composers, including Albéniz and Falla, whose careers owe so much to France.
During the winter of 1938–39, when Paris was hit by a prolonged blast of arctic air, Victoria learned that she was pregnant. Despite the foul weather, the looming prospect of war, and their negative cash flow, Joaquín and Victoria kept up a busy social life, even hosting lively gatherings in their modest apartment on the Rue SaintJacques. But it was the most difficult time of their lives. Joaquín had managed to land a job scoring Abel Gance’s movie about Christopher Columbus, but filming was cut short by the imminent war, and he had no other work. Two months before her due date, Victoria suffered a miscarriage and was hospitalized for several days. Joaquín was heartbroken. A friend who stayed over to keep an eye on him later remembered that he would spend entire nights at the piano, playing variations on a melody so sad it gave her chills. This became the theme of the slow movement from his Concierto de Aranjuez, music that would soon make him famous throughout the world. Shortly after Victoria returned to the apartment—the empty pink-andwhite cradle was still standing in the corner—she was forced to sell her much-loved Pleyel piano, a gift from her parents, to pay the medical bills.
In the spring of 1939, as the Spanish Civil War was coming to an end, Joaquín received a letter from Falla offering him a paying teacher’s position in Spain. The Rodrigos prepared to leave at once—all their belongings, including the finished manuscript of the Concierto de Aranjuez, filled just two suitcases. World War II broke out two days after they crossed the Spanish border. After the Rodrigos settled in Madrid, their fortunes slowly began to change, and the last months of 1940 held two happy events for the couple—the birth of their first child and the premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez in Barcelona.
The concerto is scored for the unlikely combination of guitar and orchestra, and Rodrigo took great pains to maintain the proper balance. (Nevertheless, the night before Rodrigo and the soloist, his friend Regino Sáinz de la Maza, arrived in Barcelona by train, they were so worried that the guitar wouldn’t be heard over the orchestra that they couldn’t sleep.) The Concierto de Aranjuez was an immediate hit in Barcelona, as it was a few days later in Bilbao and in Madrid. (After the Madrid premiere, Rodrigo was triumphantly carried through the streets of the old quarter.)
The first of Rodrigo’s eleven concertos, the Concierto de Aranjuez quickly became an international sensation, saddling him, for the remaining fifty-nine years of his life, with the unfortunate reputation of a one-hit composer. Ironically, although his name has been associated with the guitar ever since, Rodrigo never learned to play the instrument—he couldn’t play “four notes in a row,” as he put it. (His close friends de la Maza opposite page : Joaquín Rodrigo, portrait, 1949. Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images | this page : The Garden at Aranjuez. Arbor II. Painting in oil by Catalan poet and journalist Santiago Rusiñol i Prats (1861–1931), 1907. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain. Rodrigo was named First Marquess of the Gardens of Aranjuez on December 30, 1991, a title bestowed on him by King Juan Carlos I of Spain.
and Andrés Segovia were always available to offer advice on writing for the guitar.)
The concerto has three movements, with two sparkling, courtly dances surrounding Rodrigo’s famous night music—an impassioned adagio “wrapped in darkness,” as Victoria wrote. That movement, with its bittersweet melody, shared at first by english horn and guitar, is both a recollection of the idyllic days of their honeymoon and a great love song. The mood throughout the concerto suggests a deep nostalgia for an older, more genteel Spain, and Rodrigo himself described his style as “faithful to a tradition” rather than novel or revolutionary. Aranjuez, with its elaborate palaces and gardens lying just to the south of Madrid, was a favorite summer residence of the Bourbon kings in the eighteenth century, and that’s the world Rodrigo recaptures here.
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833; Hamburg, Germany
Died April 3, 1897; Vienna, Austria
The Concierto de Aranjuez became so popular that Rodrigo eventually made a version for harp, although he rejected frequent requests to turn it into a piano concerto. In 1959 the great jazz musician Miles Davis heard a recording of it and was so hooked on the score that he said he couldn’t get it out of his head. A haunting, moody, seventeen-minute-long variation on Rodrigo’s slow movement became the centerpiece of the classic Sketches of Spain recording Davis made with Gil Evans later that year. (“That melody is so strong,” Miles said in the control room, “that the softer you play it, the stronger it gets.”) Although Rodrigo was puzzled by the phenomenal success of this concerto over all his other works, he never seemed to mind that recordings regularly topped best-seller lists, and that, on occasion, he was even inadvertently called Señor Aranjuez.
Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98
Brahms’s good housekeeping has denied us an unfinished fifth symphony to set beside Mahler’s Tenth and Bruckner’s Ninth—two magnificent symphonies left incomplete at their composers’ deaths. We know that Brahms was working on a fifth symphony as early as 1890, during a trip to Italy; apparently, he soon gave up on it. During the last years of his life, Brahms conscientiously destroyed or recycled any musical scraps cluttering his desk. He admitted using the opening of his fifth symphony in the String Quintet, op. 111, the work he intended to be his last. (“It is high time to stop,” he wrote to his publisher in the note that accompanied the
score.) Although he went on to write a handful of great chamber works, he didn’t return to orchestral music and destroyed all remaining evidence of a fifth symphony.
Brahms’s Fourth Symphony is his final statement in a form he had completely mastered, although for a very long time he was paralyzed by the nine examples by Beethoven. Even Beethoven chose not to go beyond his own ninth, although he toyed with a new symphony two years before his death. It’s difficult to imagine what Beethoven or Brahms might have done next, since their last symphonies seem to sum up all either knew of orchestral writing. The difference is that Beethoven’s choral symphony opened up a vast new world for the rest of the nineteenth century to explore, while Brahms reached something of a dead end. But what
a glorious ending it is. Brahms was never one to forge new paths—like Bach and Handel, he added little to the historical development of music—and yet he always seemed to prove that there was more to be said in the language at hand.
Brahms’s Fourth Symphony begins almost in mid-thought, with urgent, sighing violins coming out of nowhere; it often disorients first-time listeners. (Brahms meant it to: he originally wrote two preparatory bars of wind chords and later crossed them out, letting the theme catch us by surprise.) The violins skip across the scale by thirds—falling thirds and their mirror image, rising sixths—a shorthand way of telling us that the interval of a third pervades the harmonic language of the entire symphony. (It also determines key relationships: the third movement, for example, is in C major, a third below the symphony’s E minor key.)
COMPOSED 1885
FIRST PERFORMANCE
October 25, 1885; Meiningen, Germany. The composer conducting
February 17 and 18, 1893, Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Thomas conducting
July 12, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Hans Lange conducting
MOST RECENT
CSO PERFORMANCES
August 10, 2016, Ravinia Festival. David Zinman conducting
December 14, 15, and 16, 2023, Orchestra Hall. Semyon Bychkov conducting
CSO RECORDINGS
1969. Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. Angel
1976. James Levine conducting. RCA
1978. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London
1993. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Erato
opposite page : Johannes Brahms, cabinet card photograph by Fritz Luckhardt (1833–1894), ca. 1885. Vienna, Austria
this page, from top : The Meiningen Court Orchestra with its music director (1880–85) Hans von Bülow (1830–1894), the composer’s friend and collaborator, 1882. Meiningen Museums, Germany. Brahms premiered his Fourth Symphony with the ensemble on October 25, 1885. Meiningen, Germany, between 1890 and 1905. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Photochrom Prints Collection
Brahms has a wonderful time playing with the conventions of sonata form in the first movement. He seems to make the classical repeat of the exposition, but, only eight measures in, alters one chord and immediately plunges into the new harmonic fields of the development section. Listen for the great point of recognition—at ppp, the quietest moment in the symphony—with which Brahms marks the recapitulation. For twelve measures, the music falters like an awkward conversation, the winds suggesting the first theme, the violins not seeming to understand. Suddenly they catch on and, picking up the theme where the winds left off, sweep into a full recapitulation capped by a powerful coda.
In the Andante moderato, Brahms takes the little horn call of the first measure and tosses it throughout the orchestra, subtly altering its color, rhythm, and character as he proceeds. A forceful fanfare in the winds introduces a juicy new cello theme. (It turns out to be nothing more than the fanfare played slowly.) Near the end, shadows cross the music. The horns boldly play their theme again, but the accompaniment suggests that darkness has descended for good.
