In Monday’s (8/16) Chicago Sun Times, Andrew Patner writes from Salzburg, “At T minus one month and counting, Riccardo Muti is spending a lot of time preparing for his new position as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has built in some downtime next month, but he’s also fulfilling longstanding commitments such as a Brahms Requiem in Stockholm, Sweden, on Sept. 2, and keeping up historic institutional relationships, especially here in this historic and picturesque Austrian town. This month marks Muti’s 40th consecutive summer as an opera and orchestral conductor at the prestigious Salzburg Festival, a unique record in the world today and one unlikely ever to be matched. And on Tuesday he will conduct his 200th Salzburg performance with the famed Vienna Philharmonic, the last of three performances of Prokofiev’s score for the classic 1944 Soviet film ‘Ivan the Terrible.’ His friend Gerard Depardieu, the French film star, will serve as narrator, and a delegation from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra administration and its trustees will be on hand as Muti is honored for this milestone by both the Philharmonic and the festival.”
Posted August 17, 2010
