Maestro Muti Waves a Richly Varied Goodbye (But Not a Farewell) by Wa…

Music director emeritus for life Riccardo Muti led the CSO in a performance of Strauss’ “Aus Italien” on Sept. 28, 2023. (Todd Rosenberg)

Although Maestro Riccardo Muti will soon head to New York’s Carnegie Hall and embark on a seven-country, 14-concert tour of Europe with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Jan. 11-29), his concert at Orchestra Hall on Thursday evening (the first of three performances) was an ideal example of the thrilling bond between him and the CSO’s brilliant musicians.

The evening opened with “The Triumph of the Octagon,” a world premiere CSO commission written by Philip Glass in the wake of last year’s much heralded performance of Glass’ “Eleventh Symphony” that marked the first time Muti conducted one of that composer’s works. The seven-minute piece was inspired by a photograph of the unusual 13th century Castel del Monte in southeast Italy (a UNESCO World Heritage site with eight octagonal towers) that Glass saw hanging on a wall in…