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Norma Burrowes is best known for her performance of Baroque music, particularly Handel, but has also excelled in Mozart and light opera, including those of Gilbert and Sullivan and Viennese operettas. She studied music at the Royal Academy in London, singing demanding lead roles while still a student. Her professional debut was in 1970 with the Glyndebourne Touring Company as Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni, followed later that year by her Covent Garden debut in the virtuoso part of the Fiakermilli in Richard Strauss' Arabella. The next year brought her Salzburg debut as Blonde in Mozart's The Abduction From the Seraglio. She sang several roles at Glyndebourne between 1970 and 1981, in addition to making recordings, appearing in television productions of operas and operettas, and giving recitals. In 1979, she repeated the role for her Metropolitan Opera debut. She is married to former tenor and voice teacher Emile Belcourt. She retired from performing in 1982.

Ranging from Bach to Wagner, Siegmund Nimsgern employed his warm and sympathetic voice to an operatic, concert, and recital repertory that made him invaluable from the earliest years of his career. One of the most frequently recorded artists of the twentieth century's final three decades, Nimsgern collaborated with nearly every major conductor and visited a majority of the world's most important venues. Though German-born and trained in his native country, he exhibited a Viennese sound: rounded, somewhat hooded, and slightly compressed in the upper register. Such a quality lent a special humanity to his finely judged Barak, while keeping him at arm's length from the more forceful utterances of Wotan. After studying philosophy, German, and musicology, Nimsgern worked with several prominent voice teachers, bass Jakob Stämpfli most prominent among them. Given Stämpfli's abiding interest in the music of Bach, no surprise resulted from Nimsgern's success in the area. Following a concert debut in 1965, Nimsgern made his first opera appearance in 1967 singing Lionel in Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orléans in Saarbrücken. A Salzburg debut took place in 1970 and from 1971 to 1974, Nimsgern was a principal artist at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. At London's Covent Garden, he appeared as Amfortas in 1973, that same year also making debuts at the Opéra de Paris and at La Scala. Nimsgern appeared in the United States for the first time in 1974, singing Jochanaan at the San Francisco Opera, an interpretation of the role described as the most vital of the time. After making his Metropolitan Opera debut as Pizarro in 1978, Nimsgern returned two years later to sing his Jochanaan. Other venues welcoming him included the Wiener Staatsoper and the companies of Berlin, Buenos Aires, Munich, Hamburg, Rome, and Chicago. Leading music festivals, too, he was frequently heard in Munich, Florence, Orange, Ansbach, Flanders, and Bayreuth. Among Nimsgern's many recordings are two of Telramund, one with Karajan, the other with Solti. Opposite such heroic undertakings are his numerous recordings of Bach under such conductors as Harnoncourt, Gönnenwein, and Rilling.

The Chicago Symphony Chorus is among the best choruses attached to a world-class symphony orchestra. It was established in 1957, when the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, engaged Margaret Hillis to develop a permanent chorus of a quality fit to partner the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at its concerts. Hillis already had a record of achievement: she was a junior golf champion and a civilian flying instructor for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She studied music at Indiana University and the Juilliard School (she had been a tuba and string bass player in her high school band), became assistant to America's leading choral conductor, Robert Shaw, and was conductor of the chorus of the American Opera Society in New York. She quickly fulfilled the mission given her by Reiner, developing one of the world's greatest choral groups.

Recordings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with its chorus have won a number of Grammy Awards. It also appears with visiting symphony orchestras when they wish to perform a choral/orchestral work. The chorus also tours with the orchestra and has been critically acclaimed for its performances in Europe, which include Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, and Brahms' Requiem.

In 1994 Duain Wolfe succeeded Hillis as the chorus' director. He originated the orchestra and chorus' popular Welcome Yule! Christmas concert programs.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of the three most acclaimed orchestras in America and one of the few serious rivals the New York Philharmonic has had in its long history. Curiously, the histories of the two orchestras are somewhat intermingled.

