Next year is the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth and the 10th of Riccardo Muti’s leadership of the Chicago Symphony.

Season highlights, announced today:

 
Riccardo Muti conducts the complete Beethoven symphonies as part of a season-long celebration of the great composer’s 250th birthday.

A master of Italian opera, Muti leads a concert performance of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and an international cast.

Celebrated guest conductors and artists join the CSO for electrifying performances of Carmina burana, Holst’s The Planets, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Ravel’s Boléro and much more.

Acclaimed pianists including Evgeny Kissin, Maurizio Pollini and Sir András Schiff perform the complete Beethoven piano sonatas on the Symphony Center Presents Piano series.

Yesterday’s broadcast on NDR covers both his flight from Germany and his post-War suppression by the serialists.

Lovely to hear his voice again (in German).

Listen here.

 

The former tenor will sing in Donizetti’s Robert Devereux at LA Opera next season, it has just been announced.

It will be his 154th role, but it might as well be his 1,154th for all its significance beyond the personal record.

Other LA highlights include Renee Fleming in Adam Guettel’s musical ‘A Light in the Piazza’, as well as two Barrie Kosky productions.

Also Danielle De Niese in the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s ‘Eurydice’.

 

Buffet Crampon Wind Instruments has aacquired Rigoutat.

Both are Paris instrument makers, one founded in 1825, the other in 1922.

Buffet say they want ‘to increase our presence in the oboe and English horn segment and to gain more recognition in the international market.’

The Rigoutat website has been taken down.

Less competition means less choice.

 

 

The Dutch conductor has cleared his diary for the coming season to take a well-earned rest, according to local media.

He will continue to fulfil engagements until the summer, including a Bruckner 4th with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.

Haitink will turn 90 in March. He suffered a serious fall last June while conducting the Concertgebouw, followed by another in Chicago.

 

The Australian director, 51, has told the Komische Oper he won’t renew his intendant contract beyond 2022.

But he’s not planning to leave town. He’s all ‘ich bin ein Berliner’ these days.

It’s minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit in Winnipeg, Canada, today.

The Winnipeg Symphony is about to start a new music festival.

And the public keeps on coming.

‘This is what makes prairie people remarkably resilient,’ says its manager, Trudy Schroeder.