Critic’s Choice

Thu Jan 10, 2013 at 3:05 am

By Lawrence A. Johnson

Conductor Edo de Waart will replace Riccardo Muti for this week’s Beethoven program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Obviously, it’s not a happy start to the new year that Riccardo Muti is ailing with the flu and has bowed out of his two-week winter residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Still, the CSO is the CSO, and in Edo de Waart we have a distinguished substitute maestro to lead the next two subscription programs.  Currently music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, de Waart will direct the ensemble 8 p.m. Thursday in an all-Beethoven program featuring the mighty Eroica Symphony (No. 3), the Leonore Overture No. 3, and Piano Concerto No. 1 with Radu Lupu as soloist. The program will be repeated 1:30 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, and 7:30 p.m. January 15. cso.org; 312-294-3000.

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Also of note, the Winter Chamber Music Festival opens in Evanston Friday night. Founded by CSO violinist Blair Milton, this year’s lineup at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music will offer seven concerts through January 31.

Milton will be joined by several CSO colleagues for Friday’s opening program 7:30 p.m. at Pick-Staiger Hall, which will feature Ravel’s Piano Trio, Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet and Mendelssohn’s Octet. Other noteworthy events include the acclaimed Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry in music of Golijov, Pärt, Biber and Walton on Jan. 18 and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra in works of Mendelssohn, Bolcom, Villa-Lobos and Richard Strauss Jan. 31. pickstaiger.org; 847-467-4000.

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