MUTI & THE CSO: VISION

VISION

Celebrating the Legacy of Riccardo Muti and the CSO

Riccardo Muti’s final season as music director pays tribute to his remarkable bond with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and celebrates the communicative power of his musicmaking that has galvanized Chicago audiences over these past 13 years.

Muti’s concerts combine classics with discoveries, and reunite him with longtime colleagues and friends. Each program highlights a different aspect of the acclaimed Muti-Chicago Symphony partnership, now at its peak after playing some 500 concerts together — reviving signature pieces, showcasing the Orchestra’s principal players and inviting beloved guest artists back to our stage.

Throughout the season, Muti will play key works from his Chicago years — Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition, which capped his first concert with the Orchestra 50 years ago next summer, and Respighi’s Pines of Rome, the dazzling finale of his first concert as music director, in Millennium Park in 2010. Muti will return to music by Schubert and Tchaikovsky, whose complete symphonies he surveyed so memorably with the Orchestra. And reunites with pianist Yefim Bronfman, violinist Julia Fischer and pianist Maurizio Pollini, who makes his first appearance with the Orchestra in a decade. Continuing his annual tradition of showcasing the Orchestra’s first-chair players, Muti joins Concertmaster Robert Chen in Mozart, longtime Principal Tuba Gene Pokorny in the concerto Lalo Schifrin wrote with him in mind and David Herbert, one of Muti’s earliest principal appointments, in William Kraft’s First Timpani Concerto.

JESSIE MONTGOMERY

DAVID HERBERT

MILLENNIUM PARK, SEPTEMBER 19, 2010

GENE POKORNY SERGEI RACHMANINOV

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR

ROBERT CHEN For the first time in Chicago, Muti will lead Rachmaninov’s haunting Second Symphony and Prokofiev’s dazzling Fifth. He will give the U.S. premiere of the recently discovered Solemn Prelude by the British composer of African descent Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and unveil a new work by Jessie Montgomery, the sixth Mead Composer-in-Residence to be appointed by Muti. At the season’s end, he will lead his first Chicago performances of Beethoven’s sublime Missa solemnis, a towering work of sacred vocal music that is a testament to the very soul and spirit of music.

Program after program is designed to demonstrate our 10th music director’s unique passion for communicating the solace and joy that music alone can deliver. In Muti’s hands, these are pieces that draw us in with their quiet depth, or thrill us with unexpected drama and lyrical power. With the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at his fingertips, Muti makes music soar and sing as only the greatest of musical partnerships can.

Muti’s last year as music director offers a panoramic view of music that reflects our complex world and speaks to the very qualities that make us human. With these unmissable programs, Riccardo Muti concludes one of the most extraordinary chapters in our Orchestra’s history.