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Orchestra Hall, January 19, 1958
On January 19, 1958, fifteen-year-old Daniel Barenboim made his piano recital debut at Orchestra Hall, with the following program:
BACH/Liszt Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543
BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57 (Appassionata)
BRAHMS Sonata No. 1 in C Major, Op. 1
BEN-HAIM Intermezzo and Toccata, Op. 34
The next day in the American, Roger Dettmer wrote, “Only very occasionally some youngster will happen along who seems to have been born adult . . . The prodigy turned out yesterday afternoon to be Daniel Barenboim, born fifteen years ago in Argentina. The talent is huge, the technique already formidable and he applied both to a virtuoso program [with] secure musical training and uncommon sensitivity of touch.”
He returned in November of that year and again every couple of years after that for more solo piano recitals, including—over the course of a month between February 26 and March 27, 1986—a series of eight concerts, traversing Beethoven’s complete cycle of piano sonatas.
After becoming the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s ninth music director in September 1991, Barenboim made regular appearances as piano recitalist and chamber musician, collaborating with an extraordinary roster of instrumentalists and singers. He performed a dizzying array of repertoire, including Albéniz’s Iberia; Bach’s Goldberg Variations; Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion; Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations; Berg’s Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Thirteen Wind Instruments (with Pierre Boulez conducting); Brahms’s cello sonatas; Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Songs of a Wayfarer, and Rückert Lieder; Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time; Mozart’s complete violin sonatas; Schubert’s Winterreise; Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben; Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Wesendonk Lieder; and Wolf’s Italian Songbook; along with other piano works by Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Schoenberg, and Schubert, among others.
Barenboim’s collaborators included instrumentalists Héctor Console, Lang Lang, Radu Lupu, Yo-Yo Ma, Rodolfo Mederos, Itzhak Perlman, András Schiff, Deborah Sobol, Maxim Vengerov, and Pinchas Zukerman, along with singers Kathleen Battle, Cecilia Bartoli, Angela Denoke, Plácido Domingo, Thomas Hampson, Robert Holl, Waltraud Meier, Thomas Quasthoff, Peter Schreier, and Bo Skovhus. He also invited countless members of the Orchestra to join him, including Stephen Balderston, Li-Kuo Chang, Robert Chen, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Louise Dixon, Edward Druzinsky, Jay Friedman, Rubén González, Richard Graef, Joseph Guastafeste, John Hagstrom, Adolph Herseth, Richard Hirschl, Alex Klein, Donald Koss, Burl Lane, Samuel Magad, David McGill, Michael Mulcahy, Lawrence Neuman, Bradley Opland, Nancy Park, Donald Peck, Gene Pokorny, Mark Ridenour, James Ross, Norman Schweikert, John Sharp, Gregory Smith, Charles Vernon, Gail Williams, and members of the Chicago Symphony Chorus (prepared by Duain Wolfe), among many others.
June 4 and 11, 2006
During the final residency of his tenure as music director, Barenboim presented Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier in two piano recitals: the first book on June 4, 2006; and the second book a week later, on June 11.
Reviewing the June 4 concert, John von Rhein in the Chicago Tribune wrote that Barenboim, “brought the full color resources of a modern concert grand to bear on Bach’s pristinely ordered sound-world . . . Bach never intended for musicians to perform all the preludes and fugues in one gulp, but when they are executed at so exalted a level of thought, feeling, and spirituality, who’s to say they shouldn’t?”
Following the second installment, Wynne Delacoma in the Chicago Sun-Times added, “One of Barenboim’s gifts as a pianist is his ability to etch clear, long-lined, richly colored phrases with seemingly no effort [and in Bach’s music] we heard the foundation on which the rest of his music-making has been built. . . . The applause that brought Barenboim back for extra bows was fervent and heartfelt. Barenboim’s annual piano recitals have been high points of Chicago’s musical life for the past fifteen years. They are appreciated and will be deeply missed.”
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May 27, 1999 (Dan Rest photo)
On May 27, 1999, Mstislav Rostropovich and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra launched a three-week festival celebrating the music of Dmitri Shostakovich with a concert that included the First Symphony along with arias and interludes from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk with soprano Olga Guriakowa.
Interviewed for the Orchestra’s program book, Rostropovich commented, “Shostakovich’s world is our world. For many decades my own life was inextricably part of that world, and has continued to be so, even now. To have lived at the same time as Shostakovich is a source of great joy. To have been invited in his creative life has been an immense responsibility. And to play his music has been the greatest happiness.”
Over the course of the festival, Rostropovich conducted four more of the composer’s symphonies: nos. 10, 11, 12, and 13 with bass Sergei Aleksashkin and men of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. He also included a suite from the incidental music to the film Hamlet, the First Piano Concerto with Constantin Lifschitz and principal trumpet Adolph Herseth, and the Violin Concerto with Maxim Vengerov. In addition, Rostropovich conducted the composer’s arrangement of Schumann’s Cello Concerto with Enrico Dindo and Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death with contralto Larissa Diadkova. Finally, he performed as soloist in the First Cello Concerto—a work written especially for him—led by associate conductor William Eddins.
