CSO’s Riccardo Muti reflects on things musical and beyond

Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, smiles mischievously over lunch (the simplest bowl of spaghetti, topped with nothing but a splash of olive oil and fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese), and quotes another great Italian maestro, Arturo Toscanini, who said: “Any donkey can conduct, but to make music is difficult.”

“To beat time is easy,” Muti elaborated. “The challenge is to interpret. Making music is the gift of a few.”

Muti, now leading the CSO through its 125th anniversary season, unquestionably possesses that gift. But just as importantly, since arriving at the helm of the CSO in 2010, he has shared it with a wide audience, reaching beyond the faithful Symphony Center subscribers to the huge audience that gathers in Millennium Park for his free pre-season concerts, and to the young inmates at the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville who he invites to sit beside him at the piano as he accompanies an opera singer in a Mozart aria.

His work with the CSO stretches far beyond the city, too. Muti and the orchestra will set out on a U.S. tour, Oct. 27-31, with stops in Kansas City, Ann Arbor and Chapel Hill, followed by a brief return to Chicago, Dec. 3-5, with a program of works by Prokofiev, Scriabin and Beethoven. Then it’s off for a whirlwind tour of Asia, Jan. 16-28, with stops in Taipei, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing and Seoul. Also in the works is a tour to Cuba.

As Muti explained: “From the moment I heard of the re-establishment of ties [with Cuba] I thought: We have to go there, because the CSO is the greatest orchestra in the U.S. — powerful in every section — and we are from the home city of the president, and can bring a message of peace and brotherhood. Plus, not only is there a great tradition of classical music in Cuba, but the rhythms and melodies of Cuban music are part of the future of music itself. I see that future as a confluence of rivers that will join to create an even bigger river by incorporating new elements of different musical cultures.”

Muti also sees such integration as a corrective to many of the modern music experiments of the past half century or so — works that, as he put it “die after their first few performances because they don’t reflect the spiritual needs of the audience.”

“Mozart and Beethoven spoke directly to the soul and intellect of people. Now there is a wide separation — a lack of communication between the creation of artists and the acceptance of the public. I think the new language of music will draw on music from places like Cuba, Norway, Afghanistan, South Africa. I also wish there were more mixing of art forms: I’d love to play 18th century music in a gallery of the Art Institute with paintings from the same era. And of course we have just welcomed two new Mead Composers-in-Residence: Samuel Adams [son of composer John Adams] and Elizabeth Ogonek, following the successful tenures of Mason Bates and Anna Clyne.”

“But the new language of music also will come from modern interpretations of the masters,” said Muti. “The CSO is a master of the great classical, Romantic and early 20th century repertoire, and to keep that work alive is a big responsibility. What we think we know well should not become easily routine.”

For Muti, a stylish, vigorous man of 74 (who credits his exemplary posture to the fact that his Neapolitan mother made him and his brothers sleep on mattresses laid out on wooden boards on the floor), music is sacred. And he enjoys recounting the biblical story of Jacob’s Ladder as it was told in Elie Wiesel’s novel, “The Oath.”

As Muti told it: “One day, an angel, who appeared to Jacob as ascending and descending the ladder that unites heaven and Earth, forgot to pull the ladder up. And that ladder became the musical scale — the angel’s gift to man, that could lead us from Earth to heaven.”

Along with orchestral music, Muti’s great passion is opera (particularly the works of Verdi), and he remains the director of the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini in Ravenna, Italy, where he has lived for many years.

“For some time I stopped directing staged productions of operas and only did concert versions, because I didn’t want to suffer a heart attack fighting against idiot directors [the rare exception being the late Giorgio Strehler] who had no idea what the works were about,” said Muti. “But I’ve decided to go back and try again, with a production of ‘Aida’ scheduled for 2017 in Salzburg.”

He also dreams of someone writing an opera about one of his “spiritual guides” — emperor Frederick II.

“He was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages — a genius whose influence ranged from Germany to Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem. He was a great patron of the arts and sciences, spoke many languages, was excommunicated three times by the pope, refused to fight in the Crusades, and wanted to bring Christians, Jews and Muslims together in peace. I have a picture of his castle in Altamura [in southeastern Italy] hanging in my office, and even own a piece of land near it. An opera about him would be fantastic.”

I ask Muti a few last questions:

Was there a piece of music he heard early on that transformed him? “Yes, when I was about 10 I heard the slow second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 on the radio, and that was it for me.”

Is there still a piece he has always wanted to conduct but hasn’t? “The ‘Missa solemnis” [Beethoven’s Mass in D major]. Its metaphysical message is too high for me to comprehend and interpret.”

And finally, does he have a pop music favorite? “When I was 14 or 15, and in love for the first time, I listened to The Platters. ‘Only You’ was my favorite.”

And then the maestro began to sing.