Riccardo Muti was conspicuous by his absence from the news conference called by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Monday afternoon at Symphony Center to announce the CSO’s 2011-12 season, his second as music director.
But the Italian maestro was very much on the premises, having taken part in auditions for several vacancies in the CSO ranks earlier in the day. Muti, 69, was discharged over the weekend from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he had a pacemaker installed days after undergoing surgery to repair fractures he suffered in a fall from the podium during a CSO rehearsal on Feb. 3, CSO Association President Deborah Rutter said.
Still, Muti’s vigorous spirit and clear vision for the CSO were palpable during the media briefing to disclose program and artist details for the CSO’s 121st season, a schedule planned before the first-time-Grammy-winning conductor’s recent accident.
The first thing to leap from the press release is that 2011-12 will include Muti’s first international and West Coast tours with the orchestra since becoming its artistic chief in September — six weeks of touring in addition to 10 weeks of subscription concerts back home.
Two big events — one inspired by the centennial commemoration of Gustav Mahler’s death, the other a three-week, 13-event, late-season piano festival organized and directed by pianist Emanuel Ax — will loom large amid an already-crowded season of subscription concerts, MusicNOW programs and Symphony Center Presents attractions.
In August and September, before leading the first concerts of his fall term here, Muti will take the CSO on a preseason European tour that is to include concerts in Salzburg, Austria; Lucerne, Switzerland; Dresden, Germany; Luxembourg; Paris; and Vienna.
The maestro’s Chicago residencies again will be divided into fall, winter and spring segments, including two subscription weeks to close the season in June 2012.
Kicking things off will be a free community concert Sept. 22 at a venue to be determined — the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park wasn’t available when the CSO needed it — to be followed by three subscription weeks and the annual Symphony Ball.
Highlighting these concerts will be Liszt’s “Faust” Symphony (part of a re-creation of a 1911 CSO program honoring the centennial of the composer’s birth), and a re-creation of the final program Mahler ever conducted, including works by Italian composers Ferruccio Busoni, Giuseppe Martucci, Leone Sinigaglia and Renzo Bossi.
Muti won’t venture any opera with the CSO in the coming season, but he is scheduled to lead performances of Carl Orff’s scenic cantata “Carmina Burana” as part of his January residency. The focal point of his February weeks will be the world premieres of CSO-commissioned works by resident composers Mason Bates and Anna Clyne. He and the orchestra will take both pieces on their first joint California tour, which will include two concerts in San Francisco.
Muti is postponing his CSO performances of the Cherubini Requiem in C minor until March 2012, when he and the Grammy-winning CSO Chorus will present it along with choral works by Brahms and Schoenberg. (The Cherubini Mass originally was scheduled for October but was scrapped after the cancellation of roughly half of the maestro’s fall residency.) An all-Brahms run-out concert to Ann Arbor also is on Muti’s March docket.
April will bring the CSO’s first trip to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, for two concerts, followed by a tour of Muti’s native Italy, details to be announced. He will return to Chicago to close the orchestra season June 14-24 with programs of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Paganini and Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony.
Muti conducts Mahler’s music very selectively and he will turn that repertory over to guest conductors for a Mahler-oriented program initiative, “An Exuberant Era: 1911/12,” holding major works composed or premiered in those years.
The seasonlong survey is to include Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 1, 4, 6 and “Das Lied von der Erde,” plus the “Blumine” movement Mahler excised from his First Symphony. Pierre Boulez will direct “Das Lied von der Erde,” and Bernard Haitink will take charge of the Fourth Symphony.
Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” a very belated CSO premiere, also figures prominently in Boulez’s two-week residency in February and March. Haitink’s two October weeks will include performances of Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation.”
All of Symphony Center’s concert series, from classical to jazz, will be represented in “Keys to the City,” a first-time festival of piano repertory and history, May 20-June 12, 2012. The ambitious event spans recitals, chamber, symphonic and jazz concerts, two symposia and a day of free piano-related events. Artists taking part include pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Mitsuko Uchida, Stewart Goodyear, Jeremy Denk, Stephen Hough, Kristian Bezuidenhout and Ax.
The new Bates work, “Alternative Energy” for electronica and orchestra, is said to incorporate sounds from around Chicago. According to Clyne, her as-yet-untitled, 20-minute piece was inspired by CSO musicians “both individually and as a mass force.” Another CSO-commissioned work receiving its premiere next season will be James Matheson’s Violin Concerto, written for CSO principal second violin Baird Dodge, who will assume the solo part.
Conductors leading the orchestra for the first time next season are Alain Altinoglu, Stephane Deneve, Susanna Malkki and Kirill Petrenko. Returning conductors include Semyon Bychkov, Charles Dutoit, Mark Elder, Manfred Honeck, Ton Koopman, Bernard Labadie, Ludovic Morlot, Trevor Pinnock, Carlos Miguel Prieto, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas and Jaap van Zweden.
Among the soloists will be pianists Yefim Bronfman, Michele Campanella, Tell Fellner, Gerhard Oppitz and Nikolai Lugansky; violinists Leonidas Kavakos, Stefan Jackiw, Frank Peter Zimmermann and Pinchas Zukerman; cellist Yo-Yo Ma (the CSO’s creative consultant); singers Ildar Abdrazakov, Ian Bostridge, Michelle DeYoung and Stuart Skelton; and CSO musicians Mathieu Dufour, J. Lawrie Bloom, David McGill, Christopher Martin, Robert Chen, Charles Pikler and John Sharp.
For details on the orchestra’s Symphony Center Presents, Beyond the Score, Afterwork Masterworks, Friday Night at the Movies and other series, visit the website,
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jvonrhein@tribune.com
2011-12 subscription concerts with Riccardo Muti
Sept. 22: Rota’s Suite from “The Leopard”; Ibert’s Flute Concerto; Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 (free community concert)
Sept. 23, 27: Rota’s Suite from “The Leopard”; Ibert’s Flute Concerto; Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5
Sept. 24: Verdi’s Overture to “Giovanna d’Arco” (“Joan of Arc”); Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Opus 16; Verdi’s “The Four Seasons” from I vespri siciliani (Symphony Ball)
Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 4: Wagner’s “Huldigungsmarsch”; Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major; Liszt’s “A Faust Symphony”
Oct. 6-8: Sinigaglia’s Overture to “Le baruffe chiozzotte”; Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A major, Opus 90 (Italian); Martucci’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat minor, Opus 66; Busoni’s Berceuse (c)l (c)giaque; Bossi’s Intermezzos from “Goldoniani”
Jan. 26-28, 31: Orff’s “Carmina Burana”
Feb. 2-4, 7: Honegger’s Pacific 231; Bates’ Alternative Energy (world premiere, CSO commission); Franck’s Symphony in D Minor
Feb. 9-11: Schubert’s Entr’acte No. 3 from Rosamunde, D. 797; Clyne’s new work (world premiere, CSO commission); Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 (“Great”)
March 7-8, 10: Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 77; Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Opus 73
March 15-17: Brahms’ Schicksalslied for Chorus and Orchestra, Opus 54; Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre; Cherubini’s Requiem in C Minor
June 14, 16, 19: Prokofiev’s The Meeting of the Volga and the Don; Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Opus 67
June 15, 17: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Opus 67 (Beyond the Score)
June 22-24: Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Opus 6; Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 in A Major
For details on the orchestra’s Symphony Center Presents, Beyond the Score, Afterwork Masterworks, Friday Night at the Movies and other series, visit the website,
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