Performer: Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs with the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato teem with subtle brilliances. 

Jakub Hrůša leads the CSO in pedestrian Janáček and Rachmaninov, but Strauss's Four Last Songs and Wagner's Tristan excerpts send audiences home deeply touched.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Music Director Designate juxtaposes his Finnish countryman's music on their shared national epic, the Kalevala, with the heroic life limned in the tone poem of Richard Strauss.

A strong world premiere of Aucoin's evocative and immediate Song of the Reappeared, a concerto for voice written for soprano Julia Bullock which sets vivid imagery by a poet who suffered under authoritarianism.

The Austrian conductor's loudest fortes and softest pianos pull together a dramatic arc from the Requiem, other Mozart works and chant. But it's not really a funeral. 

Without a baton, the contemporary-music specialist showcases the Chicago Symphony strings in an intimate program ranging from music of the last decade all the way back to Pergolesi. 

Among the most performed living composers by orchestras worldwide, Montgomery talks about her personal approach to musical storytelling, and writing a new cello concerto for Abel Selaocoe.

This May, the world’s leading orchestras and soloists gather in Amsterdam for a grand celebration of all things Mahler – a city the composer described as his “second musical homeland”.

The longest-running outdoor festival in the US and summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will undergo extensive redevelopment over the next four years.