The lightning flash of the Allegro giocoso proves otherwise. This is music of enormous energy, lightened by an unabashed comic streak—unexpected from Brahms, normally the most sober of composers. Here he indulges in the repeated tinklings of the triangle, and he later boasted that “three kettledrums, triangle, and piccolo will, of course, make something of a show.” Midway through, when the first theme’s thundering left foot is answered by the puny voice of the high winds, the effect is as funny as anything in Haydn.
Throughout his life, Brahms collected old scores and manuscripts—the autograph of Mozart’s great G minor symphony was a prized possession—studying their pages to see what history might teach him. More than once, he spoke of wanting to write a set of variations on a theme he remembered from a cantata by Bach. But no one before Brahms had seriously thought of writing a strict passacaglia—a continuous set
of variations over a repeated bass line—to wrap up a symphony.
The finale to Brahms’s Fourth Symphony isn’t a musty, academic exercise, but a brilliant summation of all Brahms knew about symphonic writing set over thirty-two repetitions of the same eight notes. Trombones make their entrance in the symphony to announce the theme, loosely borrowed from Bach’s Cantata no. 150, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (I Long for You, O Lord) [the cantata is no longer thought to be by Bach]. To bring the ancient passacaglia form into the nineteenth century, Brahms superimposes over his variations the general outline of sonata form, with an unmistakable moment of recapitulation midway through. A look at the finale in its entirety reveals the sturdy four-movement structure of the classical symphony: Brahms begins with eight bold and forceful variations, followed by four slow variations of yearning and quiet eloquence, an increasingly hectic dancelike sequence, and an urgent and dramatic final group that provides a triumphant conclusion.
One can follow Brahms’s eight-note theme from the shining summit of the flute line, where it first appears over rich trombone harmonies, to the depths of the double bass, where it descends as early as the fourth variation, supporting a luscious new violin melody. Even in the twelfth variation, where the theme steps aside so the focus is on the poignant, solemn song of the flute, the spirit of those eight notes is still with us. And as Arnold Schoenberg loved to point out, the skeleton of the main theme from the first movement also appears in the penultimate variation, like the ghostly statue in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The finale is as magnificent and as satisfying as any movement in symphonic music; it’s easy to assume that, having written this, Brahms had nothing left to say. We’ll never know whether that was so, or if, in the end, he simply ran out of time.
Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.
PROFILES
Riccardo Muti
Music Director Emeritus for Life
Born in Naples, Italy, Riccardo Muti is one of the preeminent conductors of our day. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s distinguished tenth music director from 2010 until 2023, Muti became Music Director Emeritus for Life beginning with the 2023–24 season.
His leadership has been distinguished by the strength of his artistic partnership with the Orchestra; his dedication to performing great works of the past and present, including seventeen world premieres to date; the enthusiastic reception he and the CSO have received on national and international tours; and twelve recordings on the CSO Resound label, with four Grammy awards among them. In addition, Muti’s contributions to the cultural life of Chicago— with performances throughout its many neighborhoods and at Orchestra Hall—have made a lasting impact on the city.
In Naples, Riccardo Muti studied piano under Vincenzo Vitale at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella, graduating with distinction. He subsequently received a diploma in composition and conducting from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan under the guidance of Bruno Bettinelli and Antonino Votto.
He first came to the attention of critics and the public in 1967, when he won the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition, by unanimous vote of the jury, in Milan. In 1968, he became principal conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a position he held until 1980. In 1971, Muti was invited by Herbert von Karajan to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, the first of many occasions, which led to a celebration of fifty years of artistic collaboration with the Austrian festival in 2020. During the 1970s, Muti was chief conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra (1972–1982), succeeding Otto Klemperer. From 1980 to 1992, he inherited the
position of music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from Eugene Ormandy. From 1986 to 2005, he was music director of Teatro alla Scala, and during that time, he directed major projects such as the three Mozart/Da Ponte operas and Wagner’s Ring cycle in addition to his exceptional contributions to the Verdi repertoire. His tenure as music director of Teatro alla Scala, the longest in its history, culminated in the triumphant reopening of the restored opera house on December 7, 2004, with Salieri’s Europa riconosciuta.
