Here is my Tuesday afternoon October 12 suntimes.com and Wednesday October 13, 2010, Chicago Sun-Times update on Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Muti released from Milan hospital, says tests indicate stress
Plans a month of 'complete rest' and winter return to Chicago
BY ANDREW PATNER
It was stress, they say. And its physical symptoms kicked in after the adrenalin of excitement wore off.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its new music director Riccardo Muti released a statement Tuesday afternoon stating that Muti, 69, had been released from a two-day stay at Milan’s renowned San Raffaele hospital. Tests and observation at the clinic indicated that the Italian conductor was suffering from “extreme exhaustion as a result of prolonged physical stress.” More serious underlying causes were not found, Muti said in the statement.
Muti has returned to his home in Ravenna, on the Adriatic coast of northern Italy, the statement said, and has been prescribed “a month of complete rest.” Raechel Alexander, CSO vice president for public relations, said she could not immediately say how this mandatory rest at home would effect Muti’s European concert and rehearsal commitments this fall.
He has a scheduled week of concerts in Austria in early November with his Luigi Cherubini orchestra of younger musicians and was to lead six performances of Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon (Moses and Pharaoh) at the Rome Opera in early December. Muti normally demands several weeks of intense rehearsals before an opera opening.
Muti had told CSO musicians and management during a Saturday afternoon rehearsal October 2 that he was not feeling well and he appeared very pale according to those at the rehearsal. That evening he withdrew from conducting the orchestra’s major gala benefit concert almost half an hour after the audience at the sold-out black-tie event was seated and the concert was set to begin. The program went on without a conductor.
The next day the CSO announced that Muti was suffering from “extreme gastric distress,” would return to Italy for medical advice, and was withdrawing from all of his October performances and education and community activities in Chicago, including two weeks of subscription concerts.
The CSO statement said that Muti’s abdominal pain and unspecified “other physical symptoms” were caused by stress and exhaustion. “His physicians believe that he was able to work [despite] his symptoms in his first two weeks, given all of the heightened excitement,” the statement said. “But, that as time wore on, it became increasingly more difficult to do so.
CSO Association president Deborah F. Rutter, said Muti told her in a telephone conversation Tuesday that he feels “not perfect, but relieved” that more serious health problems were not discovered during his hospitalization. Rutter said that Muti will be returning to Chicago for rehearsals and meetings in January and that his appearances in February, April, and May 2011 will go on as planned.
Muti, a colorful speaker in English as well as Italian, was quoted in the statement saying, “After a terrible storm, even if the wind dies down and the skies have cleared, it takes a while for the waves to calm down fully.
“I will do as my doctors say and rest completely so that I may return to Chicago in February ready to collaborate with the magnificent musicians of the CSO and continue the community programs we started in September.
“I very much appreciate the outpouring of well wishes and support from the members of the CSO family and residents of my new musical home, Chicago, and I look forward to my return.”
Alexander added, “I can’t express how relieved we all are here at Orchestra Hall. You can feel it physically.”
CSO conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez has taken over this week's concert dates for Muti and will lead performances of the Mahler Symphony No. 7 instead of the works on Muti's announced program, which will be rescheduled.
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