The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been riding a crest lately -- a triumphant Asian tour, Grammy Awards on its own record label, and dodging bullets in the economic downturn. This week, the CSO announced every intention of staying atop the artistic waves with a 2009-2010 season led for 13 weeks by three of the world's top conductors: music director designate Riccardo Muti, principal conductor Bernard Haitink, and conductor laureate Pierre Boulez. Each of these gentlemen won't just be showing up. Muti will be leading the beloved Brahms German Requiem, a piece he added to his repertoire only last year, and his first Bruckner symphony with the CSO, the No. 2, as well as Mozart's Haffner, in October concerts that also will include a free CSO performance as a part of the 13th annual "Day of Music." Haitink, who just led the orchestra in a highly-successful three-week tour of Japan, Hong Kong, and China, will start next season with a five-city European tour (Berlin, Vienna, Lucerne, Paris, and London) in September, return in November for major works by Bruckner, Mendelssohn, and Ravel, and then close out his four years as principal conductor in Chicago with a three-week Beethoven Festival in June 2010 featuring all nine of the master's symphonies. January will see the CSO conducted by and paying tribute to Boulez in anticipation of the composer-conductor-eminence's 85th birthday in March 2010. Celebrations will include works by Ravel, Berg, Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Boulez himself, as well as Marc-André Dalbavie's flute concerto, with CSO principal Mathieu Dufour as soloist, and a pairing of Schoenberg's prophetic Transfigured Night with Bartók's chilling one-act opera Bluebeard's Castle. St. Louis Symphony Orchestra music director David Robertson will lead one week of these concerts, and Boulez also will take his own programs to Carnegie Hall and Ann Arbor, Michigan. The continuing absence of a major voice for contemporary music at Orchesta Hall means that new music is less prominent than it should be next season. The CSO will give the first downtown performance of Osvaldo Golijov's whirling pageant The Passion According to Saint Mark and will offer world premières by American James Primosch and Uzbeck exile Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky. Soprano superstar Renée Fleming will highlight the Oct. 3 gala opening concert with Cincinnati music director Paavo Järvi and the CSO accompanying her in works of Barber and Richard Strauss. Other guest conductors include Lyric Opera of Chicago's Sir Andrew Davis, veterans Christoph von Dohnanyi, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Charles Dutoit, Semyon Bychkov, Cologne's Markus Stenz, former Tokyo String Quartet violinist Peter Oundjian, Atlanta's Robert Spano, Russian rising star Vladimir Jurowski, newly knighted Sir Mark Elder, and Esa-Pekka Salonen in his first season after his youthful retirement from the Los Angeles Philharmonic. San Francisco Symphony chief Michael Tilson Thomas comes to Chicago for two weeks in February for rare performances of Stravinsky's ballet score Agon and his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. Other exciting programs and debuts include Québécois early music champion Bernard Labadie leading Bach's St. John Passion, Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda with a work by Kaija Saariaho and the welcome return of pianist Radu Lupu in Beethoven's Third Concerto, and Haitink protégé Ludovic Morlot in a program including concertmaster Robert Chen in the Ligeti Violin Concerto. Three important young pianists will make their solo debuts next season: Paul Lewis, Shai Wosner and Kirill Gerstein. Mitsuko Uchida returns as pianist-conductor in an all-Mozart program in March. Also returning are pianists Peter Serkin, Yefim Bronfman, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Emanuel Ax, Jorge Federico Osorio and violinist Christian Tetzlaff. The CSO's wildly successful Beyond the Score series featuring live multimedia analysis of major works will expand to two performances of each program next season; creative director Gerard McBurney will examine three pieces from the first decade of the 20th century: Mahler's Fourth Symphony (with soprano Nicole Cabell), Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, and Debussy's La Mer. Details of MusicNOW, Symphony Center Presents concerts and recitals, and other programs will be announced later.
Photo: Le regard de James
Here is my Friday, February 20 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com "Weekend" story on last week's announcement of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's 2009-2010 season.
CSO season boasts Muti, Haitink, and Boulez
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