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

Riccardo Muti opens his 10th season as music director with two dramatic Russian works—Alexander Scriabin's haunting first orchestral composition and Shostakovich's pensive Sixth Symphony, written during a time of prewar tension. The brilliant Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, hailed by the Wall Street Journal as "one of the most gifted musicians of his generation," performs Edvard Grieg's treasured Piano Concerto.

CSO Program Notes: Muti Andsnes & Grieg Piano Concerto

The season-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth opens with a program dedicated entirely to his music. Riccardo Muti, who conducts all nine Beethoven symphonies this season, begins with the ebullient, classically scaled First. Unprecedented in proportion and epic in scope, the groundbreaking Eroica Symphony demonstrates how powerfully Beethoven redefined the musical language of his time, launching classical music into the romantic era.

CSO Program Notes: Muti Conducts Beethoven 1 & 3

James Gaffigan, praised for his "exemplary, full-blooded conducting" (Chicago Classical Review), leads the CSO in Shostakovich's rarely heard Eighth Symphony, a profound work that represents the composer's yearning for peace. The CSO's own Cynthia Yeh gives the U.S. premiere of Israeli-born composer Avner Dorman's percussion concerto, which he calls "a celebration of life, energy and an ever-present and eternal rhythm."

CSO Program Notes: Shostakovich 8

The sensational young Korean pianist Sunwook Kim, acclaimed for his "ability to shift from fantasy to fireworks and back in a gasp" (The News, Portsmouth), makes his CSO debut with two vivacious works by Mendelssohn—the glittering Piano Concerto No. 1 and virtuosic Capriccio brillant. Ukrainian conductor Kirill Karabits, in his CSO subscription series debut, leads Lutoslawski's melodic, folklore-inspired Concerto for Orchestra.

CSO Program Notes: Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1

A captivating program of music by Vivaldi, Mozart and Piazzolla features the CSO conducting debut of Julian Rachlin, a
violinist of "brilliant high-octane technique" (The New York Times). Rachlin conducts and performs on two vastly
different incarnations of The Four Seasons—Vivaldi’s pictorial baroque masterpiece and Piazzolla's tango-inspired take.

CSO Program Notes: The Four Seasons

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

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

Opening with the most famous four notes in all of classical music, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is a staggering masterwork that became a symphonic blueprint for all subsequent composers. Riccardo Muti leads a program that also features the composer’s buoyant, humorous Second Symphony and a world premiere concerto performed by CSO Bass Clarinet J. Lawrie Bloom.

Tickets and more info: https://order.cso.org/9951/

CSO Program Notes: Muti Conducts Beethoven 2 & 5

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.

CSO Program Notes 2019/20

ChicagoSymphony