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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra joins the classical music world in mourning the tragic loss of the remarkable Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky at the age of fifty-five. His passing was announced on his website on Wednesday, November 22.
Hvorostovsky appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on three occasions—all at the Ravinia Festival—as follows:
July 11, 1998
ROSSINI Overture to La scala di seta
VERDI Sul fil d’un soffio estesio from Falstaff
VERDI Tutto e deserto . . . Il balen del suo sorriso from Il trovatore
ROSSINI Overture to The Barber of Seville
ROSSINI Una voce poco fa from The Barber of Seville
ROSSINI Largo al factotum from The Barber of Seville
ROSSINI Dunque io son from The Barber of Seville
MOZART Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492
MOZART Crudel! perchè finora from The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492
TCHAIKOVSKY Polonaise from Eugene Onegin
TCHAIKOVSKY Ya vas lyublyu bezmerno from Pique Dame, Op. 68
GOUNOD Je veux vivre from Romeo and Juliet
GOUNOD Avant de quitter ces lieux from Faust
LEHÁR Gold and Silver Waltz, Op. 79
KORNGOLD Glück, das mir verblieb from Die tote Stadt
J. STRAUSS, Jr. On the Beautiful Blue Danube, Op. 314
Kathleen Battle, soprano
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, baritone
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
August 3, 2002
TCHAIKOVSKY Waltz and Polonaise from Eugene Onegin
TCHAIKOVSKY Kogda bi zhizn domashnim krugom from Eugene Onegin
TCHAIKOVSKY/Glazunov Melodie from Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Op. 42, No. 3
Samuel Magad, violin
TCHAIKOVSKY Ya vas lyublyu bezmerno from Pique Dame, Op. 68
ROSSINI Overture to The Barber of Seville
ROSSINI Largo al factotum from The Barber of Seville
VERDI Overture to La forza del destino
VERDI Pietà, rispetto, amore from Macbeth
VERDI Ballet Music from Macbeth
VERDI Son io, mio Carlo . . . Per me giunto . . . O Carlo, ascolta from Don Carlo
VERDI Cortigiani, vil razza dannata from Rigoletto
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, baritone
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Soprano Karita Mattila also was scheduled to appear but canceled due to illness.
August 15, 2009
VERDI Rigoletto
Gilda Eglise Gutiérrez, soprano
Countess Ceprano Valerie Vinzant, soprano
Giovanna/Page Katherine Lerner, mezzo-soprano
Maddalena Natascha Petrinsky, mezzo-soprano
Matteo Borsa Hak Soo Kim, tenor
Duke of Mantua Stefano Secco, tenor
Count Ceprano/Court Usher Jonathan Beyer, baritone
Marullo Paul Corona, bass-baritone
Rigoletto Dmitri Hvorostovsky, baritone
Monterone Jason Stearns, baritone
Sparafucile Morris Robinson, bass
Apollo Chorus of Chicago
Stephen Alltop, director
James Conlon, conductor
At Orchestra Hall, Hvorostovsky appeared in recital on four occasions, as follows:
November 17, 1996
with the Saint Petersburg Chamber Choir
Nikolai Korniev, conductor
May 2, 1999
Mikhail Arkadiev, piano
October 22, 2000
Mikhail Arkadiev, piano
February 16, 2011
Ilja Ivari, piano
Countless tributes have been posted online, including websites of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times, and Opera News, among many others. A collection of his best performances on video can be found here.
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James Conlon began his tenure as the Ravinia Festival’s fourth music director on June 24, 2005, leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Ullmann’s Second Symphony and Mahler’s First Symphony. The programming that season of several works by Ullmann was part of a multiseason effort by Conlon to showcase music written by composers whose music was suppressed by the Nazi regime, remaining all but forgotten for decades following World War II.
“Sophisticated programming is one thing, of course. Thrilling performances are another. The ultimate success Friday night was the committed, profoundly nuanced performance each symphony received,” wrote Wynne Delacoma in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Mahler’s Symphony no. 1 was a revelation. . . . The CSO positively glowed, most often with a low, lustrous burnish rather than a hectic gleam. In the final, frenzied movement, the Orchestra’s impeccable precision and tightly wound, urgent rhythmic drive set the blood racing.”

Joshua Guerrero, Michelle DeYoung,
Latonia Moore, Roberto Alagna, and James
Creswell—along with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus—in Verdi’s Aida on August 3, 2013 (Patrick Gipson photo)
Conlon’s eleven seasons at Ravinia’s helm included symphonies by Mahler; seldom-heard works by Korngold, Schulhoff, Schreker, and Zemlinsky; several of Mozart’s operas performed in the Martin Theatre; as well as Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tosca; Strauss’s Salome; and Verdi’s Aida, Otello, and Rigoletto.
Conlon had made his debut with the Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival on July 28, 1977, with violinist Itzhak Perlman and cellist Lynn Harrell as soloists in Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D major, Mendelsssohn’s Violin Concerto, and Brahms’s Double Concerto. Two days later, on July 30, he conducted Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 23 and Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand with John Browning and Mahler’s First Symphony. Conlon first conducted the Orchestra at Orchestra Hall on November 14, 15, 16, and 19, 1991, leading the first symphonies by Mendelssohn and Mahler. He concluded his tenure at Ravinia on August 15, 2015, leading the Orchestra, Chorus, and soloists in Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman.
This article also appears here.
