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Esteban Batallán, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's top trumpet, plays piccolo trumpet concertos by Telemann and Michael Haydn with the home team, under former CSO music director Riccardo Muti.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its future Music Director revel in a Brahms piano concerto with ideal collaborator Daniil Trifonov and an energetic Dvořák 7. 

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Music Director Designate, still two years from taking charge, shows himself in command of the whole toolbox available from a great Mahler orchestra. 

Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Missy Mazzoli's opera, which the company co-commissioned, has strong, dramatic, expressive music throughout, but the story lacks continuity. 

The Finnish conductor drove the orchestra as expertly as a racing champion in Strauss, Bartók and Salonen's own Sinfonia concertante for Organ and Orchestra.

In Chicago, the French pianist used the full toolbox in an impressive traversal of the character-filled pieces, some of his oldest friends.

Bookended by Tchaikovsky, Daniil Trifonov’s powerfully virtuosic recital also visits the music of Chopin and Barber. 

Janowski anchors his Chicago Symphony program with Bruckner’s Third, prefacing with music of Weber and Liszt.

Lyric Opera of Chicago revives its diverting and divisive 2015 original production by Barbara Gaines, who does it like a Shakespearean sex farce. 

Through brilliant singing and layered acting, Javier Camarena, Mané Galoyan, and Igor Golovatenko drive a Rigoletto to warm a traditionalist's heart. 

In its Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut, Bell's commission for an all-star lineup of composers boasts some virtuosic violin playing and a shared aesthetic, but not a throughline.

The 37-year-old Hong Kong native brings her calling card, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, to colorful life during a conducting tour through the United States. 

Claus Guth's production foregrounds the regimented, repressive world that drives the plot of Janáček’s tragic masterpiece.

The Finnish conductor values attention to detail across three disparate 20th-century pieces, highlighting the uniform strength of the Chicago musicians.

Riccardo Muti selects Beethoven’s daunting Missa solemnis for his final performance as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony, a performance that proves worthy of his remarkable tenure.

Jurowski and Martin Helmchen underline how much Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 25 in C major looks forward to the “Jupiter” Symphony and to Beethoven. 

Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Enigma is presented in the Adler Planetarium, with video designed by Sigurður Guðjónsson. 

Daniel Catán's operatic adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale of evil scientist and poisoned plants is compellingly set in Chicago's Field Museum.

Musicians from the Chicago Symphony showed their mettle as chamber players in a Mozart serenade and a Brahms sextet.

Contrasting Gounod, Mozart and Ravel works were combined into an exhilarating package of technical virtuosity and musical finesse.

The Joffrey Ballet presents a roster of choreographers with new approaches, a positive impression for the future of ballet. 

The Joffrey Nutcracker succeeds in redefining the socio-economic situation of the protagonists, but throws out the baby with the bathwater.

 An unusual double bill of operas by Joby Talbot and Sergei Rachmaninov under conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya in Chicago.  

A revival of Richard Jones’ production of Handel’s emotionally probing opera. 

Dame Mitsuko Uchida again brought out her outstanding musicality and special charisma in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto.

Fellow Travelers is shot through with darkness, making for a chilling performance by Lyric Opera of Chicago. 

Chicago's new Faust is a quest for youth but also a reflection on insipiration, fabrication and manipulation. 

Synergies between singers compensated for accurate but unexciting orchestral playing.

Kevin Puts effectively shapes the time-traveling structure with distinctive sound worlds as thirty dramatic vignettes unfold across a little more than an hour and a half.

David Pountney's new production of Die Walküre for the Lyric Opera of Chicago incisively charts the tectonic shift of control over the future from Wotan to Brünnhilde.

A knowledgeable and subtle devotee of Franz Liszt, bring the first two cycles of the Années de pèlerinage to Chicago.

Celebrating its 60th anniversary, the Chicago Symphony Chorus made this evening truly distinctive.

The Lyric Opera’s new production of Rigoletto evokes visually the contours and high-contrast relief of a surrealist painting. 

Dance takes center stage in Lyric Opera of Chicago's bold season-opening co-production of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice.

The powerful and appealing Hubbard Street contemporary dancers took audiences on a journey through the innards of Chicago's Harris Theater, in an 'immersive' experience choreographed and creative-directed by Peter Chu.  

For the final week of the CSO season, Muti led a stirring program of operatic excerpts by Verdi, Puccini and Mascagni, along with a rarity by Boito.

A broken string near the beginning of the “Große Fuge” was emblematic of the intensity the Juilliard String Quartet gave to their performances of Beethoven and Bartók.

A new score by Melinda Wagner, concertante pieces for saxophone and orchestra with Branford Marsalis, and works of Bizet and Debussy comprised Susanna Mälkki’s CSO program, intriguing in its eclecticism.

Juraj Valčuha’s CSO debut was an evening of diverse repertoire, from Haydn to Strauss (both Johann II and Richard) to Szymanowski, the latter featuring a memorable performance by Christian Tetzlaff.

Jesús López-Cobos returned to the CSO with works of Turina and Dvořák flanking Gershwin’s Concerto in F with Inon Barnatan.

Murray Perahia’s deeply rewarding recital featured Beethoven’s monolithic Hammerklavier piano sonata, prefaced by works of Bach and Schubert.

CSO concertmaster Robert Chen took the spotlight in two 20th-century works with Neeme Järvi conducting; anchoring the program was Beethoven’s Pastoral.

A religious-themed program made for a particularly moving Easter weekend concert from Dutoit and the CSO, highlighted by the serenity of Fauré’s Requiem.

Dutoit’s CSO program was highlighted by the US première of an intriguing discovery –Stravinsky’s long-lost Chant funèbre – complemented by Prokofiev and Dvořák with Truls Mørk.

James Conlon led the CSO in Schubert’s Unfinished symphony and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Lied.  Mixed fortunes were had for the singers in the latter, but Conlon and the orchestra provided probing performances throughout.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto received a successful world première with Yo-Yo Ma and the Chicago Symphony, the composer conducting, richly complemented by works of Adams and Stravinsky.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s colorful program included the first Chicago performance of John Adams’ Scheherazade.2 with dedicatee Leila Josefowicz, along with works of Debussy and Stravinsky.

The finale was the dramatic and musical high of the night, when both Ana María Martínez and Mariusz Kwiecień let themselves cut loose, laying waste to the bare stage.