Chicago Symphony Orchestra Tickets

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Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five".

The orchestra played its first concert on October 16, 1891 at the Auditorium Theatre Conducted by Theodore Thomas under the name "Chicago Orchestra". It is one of the oldest orchestras in the United States, along with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Orchestra Hall was designed by Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham and completed in 1904. Maestro Thomas served as music director for thirteen years until his death. The orchestra was renamed "Theodore Thomas Orchestra" in 1905 and today Orchestra Hall still has "Theodore Thomas Orchestra Hall" inscribed in its portico.

In 1905, Frederick Stock became music director until his death in 1942. The orchestra was renamed "Chicago Symphony Orchestra" in 1913.

Maestro Barenboim resigned from his post in 2006 in order to focus on his career in Europe with the Staatskapelle Berlin opera company, La Scala in Milan, and also with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra which he co-founded. Barenboim's final concerts leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra took place on June 15-17 2006.

The Chicago Symphony holds an annual fundraiser, originally known as the Chicago Symphony Marathon, more recently as "Radiothon", and now "Symphonython", in conjunction with Chicago radio station WFMT.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra maintains a summer home at Ravinia in Highland Park, Illinois. The orchestra first performed there during Ravinia Park's second season in November 1905 and continued to appear there on and off through August 1931. The Orchestra helped to inaugurate the first season of the Ravinia Festival in August 1936 and has been in residence at the Festival every summer since.

The Chicago Symphony has amassed a discography numbering more than 900. Recordings by the Orchestra have earned fifty-eight Grammy Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

On May 1, 1916, Frederick Stock recorded the Wedding March from Felix Mendelssohn's music to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Stock and the orchestra made numerous recordings for Columbia Records and the Victor Talking Machine Company, renamed RCA Victor in 1929. The orchestra's first non-acoustic electrical recordings were made for Victor in 1925.

These early electrical recordings were made in Victor's Chicago studios. Stock continued recording until 1942, the year he died. In 1951, Rafael Kubelík made the first modern high fidelity recordings with the orchestra, in Orchestra Hall, for Mercury.

In March 1954, Fritz Reiner made the first stereophonic recordings with the orchestra, again in Orchestra Hall, for RCA Victor, including a performance of Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra. Reiner and the orchestra continued to record for RCA through 1962. These were mostly recorded in RCA's triple-channel "Living Stereo" process. RCA has digitally remastered the recordings and released them on CD and SACD. Jean Martinon also recorded with the orchestra for RCA Victor during the 1960s.

Sir Georg Solti recorded primarily for Decca in recordings that were issued in the U.S. on the London label, including a highly-acclaimed Mahler series, recorded in the historic Medinah Temple. Many of the recordings with Daniel Barenboim have been released on Teldec.

The Chicago Symphony first broadcast on the radio in 1925. There have been broadcasts ever since, except for a few years during World War II and a hiatus between October 2002 and April 2007.

The Orchestra offered to match the broadcast fees of the highest-paying US orchestra, but the union refused the offer. With the resolution of the dispute, the Chicago Symphony radio syndication resumed with a 52-week series.

The CSO has also appeared on a series of telecasts on WGN-TV, beginning in 1953. The early 1960s saw the videotaped telecast series Music from Chicago, conducted by Fritz Reiners. Georg Solti also conducted a series of concerts with the Chicago Symphony that were broadcast in the 1970s on PBS.

In 2007, the Chicago Symphony formed its own recording label, CSO Resound. After an agreement was reached with the Orchestra's musicians, arrangements were made for new recordings to be released digitally at online outlets and on compact disc.

The first CSO Resound CD, recording Bernard Haitink's rendition of Mahler's Third Symphony, was released in the spring of 2007. The following releases were Bruckner's Seventh symphony conducted by Haitink, Shostakovich's Fifth by Chung, Mahler's Sixth and Shostakovich's Fourth by Haitink.