Something magical happens when Maestro Riccardo Muti arrives on the podium at Orchestra Hall to lead the invariably superb musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
True, several of the guest conductors who have led the orchestra during the past season have overseen some superb performances. Muti, who in 2010 became the 10th music director of the CSO, is not “retiring” but will officially end his tenure after several more programs in May and June, including three performances of Beethoven’s monumental “Missa solemnis” from June 23-25. He also will lead the CSO’s annual free “Concert for Chicago” , which last year attracted an audience of 12,000 people.
Opening the program was the widely familiar overture to “Tannhauser,” Wagner’s 1845 opera about the poet/musician character of the title who falls in love with Venus, the pagan goddess of love, but ultimately yearns to return to his love in the human world. A French horn solo, a blend of percussion and strings and an overall seamless mix of the rhythmic and melodic — at times pensive, at other times almost combative — creates an aura of change and uncertainty. And the composer’s intriguing use of each section of the orchestra generates a score rich in mood shifts and a true sensation of transfiguration.
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