Featured in the eleven new programs is a wide array of music conducted by Muti, including selections by Bruckner, Berlioz, and Verdi. Additional programs are dedicated to performances conducted by Fritz Reiner, Pierre Boulez, and Bernard Haitink.

Riccardo Muti has sent a resounding message that live classical music has returned the Italian stage after the coronavirus lockdown.

As the city, state, and country celebrate Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the US, Chicago arts and music organizations are giving performances and leading discussions centering Black artists. Here are four music-related streams we think you should tune in to.

In the hour leading up to the premiere of the Ravinia Festival recording of Bernstein‘s MASS on PBS‘s Great Performances, we invite you to join us for this free panel.

The joint series, which is curated by CSO music director Riccardo Muti, launched in April in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CSO’s season was set to continue through June 27 and include a two-week residency with music director Riccardo Muti. Per the statement, the CSO is working to reschedule canceled programs in future seasons.

The summer season was to feature more than 120 events, including concerts featuring the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which takes its summer residency at the venerable, Chicago-area music festival.

This Sunday, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will host a Facebook premiere for a video recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 from its archives, in part because it is “widely recognized as one of music’s most powerful and inspiring works.”

Today, WFMT and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announce the launch of an exciting new broadcast and streaming series: From the CSO’s Archives: Maestro’s Choice—For All Music Lovers in These Difficult Times.

The 35-minute program features an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, stitched together from more than 60 separate remote recordings of Civic musicians.

On Saturday, March 7, four young artists competed for a dream opportunity: to perform with the CSO. With her performance of the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, violinist Isabella Brown won the competition.

Rather than depicting nobility or mythology, ‘verismo’ opera tells stories of everyday people, and ‘Cavalleria rusticana’ by Pietro Mascagni is a premiere example of the genre.

The CSO’s 130th season begins on September 17 with a free concert for Chicago at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.

The 2010s were a tumultuous decade, replete with astounding artistic highlights, superlative new voices, and watershed moments of reckoning. WFMT hosts and staff reflect on what the past decade brought for classical music, and what the new decade may have in store.

Chicago Symphony Chorus members and pianist Sharon Peterson visited WFMT to spread some cheer and share this short and sweet rendition of a Christmas classic.

While building a successful career as a musician, (and amassing a mighty social media following), rising violinist Ray Chen has had to stay sharp. And while visiting Chicago for a series of performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chen showed WFMT audiences that being stage-ready is as easy as 1,2,3!

Between February 2020 and June 2021, Lina González-Granados will have the opportunity to study and work with Maestro Muti, conduct the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and participate in cultural activities and outreach throughout the greater Chicago area.

Anniversaries make up many of the highlights of the CSO’s annual summer residency.

For Ken-David Masur, artistry is just one aspect of a successful career in classical music; community engagement and outreach are of equal importance in building both a thriving artist and a flourishing orchestra.

“Maybe we’re getting used to being misunderstood… Hopefully, [through] music, we can be more open,” reflects Wang Lu. Her work, Code Switch, will have its world premiere to open the first MusicNOW concert of the CSO season.

Since his first CSO performances in June 2018, Batallán has served as guest principal trumpet many times. The Spanish-born trumpeter performed with the orchestra during its 2019 Florida tour as well as in Tokyo during the 2019 Asia tour.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 2019-20 season will start with a much-loved concerto in a performance by two artists picking up the piece for the first time in a while. In a phone interview with WFMT, pianist Leif Ove Andsnes says that he hasn’t played the Grieg piano concerto in more than a decade. And according to Andsnes, Riccardo Muti says …

Yo-Yo Ma shared that Bach’s cellos suites have served as “a sanctuary for [him in] good times and less good times.”

Verdi’s Aida is the apotheosis of grant opera, but the true beauty of Verdi lies not only in its grandeur but also in its details.

A successful, in-demand touring and recording artist, Pablo Sáinz-Villegas visited WFMT while in town to make his CSO debut in a program of Spanish and Latin American music conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero.