CSO Audio Program Notes

CSO Audio Program Notes

By Chicago Symphony Orchestra AssociationSociety & CultureMusicHistory
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CSO Audio Program Notes episodes

  • CSO Program Notes: CSO & The Joffrey Ballet
    Dancers from Chicago’s world-renowned Joffrey Ballet invigorate the Symphony Center stage with two newly commissioned choreographies set to Siegfried Idyll, Wagner’s glowing birthday gift to his wife, and Rameau’s vivid ballet, composed for a royal wedding at the Palace of Versailles. Ravel evokes Baroque dance in Le tombeau de Couperin, with each movement becoming a touching tribute to friends who died in World War I. The program opens with the beguiling elegance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 34.
    Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Stephen Alltop in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/22-23/cso-classical/cso-and-the-joffrey-ballet
    16 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Wagner, Bartók and Vaughan Williams
    As Great Britain endured the Blitz in 1943, the 71-year-old Vaughan Williams produced his Fifth Symphony. To celebrate 150 years since the composer's birth, Edward Gardner conducts this work of warmth and gentle contemplation. Christian Tetzlaff, “a meticulous and refined virtuoso” (The New York Times), presents Bartók’s rhapsodic Second Violin Concerto. Wagner’s serene and somber prelude to Act 3 of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg opens the program.
    Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Steve Rings in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Classic Encounter
    Thursday, November 3: Preconcert lecture hosted by Chicago’s favorite radio DJ, WXRT’s Terri Hemmert, with co-host and CSO viola Max Raimi.
    You will have the opportunity to add Classic Encounter to your order after selecting your seats for the concert.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/22-23/cso-classical/wagner-bartok-and-vaughan-williams
    18 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Grieg Piano Concerto and Prokofiev 6
    Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony was a risky undertaking in post-World War II Russia: a personal meditation on suffering and loss that he described as agitated, lyrical and austere. Pianist Simon Trpčeski animates the romantic flourishes of Grieg’s Piano Concerto while Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s Primal Message is a fantasia inspired by the 1974 Aricebo interstellar radio transmission.
    Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation Daniel Schlosberg in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/22-23/cso-classical/grieg-piano-concerto-and-prokofiev-6
    12 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Thielemann Conducts Bruckner 8
    Bruckner’s last completed symphony is a majestic statement in which every theme feels like a sacred offering. Bruckner signed the score "Hallelujah,” and eagerly declared, “The finale is the most important movement of my life.” Christian Thielemann, “the most admired of today’s German conductors” (Los Angeles Times), leads the CSO on this sweeping journey.
    Classic Encounter
    October 20: Preconcert lecture hosted by Chicago’s favorite radio DJ, WXRT’s Terri Hemmert, with co-host John Hagstrom, CSO trumpet (Pritzker Military Museum and Library Chair)
    You will have the opportunity to add Classic Encounter to your order after selecting your seats for the concert.
    Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Max Raimi in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/22-23/cso-classical/thielemann-conducts-bruckner-8
    13 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Muti Conducts Pictures from an Exhibition
    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’s dark-hued final piano concerto. The program opens with Franck’s supernatural thriller The Accursed Huntsman.
    Pianist Maurizio Pollini has withdrawn from this engagement; a statement from his management notes that “Maurizio Pollini is very disappointed to announce that for medical reasons, he is required to cancel his upcoming American tour.”
    Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Carl Grapentine in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/22-23/cso-classical/muti-conducts-pictures-from-an-exhibition
    17 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Muti Conducts Mozart & Prokofiev
    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.
    Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Daniel Schlosberg in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/22-23/cso-classical/muti-conducts-mozart-and-prokofiev
    11 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Muti & Bronfman
    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 invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Johann Buis in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/22-23/cso-classical/muti-and-bronfman
    17 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Muti Conducts Verdi Un ballo in maschera
    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 featuring a spectacular cast of international singers and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
    Ticket holders are invited to a free preconcert conversation featuring Derek Matson in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Cast
    Francesco Meli tenor (Riccardo)
    Joyce El-Khoury soprano (Amelia)
    Luca Salsi baritone (Renato)
    Yulia Matochkina mezzo-soprano (Ulrica)
    Damiana Mizzi soprano (Oscar)
    Alfred Walker bass-baritone (Samuel)
    Kevin Short bass-baritone (Tom)
    Ricardo José Rivera baritone (Silvano)
    Lunga Eric Hallam tenor (A Judge)
    Martin Luther Clark tenor (A Servant to Amelia)
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/21-22/cso-classical/muti-conducts-verdi-un-ballo-in-maschera
    18 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Muti, Mutter & Beethoven Violin Concerto
    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 conversation featuring Carl Grapentine in Orchestra Hall 75 minutes before the performance. The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/21-22/cso-classical/muti-mutter-beethoven-violin-concerto
    17 min
  • CSO Program Notes: Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet
    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 last approximately 30 minutes. No additional tickets required.
    Learn about Soundpost, a preconcert discussion about how technology is being used as a tool to push sound by producing not only novel sounds but also innovative works of music.
    Learn more: cso.org/performances/21-22/cso-classical/tchaikovsky-romeo-juliet
    13 min

About CSO Audio Program Notes

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Founded in 1891, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is consistently hailed as one of the greatest orchestras in the world. In collaboration with the best conductors and guest artists on the international music scene, the CSO performs well over one hundred concerts each year at its downtown home, Symphony Center, and at the Ravinia Festival on Chicago’s North Shore, where it is in residency each summer. Music lovers outside Chicago enjoy the sounds of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through best-selling recordings and frequent sold-out tour performances in the United States and around the globe.

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