Over the course of his extraordinary career, Riccardo Muti has conducted the most important orchestras in the world: from the Berlin Philharmonic to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and from the New York Philharmonic to the Orchestre National de France; as well as the Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestra to which he is linked by particularly close and important ties, and with which he has appeared at the Salzburg Festival since 1971 and is an honorary member. When Muti was invited to lead the Vienna Philharmonic’s 150th-anniversary concert, the orchestra presented him with the Golden Ring, a special sign of esteem and affection, awarded only to a few select conductors. In 2021, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the New Year’s Concert for the sixth time; he will conduct the concert again in 2025. In May 2024, Muti led the Philharmonic in its 200th anniversary performance of the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Muti has received numerous international honors over the course of his career. He is Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Italian Republic and a recipient of the German Verdienstkreuz. He received the decoration of Officer of the Legion of Honor from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and in 2024 was bestowed the title of Commander of the Legion of Honor while on the CSO’s European Tour in Rome. He was made an honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. The Salzburg Mozarteum awarded him its silver medal for his contribution to Mozart’s music, and in Vienna he was elected an honorary member
of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna Hofmusikkapelle, and Vienna State Opera. The State of Israel has honored him with the Wolf Prize in the arts. In July 2018, President Petro Poroshenko presented Muti with the State Award of Ukraine during the Roads of Friendship concert at the Ravenna Festival in Italy following earlier performances in Kyiv. In October 2018, Muti received the prestigious Praemium Imperiale for Music of the Japan Arts Association in Tokyo.
In September 2010, Riccardo Muti became music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was named 2010 Musician of the Year by Musical America. In 2011, Muti was selected as the recipient of the coveted Birgit Nilsson Prize and received the Opera News Award in New York City and Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. That summer, he was named an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic and honorary director for life of the Rome Opera. In May 2012, he was awarded the highest papal honor: the Knight of the Grand Cross First Class of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI. In 2016, he was honored by the Japanese government with the Order of the
Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star. In August 2021, Muti received the Great Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria, the highest possible civilian honor from the Austrian government.
Passionate about teaching young musicians, Muti founded the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra in 2004 and the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy in 2015. The purpose of the Italian Opera Academy—which takes place in Italy, as well as in Japan since 2019 as part of a multi-year collaboration with the Tokyo Spring Festival—is to pass on Muti’s expertise to young musicians and to foster a better understanding of the complex journey to the realization of an opera. Through Le vie dell’Amicizia (The Roads of Friendship), a project of the Ravenna Festival in Italy, he has conducted in many of the world’s most troubled areas in order to bring attention to civic and social issues.
The label RMMUSIC is responsible for Riccardo Muti’s recordings.
Bruckner, Boccanegra, and Italian Honors for Riccardo Muti
The CSO’s Music Director Emeritus for Life Riccardo Muti had an eventful summer and early fall that included his annual concerts at the Salzburg Festival, the latest edition of his Italian Opera Academy in Tokyo, and new honors bestowed upon him in his native Italy.
At this summer’s Salzburg Festival, Muti conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in performances of Schubert’s Tragic Symphony no. 4 and Bruckner’s Mass no. 3 in F minor. “Maestro Muti first conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in 1971,” wrote Jay Nordlinger in his review for The New Criterion. “In recent seasons, he has gone from strength to strength. I think of an Aida (the Verdi opera). Those Bruckner symphonies, that Beethoven mass. Two Tchaikovsky symphonies: 4 and 6. This Bruckner mass. The guy is on a roll,” he continued. Muti’s annual three concerts at the festival were, as Wilhelm Sinkovicz of Die Presse pointed out, “notoriously sold out.” He continued in his review, “Anyone who experiences Muti conducting Schubert also understands why this is so.”
The second half of the program featured Bruckner’s Mass in F minor, considered the Austrian composer’s most important and final mass setting.
Requiring the considerable forces of four soloists, a large choir, and a huge orchestra, the work marks an important crossroads in Bruckner’s career and is emblematic of the enigmatic and powerful symphonies to come after he relocated to Vienna in 1868. “After interpretations of the Seventh and Eighth, it seems fitting that Muti should also celebrate Bruckner’s greatest mass composition in Salzburg, with the serenity that this music demands,” wrote Florian Oberhummer in the Salzburger Nachrichten. “In this setting of the mass, the Vienna Philharmonic’s strong contrasts in dynamics and timbres were wonderfully realized . . . under the once again commanding Riccardo Muti,” wrote Helmut Christian Mayer of the Kurrier.
