The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, CSOA president Jeff Alexander and Maestro Riccardo Muti today unveiled a new bronze bust of Fritz Reiner, who served as the orchestra’s sixth music director, from 1953 to 1962, and musical advisor from 1962-63.
The event took place at Symphony Center on South Michigan Avenue.
Some key Reiner-CSO moments:
— Fritz Reiner served as CSO music director from 1953 – 1962, founding the Chicago Symphony Chorus in 1958, and serving as musical advisor during the 62-63 season.
— Reiner and the CSO first recorded together on March 6, 1954, for RCA. He was the first CSO music director to record a Mahler symphony with the orchestra. He conducted the recording that won the CSO its first Grammy award for best classical performance. His final recording with the CSO was made in April 1963; Beethoven’s 4th piano concert with van Cliburn. RCA recently released a 63-cd set of Reiner’s complete recordings with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
According to CSO archives, Muti and Reiner shared a common denominator: Maestro Antonino Votto, who in the early 1960s served as teacher to Muti:
Just before the opening of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s seventieth season, our sixth music director Fritz Reiner suffered a heart attack on October 7, 1960. He had been scheduled to conduct the first four weeks of concerts, but his recuperation forced the cancellation of his remaining appearances for the calendar year. Replacement conductors included CSO associate conductor Walter Hendl, Robert Shaw (leading Beethoven’s Missa solemnis), Erich Leinsdorf (to conduct a special Saturday evening concert on October 15 featuring the U.S. debut of Sviatoslav Richter as soloist in Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto), and Antonino Votto (who would soon become Riccardo Muti‘s conducting teacher). … Votto returned to Italy and in November 1962, twenty-one-year-old Riccardo Muti met him during his first year as a student at the Milan Conservatory. Muti remembers: And then there was Votto, whom I recall so vividly. He was solemn and incredibly strict, and had worked with [Arturo] Toscanini during his years at La Scala. . . . Within a few days, however, I realized that Votto had taken a liking to me, to the point of giving me — as if to prefer me over less talented students, or ones he didn’t like as much — some pieces to conduct for the performances the following year. Not only did I take a class with him, but I also attended some of his rehearsals at La Scala. … Their friendship continued well beyond the conservatory, and when Muti married Maria Cristina Mazzavillani on June 1, 1969, in Ravenna, Italy, Votto was best man.
Read the full archival account here.
