“With the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s four scheduled performances from June 18 to 21 of Beethoven’s blockbuster Symphony No. 9 already sold to capacity in the 2,200-seat Orchestra Hall, the parent Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association … is taking the rare step of opening the final rehearsal of the massive piece on June 17 to the public and making it a paid-ticket event,” writes Lewis Lazare in Tuesday’s (2/18) Chicago Business Journal. “According to a CSO spokeswoman on Tuesday, the last time the orchestra took such a step was in 1995 for performances of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, conducted by the late Sir Georg Solti…. Tickets for the final rehearsal will go on sale on Feb. 21…. The CSO last performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in 2014, at the start of a new season. This time around the CSO performances … which require the services of the entire complement of 104 CSO players and the 140-member CSO Chorus plus four soloists … mark Riccardo Muti’s 10th anniversary as music director. The performances … are the culmination of a season during which the CSO is performing all of Beethoven’s nine symphonies to honor the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.”
Change font size
