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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association named maestro Riccardo Muti on Monday as the next music director of the CSO, the 10th conductor to hold the prestigious post. CSO Association President Deborah Card announced that Muti, 66, had signed a five-year contract to serve as music director beginning in September of the 2010-2011 season. The post has been vacant since Daniel Barenboim retired in 2006.
Under the terms of the contract, Muti will conduct a minimum of 10 weeks of CSO subscription concerts each season, plus lead the orchestra in domestic and international tours.
As music director designate, Muti will lead the CSO and its chorus in performances of the Verdi Requiem next Jan. 15, 16 and 17, Card said.
Muti, a native of Naples, Italy, first led the CSO as a guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival in 1973, but didn't return to Chicago until last year. Rumors that he was being considered for the top post began circulating after he led the orchestra in a sold-out opening night gala for the 2007-2008 season and later a triumphant European tour.
"From the moment maestro Muti took the podium earlier this season, it was immediately evident that something truly special was taking place," Card said in a statement. "The connection between maestro Muti and our musicians was electric, and music-making was astonishing."
Muti first came to the attention of critics in 1967 when he won a major competition for conductors in Milan. He soon was appointed to important positions in Florence and London. He has been a regular guest conductor at the Salzburg Festival since 1971, and is regarded by many critics as an outstanding Mozart interpreter.
In the U.S., Muti is best known for his work as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980 to 1992. During his tenure there, traditionalists objected to his deliberate stripping away of the lush high-Romantic "Philadelphia sound" made famous by the late Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy. Supporters, though, praised Muti's leaner sound and said he often came closer to composers' original concepts.
Muti's most prestigious appointment, as music director of Milan's La Scala, began in 1986 and ended when he resigned in April 2005 amid bitter controversy after artistic and programming differences with the opera house's former general manager, Carlo Fontana, led to open conflict with the musicians after Fontana was dismissed.
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Written By F.N. D'ALESSIO
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