Music director emeritus for life Riccardo Muti, Megalopolis director and Academy Award-winner Francis Ford Coppola greet each other backstage following the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s November 8 performance of Osvaldo Golijov’s “Megalopolis” Suite, which receives its world premiere performances with Muti and the Orchestra November 7-9, 2024/Photo: Amy Aiello

“Good afternoon, Maestro,” says a smiling, cheerful waitress to Riccardo Muti. “How are you today?”

“Today, I don’t know,” says Muti tongue in cheek, about to have lunch on his day off during his late autumn Chicago Symphony Orchestra residency. “Yesterday was okay. And tomorrow, we never know what happens.”

“Tomorrow is a mystery,” agrees the waitress. “It’s a big mystery for our whole country,” she adds, referencing the election that would take place the following day.

“For the world,” says Muti.

Was it a coincidence that Muti happened to be doing the Beethoven Third “Eroica” Symphony with its themes of freedom and liberty during our election week?

“I never mix politics with art,” says Muti. “But every act we make is a political act in the sense of the Greek term for politics, polis, not the cheap politics. Every act, everything we say, is a political thing. It’s a coincidence. But ‘Eroica,’ as you know, was dedicated to Napoleon by Beethoven, but then he cut and cancelled the dedication.”

Scratching out the dedication on the score when Napoleon declared himself emperor.

“Si.”

The synergy that existed between conductor and orchestra during the “Eroica” rehearsals and performances was something quite special.

“I like the fact that in a symphony that they have played so many times, when I point out something that has not been realized in many performances—about a dynamic, of a nuance—you can see in their eyes, a sense of surprise. It’s almost like, ‘why didn’t we do it like this before?’ This, for me, is the biggest compliment. Without saying anything, you see it in their eyes.”

How does it feel for Muti to be back in Chicago after more than a year away?

“When you have worked so closely with the musicians, they become part of your family. And when you go back, even after many months, you go on the podium and it’s like you have left the podium the day before.

“This happened to me last week in Philadelphia. I was music director there [from 1979] until 1992. In the orchestra, there are still twenty-two musicians hired by me. When I started to rehearse with them, it was my home again. It was like it was my orchestra. Immediately, all the years in the middle disappeared.

“Of course, I found an orchestra that was not exactly the same orchestra I left because the players were different, there had been other music directors and leadership, etc. But I was able after the second rehearsal to bring back the concept of the sound that I have in my mind. This is the most important thing.

“It was kind of like the father, the grandfather is back. It was a wonderful week and a beautiful experience to go back. They even made a party for me with all the musicians of my time and prepared a cake, ‘Benvenuto, Maestro.’ And the public, as soon as I went on stage, there was a standing ovation immediately. That means that what I did at that time still remains there.”

It had been decades since Muti had been back to Philadelphia. Was this a special one-off occasion or might he return?

“You know, more and more, I become homesick. But if it happens, I will be glad. I don’t want to meet new orchestras, I want to go on the podium and start immediately with musicians that know me and I know them. So the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago, the Bayerischen Orchestra [Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra], I like very much. And after many years, I conducted Orchestre National de France again, they love me very much, too. And I go to the Philharmonia in March.”

Muti was principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London from 1972-1982, succeeding Otto Klemperer. How long has it been since he has been back? “A long time.” Likely decades. “You cannot be everywhere. A music director should be dedicated to the orchestra you are working with. That’s where I devoted my time rather than going elsewhere. And now, only these orchestras. And then the Vienna Philharmonic has been the orchestra of my life. This year will be—do you remember how many years?”

Wasn’t 1971 Muti’s Vienna Philharmonic debut? “It’s been fifty-four years if you count from year one.”

So counting the 2025 Vienna New Year’s Concert that Muti will conduct in a few weeks, fifty-five years.

“Si. This will be my seventh New Year’s Concert. You know, 2025 will be the bicentennial of Johann Strauss, so it’s a celebration of Johann and the Strauss family generally. But for the first time, we will play a waltz by a lady, by a woman composer.”

A female member of the Strauss family? “Constanze Geiger, born in 1835. She was a contemporary of Strauss.”

Muti also conducted the monumental Bruckner Eighth Symphony for the first time ever with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival in August.

