Ravinia 2025 Issue 2

Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, op. 36, Enigma (1898–99) July 27: CSO / Marin Alsop conductor Elgar is best known in the United States for the Trio section from his Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, which is played at nearly all high-school and college graduation ceremonies. But not far behind is his Enigma Variations . When the work debuted in London in 1899, it became an immediate hit and the work’s popularity has never wavered since. It consists of a theme and 14 variations—one devoted to the English compos- er, another to his wife, and the rest to a dozen of his friends. “I particularly like ending with the Enigma Variations , because Elgar wrote the piece for his friends. It’s a piece about connec- tion and knowing each other,” Alsop said in a 2022 Experience CSO interview. The title continues to be something of an enigma more than a century after its premiere, because no one knows for certain to what the title exactly refers despite multi- ple theories proffered by musicologists. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, Jupiter (1788) Aug. 10: CSO / Louis Langrée conductor In 2016, BBC Music Magazine asked 151 of the world’s top conductors to vote for the best symphonies ever written, and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony came in all the way up at third on the list, a hardly surprising ranking. The work is the last and the biggest of of the composer’s symphonies—one of the largest-scale works in the form during the Classical era. This work has all the hallmarks of this timeless composer – capti- vating verve, boundless creativity and good cheer. “About many things in this world, there is simply nothing to be said,” composer Robert Schumann wrote, “for example, about Mozart’s C-major symphony with the fugue, much of Shakespeare, and some of Beethoven.” This piece will culminate an all-Mozart program that also includes the Overture to his opera La clemenza di Tito and his Piano Concerto No. 22. RAVINIAMAGAZINE • JUNE 6 – JUNE 15, 2025 16 KYLEDUNLEAVY/RAVINIA(ALSOP);CHRISLEE(LANGRÉE)