular symphony, with its allusions to the peaceful countryside, hunting horns and a boisterous Austrian folk dance. Martin Helmchen, whose “pliant, quicksilver touch seemed to illuminate every solo passage” (Chicago Classical Review), is the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17. The graceful score stems from one of the happi...

Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi leads a program of passionate and colorful works featuring Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, a five-movement portrait of romantic obsession, replete with a witches’ sabbath, a guillotine and opium-induced hallucinations. Chopin’s dazzling Second Piano Concerto features Benjamin Grosvenor, hailed by Gramophone magazine as possibly “the most remarkable young pianist of...

Riccardo Muti assembles the combined forces of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chorus and internationally renowned soloists for “the symphony to end all symphonies” (The Guardian), Beethoven’s euphoric Ninth. A masterpiece whose staggering influence can be heard throughout classical music, it concludes with the famous Ode to Joy, which powerfully calls for understanding, peace and universal goodwi...

One of Beethoven’s most reflective and serene creations, the Fourth Piano Concerto is an ideal vehicle for Mitsuko Uchida, who conveys “a sense of intimacy and directness in her playing, as well as a certain quiet grace” (San Francisco Chronicle). Riccardo Muti also conducts Glass’ Symphony No. 11, a colorful, exuberant score that the composer wrote for his own 80th birthday celebration. Ticket ho...

A program of rich, Romantic intensity features Rachmaninov’s ravishing Second Piano Concerto, performed by the brilliant Czech pianist Lukáš Vondráček. Elgar’s Enigma Variations are miniature portraits of friends, family members and the composer himself, alternately noble, yearning and blustery in character. Barber’s First Symphony is a mid-century gem, alive with soaring lyricism, bold colors and...

Riccardo Muti conducts a program of Baroque masterpieces by Vivaldi and Handel. CSO musicians are prominently featured in three defining examples of Vivaldi’s mastery of the concerto form. Concluding the program is Handel’s grand and celebrated Water Music. Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Daniel Schlosberg in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance....

Muti leads the CSO in suites from two of Tchaikovsky’s most popular ballets, the timeless and romantic Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. Also included in the program are Emil von Reznicek’s delightful overture to his comic opera Donna Diana and Johann Strauss’ regal Emperor Waltz. Learn more: cso.org/performances/21-22/cso-classical/muti-conducts-sleeping-beauty-swan-lake