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Wishing a very happy eightieth birthday to the remarkable Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini!
A frequent and favorite guest artist in Chicago for more than fifty years, Pollini has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and in recital on numerous occasions, in Orchestra Hall, at the Ravinia Festival, and in Milwaukee.
Following Pollini’s debut in Orchestra Hall in January 1971, Thomas Willis commented in the Chicago Tribune that he had “been literally pulled forward in my seat by [the] pianist’s bravura . . . last night when Maurizio Pollini charged the climactic repeated octaves in Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto. The speed and power of that single passage—no more than, say, fifteen seconds long—broke the piano’s sound barrier for me. Until I heard this virtuoso do it, I would never have believed that alternating octaves could be played so fast and so loud on any concert piano. . . . This one could be the star shaker.”
A complete list of Pollini’s appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to date is below.
July 5, 1969, Ravinia Festival
CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21
Seiji Ozawa, conductor
June 27, 1970, Ravinia Festival
PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26
Seiji Ozawa, conductor
January 21, 22, and 23, 1971, Orchestra Hall
BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 2
Claudio Abbado, conductor
February 21, 22, and 23, 1974, Orchestra Hall
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83
Claudio Abbado, conductor
February 10 and 11, 1977, Orchestra Hall
BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 1
Claudio Abbado, conductor
Recorded in Orchestra Hall in February 1977 for Deutsche Grammophon
1979 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance–Instrumental Soloist
1979 Gramophone Award for Concerto
February 17, 18, and 20, 1977, Orchestra Hall
February 21, 1977, Uihlein Hall, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 2
Claudio Abbado, conductor
Recorded in Orchestra Hall in February 1977 for Deutsche Grammophon
1979 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance–Instrumental Soloist
1979 Gramophone Award for Concerto
April 5, 6, and 7, 1979, Orchestra Hall
April 9, 1979, Uihlein Hall, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
March 19, 20, and 21, 1981, Orchestra Hall
CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21
Daniel Barenboim, conductor
March 3, 4, and 5, 1983, Orchestra Hall
SCHOENBERG Piano Concerto, Op. 42
Claudio Abbado, conductor
March 31, April 1, 2, and 5, 1988, Orchestra Hall
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 73 (Emperor)
Claudio Abbado, conductor
October 23 and 24, 1997, Orchestra Hall
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
Daniel Barenboim, conductor
April 21, 2000, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83
Daniel Barenboim, conductor
April 25, 26, and 27, 2013, Orchestra Hall
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467
Riccardo Muti, conductor
For his February 1982 recital debut in Orchestra Hall, Pollini gave a program of works by Schubert and Chopin. “Nor could you hope to hear every note, every chord, every structural detail of [Chopin’s] B minor sonata rendered with more breathtaking accuracy or digital strength,” commented John von Rhein in the Chicago Tribune. Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy was “a meeting of mind and music that illuminated the inner workings [and placed] everything in his technical and musical arsenal at the music’s disposal. . . . His view understood, as Schubert did, the eloquence that can reside in lyrical simplicity.”
Dates for Pollini’s numerous recitals in Orchestra Hall—given under the auspices of Allied Arts and Symphony Center Presents—are below.
February 28, 1982
March 11, 1984
April 1, 1987
March 27, 1988
March 18, 1990
March 15, 1992
March 21, 1993
October 12, 1997
October 25, 1998
October 7, 2000
May 5, 2002
October 31, 2004
May 14, 2006
May 6, 2007
October 12, 2008
April 11, 2010
October 26, 2014
October 4, 2015
May 28, 2017
April 22, 2018
Happy, happy birthday!
Wishing a very happy eighty-fifth birthday to the remarkable Estonian composer Arvo Pärt!
Arvo Pärt (Press Service photo)
Following the first Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances of the composer’s Third Symphony in 1989, John von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune, “We must be grateful to Neeme Järvi [to whom the work was dedicated] for introducing us to this fascinating and utterly individual composer, and for doing so in a performance of such power, accuracy, and dedication. . . . [Pärt’s] spare ritualistic austerity (deeply rooted in medieval modes and harmonies) [is] strongly beholden to the cadences of Machaut and other fourteenth and fifteenth-century music [and] speaks with a communicative fervor.”
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has performed several works by Pärt in Orchestra Hall, at the Ravinia Festival, and at Wheaton College. A complete list of performances is below.
