Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Center

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1891 by Theodore Thomas and he was its conductor until his death in 1905. His successors have been Frederick Stock (until 1942), Desire Defauw, Artur Rodzinski, Rafael Kubelik, Fritz Reiner, Jean Martinon, Sir Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim (until 2006). The orchestra has its own concert hall which was completed in 1904 and which now forms part of the Symphony Center Complex in Chicago. The many distinguished guest conductors which the CSO has seen include Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninov, Maurice Ravel, Edward Elgar and Aaron Copland. More recent guest conductors include John Williams, Andre Previn, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Bernstein, Claudio Abbado and Pierre Boulez.

Lucas Jussen and Arthur Jussen are a Dutch piano duo. They are brothers who have been performing in public since early childhood, often together as a piano duo. They come from a musical family: their mother Christianne van Gelder teaches the flute, while their father Paul Jussen is a timpanist in the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Hilversum and a percussionist in the Ensemble Da Capo. The brothers were students of piano teacher Jan Wijn. They lived and studied with Maria João Pires and have played with pianists Ricardo Castro and Lang Lang.