From September 2 to 15, Muti led the fifth iteration of the Italian Opera Academy in Tokyo, focusing on Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. During the two-week academy, Muti trained five young conductors selected by audition, and the daily rehearsals were open to the public. On September 2 Muti held a master class for the conductors with full orchestra, chorus, and soloists, and on September 11 the conductors led a concert performance of the opera. Muti also conducted two concert performances of Simon Boccanegra as the grand finale of the Italian Opera Academy.
On September 25, in Santena, near Turin, the Camillo Cavour Foundation President Marco Boglione awarded Riccardo Muti the 2025 Cavour Prize for “masterfully embodying the Italian musical and artistic tradition.”
On October 7 Marco Massari, the mayor of Reggio Emilia, presented Muti with the Primo Tricolore, the city’s highest honor, “for [Muti’s] artistic merits, the social values he has conveyed, and the closeness he has demonstrated to [local] citizens.”
May 23, 24, 25, and 26, 2019, Orchestra Hall. Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, Giancarlo Guerrero conducting
MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES
March 30, April 1, and 4, 2023, Orchestra Hall; March 31, 2023, Edman Memorial Chapel, Wheaton College. Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto in D major and Cuello’s arrangement of Boccherini’s Introduction and Fandango from Guitar Quintet no. 4 in D major, Bernard Labadie conducting
Pablo Sainz-Villegas has been acclaimed by the international press as the successor to Andrés Segovia and an ambassador of Spanish culture in the world. He is the first solo guitarist to appear at Carnegie Hall in New York since Segovia in 1983 and the first to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 2001 and in the Berlin Philharmonic’s New Year’s Eve gala since 1983.
Since his New York Philharmonic debut under the baton of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, he has concertized in over forty countries and with such ensembles as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and the National Orchestra of Spain, as well as in venues including the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo, among many others of equal importance and reputation.
His most notable milestones include the Princess of Asturias Awards Concert and his
participation in the Metropolitan Opera Gala last May at the Palace of Versailles. His numerous performances at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, as well as concerts held in such distinguished venues as Grant Park in Chicago, the iconic Praça do Comércio in Lisbon, and the illustrious Hollywood Bowl accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, have made him one of this generation’s most remarkable and prolific performers.
As a socially committed artist, he is the founder and driving force behind the non-profit association Strings in Common in the United States. He is also creator and artistic director of the Rioja Festival in Spain.
An exclusive Sony Classical artist, SainzVillegas has released solo albums as well as duo recordings with tenor Plácido Domingo and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Film composer John Williams has written two works for him for guitar: Rounds and Prayer for Peace.
Highlights of his 2025–26 season include the continuation of the premiere tour of Místico y Profano written especially for him by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez with the Ottawa Symphony, Annapolis Symphony, and Pacific Symphony; the world premiere of a work for string quartet and guitar by Andrea Casarrubios with the Agarita Quartet; his new chamber project Spanish Night, which will premiere on a U.S. tour; and appearances with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Québec, and the Argovia Philharmonic based in Switzerland, among others.
Pablo Sainz-Villegas was born in La Rioja, Spain, and he has resided in the United States since 2001.
This season, he wears TomBlack Barquillo, based in Madrid.
PHOTO BY PSV RECÁMARA
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra—consistently hailed as one of the world’s best—marks its 135th season in 2025–26. The ensemble’s history began in 1889, when Theodore Thomas, the leading conductor in America and a recognized music pioneer, was invited by Chicago businessman Charles Norman Fay to establish a symphony orchestra. Thomas’s aim to build a permanent orchestra of the highest quality was realized at the first concerts in October 1891 in the Auditorium Theatre. Thomas served as music director until his death in January 1905, just three weeks after the dedication of Orchestra Hall, the Orchestra’s permanent home designed by Daniel Burnham.
Frederick Stock, recruited by Thomas to the viola section in 1895, became assistant conductor in 1899 and succeeded the Orchestra’s founder. His tenure lasted thirty-seven years, from 1905 to 1942—the longest of the Orchestra’s music directors. Stock founded the Civic Orchestra of Chicago— the first training orchestra in the U.S. affiliated with a major orchestra—in 1919, established youth auditions, organized the first subscription concerts especially for children, and began a series of popular concerts.
