{"id":15965,"date":"2023-06-27T12:06:02","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T10:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.riccardomuti.com\/2023\/06\/27\/riccardo-muti-e-stato-nominato-music-director-emeritus-dalla-cso\/"},"modified":"2023-06-27T15:14:05","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T13:14:05","slug":"riccardo-muti-e-stato-nominato-music-director-emeritus-dalla-cso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.riccardomuti.com\/en\/2023\/06\/27\/riccardo-muti-e-stato-nominato-music-director-emeritus-dalla-cso\/","title":{"rendered":"Riccardo Muti named Music Director Emeritus for life by CSO"},"content":{"rendered":"
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RICCARDO MUTI NAMED MUSIC DIRECTOR EMERITUS FOR LIFE BY <\/strong><\/span>
\nCHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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CHICAGO \u2014 The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA) has announced that Riccardo Muti, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra\u2019s prominent 10th Music Director, has been named Music Director Emeritus for Life beginning in the 2023\/24 season. Muti, who is currently in Chicago leading concerts that culminate his tenure as Music Director after 13 seasons of celebrated artistic partnership, will assume the new role in September and conduct two weeks of concerts in Chicago to open the CSO\u2019s 133rd season, followed by two concerts in New York\u2019s Carnegie Hall to open their season on October 4 and 5. Muti will rejoin the Orchestra in January 2024 for three weeks of concerts during its first European Tour since 2020, with performances already announced in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria and Italy. In the new role, Muti will maintain a close connection with the Orchestra with an additional six weeks of concerts already planned for the 2024\/25 season \u2013 four in Chicago and two in tour performances to be announced \u2013 with annual weeks of concerts with the CSO in discussion for subsequent seasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Muti was recognized with the new artistic title during an onstage ceremony on June 23 at Orchestra Hall following the first of three performances of Beethoven\u2019s Missa solemnis which mark his final subscription concerts as Music Director.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am honored to stay with the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as their Music Director Emeritus for Life,\u201d said Riccardo Muti. \u201cOur artistic collaboration has been one of the great joys of my life and created deep bonds of friendship across my years in Chicago. I look forward to returning regularly to share great music with audiences in the city and on tour.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe inspired leadership and musicianship of Riccardo Muti has broadened worldwide acclaim for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during his distinguished tenure,\u201d said CSOA Board Chair <\/span>Mary Louise Gorno. \u201cWe express our endless gratitude to Maestro Muti for accepting this important role that will keep him close to the musicians of the Orchestra and extend a golden era of music making.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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CSOA President Jeff Alexander noted \u201cRiccardo Muti has conducted the Orchestra in transformative performances in Chicago, across the country and around the world, creating musical experiences for audiences who will be forever changed. We are delighted that he has accepted our invitation to continue leading CSO concerts and maintaining artistic continuity and excellence for the musicians during this new chapter for the Orchestra.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Members\u2019 Committee Chair James Smelser added, \u201cThe Musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are extremely fortunate to have had Maestro Muti as our Music Director these past 13 seasons, and we look forward to continuing our wonderful music-making experiences with him as our Music Director Emeritus for Life. We are grateful to Maestro Muti for accepting this ongoing role to make music with us at the highest and most inspired level, and we will continue to treasure each and every concert.\u201d
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For Riccardo Muti, a\u00a0Grand Sort-of-Finale in Chicago<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

The eminent maestro is ending an acclaimed 13-year run at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But with his successor not yet named, he\u2019s sticking around.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zachary Woolfe | June 17, 2023<\/span><\/p>\n

The concert had ended, and Riccardo Muti, the music director of the Chicago Symphony, was walking out of Orchestra Hall when he saw a banner in the lobby and stopped in his tracks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMuti Conducts the Grand Finale of the 2022-23 Season,\u201d it read. This was in May, with just a month of programs to go \u2014 culminating in performances of Beethoven\u2019s mighty \u201cMissa Solemnis,\u201d June 23-25, which will mark the end of Muti\u2019s 13-year directorship.<\/span><\/p>\n

