Riccardo Muti’s towering authority, musical and otherwise, should reassure members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s extended family that stability and continuity will be maintained while management undergoes significant transition.
Jeff Alexander, Deborah Rutter’s successor as CSO association president, won’t be on board here until just after the New Year. Before then, two key positions in the executive hierarchy – vice president for artistic planning, and director of artistic administration, posts now held by Martha Gilmer and Nick Winter, respectively – will be vacant. Filling them will be among the new man’s first and most pressing orders of business after assuming command on Jan. 12.
Fortunately, most of the artistic essentials of Muti’s fall residency, which begins this week at Symphony Center, were put into place as far back as two-to-three years ago. And board chair Jay Henderson said he is assuming some administrative responsibilities in advance of Alexander’s arrival.
Even so, you can be certain Muti’s input will carry even greater weight than before, as the 73-year-old Neapolitan maestro begins his fifth season as CSO music director.
A look at his packed fall schedule suggests his appetite for concentrated work remains voracious.
Muti is launching his autumn tenure with four virtually sold-out performances this week and next of Beethoven’s iconic Ninth Symphony, with the CSO, soloists and Chicago Symphony Chorus. In case you’re unable to scare up tickets to any of these performances, do not despair: Thursday’s concert is to be videotaped for worldwide streaming at a future date. Access will be free on demand at cso.org, riccardomutimusic.com, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
On Friday, one night before the maestro mingles with the swells at Saturday’s annual Symphony Ball fundraiser, he will get down with the masses at Millennium Park. In keeping with his often-stated aim to put the CSO’s music-making within reach of the entire community, he and the orchestra will favor the throng with their annual free Concert for Chicago, an all-Tchaikovsky program.
Although one is disappointed not to find anything truly contemporary in Muti’s fall subscription concerts, he and the CSO will offer Andrzej Panufnik’s “Concerto in modo antico” in celebration of the late Polish composer’s centennial. The soloist will be principal trumpet Christopher Martin.
That piece is to be reprised in Warsaw on Oct. 20 when Muti and the orchestra begin their fifth European tour, a three-week itinerary that will include stops in Geneva, Switzerland; Luxembourg; and Paris. The final tour week will be given over to four concerts in Vienna, including two performances of Muti’s signature masterpiece, the Verdi Requiem. The tour will mark the CSO’s first appearance in Poland.
Muti’s repertory focus this season will be the symphonies of Russian masters Tchaikovsky and Scriabin, whose music he will compare and contrast. He will launch his Tchaikovsky cycle this month and next with the Symphonies No. 4 in F minor and No. 3 in D major (“Polish”).
Apropos of strengthening community connections, Muti is scheduled to lead the CSO’s preprofessional youth training orchestra, the Civic Orchestra, in an open rehearsal of Liszt’s “Les Preludes,” at 7 p.m. Sept. 29 in Orchestra Hall. Although the event is free, tickets will be required.
Along the same lines, he also will rehearse the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest in music of Richard Strauss, at 7 p.m. Sept. 24 at the Dominican University Performing Arts Center in River Forest; the rehearsal is open to the public and tickets will not be required.
No less an essential part of the maestro’s mission to make classical music accessible to more young people will be his visit to the Illinois Youth Center-Chicago, where he and CSO members will perform for the facility’s incarcerated youth, date to be announced.
Finally, autumn will see the release on the orchestra’s in-house recording label, CSO Resound, of Muti’s performance of music from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The new recording is being sold exclusively at Symphony Store beginning this week, in advance of its general U.S. release on Oct. 14.
When asked whether the label eventually will release a recording of Muti’s extraordinary 2013 concert performance of Verdi’s “Macbeth,” a CSO spokeswoman replied that “the CSO does not currently have plans” to do so. That is depressing news indeed. Perhaps if enough audience members lodge enough protests, and prospective funders step forward, something good might come of it.
Gladys Elliot, 1929-2014
Gladys Elliot, longtime former principal oboe of the Lyric Opera Orchestra and one of the handful of pioneering woman musicians to hold a first-chair position with a prominent U.S. symphonic ensemble, died Friday at a nursing care facility in Austin, Tex., according to Bailey Gartner, her caregiver of the last 20 years and a former oboe student of hers. Elliot was 85.
Very few female musicians were deemed worthy of holding principal posts with symphony orchestras during the 1950s when Elliot embarked on an orchestral career.
She gave up her position as principal oboe of the Dallas Symphony in 1963 when she came to Chicago with her then-husband, Willard Elliot, who joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as first bassoon.
Recruited in 1964 to play in the Lyric orchestra, Elliot went on to hold the first oboe chair with the company for a remarkable 30 years. She also served as principal oboe with the Grant Park Orchestra during that time. Her musicality and reliability were widely admired by conductors and colleagues.
Her career ended abruptly in 1994 when a CTA bus struck her as she was crossing a River North street. The accident left her permanently incapacitated. Three years later, the CTA paid her $7.5 million, in what was believed to be the largest individual settlement in CTA history.
‘In Search of Chopin’
Anyone who admired British director Phil Grabsky’s previous documentary portraits of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn is likely to find his latest film, “In Search of Chopin,” equally absorbing, informative and, yes, entertaining.
Performance excerpts and interviews flesh out the saga of the brilliant if short-lived Polish-born composer and pianist (he was only 39 at his death) whose keyboard music represents the quintessence of the Romantic piano tradition. Links are drawn between Chopin’s creative impulse and his emotional fragility, lifelong battle with tuberculosis and sometimes fraught romantic relationships, including a notorious liaison with novelist George Sand.
Included is illuminating commentary by pianist-performer Hershey Felder, who portrayed the composer in his one-man show, “Monsieur Chopin,” at the Royal George Theatre here in 2005.
“In Search of Chopin” receives its U.S. premiere on Friday, and will run through Oct. 2, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Grabsky take part in audience discussions at all Friday-to-Monday screenings during the first week; 312-846-2600, siskelfilmcenter.org.
Sharps and flats
Mason Bates, beginning his fifth and final season as composer in residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has joined the composition faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Conductor Rossen Milanov, a former music director of the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras who’s currently serving as music director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, has been named music director of the Columbus Symphony in Ohio. His four-year contract will take effect with the 2015-16 season.
Roderick Cox and Sameer Patel are the first recipients of the Chicago Sinfonietta’s Project Inclusion conducting fellowship. They will be mentored by sinfonietta music director Mei-Ann Chen, Civic Orchestra of Chicago principal conductor Cliff Colnot and Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University dean Henry Fogel.
Chen will lead the opening concerts of the sinfonietta’s 2014-15 season Saturday at Wentz Concert Hall in Naperville and Monday at Symphony Center; 312-284-1554, chicagosinfonietta.org.
Twitter @jvonrhein
