‘I was thinking about my musicians here.’ Riccardo Muti reflects on his time away from Chicago as CSO announces next season

Symphony orchestra seasons can be slow-moving vessels. Artist lineups and programming are often arranged years in advance, with the season itself announced months before the previous has even ended.

But unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened its season last month with concerts filled out only through the end of the year. Based on plans announced Tuesday, however, the rest of the 2021-22 season is shaping up to be business as usual in terms of programming sensibilities, familiar faces, and the sheer number of performances on deck.

The complete season news comes on the heels of last month’s announcement that music director Riccardo Muti took a one-season contract extension to redeem time lost to the pandemic. For much of the past year, the conductor, 80, remained busy as ever with engagements in Europe and Asia, though COVID-19 restrictions prevented him from coming to the U.S.

“Every time I did a concert, I was thinking about my musicians here that were not playing as an orchestra. I felt guilty, in a way; I had the privilege to do things that my musicians in America were not,” Muti said in a recent interview. “But fortunately, we kept contact always, and they played chamber music and other activities. When we met the other day, immediately the orchestra was in excellent (form). Now, things, I think, are becoming better and better.”

As promised by the extension announcement, Muti returns several times over the course of the season, beginning with the first CSO performances of Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 11 (Feb. 17-19, 2022). In more firsts for the CSO, Muti conducts hometown hero Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3 and William Grant Still’s “Mother and Child” in already-teased concerts May 5-7, 2022. The season closes with the CSO’s first performance of “Un ballo in maschera,” continuing Muti’s tradition of performing Verdi’s operas in concert (three performances June 23-28, 2022), and the annual Concert for Chicago, this time playing Shostakovich’s Festive Overture and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 at Millennium Park (June 27, 2022).

Then, in firsts for the world, not just the CSO, the orchestra’s current and former Mead composers-in-residence unveil new works commissioned by the orchestra, both under Muti’s baton: the much-anticipated world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s “Orpheus Undone” in three performances March 31 to April 5, 2022, and the first of three promised new orchestral works by Jessie Montgomery April 28 to May 3, 2022. (The orchestra performs additional commissions by Magnus Lindberg and Gabriela Lena Frank in already-announced concerts this fall.)

But if you thought a deferred season would stunt anniversary celebrations of a certain scowling symphonist, think again — Ludwig van Beethoven crops up all over the 2021-22 season. Early on, Muti and orchestra convene for the mighty Symphony No. 9, featuring soprano Lisette Oropesa, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, tenor Daniel Johansson, and bass Tareq Nazmi (Feb. 24 to 27, 2022).

In a rare move and season highlight, the CSO and neighboring period music juggernaut Music of the Baroque join forces for the Midwest premiere of “The Chevalier,” a concert theater work about 18th century phenom composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Music of the Baroque music director Dame Jane Glover directs three showings of the play around the Chicago area Feb. 18 to 20, 2022, then the following month, she takes the CSO podium for the first time (March 17 to 19, 2022). Principal oboist William Welter cinches his first-ever solo spotlight turn with the orchestra in those concerts, too, in Mozart’s Oboe Concerto. Also making a surprising CSO debut is inexhaustible conductor Karina Canellakis, who directs the CSO in Robert Schumann’s piano concerto with Kirill Gerstein and its first performances of Augusta Read Thomas’s “Brio” (May 19-22, 2022).

But, as usual, the Civic Orchestra — the CSO’s venerable training orchestra — boasts the most varied orchestral programming by pound. Besides its already announced return concert led by Thomas Wilkins (Nov. 8), highlights include Sarah Kirkland Snider’s “Something for the Dark” in a two-concert run (Jan. 16-18, 2022), a program including the very underrated Grazyna Bacewicz’s Overture (Feb. 14, 2022), a community concert directed by Solti conducting apprentice Lina Gonzalez-Granados (Feb. 28, 2022, location to come), and another chance to hear Jessie Montgomery’s music (May 2, 2022).

As is somewhat typical for the contemporary music series, Montgomery’s first MusicNOW season is still coming together — only the Nov. 1 program has been fully announced — but it will be three concerts instead of the usual four and include a world premiere by Portland, Oregon-based composer Damien Geter (March 14, 2022).

Meanwhile, the CSO’s 2021-22 chamber, piano and special concerts series are as starry as ever, with an emphasis on returning artists. Pianist Yuja Wang and violinist Leonidas Kavakos, playing in a recital together next month, will be series MVPs, seeing as they perform twice in the series: Kavakos returns March 11, 2022, with pianist Emanuel Ax and cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Wang gives a solo recital April 10, 2022. New CSO artist-in-residence Hilary Hahn plays in a piano trio of her own with cellist Seth Parker Woods and pianist Andreas Haefliger (April 1, 2022); before that, her two promised Bring Your Own Baby concerts — which encourage new parents to do just that — will be later this season, date to be announced.

The Symphony Center Presents Jazz series is also blazing out of the gates post-caesura. Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa kick things off Feb. 4, 2022, with their respective groups: Carrington’s Social Science, inaugurated in 2019 with their two-disc whopper album “Waiting Game,” and Mahanthappa’s trio with bassist Francois Moutin and drummer Rudy Royston, who released “Hero Trio” in 2020. Saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Brian Blade got their band from 1994′s “MoodSwing” back together for 2020′s “RoundAgain”; they perform on April 20, 2022. Sharing a bill with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and pianist Bill Charlap is all-women jazz supergroup Artemis, who sidled onto the scene with a self-titled album last year (April 29, 2022). Artemis founding singer Cécile McLorin Salvant won’t join them for that performance but returns later on (June 3, 2022).

Chicago artists also stake out a perch on this year’s jazz series: Greg Ward’s Rogue Parade performs on the same evening as The Bad Plus (March 18, 2022) and vibraphonist Thaddeus Tukes plays with his quintet on a bill with trumpeter Sean Jones (May 20, 2022). And, of course, it wouldn’t be an SCP Jazz season without a Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra appearance, this time in a doubleheader including Wynton Marsalis’s 60th birthday celebrations and a touring iteration of JLCO’s streamed “Freedom, Justice and Hope” project, which includes a new work by bassist-composer Endea Owens dedicated to Ida B. Wells (Feb. 25-26, 2022).

Missing from the season announcement is any mention of streaming, particularly after the CSO spent much of the last two years building up its CSOtv platform. But a representative for the orchestra confirmed the site’s not going anywhere; more details for the orchestra’s streaming future will be announced later this month. The same representative also confirmed that the community events promised in Muti’s contract extension will happen this coming January, trading the time he would have typically spent touring for time in Chicago.

“We are organizing concerts in the area here — to play in churches, schools,” Muti said. “It’s better to serve the community than to do another tour, vero?”

Complete programming details are available at cso.org .

Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.

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