Unfortunately, Riccardo Muti has impeccable timing.
In 2018, as music director of the Chicago Symphony, he led the orchestra of Verdi’s Requiem — which Muti takes up in June 2025instead of the initially planned “Damnation of Faust” – the day the country was shaken by news of yet another mass shooting. Most recently, Muti conducted Beethoven’s Ninth at Orchestra Hall on the day Russia invaded Ukraine.
It may be a coincidence that Muti, who returned for a two-week subscription this month, conducted Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” and Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor ”, with pianist Mitsuko Uchida the week before election day. Beethoven originally dedicated the symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, considering him a champion of democracy. When he learned that the demagogue had declared himself emperor, he reportedly tore up the title page in a fit of rage. (Muti not long ago conducted yet another substantial “Eroica,” part of the program that officially reopened the Orchestra Hall in 2021.)
Muti’s “Eroica” on October 31 was expansive, as usual, and lasted nearly an hour. Sometimes this breadth did not stabilize, as in the first movement, whose driving lines needed an elastic snap, and in the funeral march of the second movement, which had some fleeting tempo disagreements.
But even if there were times when you couldn’t see the forest because of the trees, which trees they were. Muti pays attention and consideration to gestural detail like few others, and its uncompromising specificity makes for captivating listening. One entry in the first movement still sticks: a cello and bass signal from the first movement, usually fleeting, which Muti indicated with a violent angled stab. Beethoven’s shock and betrayal rarely seem so visceral.
Overall problems aside, the march tempo of the second movement worked – dragging, funereal, but nevertheless moving, even as it heads towards an uncertain horizon. The Scherzo varied the dizzying dynamic ranges that Muti is able to coax from the orchestra, and in the finale he exposed the string lines so that their function was never a matter of controversy – a chorale here , a cannon lurking there.
Even as Muti’s “Heroic” took on immense proportions, the CSO itself remained agile, playing as if on tiptoe. The orchestra seemed to carry on the lessons learned from Uchida, who played the powerful “Emperor” with Mozartian skill. No living pianist plays a pianissimo like Uchida – even in a narrow volume range, she carries nuances deeply etched like canyons, as in the tinkling music box interludes of the first movement or the hymn opening of the second movement.
But Uchida is human and, undeniably, he is getting older. The pianist seemed tired as the finale of the Rondo rolled around, with note errors and an uncertain meeting with timpanist David Herbert at the end of the movement. Although Uchida, as always, issued an encore, that didn’t stop the Orchestra Hall audience from trying to convince her otherwise, with Muti urging her again and again to come on stage to bow.
Alongside this austere concert, the program for November 8 Wrapping up Muti’s two-week residency was a Dionysian adventure. He hosted the premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s sequel to Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Megalopolis” – the one and only new order on the main stage this season – and had the same breezy travel feel as Muti’s very Italian program last year.
This time, it’s Spain that gets in on the action with Chabrier’s “España” and De Falla’s second suite “Tricorne.” Both received bespoke and carefully crafted performances, the orchestra playing with vital and urgent unity.
In contrast to these tense numbers are the two opera selections at the top of the program, the overture to Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” — which makes its subscription debut — and the ballet “Four Seasons” from “I vespri siciliani” of Verdi remained at the center. But again, when it came to close-up details, Muti was consistently convincing, inserting a coy rubato into the leaping violin theme of “Don Pasquale” and reserving the ritardandos for where they matter in “The Tricorn”.
The four-part “Megalopolis” sequel, lasting about 15 minutes, fits into the itinerary thanks to the setting of the film: “New Rome”, a supercity with skyscrapers which is not a parable at all veiled for New York and America. in general.
Or maybe it’s because of the thickness of the blood: Muti and Coppola are first cousins. When Muti shared this in an onstage speech Friday, the audience played it for laughs, assuming he was joking. Not at all – and the concert became a mini-family reunion when Muti flagged down Coppola himself in the dressing room after the performance.
As Golijov explained in a pre-concert Q&A, he wanted to tap into what we imagine ancient Rome to sound like — think Miklós Rózsa’s “Ben-Hur” or “Cleopatra.” by Alex North – while fusing it with an American sensibility. Which is why a noirish tenor sax meanders through the middle of the suite (played with languorous sensuality by Timothy McAllister of the PRISM Quartet), accompanied by lyre-like harp accompaniment.
During a rehearsal break on Wednesday, Muti told reporters that he intentionally avoided seeing “Megalopolis” because he didn’t want it to influence his interpretation of the sequel — a decision Golijov calls “wonderfully crazy “. I’m inclined to agree. Golijov’s sequel actually makes a strong argument for having seen the film before leaving. The film and sequel balance high-value glory and deep, deep rot. Likewise, beefy fanfares are disrupted by hiccupping trombones and curdling dissonance.
Golijov also does musically what “Megalopolis” does visually and narratively: diverting references left and right. This is nothing new for the CSO’s former composer-in-residence, whose penchant for cheeky quotes has already courted accusations of plagiarism.
In his preface to the score, Golijov cites these inspirations, from the aforementioned film scores to Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” But even citing his sources, Golijov is skating on ice with “Megalopolis.” The film’s theme is more or less a variation of the fanfare theme from “Ben-Hur” – and, like its source material, it also opens the sequel and is threaded like a leitmotif. (Golijov doesn’t even change the key.) It’s not the bold choice most people would make if they were already accused of indiscreet borrowing. Or again, one could take Golijov at his word that he “played with these references, as if they were organ registers,” at Coppola’s request. Go hear it and decide.
“Mégalopolis” and a large part of the November 8 program rely on a strong brass section. In an improvement over Thursday’s recent jolts, the CSO’s horns blared throughout this program, with Principal Mark Almond’s presentations in the “Three-Cornered Hat” going from swaggering to lyrical. The wind doublings synchronized impressively in Verdi’s “Four Seasons,” and clarinetist Stephen Williamson and oboist William Welter offered poignant verses in their solos — within the maestro’s limits, of course.
Also in CSO news:
First violin Robert Chen remains on leave with a pinched nerve in his neck. Assistant concertmaster Stephanie Jeong covered it in the programs above, as she has for most of the season so far.
Despite a slight operating deficit of $1.4 million — the same margin as the previous season — the CSO Annual Meeting on October 30, ticket sales for the 2023-2024 season brought in just over $23 million. This figure comes close to the previous CSO record of $23.3 million during the 2017-2018 season.
Some 29,000 of the CSO’s 57,000 ticket-buying households were first-time attendees, reflecting the industry’s long-standing trend of attracting new, single ticket buyers as subscription cash flows decline. The data also confirms what has appeared anecdotally since 2021, namely that young people are leading the charge in the Orchestra Hall: student ticket sales represented 8% of the public (or a total of some 22,000 tickets). Programming also jumped 7%, with the organization producing 494 paid and free community events in 2023-24.
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
The program repeats at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 9 at the Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. ; tickets between $45 and $399; more information on cso.org