November 22, 24, 25, and 28, 1989, Orchestra Hall
PÄRT Symphony No. 3
Neeme Järvi, conductor
July 18, 1992, Ravinia Festival
PÄRT Symphony No. 2
James Conlon, conductor
April 15, 16, 17, 18, and 21, 1998, Orchestra Hall
PÄRT Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten
Donald Runnicles, conductor
May 6, 7, and 8, 2004, Orchestra Hall
PÄRT Fratres
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Yuan-Qing Yu, violin
January 22, 23, and 24, 2009, Orchestra Hall
PÄRT Symphony No. 4 (Los Angeles)
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
February 11, 12, 13, and 16, 2016, Orchestra Hall
PÄRT Orient & Occident
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor
April 20, 22, and 23, 2017, Orchestra Hall
April 21, 2017, Edman Memorial Chapel, Wheaton College
PÄRT Fratres
Neeme Järvi, conductor
Robert Chen, violin
Happy, happy birthday!
Wishing a very happy ninetieth birthday on September 8, 2019, to legendary German conductor Christoph von Dohnányi! For nearly forty-five years, he has been a frequent guest conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, both in Orchestra Hall and at the Ravinia Festival, as follows:
Christoph von Dohnányi (Terry O’Neill photo for Decca)
January 31, February 1, and 2, 1974, Orchestra Hall
BARTÓK Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19
SIBELIUS Violin Concerto D Minor, Op. 47
György Pauk, violin
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 (From the New World)
February 7, 8, and 9, 1974, Orchestra Hall
SCHUMANN Overture, Scherzo, and Finale, Op. 52
MOZART Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat Major, K. 365
Anthony and Joseph Paratore, pianos
LIGETI Lontano
STRAUSS Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28
April 5, 6, and 7, 1979, Orchestra Hall
MOZART Adagio and Fugue in C Minor, K. 546
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
Maurizio Pollini, piano
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93
April 12, 13, and 14, 1979, Orchestra Hall
MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 11
HENZE Symphony No. 5
SCHOENBERG Erwartung, Op. 17
Anja Silja, soprano
May 22, 23, and 24, 1980, Orchestra Hall
BARTÓK Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19
SCHOENBERG Six Songs with Orchestra, Op. 8
Anja Silja, soprano
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 120
March 4, 5, and 6, 1982, Orchestra Hall
RIHM Tutuguri II, Music after Artaud
HANDEL/Schoenberg Concerto for String Orchestra and Orchestra
Chicago Symphony String Quartet
Victor Aitay, violin
Edgar Muenzer, violin
Milton Preves, viola
Frank Miller, cello
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61
Christoph von Dohnányi (Andreas Garrels photo)
November 7, 8, and 9, 2002, Orchestra Hall
IVES The Unanswered Question
Craig Morris, trumpet
LUTOSŁAWSKI Concerto for Orchestra
BRAHMS Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68
May 6, 7, and 8, 2004, Orchestra Hall
PÄRT Fratres
Yuan-Qing Yu, violin
PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25 (Classical)
MAHLER Symphony No. 1 in D Major
July 2, 2004, Ravinia Festival
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K. 595
Emanuel Ax, piano
IVES Three Places in New England
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61
May 11, 12, and 13, 2006, Orchestra Hall
MOZART Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, K. 183
STRAUSS Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
Emanuel Ax, piano
November 1, 2, 3, and 4, 2007, Orchestra Hall
SIBELIUS Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47
Arabella Steinbacher, violin
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major (Romantic)
November 19, 20, 21, and 22, 2009, Orchestra Hall
BARTÓK Divertimento for String Orchestra
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414
Paul Lewis, piano
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61
July 14, 2011, Ravinia Festival
BRAHMS Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
Emanuel Ax, piano
July 15, 2011, Ravinia Festival
BRAHMS Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83
Emanuel Ax, piano
July 11, 2013, Ravinia Festival
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 (Eroica)
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37
Emanuel Ax, piano
July 12, 2013, Ravinia Festival
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 73 (Emperor)
Emanuel Ax, piano
May 1, 2, and 3, 2014, Orchestra Hall
LUTOSŁAWSKI Funeral Music
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37
Paul Lewis, piano
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 (Pathétique)
June 9, 10, and 11, 2016, Orchestra Hall
MOZART Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, K. 183
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 19
Martin Helmchen, piano
MOZART Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 (Jupiter)
Happy, happy birthday!
Emanuel Ax in 1980 (Nick Sangiamo photo)
Wishing a very happy seventieth birthday to the remarkable American pianist Emanuel Ax! A longtime Chicago favorite—in recital, as a chamber musician, and as soloist with orchestra—he has appeared in Orchestra Hall and at the Ravinia Festival on near-countless occasions.
Following first place triumphs at the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists and the Artur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, Ax made his local debut at Ravinia on July 23, 1975, substituting for an indisposed Alexis Weissenberg. Performing an all-Chopin program, “the young Polish-American master took the evening by storm,” according to Thomas Willis in the Chicago Tribune. “Still in his middle twenties . . . there is nothing of the poseur in him, no excess mannerism, no youthful sentimentality, no histrionic display. He walks onstage, settles solidly onto the bench, shakes a hand to limber up, and begins to play. At that moment, or within a few seconds, a transformation of near miraculous proportions takes place. . . . This is quite possibly the outstanding poet-performer of his generation.”
