Chicago Symphony Splits the Difference in 2026-27

Between its designate and emeritus-for-life music directors, the Chicago Symphony has carved out a mostly want-to-be-there 2026-27 season. The former, Klaus Mäkelä, spends five subscription weeks on the podium plus an eight-city European tour, while the latter, Riccardo Muti, will be in town for three. Their respective repertoire choices point to a very different era ahead. Next season Mäkelä conducts Sibelius and Shostakovich symphonies (seventh and fourth, respectively) in the fall, along with Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Mahler’s Ninth, and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast with Thomas Hampson and the CSO Chorus. His spring concerts will see a new violin concerto by Magnus Lindberg for Lisa Batiashvili and Sibelius’s First Symphony. He’ll also lead the season finale, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony paired with the composer’s Elegy.

Muti mostly adheres to the more distant past, with works by Dvorák, both Richard Strauss and Johann Strauss, Jr., Rossini’s Stabat mater and William Tell overture and ballet music. a Mozart Piano Concerto with Yefim Brofman, and Bartók’s Two Pictures tone poems.  

Beyond Mäkelä’s Ninth, Beethoven features prominently: Lang Lang will finesse all Five Piano Concertos with conductor Paavo Järvi in March; Isabelle Faust takes on the Violin Concerto with guest conductor Maxim Emelyanychev; Marek Janowski conducts the Fourth Symphony and Järvi the Fifth. The orchestra’s Symphony Center Presents will see Kissin in one concert of Beethoven Piano Trios and one of his Sonatas (including the Diabelli Variations); pianists Bruce Liu, Mitsuko Uchida, Yuja Wang are also the “Presents” series.

The 2026-27 artist-in-residence Jean-Yves Thibaudet will perform the Khachaturian Piano Concerto, his latest signature work, under guest conductor Fabien Gabel. He’ll also partake of chamber concerts with Maxim Vengerov and Gautier Capuçon and do some unspecified community outreach for the CSO.  

The season opens in September with his predecessor-in-residence, Hilary Hahn, performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Petr Popelka on the podium.

First CSO outings include the U.S. premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Tiu, a revised version of his 12-minute 2023 work, the composer conducting. The world premiere of Mason Bates’s The Escapist Symphony will be led by Manfred Honeck; Tan Dun makes his house debut on the podium leading his own Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds; Water Concerto, featuring percussionist Yuri Yamashita; and Concerto for Orchestra from Marco Polo. Other podium debutants are Masaaki Suzuki, founder and music director of Bach Collegium Japan and principal guest for Yale Schola Cantorum, leading Handel’s Messiah and Maxim Emelyanychev, principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and chief conductor of Il Pomo d’Oro conducting an overture by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn’s Reformation.

Other highlights: violinist Anne Akiko Meyers in the first CSO performances of Arturo Márquez’s Fandango, written for and premiered by Meyers, with conductor Giancarlo Guerrero; soprano Louise Alder in her house debut with Brahms’ s A German Requiem under Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider; Beatrice Rana with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto; Randall Goosby in Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto; pianist Orion Weiss with Bach’s  Keyboard Concerto No. 3 in D Major, led by Harry Bicket; cellist Alisa Weilerstein in Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto under James Gaffigan; Jakub Hruša with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 Leningrad; and piano duo Lucas and Arthur Jussen in Poulenc’s Double Concerto under Kazuki Yamada. And there’s more, of course: Chicago Symphony 2026-27 calendar.

Pictured: Klaus Mäkelä and Riccardo Muti