Theodore Thomas had organized and led orchestras in New York during the 1870s and 1880s, competing with the Philharmonic Society of New York for audiences, soloists, and American premieres of works. His orchestra did very well as a major rival to the group that would become the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra visited Chicago during several seasons, and it was intended that he would be music director of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in that city. However, in 1891, he abandoned New York entirely in favor of Chicago and arrived as the first conductor of what was then called the Chicago Orchestra. Thomas held that position until his death in 1905. In his honor, the Chicago Orchestra changed its name to the Theodore Thomas Orchestra in 1906. Six years later, the group was renamed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

It was under the leadership of Thomas' assistant, Frederick Stock, that the Chicago Symphony's modern reputation was formed. From 1905 until his death in 1942, Stock led the orchestra in decades of programs that featured not only the established classics but the American premieres of many post-romantic works. Additionally, Stock raised the level of performance and the financial status of his players and established the orchestra in a major teaching role for aspiring musicians in its home city. Its recordings were relatively few in number because the long-playing record -- central to the appreciation of classical music -- had not yet been invented, which means there is little evidence by which modern listeners can judge the work of the orchestra during this period, but some of the recordings from that era were among the best in the world at the time. Among the few available from the period on major labels are the Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 on the BMG label, featuring soloist Arthur Schnabel with Stock conducting.

Stock's death in 1942 precipitated a difficult decade for the orchestra. Apart from the general complications of World War II, it had a great deal of trouble finding acceptable leadership. Désiré Defauw lasted for only four years, from 1943 until 1947, and Artur Rodzinski (best known for his leadership of the New York Philharmonic) was in the job for only one year (1947-1948). Rafael Kubelik served three years as music director from 1950 until 1953, but his gentlemanly manner and decidedly modern, European-centered taste in music proved unsuited to the players, critics, and management -- although it was under Kubelik that the orchestra made its first successful modern recordings, for the Mercury label, many of which were reissued in the mid-'90s.

Fritz Reiner became the music director of the Chicago Symphony in 1953, beginning the modern renaissance and blossoming of the orchestra. Under Reiner, the orchestra's playing sharpened and tightened, achieving a clean, precise, yet rich sound that made it one of the most popular orchestras in the United States. The Chicago Symphony under Reiner became established once and for all as an international-level orchestra of the first order, rivaling the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony. Moreover, Reiner's arrival with the orchestra coincided with its move to RCA Victor, which, in 1954, was beginning to experiment with stereo recording. With Reiner as conductor, these "Living Stereo" recordings -- characterized by vivid textures, sharp stereo separation, and microphone placement that gave the impact of a live performance -- became some of the best-selling classical albums of all time and have since been reissued numerous times on compact disc to new acclaim from critics and listeners, more than a generation removed from their original era.

Reiner's death in 1963 led to another interregnum period, during which conductor Jean Martinon led the orchestra (1963-1968). In 1969, Sir Georg Solti joined the orchestra as its music director. Under Solti, the orchestra's national and international reputations soared, as did its record sales. Reiner had begun the process of cultivating the burgeoning audience for late-romantic composers such as Mahler, but it was with Solti that the works of Mahler and Bruckner became standard fare in the orchestra's programs, right alongside those of Beethoven and Mozart. The playing standard achieved during Solti's tenure, in concert and recordings, was the highest in the history of the orchestra. Additionally, the orchestra under Solti began a quarter-century relationship with London Records that resulted in some of the best-sounding recordings of the era. Solti's approach to performance was very flamboyant yet intensely serious -- even his performances of lighter opera and concert overtures strike a perfect balance between broad gestures and finely wrought detail, attributes that have made him perhaps the most admired conductor of a major American orchestra, if not the most famous (Leonard Bernstein inevitably got more headlines during the 1960s, especially with his knack for publicity). Solti was both popular and respected, and his tenure with the Chicago Symphony coincided with his becoming the winner of the greatest number of Grammy Awards of any musician in history (he also recorded with orchestras in London and Vienna). Daniel Barenboim succeeded Solti and served as music director from 1991 until 2006, with Solti transitioning to the post of music director emeritus. Bernard Haitink was named the orchestra's first principal conductor, holding this position from 2006 through 2010. Riccardo Muti was chosen as the tenth music director in the orchestra's history in 2010.

As with other major American orchestras, the Chicago Symphony found itself competing with its own history, especially where recordings are concerned. Reissues of its work under Reiner and Solti continue to sell well and are comparable or superior to the orchestra's current recordings in sound and interpretive detail. Even the early-'50s recordings under Kubelik were reissued by Mercury in the late '90s, while RCA-BMG and some specialty collector's labels have re-released the recordings under Stock. The recordings of Solti and Reiner leading the Chicago Symphony are uniformly excellent, and virtually all of them can be recommended. The orchestra also maintains composer-in-residence and artist-in-residence partnerships; in 2023, Jessie Montgomery occupied the former, and Hilary Hahn the latter. ~ Bruce Eder