Rostropovich first appeared as soloist with the Orchestra on December 9, 10, and 11, 1965, in Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with Georg Solti—in his Orchestra Hall debut—conducting. He first appeared as conductor with the Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival on August 14, 1975, leading Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini; arias from Puccini’s operas with his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya; and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. Rostropovich first conducted at Orchestra Hall on the Orchestra’s gala centennial concert on October 6, 1990, leading the last movement of Brahms’s First Piano Concerto with András Schiff as soloist.
This article also appears here.
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Sir Georg Solti and members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral in November 1990 (Jim Steere photo)
On November 18, 1990, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra departed for a tour that would include its first concerts in Russia as well as in Sir Georg Solti’s native Hungary.
“Orchestra officials concede this trip was the toughest they have ever put together, requiring more than a year’s planning and a major solicitation,” wrote John von Rhein in the Chicago Tribune. Quoting Solti, “I fought very hard for this tour. . . .We have the opportunity to send a message from our city, and from this orchestra, which is unparalleled by any ambassador America could send to Russia [and that] America has produced a cultural institution that is the best in the world.”
Early on November 21, Solti and the Orchestra recorded Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony at the Bolshoi Hall of the Philharmonie in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg); that evening they performed their first concert: Bartók’s Dance Suite and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. The following evening’s program featured only Bruckner’s symphony; however, the audience demanded no less than four encores, and Solti and the Orchestra obliged with Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, the second movement (Allegro) from Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Debussy’s Festivals from Nocturnes.
Traveling on to Moscow the next day, a truck hauling instruments and luggage broke an axle just outside Leningrad. “It took dozens of midnight phone calls and a full militia escort to get the instruments and performance clothes to the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory just four-and-a-half hours before the CSO was to begin playing,” reported Thom Shanker, a correspondent in the Tribune’s Moscow bureau. “As if that weren’t enough . . . students, soldiers, museum workers, and average folks lied, pushed, and flashed false passes to win their way into the hall. Fire codes were ignored as spectators filled the aisles, exits, and passageways in the balconies of the nineteenth-century concert hall.”
For the November 28 concert in Budapest, Solti led the Orchestra in an all-Bartók program: the Dance Suite, Third Piano Concerto with András Schiff, and the Concerto for Orchestra. Again, the audience demanded more: Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun, Shostakovich’s Allegro, and Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger.
This article also appears here.
Congratulations to Bernard Haitink—the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s principal conductor from 2006 until 2010 and a frequent guest conductor—the recipient of this year’s Gramophone magazine award for lifetime achievement!
Bernard Haitink leads the Chicago Symphony in Orchestra Hall on October 31, 2013 (Todd Rosenberg photo)
On the magazine’s website, several of Haitink’s colleagues offered tributes, including Emanuel Ax: “Bernard Haitink has been an inspiration to all of us in the world of music. He has combined never-ending search for truth in the works he conducts with the ability to make each performance sound inevitably right. It has been an incredible privilege for me to share a few steps on his musical journeys, and to witness his devotion and insatiable curiosity for all composers.” And Sir András Schiff added: “Bernard is unique because, of all the conductors I know, he has the least ego. It’s like a breath of fresh air! The way he loves music, and respects and reveres great composers, and how he sees his role, is exactly as it should be: as a medium between the composer and the players and the listeners.”
James Jolly, Gramophone‘s editor-in-chief wrote: “Had Bernard Haitink not conducted another note after stepping down as principal conductor of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1988, his position as one of the world’s great conductors would have been secure enough. . . . But he went on [and is enjoying a] glorious Indian Summer that shows no sign of drawing to a close. . . . As the Grand Old Man of the conducting world, his love for the music remains palpable and we’re delighted to honor him with this special award.”
Congratulations, Maestro Haitink!
Haitink returns to Chicago in April 2016, leading the Orchestra in Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 22 with Till Fellner and Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony.
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To honor Sir Georg Solti’s seventy-fifth birthday, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus gave a gala concert of the highest order on October 9, 1987.
