CSOradio
CSOtv
CSOradio
CSO wind principals appointed by Riccardo Muti are (clockwise from top left) Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, principal flute; Keith Buncke, principal bassoon; William Welter, principal oboe, and Stephen Williamson, principal clarinet.
Todd Rosenberg Photography
It’s not goodbye, and it never will be, to hear the four principal woodwinds of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra talk of the pre-eminent conductor whose presence and prestige lured them to audition for top positions as principal flute, principal oboe, principal clarinet and principal bassoon here.
Riccardo Muti, recently named the CSO’s Music Director Emeritus for Life, has led the Orchestra since 2010 in headline-grabbing world premieres, national and international tours, and dozens of sought-after concerts in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center.
Here are accounts of four key woodwind players appointed by Muti: Principal Flute Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, who joined in 2015; Principal Clarinet Stephen Williamson, 2011; Principal Oboe William Welter, 2018, and Principal Bassoon Keith Buncke, 2015. Höskuldsson and Williamson came as seasoned veterans lured from top New York City ensembles, while Welter and Buncke were gifted prodigies in their early 20s. All shared highlights of their experiences rehearsing, performing and touring with Muti and the CSO.
Principal Flute Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson: “With Muti, you are experiencing the composer’s vision, first of all”
Before joining the CSO, Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson served as principal flute of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, where since 2008 he had ample opportunity to work with a rotation of maestros coming in from around the world, a busy schedule with multiple operas a week. One of the conductors happened to be Muti, who had been hand-picked to conduct Attila, one of Verdi’s early and lesser-known operas. The impact was immediate, and startling, Höskuldsson said: “Those rehearsals and seven performances in 2010 were just a revelation for me. I had never experienced this kind of conductor before, one with his leadership, clarity of vision and musical depth. That was music-making really and completely.
“When the principal flute position opened in Chicago I did not think twice to come and audition,” Höskuldsson recalled. “Two of my woodwind colleagues at the Met for a while, clarinetist Stephen Williamson and flutist Yevgeny Faniuk [appointed as CSO assistant principal flute in 2022] won positions with the CSO, so it was very much a dream come true when I got here to take this job.”
His time in Chicago has probably been the best musical years of his life. “I have learned so much from Maestro Muti. He’s been generous to all of us, really encouraging. He is also a great boss who embodies what great leadership is about. He’s a disciplinarian, of course; he respects the music first of all. He respects the composers, and he also respects us, the musicians, and he brings this all together in a very unified way. It has been just a thrill, really, to have this opportunity.”
So it was out of the pit, and up onto the stage, for Höskuldsson, who was particularly eager to see what Muti would do in the strictly orchestral realm: “There were some great performances at the Met, and it was a great experience for me to know this great literature of opera. However, there are so many moving parts — with the orchestra and the stage, the soloists, the chorus, and so many dramatic elements — that it takes a special kind of discipline to pull that off to the maximum.
“That’s the vision that Maestro Muti has. When you are doing a performance of opera in a concert version with him, like we do at the Chicago Symphony, then you are experiencing the composer’s vision first of all, and not pulling it together for the sake of some modern stage production — a dangerous road the opera world is going down. With Muti, you connect to the heart of the music.”
Höskuldsson now has had ample opportunity to play iconic flute solos in the non-operatic repertoire with Muti and the CSO: “I mean, for the flutist in pieces like Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un Faune, where the flute contributes so much to the musical line of the story — what more can I say? It is a special privilege to use my talent to bring out the maximum color and line in that regard, you know, to tell the story with the color of sound, the expression, in these orchestral works, and I’m still exploring all of that.
“And I love the aspect of orchestra life that we are working for the whole week on the same program, which we play three or four times in succession,” Höskuldsson said. The CSO is unlike the typical opera schedule of a place like the Met, with a different program every night. “I love having that tight space of a week to rehearse and perform the same concert several times, when you can refine your understanding every time you play. It will be different each time, just like each day is different. It never gets boring or old. And in concert [without the elaborate opera staging] the experience takes on a different hue, a different sort of connection to the heart of the music, which is really what matters most in a performance. And even if a mistake happens, it really doesn’t matter, because you are so connected to the heart.”
