The new radio series opens with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first recording—Mendelssohn’s Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream—made for the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1916 under second music director Frederick Stock. Other firsts featured in this program include Wagner’s A Faust Overture, which was the first piece the Orchestra performed at its inaugural concerts in 1891 we will feature a 1991 recording with ninth music director Daniel Barenboim; Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, a work featured on the opening concert in Orchestra Hall in 1904 in a 1977 recording with eighth music director Sir Georg Solti; Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which was the first work performed on the inaugural Ravinia Festival program in 1936 in a 1992 Daniel Barenboim recording; and the CSO’s first recording of a symphony by Gustav Mahler, the composer’s Fourth Symphony led by sixth music director Fritz Reiner in 1958 with soprano Lisa Della Casa.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Firsts

Theodore Thomas and Chicago Orchestra - Auditorium Theatre, Nov 1897 (Lawrence & Dinius photo)
Playlist
Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61, by Felix Mendelssohn
Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Frederick Stock, conductor
A Faust Overture, by Richard Wagner
Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Daniel Barenboim, conductor
Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24, by Richard Strauss
Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Sir Georg Solti, conductor
Symphony No. 4 in G Major, by Gustav Mahler
Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Lisa Della Casa, soprano; Fritz Reiner, conductor
Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, by Richard Wagner
Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Daniel Barenboim, conductor