The music of Tchaikovsky remains ‘very dear’ to maestra Karina Canellakis

Growing up as the daughter of musicians in New York City, Karina Canellakis enjoyed an early introduction to classical music. Around the age of 3, she attended her first live performance of a symphony: Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, performed by the Queensborough Community College Orchestra and conducted by her father, longtime faculty member Martin Canellakis. “Apparently I stayed awake for the whole thing and was mesmerized,” she said in a recent interview. 

Now the chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Canellakis will conduct that same Tchaikovsky symphony when she returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for four concerts this spring (April 30-May 3). Also on the program are Dvořák’s Scherzo capriccioso and Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, featuring soloist Conrad Tao.

After being raised with Tchaikovsky’s music, the composer remains “very dear” to Canellakis, and she’s not alone in this sentiment; his Fifth Symphony is one of the most popular in the orchestral repertoire. “One of the things that I think resonates with people about Tchaikovsky’s music is that he put so much of himself into everything he wrote,” she said. “There’s such a core warmth to his music, and it’s extremely personal.”

“We now know a lot about Tchaikovsky’s life. We know that he was not able to be the person he was in a public way and had to live a double life,” said Canellakis. “I love to think about all of this when I’m conducting all of his music, but in particular, the Fifth Symphony has this sense of something looming, something beneath the surface, and a sense of dreaming of something that you know is never going to come to pass.”

“Tchaikovsky put so much of himself into everything he wrote. There’s such a core warmth to his music, and it’s extremely personal.” — Karina Canellakis 

Canellakis has performed this symphony many times and recently recorded it, alongside Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony (Pathétique), with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on an album released by the LPO’s label in October 2025. Whenever she returns to the Fifth Symphony, she finds an exciting challenge in the task of interpreting music that’s already so familiar to audiences. “With any symphony that’s very well known, it’s even more the case that there are very specific choices that need to be made by the conductor and the musicians in the rehearsal, in order for everybody to feel that there’s a solid direction and interpretation.”

While certain priorities remain consistent across her performances, such as tempi and articulations, there’s also “a tremendous amount that changes from orchestra to orchestra,” said Canellakis. “Especially when you work with these top-level, historical orchestras, like the London Philharmonic or the Chicago Symphony — who have a long history of playing this repertoire and have recorded it with many different conductors — you’re dealing with a living, breathing animal. That’s the whole fun of it: to see what I’m given on that first day and try and shape that and create something together that is something completely new that no one has heard before.”

The program will open with the Scherzo capriccioso, which Canellakis describes as “instantaneously, recognizably Dvořák.” The Czech composer is well known for taking inspiration from folk-dance rhythms, but Canellakis also finds connections between his native language and his music. “I did a cycle of Janáček’s operas, and I had to study a lot of Czech,” she said. “The way the Czech language sounds, there’s a brightness and a clarity to it.”

Canellakis enjoys pairing Czech and Hungarian composers on the same program, and she has continuously returned to the music of Bartók, both in her earlier career as a violinist and now as a conductor. Bartók, who had emigrated from Hungary to the United States in the early years of World War II, composed the Third Piano Concerto in 1945, during the final months of his life. Suffering greatly from leukemia, he dedicated the piece to his wife, pianist Ditta Pásztory-Bartók.

Similarly to the Dvořák, Bartók’s concerto opens with a “bright, sunny clarity,” said Canellakis. “It doesn’t sound at all like someone who is unwell. It’s not brooding; it’s dancelike and joyful.” In this way, the piece reminds her of Beethoven’s Second Symphony, “the most joyful symphony of his career,” yet written while the composer was losing his hearing and deeply depressed.

These Bartók and Beethoven works also share a “beautiful, reverent” second movement, Canellakis said. Bartók gave this movement the unusual marking “adagio religioso,” which foreshadows the music’s “pure and chorale-like” qualities. “I think of him as looking up at the sky and wondering what is going to become of him when he passes over to the other side,” said Canellakis.

“This movement cuts really deep without imposing on the listener,” she added. Because of Bartok’s love of dissonance and irregular rhythms, the average listener might find that “some of his music can be hard to know how to get your foot in the door. But not this piece. This is sort of simplified, and it’s interesting that he would go in that direction after everything else that he wrote.”

“I regularly play a lot of his music, and one of the things that I’ve always felt was that he did not intend for his music to be played with a rough sound,” said Canellakis. “Unfortunately, sometimes because of the way it’s written, it ends up coming out that way, and I don’t believe that’s what he meant. I [believe in] playing it with warmth and soul and this verve and this zest for life.”

In her upcoming concerts, Canellakis looks forward to reuniting with Tao, a pianist who combines “rock-star energy” with “a real intellect and thoughtfulness.” She’s also eager to collaborate with the CSO again after her most recent conducting appearance in April 2025. “I always love making music with them,” she said. “I have a lot of dear friends in this orchestra, so it’s just a joy to be back in Chicago and be able to explore different repertoire on each visit.”