Riccardo Muti returns to the podium to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a program featuring Kirill Gerstein as soloist in Brahms’s First Piano Concerto. Gerstein also performs the piano part in the suite from Strauss’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme, and Puccini’s Preludio sinfonico opens the concert. Closing out this broadcast, Muti leads Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain.

Puccini Preludio sinfonico
Strauss  Suite from Der Bürger als Edelmann (Le bourgeois gentilhomme), Op. 60
Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
Kirill Gerstein, piano
Riccardo Muti, conductor
Originally recorded at concerts in November 2017

Mussorgsky/Rimsky-Korsakov A Night on Bald Mountain
Riccardo Muti, conductor
Originally recorded at concerts in September 2016

This program will be available until June 16, 2019.

Program notes for Puccini’s Preludio sinfonico, Strauss’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme, and Brahms’s First Piano Concerto can be found here, and notes for Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain are here.

Did you know: The first performance of Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain in the U.S. was given on a concert of Russian folk music presented at the World’s Columbian Exposition on June 8, 1893. The Exposition Orchestra, which was the Chicago Orchestra expanded to 114 players, was led by Vojtěch I. Hlaváč, professor of music at the Imperial University in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Brian Wise is the producer for CSO radio broadcasts.

Performer Biographies
Riccardo Muti, Zell Music Director and conductor
Kirill Gerstein, piano

To continue to make these programs possible, please consider a donation to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

TOP: Riccardo Muti, Kirill Gerstein, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Orchestra Hall. | ©Todd Rosenberg Photography 2017

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