“It was a huge success and was incredible. It was a sort of a religious experience. But there are some people that still ask me, ‘Do you conduct Bruckner?’ They think I only conduct Verdi. I don’t do Bruckner in the Teutonic way. He was Austrian, not German. Generally, here they think that Bruckner was [makes a dour face with a heavy arm gesture]. He comes from Schubert. The line is Haydn—not Mozart—Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner.”

Are we going to hear Muti do the Bruckner Eighth with the CSO at some point?

“I don’t know. We’ll see in the future. You would like to hear me do it here?”

It’s hard to imagine anyone who would not.

“Maybe I will do it.”

The following day, Muti would begin rehearsals for a Chicago Symphony Orchestra world premiere later that week, “Megalopolis Suite,” by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. Golijov had been the CSO composer-in-residence 2007-2010, and the work would be comprised of music Golijov had composed for Francis Ford Coppola’s 2024 film, “Megalopolis.” Had Muti seen the film?

“No.”

With its Roman theme, the assumption was that was behind Muti’s interest in doing music from it.

“I didn’t want to see the film because I will do the piece as pure music, not connected to an image. It could then become sort of like a wrong interpretation of ‘Pines of Rome,’ you know? When I conduct ‘Pines of Rome,’ I don’t think about the pines of Via Appia Antica. It is pure music.”

What was Muti’s interest in doing the piece? Does he know Golijov or his music?

“I will meet the composer tomorrow, he is coming to the rehearsals. It started with Coppola, who is a relative of mine. Not a close relative, we have to go back to my relatives in Napoli and his relatives there. In fact, Coppola says that we are cousins.”

Does Muti know Coppola?

“Si, because when I received a prize in New York a few years ago, Coppola was there. I will tell you the story.

“When I was a young boy in Napoli, my uncle—whose family name was D’Avenia—apparently wrote to his relative in America saying, ‘I have a nephew that plays piano and studies music. And we think that he has talent.’ He didn’t ask for anything, he was just sharing information between families. The person that received the letter was the father of Coppola.”

Carmine Coppola? “Si. He was a flutist.” And became a conductor and wrote scores for some of Francis’ films. “I didn’t know this. But he was a flutist in Detroit. So, things stopped there.

“After the announcement of my Chicago appointment, I came to conduct the New York Philharmonic. Coppola was told that this conductor in New York, who is now becoming chief conductor in Chicago, is from Napoli. So he started to think about his father receiving this letter from Napoli and wondered, ‘Is it possible that this conductor from Napoli is the boy of many years ago?’

“At the time when the father of Coppola received the letter, Coppola the filmmaker was a young boy. He wanted to go deeply into the story. So my secretary received an email or letter from Coppola saying, ‘Can you ask Maestro Muti if he has the name D’Avenia in his family? Because in the Coppola family, we also have the name D’Avenia. And if he does, is the D’Avenia in his family the one that had a shop of pianos that he sold in one part of Napoli? If this is so, we are relatives.’ So I received and answered back to him that, ‘Yes, my uncle was that D’Avenia that had the piano shop.’ And he called me and said, ‘We are cousins.’ I have never told this story until now.

“So I said, ‘Then you speak Italian?’ ‘No. In Italian I can only say, “La commedia è finita!”’ The end of ‘Pagliacci,’ and he said it in a southern Italian accent. And then when I went to New York and received the prize I mentioned, every artist there was introduced and Coppola was there. So when he wrote this film, he was hoping that I would be interested in the music. Golijov made a suite from ‘Megalopolis’ and in the score, you see the dedication to Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony. The piece is complex so it needs a lot of dedicated work to clarify. He’s a very passionate composer.”

After its world premiere performances later that week, Golijov’s “Megalopolis Suite” will be part of the repertoire that Muti and the CSO takes on tour to Florida in January 2025 along with music of Donizetti, Verdi, Chabrier, Falla, Bellini, Schubert and Tchaikovsky.

Muti with Osvaldo Golijov at a CSO rehearsal on November 6, 2024, the day before the world premiere
Photo: David Taylor

The big news since Muti was last in Chicago was the April announcement that twenty-eight-year-old Finnish cellist and conductor Klaus Mäkelä would become his successor as the eleventh music director of the CSO, effective with the 2027-28 season. At thirty-one when his tenure begins, Mäkelä will take over as the youngest music director in the organization’s 136-year history. The announcement was greeted with a firestorm of international controversy given the revered place the Chicago Symphony holds in the music world versus Mäkelä’s age and lack of experience.

