Mitsuko Uchida, Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Oct. 31, 2024. (Credit: Anne Ryan)

Riccardo Muti, who now bears the title of Music Director Emeritus for Life of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has returned to the CSO’s podium for two weeks.

Not only was there a packed house for Thursday evening’s concert at Symphony Hall, but he, along with the program’s two works by Beethoven, and guest artist, pianist Mitsuko Uchida, were winningly celebrated.

The first half of the evening was devoted to Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major (Emperor)” — the composer’s final work in this vein, that received its first performance in 1811, and that was here performed by the petite but powerful Uchida.

The work opened with her strong fluttering sound on the keys followed by a gradual build delivered by the winds and full orchestra. Both the delicacy and frenzy of the piano were complemented by the orchestra in a work marked by a multitude of different intensities, with a first movement that ended with a strong burst of sound.

Next came the Adagio movement, with its gentle and lyrical opening by the strings, and with Uchida’s beautifully delicate “steps” along the keyboard that then moved into her rapid flight over the keys. It was followed by many more mood shifts — a riff by the brass, the orchestra’s response to her delicacy and clarity, a fine moment by the clarinets, and then a big rush up and down the keyboard, and a burst from the orchestra that was in its usual superb form.

And there was much more, with both strength and delicacy, and continual mood shifts on the piano in a work that closed with a great rush along the keyboard and a burst from the orchestra.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major (Eroica),” the grand work composed in 1803-1804 that is often described as “a landmark in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras.”

It opens with two forceful chords and then shifts into a familiar melody as it builds with the lyrical winds, and proceeds with grand-scale mood changes that range back and forth from great urgency and intensity to moments of calm. It’s a work that showcases the orchestra’s golden tone as well as Beethoven’s great gift for capturing everything from a solemn, funereal mood of lyrical beauty, to great waves of sound and speed, to teasing accents of the timpani, to the delicate beauty of the strings, and softly spiraling winds. Then comes a wild, celebratory and high-speed finale.

Note: Muti’s second week of concerts by the CSO on Nov. 8 and 9 at 7:30 pm, will feature a very different program. In addition to featuring works by Donizetti, Verdi, Chabrier and de Falla, it will include the world premiere of a CSO commission of contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov’s “Megalopolis Suite.” The suite is drawn from the score of the 2024 release of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic film that has been described as capturing “how the fate of Ancient Rome haunts a modern world.”

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