Chicago Symphony Orchestra Radio Broadcast Series

Sundays at 6:00 pm
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Radio Broadcast Series

Hear live performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra every week

The Chicago Symphony presents a full range of orchestral works under the seasoned baton of music director emeritus for life Riccardo Muti. The top-tier soloists and guest conductors complete the series with artists like Yo-Yo Ma, Hilary Hahn, and Daniil Trifonov; as well as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mitsuko Uchida, and Bernard Haitink. The two-hour Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcasts include dynamic and innovative commentary which takes the listener behind the scenes and into the music.

Composers’ Early Successes

July 13, 2025, 6:00 pm

Most of the music on this program was written by teenagers: Mendelssohn was seventeen years old when he composed his overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rachmaninoff completed his first piano concerto, and Strauss his first horn concerto at age eighteen, and nineteen-year-old Shostakovich submitted his first symphony as a graduation exercise from the Petrograd Conservatory. The overture to Rienzi, ...

Solti Conducts Beethoven and Liszt

July 20, 2025, 6:00 pm

This week, we hear two Grammy Award-winning recordings of Sir Georg Solti and the CSO. Opening the broadcast is Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring Vladimir Ashkenazy. Next, we hear Liszt’s A Faust Symphony, featuring vocal soloist Siegfried Jerusalem and the Chicago Symphony Chorus.