Ravinia 2025 Issue 5

as he admitted to Michael Puchberg, a fellow Freemason, in a letter written sometime before June 17: “I have hopes of finding more patrons abroad than here .” No evidence of the summer concerts has sur- vived, a fairly typical situation, but Mozart al- most certainly composed his final set of three symphonies for that series. This valedictory trio included No. 39 in E-flat major, No. 40 in G minor, and No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”). Given their rapid spread throughout Europe and the composer’s later addition of clarinets to the middle symphony, Mozart must have found ample opportunity to perform these works. Lamentably, Mozart family correspondence contains no reference to the symphonies. Even family members were uncertain where this final symphony’s nickname—“Jupiter”—orig- inated. Mozart’s youngest son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang (who later called himself “W.A. Mo- zart Jr.”) suggested that the London impresario Johann Peter Salomon so named the work for one of his concerts. Symphony No. 41 partly reflected Mozart’s recent experimental ten- dencies (the final movement offers a brilliant late-18th-century example of fugue) and his unparalleled mastery of orchestration, formal balance, and musical expression. –Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart by Karl Gottlieb Schweikart (1825) LOUIS LANGRÉE French conductor Louis Langrée became direc- tor of the Théâtre National de l’Opéra-Comique in November 2021, appointed by French Presi- dent Emmanuel Macron. Following a successful 10 years as music director of the Cincinnati Sym- phony, Langrée is Music Director Laureate of the orchestra through the 2027/28 season. Over the past year, Langrée brought Opera-Comique to Lille for a production of Gounod’s Faust , and on the symphonic stage, he led the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall, Orchestre Metropol- itain, and NDR Elbphilharmonie in concerts in Bremen, Lubeck and Hamburg. Recent high- lights also include performances of Thomas’s opera Hamlet and new works by Jonathan Bai- ley Holland, Bryce Dessner (US premiere) and Anthony Davis (world premiere) with the Cin- cinnati Symphony and a production of Bizet’s Carmen at the Edinburgh Festival with Opéra- Comique. His recent recording of Hamlet with the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and Opéra- Comique received the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, Caecilia Prize, and Diapason d’Or of the Year, as well as top prizes from the Inter- national Opera Awards and International Clas- sical Music Awards. A regular presence in New York since his 1998 debut, Langrée has conduct- ed around 250 performances at Lincoln Center with the Mostly Mozart Festival, Metropolitan Opera, and New York Philharmonic. As a guest conductor, he has led the Paris and French Na- tional Orchestras, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orches- tra, NHK Symphony, Budapest Festival Orches- tra, Freiburg Baroque, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Berlin, Czech, London, and Vienna Phil- harmonics. In addition to the Met, Langrée fre- quently alights to the orchestra pits of Teatro alla Scala, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Bavarian and Vien- na State Operas, as well as the festival stages of Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, BBC Proms, Edinburgh, Vienna, Salzburg Mozartwoche, and Whitsun. An advocate for contemporary music, Langrée has premiered works by Julia Adolphe, Anna Clyne, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly, André Previn, Caroline Shaw, and Christopher Rouse. He is a Chevalier de la Lé- gion d’Honneur and an Officier des Arts et des Lettres. Louis Langrée is making his Ravinia and Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuts. GARRICK OHLSSON Born in White Plains, NY, pianist Garrick Ohls- son began his musical studies at the Westches- ter Conservatory of Music at age 8, five years later entering The Juilliard School. Under the tutelage of such keyboard luminaries as Clau- dio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne, and Irma Wolpe, he became the first-prize winner of both the 1966 Busoni and the 1968 Montreal Pia- no Competitions. To this day Ohlsson retains the distinction of being the only American to earn the gold medal in Warsaw’s International Chopin Piano Competition (in 1970), and he has since conducted many concert tours of Po- land, where he received the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for cultural merit in 2018. His honors also include the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994, the University Musical Society Distinguished Art- ist Award from the University of Michigan in 1998, and Northwestern University’s 2014 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize, which included a multiweek residency at the school. Additionally, Ohlsson won a Grammy Award in 2008 for the third disc of his acclaimed cycle of Beethoven’s pia- no sonatas for Bridge Records. His discography also includes albums on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Virgin Classics labels, and he recently appeared on concert record- ings by the Atlanta, Sydney, and Melbourne Symphonies, playing concertos by Rachmani- noff, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms, respectively. In 2010 Ohlsson was featured in the documentary The Art of Chopin as well as a DVD including performances of the composer’s two concertos. Over the past year, he has been featured with orchestras in Portland, Madison, Kalamazoo, Palm Beach, and Fort Worth, and he returned to Carnegie Hall alongside the Orpheus Cham- ber Orchestra. Ohlsson has frequently collabo- rated on chamber recitals with the Cleveland, Emerson, Takács, and Tokyo String Quartets, and he has accompanied such vocalists as so- pranos Magda Olivero and Jessye Norman and contralto Ewa Podleś. Garrick Ohlsson was on Ravinia’s Steans Institute faculty in 2015, having been a regular performer at the festival since 1981. This is his 25th season on Ravinia’s stages. CHRISLEE(LANGRÉE);DARIOACOSTA(OHLSSON)