Enjoy the music even more by accessing CSO Program Books or Program Notes before and after the performance. For most performances, they are offered in a variety of formats.

Program Notes engagingly describe the works being performed and the histories and personalities behind the music. Program Books include the notes as well as articles about the music and about Riccardo Muti, the CSO’s pre-eminent music director, the CSO’s world-renowned musicians and esteemed guest artists and ensembles.

Program notes from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s extensive archive are available for reprint.

The CSO Digital Program Books are made possible with the generous support of The Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation.

http://cso.org/programnotes/

CSO Program Notes 2019/20

ChicagoSymphony

Following a "blistering" (Chicago Tribune) CSO podium debut, David Afkham returns to lead a diverse program featuring Haydn's emotionally charged Mourning Symphony, Strauss' tone poem portraying a man's journey through death and Brahms' radiant Third Symphony, which Clara Schumann described as "one beat of the heart, every movement a jewel!"

CSO Program Notes: Brahms 3

A season-long Beethoven celebration continues with the composer’s dazzling Violin Concerto performed by the renowned Leonidas Kavakos, “the most deeply satisfying violinist performing today” (Philadelphia Inquirer). Riccardo Muti conducts this towering work along with a world premiere by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Bernard Rands.

CSO Program Notes: Muti, Kavakos and Beethoven Violin Concerto

Brahms' final orchestral composition calls for deep lyricism and virtuosic technique from its soloists to create the illusion of a single instrument. CSO Associate Concertmaster Stephanie Jeong and Assistant Principal Cello Kenneth Olsen take center stage for this exhilarating work. Riccardo Muti concludes the program with Schumann's Third Symphony, inspired by the composer's journey to the Rhineland.

CSO Program Notes: Brahms Double Concerto

Juanjo Mena conducts the CSO in a program featuring Holst’s powerful and haunting The Planets. Sally Matthews, a soprano of “incandescent verve” (The Times, London), performs two scenes from Barber’s 1966 opera that opened the Metropolitan Opera's new house at Lincoln Center. Detroit-based composer James Lee III’s celebratory Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula illustrates an ancient Hebrew harvest festival refracted through the lens of the Book of Revelation.

CSO Program Notes: Holst The Planets

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim, conductor
John Sharp, cello
Stephen Hough, piano

Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (Erato 1990)

Taking inspiration from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth explores fate, progressing from dark despair to defiant triumph. John Storgårds leads this powerfully expressive work, along with the first CSO performance of the deeply moving blue cathedral by Jennifer Higdon, winner of the 2018 Nemmers Prize in Music Composition. The dazzling Ray Chen, making his CSO subscription series debut, brings his “liquid tone that carries with it emotional depth of great intimacy” (The Huffington Post) to the youthful bravura of Wieniawski’s First Violin Concerto.

Tickets and more info: https://order.cso.org/9945/

CSO Program Notes: Higdon & Tchaikovsky 4

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.

Visit cso.org for tickets and information.