Audiences will have a rare chance to hear Chicago Symphony Orchestra principal conductor Bernard Haitink in a variety of guises this week, not only leading the CSO in a program including Mozart’s final “Jupiter” Symphony No. 41 and Richard Strauss’ domestic tone poem “Ein Heldenleben” but also leading a rare Sunday night concert by the Civic Orchestra, the training orchestra of the CSO (tickets are free, but must be reserved in advance) in Schubert’s “Unfinished” Eighth Symphony and Richard Strauss “Death and Transfiguration,” a work portraying a man’s death (a slow timpani portrays his faltering heartbeat and subsequent arrival in a glorious C Major afterlife. Haitink will also reprise a performance of the Bruckner Seventh Symphony for one night only (Dec 9)—the first piece that he recorded with the CSO and which launched the CSO’s own record label—as the last concert of his winter residency. (Dennis Polkow)
December 5-7 & 9 at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, (312)294-3000.
Scenes From A Season: An Inside Look at a Year with Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Walking out onto the stage last September, Muti was receiving his first applause at Orchestra Hall in over nineteen months. The celebrated Italian-born music director of the CSO, who had turned eighty two months earlier, was clearly moved. What made the acclamation unusual was that the hall was empty. The orchestra itself was providing heartfelt and sustained applause, greeting Muti…