So when Muti, 81, began railing about the banner to his tiny entourage, it seemed like he must be joking: There could hardly be a grander finale to his acclaimed tenure. But it quickly became obvious that his anger was real.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI told them not to write \u2018grand finale,\u2019\u201d he said, grimacing. \u201cIt\u2019s a finale? And then I\u2019m back in September?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The next morning, the offending banner was gone. His frustration was mostly silly, of course. The orchestra was just being factual in ginning up a little excitement at a climactic moment in the six-decade career of one of the most eminent figures in classical music.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Muti had a point. Since his successor has not yet been named, he will be continuing as a kind of shadow music director next season, and possibly longer. Leaving \u2014 yet not entirely leaving \u2014 on a high note, with the adoration of Chicago\u2019s musicians and audiences, he has been sensitive that his farewell will seem like a grand anticlimax when he returns, just three months from now, for the fall opening concerts and a trip to Carnegie Hall.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018He\u2019s here again,\u2019 they will say,\u201d Muti speculated in an interview. \u201c\u2018He\u2019s back!\u2019 It\u2019s too much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t blame him,\u201d said Helen Zell, the former chair of the orchestra\u2019s board, who endowed Muti\u2019s music director position. \u201cJust as courting him was a big, long process, the exit is just as challenging.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Between the complicated beginning and ending, though, Muti\u2019s time in Chicago has been widely reckoned an enormous success. His performances of a broad swath of repertoire \u2014 his signature Italian operas in concert, Beethoven symphonies, world premieres, rarities of the past, Mozart, Schubert, Bruckner, Florence Price, Philip Glass \u2014 have been pristine yet intense, powerful yet graceful.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe took the great Chicago Symphony Orchestra and made it even greater,\u201d Jeff Alexander, the orchestra\u2019s president, said. \u201cThe sound now is really spectacular \u2014 in a more mellifluous, mellow, lyrical way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His departure is about more than inevitable turnover at an important ensemble, said Pierre Audi, the stage director and impresario. It\u2019s a milestone as the generation of leaders born before the end of World War II passes \u2014 and, with it, the old-school conception of the commanding, protecting maestro.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMuti will leave Chicago, and that\u2019s it,\u201d Audi said. \u201cIt\u2019s the beginning of the end.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Muti was born, as he loves to tell people, in Naples and raised in Puglia. His longest-held position was nearly 20 years at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and his most lasting affiliation has been with the Vienna Philharmonic, which names no chief conductor. (He will lead that orchestra on the 200th anniversary of Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony next spring.) He is European to the core.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet perhaps his most triumphant stints have been with two American ensembles: Chicago and, through the 1980s, the Philadelphia Orchestra. When he arrived in Philadelphia, he was an upstart in his 30s, taking over after four decades of Eugene Ormandy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ormandy had built an ensemble that was thick and lush, particularly in its famous strings, and he bathed every work in a uniform butteriness: The composer served the sound. Muti aimed to reverse that dynamic, creating distinct styles for Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky \u2014 adding a flexibility that took the group, as the violinist Barbara Govatos said, \u201cfrom the Cadillac of orchestras to the Ferrari.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He surprised the still-enamored musicians when he left in the early 1990s, partly because of the difficulty balancing his work with La Scala and partly because plans for a new hall in Philadelphia were stagnating. As he focused on Milan, Muti said he had no interest in another music director position in America, with all the attendant extramusical responsibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The New York Philharmonic nevertheless thought \u2014 twice \u2014 that it was on the verge of hiring him. Chicago ended up luckier after Daniel Barenboim announced in 2004 that he was leaving. Watching Muti conduct in Paris early the next year, Deborah Rutter, then president in Chicago, told a colleague, \u201cIf we can do it, this is the one it should be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a sort of electrical current to the energy he brings to his music-making,\u201d Rutter said recently. \u201cAnd that sort of hyper-focused energy is something I would describe as being very Chicago-like.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Muti\u2019s relationship with La Scala was foundering, but he hadn\u2019t appeared with the Chicago Symphony since the 1970s. He and Rutter agreed he would come in 2006, but he canceled, which was crushing. She lured him back with dates the next fall, along with a European tour.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was too tired to travel, to start a new adventure,\u201d Muti said. \u201cBut when I came back here, immediately it was something that happened between me and the orchestra.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The critic Andrew Patner, describing those 2007 performances, wrote, \u201cBy the second date, the Italian maestro almost seemed like an old friend.\u201d After the tour, Muti received a box of handwritten letters from the players, a personal touch that helped seal the deal<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an ecstatic reception he had when he was in Chicago, from the press and the public,\u201d said Zarin Mehta, then the president of the New York Philharmonic. \u201cHe was treated with total respect in New York, but not with the ecstatic admiration he gets in Chicago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Barenboim had relaxed the ensemble\u2019s sound from the muscular, stentorian days of Georg Solti, but it still had a resolute Germanic style. Under Muti, the orchestra has still been able to produce, say, a Beethoven\u2019s Fifth of blistering force, but he generally wanted something more Italianate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI found a great orchestra,\u201d he said, \u201cbut not balanced. Everyone was speaking about the brass. The strings were a little too \u2014 not harsh, but hard. No perfume. And the woodwinds, they had good players, but no one spoke about the woodwinds. And there is another thing: I needed them to sing<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The diet he prescribed was heavy on Schubert and, of course, opera, particularly his beloved Verdi, prepared with unsparing attention to detail. \u201cOtello,\u201d in 2011, was ferociously dramatic; \u201cMacbeth\u201d (2013), a brooding march. \u201cFalstaff\u201d (2016) was witty, more delicate than slapstick; \u201cAida\u201d (2019), coolly elegant; \u201cUn Ballo in Maschera\u201d (2022), meticulously sumptuous.