No American orchestra has a more prestigious roster of past conductors than the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), which within living memory boasts Fritz Reiner, Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, and Bernard Haitink. These are names with whom any conductor would happily be associated, yet I was astonished (as well as elated) when it was announced in 2008 that Riccardo Muti would become the music director in Chicago, effective beginning the 2010–11 season. Following his acrimonious departure as music director at La Scala in Milan, a move to an orchestra in the United States, however prestigious, looked unlikely given the breadth of duties—especially nonmusical ones—expected of a music director here. Moreover, he had rebuffed efforts to attract him to a similar post at the New York Philharmonic.
His thirteen years as the CSO’s music director, which ended last month, now seem so felicitous for the orchestra, the city, and Muti himself—thanks in important part to a special bond between him and the players—that one can hardly imagine those years not existing. For anyone who followed his La Scala tenure, the breadth of his musical tastes revealed in Chicago will seem remarkable. At the CSO he explored fringe areas of the repertoire and mentored young composers, all the while breathing new life into orchestral staples.
Muti concluded a couple of recent seasons with concert presentation of Verdi, a composer for whom Muti has a special sympathy, but this season clearly demanded something extraordinary. Accordingly, the composer chose Beethoven’s late, interpretively challenging Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123, which Beethoven repeatedly referred to as his greatest work. Alongside the Ninth Symphony (a close contemporary) and the earlier opera Fidelio, Missa constitutes the third of the conductor’s triumvirate of resplendent, large-scale works, each of which ennobles the human spirit in its own way. A personal detail added to the special nature of the three performances of the Missa solemnis: Muti acquired, as he has explained, a score of the Missa solemnis in 1972, but nearly fifty years elapsed before he conducted it in performance. He initially planned to perform the piece during the 2020–21 season as part of a cycle of Beethoven’s integral symphonies, but the pandemic necessitated rescheduling. Eventually, the Salzburg Festival hosted the first Muti-led rendition of the mass in August 2021, shortly after the conductor’s eightieth birthday.
Although the Missa solemnis is a tribute to universality and not an expression of doctrine, in fact it was conceived for a liturgical event: the installation of Beethoven’s great patron, Archduke Rudolf of Austria, as bishop of Olmütz in 1819. As it happened, however, Beethoven missed the deadline and only finished the mass three years later, during which time it developed in directions different from those initially contemplated, grand though that occasion surely was. Beethoven made highly personal decisions about the portions of the text he chose to emphasize, not just by treating certain words or phrases with special energy or drama but also by allowing some to fill expanses of time that can seem disproportionately large.
With these qualities taken into account, Muti’s reading of the eighty-minute work flowed with cohesion and formal balance. The musical contrasts are strongest in the Gloria and Credo movements, which are also the longest texts. Muti gave the explosive moments and mighty choral fugues their due, but he also fixed on moments of understatement. During a rehearsal he noted, for example, that the initial attack on the word Kyrie (Lord), unusually, does not occur on the strong first beat of the measure. And he ensured that the fugues, for all their assertiveness, had buoyancy. The benedictus portion of the Sanctus lasts longer than, by right, it should, but its melodic beauty is irresistible in so cerebral a work. Robert Chen was the movement’s violin soloist. Muti also brought out the ambiguity of Beethoven’s setting of the Agnus Dei’s , which is comforting in its initial, simple form but becomes unsettlingly complex as it reflects, perhaps, a comment written by Beethoven in the margin of the original manuscript referring to the piece as a “prayer for inward and outward [meaning international] peace.”
The fine solo quartet included Erin Morley, Alisa Kolosova, Giovanni Sala, and Kyle Ketelsen; Sala, a relative newcomer, made an especially appealing impression. It is often said that Beethoven wrote for voices as if they were instruments, and here the Chicago Symphony Chorus, scrupulously prepared for the occasion by the Metropolitan Opera chorus master Donald Palumbo, joined the orchestra in producing equally superlative results.
The Missa solemnis performances mark the end of an era but not a farewell. Next season will see important European engagements by Muti, including Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Palermo staged by Muti’s daughter Chiara, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera in Turin staged by Andrea de Rosa, and a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic marking the work’s two-hundredth anniversary.
But Muti is not optimistic about the future of classical music. For several years he has criticized all-powerful stage directors for willfully distorting operas in their productions. More recently, young conductors have come under attack for their lack of rigorous training. With policies in favor of “diversity, equity and inclusion” sweeping U.S. arts institutions, Muti called for higher standards in a recent interview for the Spanish daily El País: “I don’t care about what’s politically correct, but about quality. For me, we are all equal—black, white, yellow, tall or short. Of course, I think it’s wrong to discriminate against African Americans or Latinos. But I believe it’s a mistake to prioritize that over quality.”
His vibrant performances and scintillating personality supply a counterweight to prophecies of gloom. Happily, Muti’s relationship with the CSO will continue in his new capacity as music director emeritus for life. A successor as music director has not yet been named and may not be for some time. In the meantime, his engagements with the CSO for next season include performances during the opening three weeks, the opening in New York of Carnegie Hall’s new season in October, and a European tour in January.