Riccardo Muti, John Williams and rising star Randall Goosby among the highlights of CSO's 2024-2025 season

Riccardo Muti, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s renowned music director emeritus for life, will lead four sets of concerts in Orchestra Hall during the ensemble’s 2024-25 season, it was announced Wednesday.

The 82-year-old maestro will be seen in Chicago twice as often as the current season when most of his six contracted weeks with the ensemble were devoted to touring. Highlights of his upcoming appearances include the world premiere (Nov. 8-9) of a CSO-commissioned suite from Osvaldo Golijov’s score for Francis Ford Coppola’s soon-to-be-released film, “Megalopolis.”

© Todd Rosenberg Photography

Muti will also lead rare performances (June 19, 21 and 24, 2025) of Hector Berlioz’s “The Damnation of Faust” (1846), a massive choral work that is a kind of a cross between opera and cantata. The orchestra has only programmed it twice previously in the last 35 years.

The 2024-25 season will open Sept. 19-20 with famed violinist Hilary Hahn, who concludes her three-year tenure as the orchestra’s artist-in-residence in June. The season concludes June 26-28, 2025, with screenings of “Back to the Future” accompanied by live performances of Alan Silvestri’s score.

While the search continues for a successor to Muti, who ended his 13-year tenure as music director in June 2023, the 2024-25 season will be dominated by guest conductors, just as this season has been.

Jaap van Zweden, the Dutch conductor who is stepping down at the end of this season as music director of the New York Philharmonic, returns for a pair of programs featuring two of Gustav Mahler’s greatest works: Symphony No. 7 (April 17-19) and Symphony No. 6 (May 8-9).

Other major names taking the podium include Marin Alsop (Oct. 10-11), chief conductor of the Ravinia Festival and the recently named principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra; and Manfred Honeck (March 13-15), a CSO favorite who serves as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Daniil Trifonov, one of the world’s most celebrated pianists, will succeed Hahn as the CSO’s artist-in-residence in 2024-25. He will make three appearances across the season, including performances May 1-4 with guest conductor Klaus Mäkelä and the orchestra.

Among the other stand-out soloists coming in 2024-25 are pianist Lang Lang, who will take part in the orchestra’s annual gala concert on Sept. 21, violinist Christian Tetzlaff (Feb. 14-16, 2025), and pianist Seong-Jin Cho (Feb. 27-28 and March 1-2, 2025).

Here are some additional highlights of the season:

Dario Acosta

• Oct. 22, John Williams conductor, violinist Anne Sophie-Mutter: Williams, who turned 92 in February, has pared back his conducting, making this appearance more special. He will lead Sophie-Mutter in the CSO premiere of his Violin Concerto No. 2 as well as selections from his much-celebrated film scores.
• Jan. 30-Feb. 1 and Feb 4 and Feb. 6-8, 2025, Esa-Pekka Salonen: One of the world’s most esteemed conductors and composers returns for back-to-back sets of concerts. Included is the CSO premiere of his Sinfonia concertante for Organ and Orchestra with soloist Iveta Apkalna and nods to the 80th anniversary of Béla Bartók’s death, including a concert performance of the composer’s one-act opera “Bluebeard’s Castle.”
• June 5-7, violinist Randall Goosby: The 28-year-old rising star who signed with Decca Records in 2022, will make his CSO debut as soloist for the orchestra’s first performances of the recently rediscovered Violin Concerto No. 2 by Florence Price. The once-forgotten 20th-century Chicago composer has enjoyed a massive revival in the past decade.

Along with the CSO line-up, Symphony Center Presents, an arm of the orchestra, also announced its offerings for 2024-25, including a chamber-music series concert on May 7, 2025, featuring three heavy-hitters — Mutter, cellist Pablo Ferrández and pianist Yefim Bronfman. In addition, the Berlin Philharmonic, another of the world’s great orchestras, returns Nov. 26 to Orchestra Hall with its chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, to perform Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5.

YASUO YAMAHIRO