What does Muti, who was the oldest CSO music director to date when he stepped down in June of 2023 at eighty-one, think of the choice?

“I have my opinions, but I will not tell you. I didn’t want to take part in the search, so I was completely out of it. As I should be. So I didn’t even know the person that they chose.”

Muti did not know who Mäkelä was?

“No, because I do not keep up with what happens here or there with other orchestras in Oslo or in other cities.”

But Mäkelä conducted here in 2022 and 2023 before the April 2024 announcement was made.

“Si, but I was not here. [Artistic administrator] Cristina Rocca invited him.”

As music director, Muti couldn’t have offered an opinion?

“There are so many conductors that come through here so I was completely out of the decision. I didn’t make comments before they came to say, ‘This one is good, this one is not good. This one is okay, this one is not okay.’”

What seemed odd, if not unprecedented, was that in the announcement of his appointment, Mäkelä did not acknowledge his predecessor in any way. Reiner and Solti, yes. But not Muti. “I don’t know him. Maybe he doesn’t know me.

“I will say that I think it is very dangerous to have the orchestra be without a music director for three years. At a certain point, they needed a successor. But not a successor three years before.

“In the room of [music director] Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Philadelphia, there is a picture of me and [Eugene] Ormandy together in the moment of the transition from Ormandy to Muti. Ormandy is smiling, happy to give over his orchestra to the young conductor. I was thirty-nine years old and this is what makes for continuity. Not, ‘Don’t say anything to Muti,’ because I never knew who my successor actually was. The entire world was talking about ‘Mäkelä, Mäkelä,’ and were asking me. I said, ‘I don’t know.’

“Several players are leaving the orchestra, I don’t know the reasons. [Cellist] David Sanders has left. [Violinist] Sylvia [Kim Kilcullen] has left.”

And principal trumpet Esteban Batallán.

“Si. I think February or March is the deadline for him to officially say if he is coming back or not, so we don’t know.”

But either way, Batallán is scheduled to make his CSO solo debut in June doing Telemann and Michael Haydn trumpet concertos with Muti conducting.

“Si, but if he doesn’t come back, it will be very strange to say, ‘I’m not a part of this family anymore, but I will play.’ I hope that he will come back. But in any case, there is the future of the entire brass section.”

Iconic principal trombone Jay Friedman, one of the last hires of legendary CSO music director Fritz Reiner still playing in the orchestra, has announced he will retire in September 2025. “And we have another trumpet leaving.”

How does Muti feel that the new principal French horn, Mark Almond, is working out?

“The last player had wonderful technique but never followed the beat. This new horn player that I sustained has a bigger sound, but needs to establish himself in an orchestra where some remain against him. He will grow. The scherzo in the ‘Eroica’ is a very challenging piece. I like his sound because it’s the typical big sound that you need for this kind of work.

“I am also very proud that my last appointment as music director was our principal viola [Teng Li]. I am very proud that I have brought many wonderful musicians into this orchestra. Look at the group of woodwinds we have, it is one of the most outstanding in the world. And many good players in the violins. So I think that I will always have for what remains of my life, wonderful memories.

“Ciao, domani. I’m off to study Golijov. I think Coppola is coming later in the week for the performances.”

A Coppola coda is that indeed he did. And was introduced from the stage by Muti both nights and took an audience bow from his box. Backstage after the concert, Muti and Coppola were trying to figure out who was older. “I was sixteen when you were fourteen,” said Coppola. What did Coppola think of how his cousin did?

“The second night was even better than the first.” Upon learning that he was conversing with a music critic who had known his father, Carmine, Coppola lit up and said, “I have to tell you a funny story.

“My two families, the Coppolas and the Penninos, met because they were both in the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

“One night, Toscanini invited my father, who was the flute player, to come and have dinner at the home of Humbert Pennino, who was the trumpet player. My father figured he’d get Neapolitan food, so he went along. And the youngest daughter of the Penninos, who was my mother Italia, was like sixteen, seventeen. So that became a love story. And all our lives they argued, ‘Where’d the talent come from?’

“When I was about sixteen, we got a letter once from my mother that there was a boy that had a music store in Naples. And there was a boy who didn’t have a piano, so he practiced the piano in the D’Avenia Music Store. And he was very good. And maybe the Coppolas who were big shots in New York, they thought, could help him. And that was Riccardo. My father would say, ‘Any boy with short pants who can play the piano, is a genius!’”