«In Vienna I will conduct Beethoven’s Ninth for the 200th anniversary and I will return to La Scala»- Corriere.it

When the Ninth is said, there is no need to add the author. The Ninth Beethoven. And Vienna, so jealous of her treasures, gives an Italian the anniversary wand. Behind every city that Via Riccardo Muti talks about, there is so much music, so many thoughts, memories, projects. The most immediate is June 23: after thirteen years, and over 500 concerts, he comes full circle as music director of the CSO, Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But a cycle of three very important stages will begin: the return to opera, at La Scala (on tour with the CSO). And above all, in a year’s time, on May 7, the concert with the Wiener Philharmoniker for the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the first performance of which took place in Vienna.

It is a source of great pride that they have called an Italian. It will be a worldwide event on television. I have been working with the Wieners for 53 years, with them I have commitments until 2028. The first movement of the Cosmic Ninth, on my score I wrote the verses of the Russian poet Lermontov: silent night! The desert listening to God. And the star speaks to the star. The Adagio, so unfathomable and rarefied, reminds me of a phrase by Carlos Kleiber: there are pieces of music that should remain on paper, because bringing them to life they lose their light, given our limitations.

Nietzsche spoke of Beethoven wild and childish idealist, who blindly follows the unruly instinct.

Sometimes Nietzsche has to be taken cum grano salis. After the quarrel with Wagner, whom she adored before, she said that the Carmen it was superior. With the Ninth we enter a metaphysical sphere. When Otto Nicolai founded the Wiener, the orchestra included two double bass players making their debut with Beethoven. I conducted it for the first time when I was 45, there are pieces of music that need great experience, even human; I conducted the Missa Solemnis for the first time three years ago in Salzburg. I kept taking the score and putting it back….

It’s the piece with which he will take his leave of Chicago.

Those were wonderful years. I renewed 50 percent of the orchestra, the strings are full of Asians, but so too in Vienna and Berlin, where the concertmaster is Japanese. I brought music to the city, playing in juvenile detention centers, bringing ethnic groups away from classical music. I had a competition for conductors and composers, we had a few in residence. Never had a falling out with the orchestra, just the pleasure of making music. They came from a Germanic tradition, the founder, Theodor Thomas, was German and the hall programs of their first concerts were printed in that language. When I arrived, I lacked knowledge of Italian operatic music and authors such as Busoni, Martucci, Sinigaglia.

An additional culture of sound, without losing any of their quality (it was a super-dreadnought with exceptional brass), acquired brilliance, singability and a balance between the various sections. I will maintain a relationship, in January we will have a European tour, we will touch Turin, the Rome Opera and La Scala, which remains a fundamental theater in my life, I will return there for a concert, with great emotion and pleasure.

Next year in Palermo I will resume the Don Giovanni directed by my daughter Chiara, in Turin will make a new production of A masked ball with Andrea De Rosa director. I’m a man of the theater, I don’t deny it, but today we live in a world of provocations, I’m looking for modern and intelligent directors, perhaps able to read music, like Stein or Strehler who used to say, it would be ideal if we exchanged the roles. If I have thinned out the work, because it runs too fast, there is no longer a month to plan a production, we are moving towards a world of appearance and less of substance.

I dreamed of a sort of Lincoln Center in New York, a center that connected the San Carlo, the theater of the first experiences that I love, to the Conservatory and the Girolamini Library. It hasn’t been done.

Not even a bridge has been created between Milan and Chicago, cities that are twinned.

I talked about it with the two mayors but nothing happens. Chicago and Milan are similar, driving, dynamic. They are cities of the future, from the point of view of science, art and architecture. To do you have to want.

So a future between Vienna, Chicago and Cherubini.

Where 900 young musicians have already passed, 50 have found work permanently in the musical world. As long as there is strength, he will be the object of my care. In July for the Ravenna Festival we will go to Jordan and Pompeii with Cherubini. Then I want to devote myself more to teaching, in Milan for the Prada Foundation I will work on Norm.

But another New Year’s concert?

He smiles: I answer with the words of the guardian father of The Force of Destiny: Who can read the future?.