Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Riccardo Muti announce 2020-2021 season

The season marks the 130th of the Grammy Award-winning, world-renown orchestra.

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Maestro Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will kick off the 2020-2021 season with a free concert on Sept. 17 in Millennium Park.

Maestro Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will kick off the 2020-2021 season with a free concert on Sept. 17 in Millennium Park.

Todd Rosenberg Photography

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and maestro Riccardo Muti on Tuesday announced the programming for the 2020-2021 season, which celebrates the world-renown orchestra’s 130th season.

Muti will lead 10 weeks of subscription concerts in five residencies at Symphony Center, in a season that boasts Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite, Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, Bruckner’s Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (From the New World), Janáček’s Taras Bulba, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos. 2 & 5 and Francesca da Rimini, as well as Beethoven’s Missa solemnis as part of the culmination of the CSO’s yearlong commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Also on the schedule are two world premieres of CSO-commissioned works by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank and Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, as well the first CSO performances of Julia Wolfe’s “Her Story,” co-commissioned by the CSO and four other major U.S. orchestras. The new work commemorates the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. 

Season highlights include:

  • Sept. 17: The annual Concert for Chicago, a free event featuring Muti and the CSO at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Program includes Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and Rimsky-Korsakov’s tone poem Sheherazade.
  • Dec. 10, 11, 12: Mezzo-soprano Kara Dugan, makes her CSO debut as a vocalist in the CSO premiere of Michael Tilson Thomas’s Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind, set to Carl Sandburg’s poem.
  • Dec. 3-5 and 8: Conductor Jane Glover makes her CSO debut in a program of 19th century music.
  • The 90th season of “Symphony Center Presents” music series includes Joshua Bell and the Jerusalem Quartet with guests Pinchas Zukerman, violin/viola, and Amanda Forsyth, cello, as well as series debut appearances for the ThibaudetBatiashvili-Capuçon piano trio and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The series also features the return of the Berliner Philharmoniker with its new chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, and the Mariinsky Orchestra with its artistic and general director Valery Gergiev.

According to Tuesday’s announcement, the CSO will perform 16 works for the first time:

  • Qigang Chen: L’Eloignement (Oct. 29-31)
  • Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America (Nov. 5-8)
  • Michael Tilson Thomas: Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind (Dec. 10-12)
  • Peter Tchaikovsky: Valse-Scherzo in C Major, Op. 34 (Dec. 17-19)
  • Lalo Schifrin: Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra (Jan. 14-16, 2021)
  • Lalo Schifrin: Theme from Mission: Impossible (Jan. 14-16, 2021)
  • William Kraft: Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra No. 1 (Jan. 14-16, 2021)
  • Jessie Montgomery: Starburst (Feb. 26-27, 2021)
  • Julia Wolfe: Her Story (Feb. 26-2021; a CSO co-commission)
  • Luigi Cherubini: Mass for the Coronation of Charles X (March 4-6, 2021)
  • Thomas Adès: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (March 25, 26, and 30, 2021)
  • G.F. Handel: Dopo notte, atra e funesta from Ariodante (April 29, 30, May 1, and 4, 2021
  • Antonio Vivaldi: Armatae face et anguibus from Juditha triumphans (April 29, 30, May 1, and 4, 2021)
  • Antonio Vivaldi: Kyrie, RV 587 (April 29, 30, May 1 and 4, 2021)
  • Antonio Vivaldi: Leggi almeno, tiranna infedele from Ottone in villa (April 29, 30, May 1 and 4, 2021)
  • Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for Strings in G Minor, RV 157 (April 29, 30, May 1 and 4, 2021)

Also returning will be the hugely popular “CSO at the Movies” series which features the orchestra performing film scores to screenings of major motion pictures. The season will include: “Amadeus” (Constantine Kitsopoulos, conducting in his CSO debut, Oct. 8-10 and 13); “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (David Newman, conducting, Nov. 27- 29); “The Wizard of Oz” (Richard Kaufman, conducting, April 9 and 11, 2021); “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (Richard Kaufman, conducting, May 27-29 2021).

Subscriptions series tickets are now available by calling (312) 294-3000 or (800) 223-7114. Note: The concert start time for subscribers attending all Thursday CSO concert series will move to 7:30 p.m. Groups of 10 or more seeking subscription series tickets should call (312) 294- 3040. Single tickets will go on sale Aug. 12.

For the complete season schedule and more information, visit cso.org.

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