Ravinia 2025 Issue 5

IN A 2023 PROFILE, written as Louis Lan- grée was preparing to step down as music di- rector of the Mostly Mozart Festival, the New York Times characterized his career as “quietly remarkable but undersung.” ¶ It is an apt de- scription. The 64-year-old French conductor has never been interested in just adding notch- es to his career belt with flashy recordings or high-profile appointments. Instead, he has focused more on building profound relation- ships with the groups he has led and making meaningful music. ¶ That said, Langrée has nonetheless amassed an impressive résumé that includes a 2013–24 stint as music director of the well-respected Cincinnati Symphony and guest conducting dates with many of the world’s most auspicious classical institutions, from Milan’s La Scala and New York’s Metropolitan Op- era to the Berlin Philharmonic and London Philharmonic. ¶ “There are different kinds of wines,” he said. “There are different kinds of people. There are some wines, which give their best when they are young, and some need years and years to become more mature and maybe complex. I’m more the second type, I think.” One orchestra that has long eluded the conductor is the Chicago Sympho- ny Orchestra, with which he will make his overdue debut on August 10 during his first-ever appearance at the Ravinia Festival. He had been scheduled to lead a CSO concert at Ravinia in 2020, but it was cancelled because of the COVID-19 shutdown. “I have grown as a musician listening to so many [CSO] recordings with Fritz Reiner, Jean Martinon, and Georg Solti,” he said. “What a wonderful orchestra. I’m really eager to meet them and make music together.” Fittingly for a conductor who served 21 years at the artistic helm of the Most- ly Mozart Festival in New York, he will lead an all-Mozart program. “You have everything in his music,” Langrée said. “You have fun, joy, drama, humor and tragedy.” The Alsatian native began his career in 1983 as a répétiteur at the Opéra National de Lyon, a job as a pianist that called on him to coach and accompany singers. He got his first taste of con- ducting when the head of the company saw him observing rehearsals and invit- ed him to assist a young, little-known conductor working there at the time— the now-famous Semyon Bychkov. “I remember Semyon telling me, ‘Be careful, because if you’re a real conductor, you won’t be able to stop, to live without it. It doesn’t mean you will be a good con- ductor, but you will be a conductor.’ And that’s what happened,” Langrée said. RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 13