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With its summer residence
at Ravinia historically
programmed independent of its traditional concert season at
home in Orchestra Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
has occasionally been introduced to conductors and soloists
at the summer festival before the acquaintance can be made
in downtown Chicago. Critically, some of the orchestra’s most
important musical leaders of the past century had their first
brush with the ensemble at Ravinia. Artur Rodziński made
his debut with two weeks of programs during the 1938 festival
season before becoming the CSO’s fourth music director in
1947. Fritz Reiner had made his debut one year earlier, in 1937,
not long after accepting a faculty post at the Curtis Institute,
where Leonard Bernstein became one of his pupils. He became
the orchestra’s sixth music director (and one of its most con-
sequential) in 1953, and returned to Ravinia once during that
tenure, in 1958. Reiner’s successor, Jean Martinon, had a much
shorter interval between his debut with the orchestra at Ravin-
ia (1960) and ascending to the directorship (1963), also once
returning to the festival during his tenure, in 1967.
Georg Solti was originally to have made his US debut with
the CSO at Ravinia in 1953, but the McCarthyist government
held up his visa for too long and he was forced to break the
engagement. He made the connection the following year, and
when Reiner died in 1963, he was the first to be offered the
directorship, ultimately declining it because of commitments
at Covent Garden in London. He accepted a second invitation
in 1969 and soon led the CSO on its first international tour,
continuing the ascendant worldwide standing of the orchestra
begun under Reiner.
Both of the CSO’s leaders since Solti were also introduced
to the ensemble at Ravinia. Daniel Barenboim (1991–2006),
however, made his first impression as a pianist rather than as
a conductor, playing Beethoven’s First Concerto in 1965. He
would lead seven performances at Ravinia during his tenure,
five in 2001, and two in 2004. The CSO’s present maestro,
Riccardo Muti, made his first inroads on July 25, 1973, conduct-
ing the Overture to
Semiramide
by his fellow Italian Rossini, as
well as Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition
and Schumann’s
Piano Concerto (which, coincidentally, featured the CSO debut
of Christoph Eschenbach, who would be Ravinia’s music direc-
tor from 1995 to 2003).
That first experience left a deep impression on Muti. The
CSO’s brass section had earned particular international ac-
claim under the leadership of Reiner and Solti, but even such
water cooler gossip did not prepare Muti to stand in front of
the ensemble for
Pictures
. “At the end you ‘The Great Gate of
Kiev,’ and you enjoy this massive, huge sonority. So, as a young
conductor truly not knowing what I had in front of me, I asked
for a big sound. The sound that came from the brass was so
massive and so beautiful! It felt like there was a storm in my
hair. At a certain point, instead of my arms going up and up,
they actually started to go down. … Today, however, we can
also speak about the wonderful woodwinds, the wonderful
strings. Today it is more even, not just that the brass or the
percussion is very good.”
July 25, 1973
45 YEARS AGO
ON THIS DATE
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 23 – AUGUST 5, 2018
36