Three conductors headed the Orchestra during the following decade: Désiré Defauw was music director from 1943 to 1947, Artur Rodzinski in 1947–48, and Rafael Kubelík from 1950 to 1953. The next ten years belonged to Fritz Reiner, whose recordings with the CSO are still considered hallmarks. Reiner invited Margaret Hillis to form the Chicago Symphony Chorus in 1957. For five seasons from 1963 to 1968, Jean Martinon held the position of music director.
Sir Georg Solti, the Orchestra’s eighth music director, served from 1969 until 1991. His arrival launched one of the most successful musical partnerships of our time. The CSO made its first overseas tour to Europe in 1971 under his direction and released numerous award-winning recordings. Beginning in 1991, Solti held the title of music director laureate and returned to conduct the Orchestra each season until his death in September 1997.
Daniel Barenboim became ninth music director in 1991, a position he held until 2006. His tenure was distinguished by the opening of Symphony Center in 1997, appearances with the Orchestra in the dual role of pianist and conductor, and twenty-one international tours. Appointed by Barenboim in 1994 as the Chorus’s second director, Duain Wolfe served until his retirement in 2022.
In 2010, Riccardo Muti became the Orchestra’s tenth music director. During his tenure, the Orchestra deepened its engagement with the Chicago community, nurtured its legacy while supporting a new generation of musicians and composers, and collaborated with visionary artists. In September 2023, Muti became music director emeritus for life.
In April 2024, Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä was announced as the Orchestra’s eleventh music director and will begin an initial five-year tenure as Zell Music Director in September 2027. In July 2025, Donald Palumbo became the third director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
Carlo Maria Giulini was named the Orchestra’s first principal guest conductor in 1969, serving until 1972; Claudio Abbado held the position from 1982 to 1985. Pierre Boulez was appointed as principal guest conductor in 1995 and was named Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus in 2006, a position he held until his death in January 2016. From 2006 to 2010, Bernard Haitink was the Orchestra’s first principal conductor.
Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is the CSO’s Artist-in-Residence for the 2025–26 season.
The Orchestra first performed at Ravinia Park in 1905 and appeared frequently through August 1931, after which the park was closed for most of the Great Depression. In August 1936, the Orchestra helped to inaugurate the first season of the Ravinia Festival, and it has been in residence nearly every summer since.
Since 1916, recording has been a significant part of the Orchestra’s activities. Recordings by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus— including recent releases on CSO Resound, the Orchestra’s recording label launched in 2007— have earned sixty-five Grammy awards from the Recording Academy.
Celebrating Latino composers, conductors and artists
The CSO Latino Alliance is a liaison and partner organization that connects the CSO with Chicago’s diverse communities by creating awareness, sharing insights and building relationships for generations to come. The group encourages individuals and their families to discover and experience timeless music with other enthusiasts in concerts, receptions and educational events.
Be a part of the season with concerts across musical genres highlighting world-class performances and compositions from Aida Cuevas, Sinfónica de Minería, Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, Gonzalo Rubalcaba and more!
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä Zell Music Director Designate
Joyce DiDonato Artist-in-Residence
VIOLINS
Robert Chen Concertmaster
The Louis C. Sudler Chair, endowed by an
anonymous benefactor
Stephanie Jeong
Associate Concertmaster
The Cathy and Bill Osborn Chair
David Taylor*
Assistant Concertmaster
The Ling Z. and Michael C.