Principal Oboe William Welter: “He helps us get the right sound, whatever it takes”
Appointed to the CSO at age 22, William Welter recalled his Day 1 experience on the job as a revelation: “My very first impression of Maestro Muti was that he has this power to get you to play better than you think you can play. Just his presence, his eyes looking at you onstage. He fills you with the affirmation that you can do your best. Even in my trial weeks, my first weeks with the orchestra, I could tell that he wanted me to feel comfortable. ‘Just watch me,’ he said.”
The Omaha native had started on violin when very young. “But the oboe was the first thing that attracted me so strongly that I felt it was going to be this or nothing for me,” Welter said. “That, and Maestro Muti’s recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake,’which has that big oboe solo!”
Welter spent his student days at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where Muti’s prior tenure as music director with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980 to 1992 was the stuff of legend. “He does know these composers so deeply,” Welter said. “It’s almost superhuman, his ability to transmit these subtle, powerful expressions. And he really does trust us. He has this manner of allowing us to play in such a way that you feel you’re not playing for yourself, but it’s not just him doing it, either. It becomes something greater.
“I have to say there have been many extraordinary experiences, but I would pick out the Verdi Requiem in particular, which we played in Chicago and Europe and Asia in 2018. The first time I played that piece with him was a transcendental moment. I was so moved by his conducting, and the energy, and all he was bringing to the piece, that I almost lost track of where I was!
“Another wonderful experience was the opera Aida in concert — oh, man. It was the end of my first year with the CSO, and I would always try to keep my eyes locked on him. Because he knows these pieces so deeply, he can communicate exactly what we need to do without appearing to do much. And one of the most challenging experiences for my own musical growth so far has been playing all nine Beethoven symphonies with him. This is the core repertory that we play again and again, but with Muti there is always a new perspective. He is pushing the limits of what is possible, to create that otherworldly experience.”
Welter recalled another lovely moment, in Respighi’s Pines of Rome, and the happy-go-lucky moves that Muti made to underscore the idea that a certain passage was “almost like a children’s nursery rhyme he sang in Italy as a little kid. The way that Muti described that scene, with a glint in his eye, and then let us digest that, really helped us to transform the effect. He helps us to get the right sound, whatever it takes, and the rest is carpentry.”
Principal Bassoon Keith Buncke: “I was immediately aware of his incredible ears”
After his appointment in 2015 at age 21, Keith Buncke made his solo debut with the CSO in January 2018, performing the Mozart Bassoon Concerto. “One of the things I noticed right away was Muti’s encouragement of a very wide dynamic range, asking for really soft as well as quite loud playing, going for that contrast,” Buncke said.
“And I was also immediately aware of his incredible ears; he can hear all the precise imperfections going on in the ensemble and what things, exactly, are not together, having that kind of absolute clarity. Muti noticed right away that I was a little behind his beat when I was first adjusting to the acoustics of the hall as a new member,” Buncke recalled. “I quickly learned that as long as I am with him visually, I can absolutely trust that I am right with the rest of the ensemble, even if some groups are too far away for me to rely on what I’m hearing. Muti is really clear in terms of all that he can show with his beat.
“It sort of feels like Muti makes the rehearsals more intense than the concerts in a way. He demands a lot of focus and a high level of playing in either case. But by making it harder in rehearsal, then you’ve done that, and then you can enjoy the experience of performing all that much more.”
Among standout experiences with Muti in Buncke’s memory is a performance with the CSO in the Verdi Requiem at the Vienna Musikverein while the CSO was on tour in 2020. “It’s also been really fun to anticipate the culmination of each season with a big choral-orchestral work — such as the Missa solemnis [which Muti conducted in June] and Verdi’s Falstaff back in 2016,” Buncke said. (Led by Muti, the CSO will return to Vienna’s Musikverein in January to perform two concerts, featuring works by Philip Glass, Florence Price, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Richard Strauss.)
