Concertgebouw Orchestra Tours North America

CHICAGO, 8 February 1999 - Riccardo Chailly opened the 110-year-old Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's tour of North American cities, with a programme of Brahms and Schönberg at the Orchestra Hall in Chicago last night. The tour will last seven days and includes performances in Detroit, Toronto, New York, Boston, Washington and a second and final performance in New York. See Concert Calendar for dates and venues.

Italian-born and a modernist, Chailly, 46, has guided the Amsterdam orchestra through the first decade of its second century of existence and is poised to take it into the next millenium. He has not hesitated to break with "tradition" when he saw sclerosis, and has revived the orchestra's original practice of playing the music of contemporary composers. This has often startled the die-hard elements of Amsterdam's staid audience, but the orchestra has constantly maintained its confidence in its somewhat revolutionary conductor. Chailly's portrait now hangs alongside those of Willem Kes, Willem Mengelberg, Eduard van Beinum and Bernard Haitink in the Concertgebouw's hall of fame. His recent recording of the complete works of Edgard Varèse (1883 - 1965) is considered by many European critics as the finest classical recording of 1998.

Klassiknet's chief editor, Joseph E. Romero, spent some time in Amsterdam recently for an exclusive interview with Riccardo Chailly to discuss the conductor's ideas and future plans.

Read the interview