Markovitz Chair
Yuan-Qing Yu*
Assistant Concertmaster
So Young Bae
Cornelius Chiu
Gina DiBello
Kozue Funakoshi
Russell Hershow
Qing Hou
Gabriela Lara
Matous Michal
Simon Michal
Sando Shia
Susan Synnestvedt
Rong-Yan Tang
Baird Dodge Principal
Danny Yehun Jin
Assistant Principal
Lei Hou
Ni Mei
Hermine Gagné
Rachel Goldstein
Mihaela Ionescu
Melanie Kupchynsky §
Wendy Koons Meir
Ronald Satkiewicz ‡
Florence Schwartz
VIOLAS
Teng Li Principal
The Paul Hindemith Principal Viola Chair
Catherine Brubaker
Youming Chen
Sunghee Choi
Wei-Ting Kuo
Danny Lai
Weijing Michal
Diane Mues
Lawrence Neuman
Max Raimi
CELLOS
John Sharp Principal
The Eloise W. Martin Chair
Kenneth Olsen
Assistant Principal
The Adele Gidwitz Chair
Karen Basrak §
The Joseph A. and Cecile Renaud Gorno Chair
Richard Hirschl
Daniel Katz
Katinka Kleijn
Brant Taylor
The Ann Blickensderfer and Roger Blickensderfer Chair
BASSES
Alexander Hanna Principal
The David and Mary Winton
Green Principal Bass Chair
Alexander Horton
Assistant Principal
Daniel Carson
Ian Hallas
Robert Kassinger
Mark Kraemer
Stephen Lester
Bradley Opland
Andrew Sommer
FLUTES
Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson § Principal
The Erika and Dietrich M.
Gross Principal Flute Chair
Emma Gerstein
Jennifer Gunn
PICCOLO
Jennifer Gunn
The Dora and John Aalbregtse Piccolo Chair
OBOES
William Welter Principal
Lora Schaefer
Assistant Principal
The Gilchrist Foundation, Jocelyn Gilchrist Chair
Scott Hostetler
ENGLISH HORN
Scott Hostetler
Riccardo Muti Music Director Emeritus for Life
CLARINETS
Stephen Williamson Principal
John Bruce Yeh
Assistant Principal
The Governing
Members Chair
Gregory Smith
E-FLAT CLARINET
John Bruce Yeh
BASSOONS
Keith Buncke Principal
William Buchman
Assistant Principal
Miles Maner
HORNS
Mark Almond Principal
James Smelser
David Griffin
Oto Carrillo
Susanna Gaunt
Daniel Gingrich ‡
TRUMPETS
Esteban Batallán Principal
The Adolph Herseth Principal Trumpet Chair, endowed by an anonymous benefactor
John Hagstrom
The Bleck Family Chair
Tage Larsen
TROMBONES
Timothy Higgins Principal
The Lisa and Paul Wiggin
Principal Trombone Chair
Michael Mulcahy
Charles Vernon
BASS TROMBONE
Charles Vernon
TUBA
Gene Pokorny Principal
The Arnold Jacobs Principal Tuba Chair, endowed by Christine Querfeld
* Assistant concertmasters are listed by seniority. ‡ On sabbatical § On leave
The CSO’s music director position is endowed in perpetuity by a generous gift from the Zell Family Foundation. The Louise H. Benton Wagner chair is currently unoccupied.
TIMPANI
David Herbert Principal
The Clinton Family Fund Chair
Vadim Karpinos
Assistant Principal
PERCUSSION
Cynthia Yeh Principal
Patricia Dash
Vadim Karpinos
LIBRARIANS
Justin Vibbard Principal
Carole Keller
Mark Swanson
CSO FELLOWS
Ariel Seunghyun Lee Violin
Jesús Linárez Violin
The Michael and Kathleen Elliott Fellow
Olivia Jakyoung Huh Cello
ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL
John Deverman Director
Anne MacQuarrie
Manager, CSO Auditions and Orchestra Personnel
STAGE TECHNICIANS
Christopher Lewis
Stage Manager
Blair Carlson
Paul Christopher
Chris Grannen
Ryan Hartge
Peter Landry
Joshua Mondie
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra string sections utilize revolving seating. Players behind the first desk (first two desks in the violins) change seats systematically every two weeks and are listed alphabetically. Section percussionists also are listed alphabetically.
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association Board of Trustees
OFFICERS
Mary Louise Gorno Chair
Chester A. Gougis Vice Chair
Steven Shebik Vice Chair
Helen Zell Vice Chair
Renée Metcalf Treasurer
Jeff Alexander President
Kristine Stassen Secretary of the Board
Stacie M. Frank Assistant Treasurer
Dale Hedding Vice President for Development
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association Administration
SENIOR LEADERSHIP
Jeff Alexander President
Stacie M. Frank Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, Finance and Administration
Dale Hedding Vice President, Development
Ryan Lewis Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Vanessa Moss Vice President, Orchestra and Building Operations