Among the splendid moments of the 2022-23 season for Buncke was the May performance of Mozart’s Gran Partita for 13 players, mostly winds. Scholars now think the partita was written in the early 1780s, perhaps even performed at the celebration of Mozart’s own wedding. A lavish chamber work in many movements, the Gran Partita is by orchestral standards a jewel of chamber piece, and by chamber standards, an indulgent display of extravagant beauty. The CSO performance was a highlight of Muti’s final season as music director, and a personal highlight for Buncke as well.
“Muti’s approach to Mozart is to let the music speak for itself, and to focus on the elegance, simplicity and a beautiful blend of sound,” the bassoonist explained. “But having said that, I think in the Gran Partita, I got a little more sense of how Muti was building an impressive dramatic narrative through the piece, bringing out the wide-ranging character of it. That whole experience of preparing and performing that partita was tremendously energizing for me. Maestro Muti is demanding of the highest level in rehearsal, but he can also be really entertaining.”
Principal Clarinet Stephen Williamson: “He is a true maestro, because he is teaching us"
One of Muti’s first appointments in 2011, Stephen Williamson was already a veteran leader who had served as principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Orchestra (2003-2011) and a frequent guest principal with the Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra in Japan under Seiji Ozawa. But the pressure was on when he arrived at the Chicago Symphony, which was about to go on tour immediately, with performances in Salzburg and other European stops, and in some music that Williamson himself had never performed in public.
“I had only one rehearsal, literally three hours, and I was going to step in to play principal clarinet in three different programs on the tour,” Williamson recalled of those potentially stressful days. “Muti just jumped to all the clarinet solos, which was very generous of him, because there was so much that I didn’t know about how exactly it was going to go. There was actually quite a bit of music I had never played before, including Richard Strauss’ Aus Italien, although of course I had studied it. But it’s one thing to study, and it’s another thing to play in an orchestra, and I was profoundly glued to him with my eyes and soul! Muti just sort of guided me through these pieces and made me feel at ease, as if it was nothing difficult at all. I was very grateful that he trusted me so much from the get-go.”
Williamson is impressed by how specific Muti can be. “I love that,” he said. “There is no question about what he’s looking for. One of the most important things, certain with our orchestra, is the sense of lyricism, and not forcing the sound. The clarinet tends to have the capacity for playing the softest of all the instruments, so it sets the bar for just how soft an ensemble can play. Muti keeps challenging the others to play as softly as I do, and sometimes I feel a little guilty about it because it’s so difficult for everyone else! But we know it’s the ideal that he’s after.”
Another high point for Williamson was the Mozart Gran Partita last sesaon. It’s a big piece if one regards it as chamber music, but it’s actually quite intimate for an orchestra concert, because it’s just for 13 players when performed one per part.
Williamson remembers being surprised when Muti informed him and the 12 other players that they would be taking all the repeats. (There are many repeats!)
“Muti told us, ‘I know, it’s going to be a lot of playing,’ and it was,” Williamson said. But honestly, once it started, it seemed like it was already over because we were having so much fun. There was so much nuance, so much attention to detail, that it was sheer delight, and a blessing to be able to do this with him.”
One of Williamson’s favorite memories was performing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, if under highly unusual circumstances.
“I would never have been presumptuous enough to ask him if I could do the Mozart with him, but Muti told me ever since my audition that he wanted to find a time for us to do it, and I was super grateful. But as it happened, he had to withdraw from the CSO performances that were scheduled, and I thought we had missed our chance for good. Later on, though, the CSO was going to do a benefit fund-raiser for the Great Chicago Food Depository over at the Fine Arts Building, and Muti suggested that we should do the Mozart. Only thing, there was going to be no rehearsal. We were just going to walk out and do it. Muti told me, ‘Just do whatever you want and don’t worry.’
“It was amazing to see how gifted he was at that. As we all know, Muti is one of the greats of all time, so incredibly flexible and fluid. We did my interpretation from the beginning, yet we never rehearsed it. We just walked into the hall and performed. Honestly, I felt it couldn’t have gone better.”
