Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Klaus Mäkelä leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a spirited program of hero’s tales. Through four tone poems, Sibelius regales listeners with the exploits of Finnish mythology’s heroic Lemminkäinen. Its haunting second chapter, The Swan of Tuonela, is a standalone concert favorite today, but it is a rare delight to hear Lemminkäinen performed in full. In Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, a different sort of hero is immortalized—namely, Richard Strauss. Though he denied its self-referential nature, it includes musical quotes from dozens of Strauss’s own compositions, and is almost universally considered an autobiographical tale—replete with musical battles against such mythical foes as 19th-century Viennese music critic Doktor Dehring.