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Ernest Ansermet and the Orchestra onstage at the Ravinia Festival on July 3, 1936 (Ravinia Festival photo)
On July 3, 1936, Ernest Ansermet and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra inaugurated the first season of the Ravinia Festival* with a program that included Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture, Clouds and Festivals from Debussy’s Nocturnes, and Stravinsky’s Suite from The Firebird.
“Three days ago the last seat in the pavilion was sold. The audience was socially brilliant and musically responsive, so that a full-length Beethoven symphony and the most sonorous of the preludes which Wagner wrote for any of his music-dramas evoked a veritable tumult of applause,” wrote Glenn Dillard Gunn in the Herald & Examiner following that first concert. “For the next five weeks the Chicago Symphony will continue the season begun last night, playing on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings and offering programs quite as serious as those presented in Orchestra Hall during the winter season.”
Several notable conductors made their Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuts at the Ravinia Festival, including future music directors Riccardo Muti, Georg Solti, Jean Martinon, Fritz Reiner, and Artur Rodzinski; future festival music directors James Conlon, Christoph Eschenbach, James Levine, and Seiji Ozawa; and prominent guest conductors Sir Thomas Beecham, Leonard Bernstein, Josef Krips, Erich Leinsdorf, Kurt Masur, Pierre Monteux, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
“I look around at the beauty of the park, the acoustics and proportion of the Pavilion . . . and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in residence,” commented James Levine in the 1985 book Ravinia: The Festival at Its Half Century. “Look at how these people work during the Festival weeks—putting on performances of difficult music under extreme weather conditions sufficiently well to be worthy of recording, finishing one concert and getting up the next morning to rehearse for another. . . . Most of the people around Ravinia seem to find a rejuvenation synonymous with summer from the change of pace, the change of style, the challenge of new repertoire, and the opportunity to work from a different vantage point. It’s that kind of thinking, that buoyant spirit, which has been prevalent throughout the unique history of Ravinia. And it’s that spirit which makes Ravinia truly magical!”
*Ravinia Park had opened on August 15, 1904, and Frederick Stock and the Orchestra first performed at the park’s theater on November 20, 1905. The Orchestra appeared there semiregularly through August 1931, after which the park was closed for most of the Great Depression.
This article also appears here.
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Two years after winning the prestigious 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Van Cliburn made his first appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on April 7 and 8, 1960, performing Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with Fritz Reiner conducting. On April 12 he was soloist in Schumann’s A minor concerto with the Orchestra, also with Reiner on the podium.
“Van Cliburn cannot be accused of looking for the easy road to success,” wrote Donal Henahan in the Chicago Daily News following the first performance of Brahms’s concerto. The twenty-five year-old pianist gave “a performance of glitter and grace, and one that was breathtakingly well played . . . perhaps no one but Horowitz today could play those double-note scales in both hands with as much apparent ease.”
Cliburn would appear four more times during Reiner’s tenure, and their performances of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto in April 1963 were Reiner’s last public appearances. Cliburn later appeared in Chicago under Jean Martinon as well as at the Ravinia Festival with Georges Prêtre, Seiji Ozawa, Donald Johanos, Bruno Maderna, and James Levine. His final appearance with the Orchestra was on July 16, 2005, at Ravinia in Grieg’s Piano Concerto, under festival music director James Conlon.
On the RCA label, he made several recordings with the Orchestra, including Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth concertos, Brahms’s Second, Rachmaninov’s Second, and Schumann’s concerto with Reiner; and MacDowell’s Second and Prokofiev’s Third concertos with Walter Hendl.
A complete list of Van Cliburn’s appearances and recordings with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra can be found here.
This article also appears here.
Wishing a very happy seventieth birthday to the wonderful mezzo-soprano, Frederica von Stade (recently in Chicago for performances of Ricky Ian Gordon‘s A Coffin in Egypt with Chicago Opera Theater)!
Von Stade appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on several occasions, at the Ravinia Festival and in Carnegie Hall.
May 1 & 2, 1981, Carnegie Hall
BERLIOZ The Damnation of Faust
Kenneth Riegel, tenor (May 1)
Peyo Garazzi, tenor (May 2)
José van Dam, baritone
Malcolm King, bass
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Margaret Hillis, director
Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus
Doreen Rao, director
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
July 9, 1988, Ravinia Festival
BERLIOZ Romeo and Juliet
Philip Creech, tenor
John Cheek, bass
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Margaret Hillis, director
James Levine, conductor
July 14, 1996
MOZART Ch’io mi scordi di te? . . . Non temer, amato bene (with Claude Frank, piano)
MAHLER Songs from Rückert Lieder and Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Semyon Bychkov, conductor
August 14, 1999
MOZART “Parto, parto, ma tu, ben mio” from La clemenza di Tito,
LEHÁR “Vilja” and “Lippen schweigen” (with John Aler, tenor) from The Merry Widow
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
July 8, 2000
Selections from:
COPLAND Old American Songs
KERN Show Boat
OFFENBACH The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein
MOZART Don Giovanni
RODGERS Oklahoma! and South Pacific
SONDHEIM A Little Night Music
with Samuel Ramey, bass
Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor
August 5 & 7, 2010
MOZART Così fan tutte
Ana María Martínez, soprano
Ruxandra Donose, mezzo-soprano
Saimir Pirgu, tenor
Rodion Pogossov, baritone
Richard Stilwell, bass-baritone
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Duain Wolfe, director
James Conlon, conductor
The 1981 interpretation of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust was recorded by London in Medinah Temple on May 4, 5, 6, and 7, 1981. James Mallinson was the producer, and James Lock and Simon Eadon were sound engineers. The recording won the 1982 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance (other than opera) from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.