Governor James R. Thompson opened the concert with welcoming remarks, and after the intermission, Mayor Harold Washington presented Sir Georg with the City of Chicago’s Medal of Merit. The concert program was as follows:
CORIGLIANO Campane di Ravello (world premiere)
Kenneth Jean, conductor
J. STRAUSS Overture to Die Fledermaus
Plácido Domingo, conductor
MOZART Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat Major, K. 365
Sir Georg Solti, conductor and piano
Murray Perahia, piano
STRAUSS Don Juan, Op. 20
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
Plácido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa perform a scene from Verdi’s Otello (Jim Steere photo)
VERDI Excerpts from Act 1 of Otello
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
Kiri Te Kanawa, soprano
Plácido Domingo, tenor
Kurt R. Hansen, tenor
Joseph Wolverton, tenor
Richard Cohn, baritone
David Huneryager, bass
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Margaret Hillis, director
The commemorative program contained letters and testimonials from numerous public officials, conductors, musicians, and industry professionals, including: Ronald Reagan, James R. Thompson, Harold Washington, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Carlo Maria Giulini, Rafael Kubelík, John Corigliano, Christoph von Dohnányi, Rudolf Serkin, Henry Fogel, Michael Tilson Thomas, Christa Ludwig, Birgit Nilsson, Witold Lutosławski, Sir Charles Mackerras, Mstislav Rostropovich, Klaus Tennstedt, David Del Tredici, Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Slatkin, Werner Klemperer, José van Dam, Elliott Carter, Karel Husa, Isaac Stern, Morton Gould, Hans Werner Henze, Itzhak Perlman, Anja Silja, Erich Leinsdorf, Josef Suk, Plácido Domingo, Michael Tippett, Kiri Te Kanawa, Murray Perahia, Leontyne Price, András Schiff, Kenneth Jean, Andrzej Panufnik, Dame Janet Baker, Pierre Boulez, Yvonne Minton, Herbert Blomstedt, Mira Zakai, Margaret Hillis, Gunther Herbig, Ray Minshull, Ann Murray, Philip Langridge, Raymond Leppard, Vladimir Ashkenazy, George Rochberg, Gwynne Howell, Ardis Krainik, Michael Morgan, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Henry Mancini, and Barbara Hendricks.
Solti and Perahia as soloists in Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos (Jim Steere photo)
The concert was covered widely in the press, in the Chicago Tribune (here, here, and here) and Sun-Times (here and here), as well as Time, Newsweek, the Post-Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many others.
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Sir Georg Solti led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first trip to the Soviet Union and Hungary in November 1990, also including a single stop in Vienna.
Program page for the November 24 concert in Moscow
November 21, 1990 – Bolshoi Hall of the Philharmonie, Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Soviet Union
Saturday, November 24, 1990 – Great Hall of the Conservatory, Moscow, Soviet Union
Friday, November 30, 1990 – Musikvereinsaal, Vienna, Austria
BARTÓK Dance Suite
MAHLER Symphony No. 5
November 22, 1990 – Bolshoi Hall of the Philharmonie, Leningrad, Soviet Union
Monday, November 26, 1990 – Great Hall of the Conservatory, Moscow, Soviet Union
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 8
Wednesday, November 28, 1990 – Congress Centre, Budapest, Hungary
BARTÓK Dance Suite
BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 3
András Schiff, piano
BARTÓK Concerto for Orchestra
Solti, along with members of the Orchestra and staff, poses in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square
Two recordings were made during the tour, both for London Records. The performance of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony was recorded live in Leningrad on November 22 (London’s first recording venture in the Soviet Union); Michael Haas was the producer, James Lock and Colin Moorfoot were the engineers, and Sally Drew was the tape editor. Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was recorded live in Vienna on November 30, Michael Haas was the producer, Stan Goodall was the engineer, and Matthew Hutchinson was the tape editor.
The concerts in Leningrad and Moscow were part of a cultural exchange that brought the Leningrad Philharmonic to Chicago for two weeks of subscription concerts at Orchestra Hall, with Music Director Yuri Temirkanov and Associate Conductor Mariss Jansons sharing the podium:
November 13, 15, and 18, 1990
Yuri Temirkanov, conductor
TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35
Viktor Tretyakov, violin
TCHAIKOVSKY Manfred Symphony, Op. 58
November 16 and 17, 1990
Mariss Jansons, conductor
PROKOFIEV Excerpts from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64
PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major, Op. 10
Dmitri Alexeev, piano
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Op. 64
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To launch the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 100th season, an all-star cast of conductors and soloists was assembled for a gala opening concert on October 6, 1990. From left to right, back row: Associate Conductor Kenneth Jean, András Schiff, Lorin Maazel, Gary Lakes, Sylvia McNair, Samuel Ramey; middle row: Music Director Designate Daniel Barenboim, Lady Valerie Solti, Music Director Sir Georg Solti, Leonard Slatkin, Yo-Yo Ma; front row: Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Susanne Mentzer, and Murray Perahia.
Lady Solti served as host and the concert program was as follows:
WAGNER Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
BIZET Adagietto from L’arlésienne Suite No. 1
Lorin Maazel, conductor
HAYDN Allegro molto from Cello Concerto in C Major, Hob. VIIb:1
Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
DVOŘÁK Allegro from Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104
Mstislav Rostropovich, cello
Lorin Maazel, conductor
CORIGLIANO Bells of Ravello
Kenneth Jean, conductor
MOZART Adagio in E Major, K. 261 and Rondo in C Major, K. 373
Isaac Stern, violin
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
BARBER Essay No. 2, Op. 17
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
MOZART Andante and Allegro vivace assai from Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467
Murray Perahia, piano and conductor
BRAHMS Rondo: Allegro non troppo from Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
András Schiff, piano
Mstislav Rostropovich, conductor
STRAUSS Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28
Daniel Barenboim, conductor
BEETHOVEN Finale: Ode, “To Joy” from Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125
Sylvia McNair, soprano
Susanne Mentzer, mezzo-soprano
Gary Lakes, tenor
Samuel Ramey, bass
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Margaret Hillis, chorus director
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
from the archives 