For most of the 2022-23 season, Riccardo Muti has downplayed his departure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra after 13 years, sticking to the more or less normal fare we have come to expect of him, in part because the maestro is in no way leaving for good. He will still have a strong presence with the orchestra in coming seasons.
But any sense of normality came to end Friday evening, as Muti culminated his official tenure at Orchestra Hall with a towering triumph. In the first of a set of three performances, he and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus presented a powerful, probing and deeply affecting take on Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis (Solemn Mass)” in D Major, Op. 123.
