Share

A cat, dog and mouse all turn down the Little Red Hen’s requests for help planting wheat, grinding flour and baking bread — and are disappointed when the hen eats the delicious bread all by herself. Featuring delightful musical portraits of animals, this classic children’s tale explores the importance of working together as a community.

In this South African folktale adapted by singer-songwriter Pete Seeger, a boy and his father are banished from their town for making mischief. They are welcomed back when they find a way to make a monster named Abiyoyo disappear. This redemptive story features enchanting music performed by members of the CSO.

CSO Artist-in-Residence Daniil Trifonov, “without question the most astounding pianist of our age” (The Times of London), takes on Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto, as remarkable for its rich orchestral writing as for its simultaneously glittering and muscular piano part. Dvořák’s turbulent Seventh Symphony is both an expression of the composer’s personal crises and a lyrical tribute to the Czech spirit.

Join the world-renowned Chicago Symphony Orchestra as they take the stage at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre in London on May 1, 2025. This celebrated ensemble, hailing from the USA, will be bringing their exceptional talent and passion for music to the heart of the UK, offering an unforgettable experience for all music lovers. The performance begins at 14:30, promising an afternoon filled with captivating symphonic music. For more information and to secure your tickets, visit the primary event link. You can also explore their official website and YouTube channel for more insights into their captivating performances. Don't miss this chance to witness the Chicago Symphony Orchestra live!

A community is a group of individuals working toward a common goal — just like an orchestra! Separately, each instrument is unique, but together they create a harmonious symphony of sound. Featuring the winner of the 2024 Crain-Maling Foundation CSO Young Artists Competition, this program pairs well-known classics with contemporary masterpieces to demonstrate the joy, power and beauty of coming together in service of something bigger than ourselves.

Reaching across generations, Antonín Dvořák and Florence Price explore similar sound worlds to honor their homelands and ancestors. In his Eighth Symphony, Dvořák evokes the Czech countryside — its birdsong, peasant dances, hymn tunes and sun-dappled melodies. Florence Price composed her Third Symphony amid the Black Chicago Renaissance, and the engaging work nods to American folk music and soaring spirituals.

Max Richter is one of the most influential and acclaimed composers of all time. His fusion of classical technique and electronic technology, heard across genre-defining solo albums and countless scores for film, dance, art and fashion, has won him legions of fans around the world and blazed a trail for a generation of musicians. Over the last two decades, Richter has brought his distinctly humane and emotive sensibility to a series of ambitious projects – among them, a reimagining of Vivaldi’s violin concertos, the landmark nine-hour album Sleep and his score for Wayne McGregor’s ballet Woolf Works – along with the acclaimed collection The Blue Notebooks and a string of influential solo records. After spending many years grappling with big ideas and thorny social and political questions, the making of In A Landscape has opened up another, greener world for Richter. Making music remains, above all, “a way to make a kind of alternate reality,” a constructed world “where everything is in its place.”

Anne-Sophie Mutter, the “undisputed queen of violin-playing” (The Times of London), joins her protégé, cellist Pablo Ferrández, and Yefim Bronfman, “famous not only for his spectacular technique but also for the depth of his interpretations” (The Seattle Times). Beethoven and Tchaikovsky are perfect vehicles for this classical “power trio.”

The CSO brings the soaring emotional peaks and valleys of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony to Chicago audiences before performing it on Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw stage. The “hammer blows of fate” in the finale seem to foreshadow the tragedies in Mahler’s life, including his own fatal illness. But the symphony brims with life’s pleasures, too, from memories of mountain pastures (listen for the cowbells) to a rapturous portrait of the composer’s wife, Alma.

Grammy-winning pianist, singer and Brazilian superstar Eliane Elias “sings like an angel, plays like the devil and is renowned for the sumptuous sparkling eloquence she brings to jazz” (Icon Magazine). She seamlessly intertwines straight-ahead jazz and Afro-Latin rhythms like samba and bossa nova. Colombian-born jazz harpist Edmar Castañeda performs original compositions and interpretations of traditional Colombian songs from his album Family — nominated for a Latin Grammy in the Best Latin Jazz Album category.