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe relentless thing he will not back down on is the refinement \u2014 of line, of attack, of phrasing,\u201d said James Smelser, a hornist. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t make mistakes. There\u2019s always clarity, preparedness, consistency.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Muti has proved enthusiastic about performing in the community, including events at juvenile detention facilities. He embraced a fellowship program seeking to increase the racial diversity of the players\u2019 ranks. And after years of resisting, he even began to drop some of his complaints about appearing at endless donor events.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were troubles. In 2019, a musicians\u2019 strike lasted nearly seven weeks; in an unusual move for a music director, Muti publicly sided with the players, and appeared with them on the picket line. During the pandemic, he agreed to stay on an extra year, but the pause in performances \u2014 which meant a pause in appearances by potential candidates \u2014 stalled the search for his successor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since relations between him and the orchestra are far warmer than they were with Barenboim at the end of his tenure \u2014 when Bernard Haitink and Pierre Boulez agreed to take on responsibilities in the interregnum, before Muti was hired \u2014 it makes sense for him to help fill the coming gap.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked in a few other places,\u201d said Alexander, the orchestra\u2019s president, \u201cwhere it\u2019s much more common that the music director disappears, or they come back once every three or five years. Early in our discussions with Maestro Muti about the end of his term, we said we wanted to keep seeing him for a number of weeks each season, which I think he was happy to hear.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But while Muti will finish the musician hiring and tenure processes he has started, it\u2019s not yet clear who will oversee new auditions. He seems intent on maintaining some flexibility, partly in case he should want to scale back his commitment after his successor is announced: He said that he has told the orchestra\u2019s administration \u2014 who knows how much in jest? \u2014 \u201cIf you choose somebody that really I don\u2019t like, then I don\u2019t know if I come back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His replacement is the least of it. It takes little prompting for Muti to bemoan a host of cultural problems: the decline in music education, players and conductors too lazy to properly prepare or respect the letter of the score, what he views as the increasing distance between classical music and mainstream society.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToday,\u201d he said, bags heavy and dark under his eyes, \u201cI think we are all lost.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But his melancholy melts away when he\u2019s on the podium, particularly in rehearsals that he leads with a kind of merry rigor, laughter snapping into a crisp downbeat. There was an endearing, oddball quality to the program he led near the end of May, telescoping between the intimate and the grand.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Mozart divertimento was followed by William Kraft\u2019s raucous Timpani Concerto No. 1. After intermission came one of Respighi\u2019s lively and tender \u201cAncient Airs and Dances\u201d suites, before his \u201cPines of Rome,\u201d a Muti party piece that also closed his first concert as music director \u2014 in front of some 25,000 people in Millennium Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you think of \u201cPines,\u201d you usually think of bombast. But the loudness comes very near the end; much of the piece is actually quite subtle, and the way to make the finale really potent is to handle the earlier stuff with atmospheric transparency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Muti now stretches those earlier passages into a hazily dreamlike, almost out of time quality, building only slowly to triumph. In the first performance, a Thursday evening, the pianist treated a diaphanous cadenza with too much flamboyance; Muti, visibly displeased on the podium, took him aside later, and the following afternoon, the passage was properly light and watery. Any exaggeration turns this piece into kitsch; even the brassy conclusion, under Muti\u2019s baton, is shockingly elegant and clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of \u2018Pines of Rome,\u2019\u201d Smelser, the hornist, said, \u201cmost conductors are flailing around. The sheer volume, it\u2019s out of control. But he\u2019s<\/em> never out of control, and he doesn\u2019t want us to be out of control.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe orchestra knows exactly what I want,\u201d Muti said. \u201cMany times, I don\u2019t even conduct \u2014 or it seems that I don\u2019t conduct. It\u2019s been 13 years of wonderful musical experiences, and friendly. In 13 years, I haven\u2019t had a second of fight with them. It\u2019s been always like this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times<\/em>, June 17, 2023<\/span><\/p>\n

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Watch the photos:<\/p>\n\n\t\t