Ax made two debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra the following year in 1976, on May 20 and 21 in Orchestra Hall, performing Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto under the baton of Henry Mazer, and on July 29 at the Ravinia Festival, as soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20 with Andrew Davis on the podium. According to Alan Artner in the Chicago Tribune, media reports following Ax’s competition wins had compared the young pianist to Vladimir Horowitz and Sviatoslav Richter. “But to have actually heard him in Liszt’s Second Concerto was to discover that Ax in n a class virtually by himself. . . . His performance was intelligent, wholly refreshing . . .”
Emanuel Ax in 2016 (Lisa Marie Mazzucco photo)
Since then, Ax has been one of the most frequent guest artists in Orchestra Hall and at the Ravinia Festival, performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as with visiting orchestras, and as a chamber musician and recitalist with an astounding array of collaborators. He has worked with conductors David Afkham, Daniel Barenboim, James Conlon, James DePreist, Sir Mark Elder, Christoph Eschenbach, Lawrence Foster, Bernard Haitink, Daniel Harding, Mariss Jansons, Bernhard Klee, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Itzhak Perlman, David Robertson, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Georg Solti, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Christoph von Dohnányi. Ax also has collaborated with Yefim Bronfman, Robert Chen, Evelyn Glennie,
Benjamin Hochman, Aleksey Igudesman, Richard Hyung-ki Joo, Jaime Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill, Orli Shaham, Raimi Solomonow, Isaac Stern, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Orion Weiss. With visiting orchestras, he also has performed in Orchestra Hall with the Cleveland Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Juilliard Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Ax returns to the Ravinia Festival this summer, as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on August 2, 2019, in Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with Rafael Payare on the podium. He will be back in Orchestra Hall next season on March 2, 2020, for an all-Beethoven chamber music concert, collaborating with violinist Leonidas Kavakos and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Happy, happy birthday!
This week Riccardo Muti leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s First Symphony, almost exactly one hundred years since Frederick Stock first conducted it in Chicago.
Program page for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first performances of Mahler’s First Symphony
That first performance of the symphony (sandwiched between Handel’s Concerto grosso, op. 6, no. 2 and Schumann’s Piano Concerto with Josef Hofmann) on November 6, 1914, left Ronald Webster of the Chicago Daily Tribune a bit puzzled: “The Mahler symphony is less important but more interesting to talk about because it is strictly earthy. There is a suggestion in the program notes that Mahler was not wholly serious in this symphony. It was obvious yesterday that he was not serious at all. Even the finale is not serious, though it is tiresome, being too long. But it is the quality of the humor which is likely to cause people to turn up their noses. The humor is a little coarse, definitely ironical, of a barnyard kind and healthy. Mahler is himself partly to blame for such ideas about him. Definite conceptions such as his (though he may not have been serious about them either) are death to all mystic attitude toward this work. . . . He suggests that the first movement is nature’s awakening at early morning. One suspects that Mahler included in nature the cows and chickens as well as the cuckoo and the dewy grass.” The complete review is here.
Despite that critic’s early apprehensions, the symphony soon became a staple in the Orchestra’s repertoire and has been led—at Orchestra Hall, the Ravinia Festival, and on tour—by a vast array of conductors, including: Roberto Abbado, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Adam Fischer, Carlo Maria Giulini, Bernard Haitink, Irwin Hoffman, Paul Kletzki, Kirill Kondrashin, Rafael Kubelík, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Igor Markevitch, Henry Mazer, Eugene Ormandy, Seiji Ozawa, George Schick, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Georg Solti, William Steinberg, Klaus Tennstedt, Michael Tilson Thomas, Edo de Waart, Bruno Walter, and Jaap van Zweden.
And the Orchestra has recorded the work six times, as follows:
Carlo Maria Giulini, conductor
Recorded by Angel at Medinah Temple in March 1971
Christopher Bishop, producer
Carson Taylor, engineer
Giulini’s recording won the 1971 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance—Orchestra from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Claudio Abbado, conductor
Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon at Orchestra Hall in February 1981
Rainer Brock, producer
Karl-August Naegler, engineer
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
Recorded by London at Orchestra Hall in October 1983
James Mallinson, producer
James Lock, engineer
Klaus Tennstedt, conductor
Recorded by EMI at Orchestra Hall in May and June 1990
John Fraser, producer
Michael Sheady, engineer
Pierre Boulez, conductor
Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon at Orchestra Hall in May 1998
Karl-August Naegler, producer
Rainer Maillard and Reinhard Lagemann, engineers
Bernard Haitink, conductor
Recorded by CSO Resound at Orchestra Hall in May 2008
James Mallinson, producer
Christopher Willis, engineer
For more information on Muti’s performances of Mahler’s First this week, please visit the CSO’s website.
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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.
from the archives 