Under the direction of Creative Director Gerard McBurney, this multimedia series delves into a work or a composer through the integration of historical narrative with live actors, video illustrations and musical examples performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Each program is performed twice, on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m., with question-and-answer sessions after each performance.

The three Beyond the Score presentations for next season:

 Boulez at 90: Provisionally definitive, Nov. 14 and 16

In 2015, Pierre Boulez turns 90, and Beyond the Score celebrates with an acoustic and theatrical journey through a lifetime of musical adventures, innovations and discoveries. Performed within a specially commissioned design, this production mixes live performance with rare archival footage and new interviews with the composer-conductor who has been one of Beyond the Score’s most passionate champions.

Brahms Symphony No. 3, March 27 and 29, 2015

In the summer of 1883, vacationing in the ancient German spa town of Wiesbaden, Brahms celebrated his 50th birthday by composing one of his most mellow and open-hearted orchestral works. When he showed the score to his lifelong friend Clara Schumann, she exclaimed: “One beat of the heart, every movement a jewel!” Conductor Edo de Waart leads these Beyond the Score performances of the joyful work.

Maurice Ravel: A Portrait, June 5 and 7, 2015

Beyond the Score reflects the season’s focus on Ravel’s music with a musical and dramatic depiction of this complex, subtle, private, paradoxical and mysterious man who once declared: ‘’My teacher in composition was Edgar Allan Poe. … He taught me that true art is a perfect balance between pure intellect and emotion.” On the podium will be conductor Ludovic Morlot.