Highlights include rarely-heard gems, beloved holiday concerts, and the 80th birthday celebration of Nicholas Kraemer.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association has announced its 2024-2025 season, a full year of concerts in its mainstage subscription series, as well as chamber, solo, family, and other programming.

The special bond between jazz and classical is growing closer by the day. So let’s appreciate these incredible renditions of timeless classical favorites!

Another packed summer of live music awaits.

This broadcast celebrates the CSO’s sixth music director, Fritz Reiner!

Wind and water are at the heart of Chicago’s identity; Dame Jane Glover leads a program inspired by our hometown.

This broadcast features symphonies by Haydn and Prokofiev, plus a selection of songs by Franz Schubert orchestrated by various composers and the Fantasy-Overture, Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky. The orchestra is joined by mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter for the Schubert.

Dame Jane Glover makes her CSO debut leading Haydn and Mozart.

“I’ve been with this group now for over 20 years. It is glorious.”

Anthony Parnther leads the orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4, Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, and works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and Valerie Coleman.

The dynamic ensemble performs works by Haydn, Bach, and Shostakovich as well as their crowd-pleasing arrangements of folk music.

Ravinia Steans Music Institute alumni Ariel Quartet, violinist Ayano Ninomiya, cellist Karen Ouzounian, and pianist Henry Kramer pay tribute to the retiring director of the RSMI program for piano & strings.

Musicians from rap to alternative to K-Pop and beyond look to classical music for inspiration! Here are just a few creative examples.

Daniel Barenboim leads Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C Minor. Haydn’s Symphony No. 95 in C Major opens the program.

Wanderers, farewells, and sightseeing; people are always on the go. This week, Bill calls up, “A Little Traveling Music, Please” from the pens of Handel, Smetana, Duke Ellington, and more. Reflections from such travels infuse themselves into their works, as we will discover throughout the week. We will hear selections from Beethoven’s Les Adieux, Schubert’s Die Schöne Mullerin, and Haydn’s …

Selections by Joseph Haydn and Reynaldo Hahn.

Music by Debussy, Bartók, Haydn, and Saint-Saëns.

Music by Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Kalinnikov conducted by 20th century maestro Fabien Sevitzky.

“An ensemble of exceptional insight”, the Brentano String Quartet performs masterworks with reverence and an admirable balance of creativity and restraint.

We hear MOB’s May concert Circles of Friends — featuring selections by Haydn, Mozart, and contemporaries Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Johann Baptist Wanhal — with an intermission feature: Declan McGovern previews the 23-24 season.

Pierre Boulez conducts Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, featuring Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Works by Classical era giants shine in string quartet and piano trio configurations.

Works by Anton Bruckner, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Bedřich Smetana led by one of the 20th century’s definitive conductors.

The Great Chicago Fire began on October 8, 1871. Here’s some music that takes inspiration from flames.

Composed in 1727, it’s one of two surviving J.S. Bach accounts of the last days of Jesus. Bill begins by examining the history of the Lutheran church in Germany and the early musical representations of Christ’s last days, including Bach’s earlier St. John Passion. Before the week is over, we will also sample Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ and …