Until music director James Conlon takes up his annual residency at Ravinia in late July, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be spending the first two weeks of its own residency playing Hollywood and Broadway scores and concerts of mostly popular fare.



As a matter of fact, few of the symphonic programs announced Thursday as part of the festival's 2014 summer schedule are half as adventuresome as the ones the Grant Park Orchestra will be presenting at the rival Grant Park Music Festival in Millennium Park.



The Chicago Symphony will be in residence for concerts spanning six weeks — the same number as last summer's residency — and there will be the usual abundance of chamber music and recitals.



Conlon will conduct a concert performance of Richard Strauss' "Salome" in honor of the composer's sesquicentennial before the music director and CSO members decamp to the Martin Theatre to present staged concert performances of the Mozart/Da Ponte operas "Don Giovanni" and "The Marriage of Figaro." (This is a banner year for "Don Giovanni" in that Lyric Opera will open its 2014-15 season with a new production of the same work.)



Soprano Patricia Racette will sing the formidable title role in "Salome," Christopher Maltman will portray Mozart's dissolute don, and the "Figaro" cast will include John Relyea, Lisette Oropesa, Soile Isokoski, Stephane Degout and Renee Rapier. Conlon also will lead all-Beethoven and all-Tchaikovsky programs with pianists Jonathan Biss and Denis Matsuev as soloists.



Song recitals will be given by Matthias Goerne, Stephane Degout and Kiri Te Kanawa, the latter premiering a Ravinia commission composed by Jake Heggie in honor of the soprano's 70th birthday.



Violinist Joshua Bell will headline the annual women's board gala evening. Another violin virtuoso, Midori, will join the faculty of Ravinia's Steans Music Institute and present two concerts and a master class. Itzhak Perlman will headline a program of Jewish cantorial-liturgical music. Rachel Barton Pine will give three performances, two of them containing the complete Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas.



Flutist James Galway will give the U.S. premiere of a flute concerto written for him by "Riverdance" composer Bill Whelan. Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki will lead the CSO in her Ravinia debut. Others pacing Chicago Symphony concerts include Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Krzysztof Urbanski, Robert Moody, Ted Sperling, Steven Reinecke and Bramwell Tovey. The CSO also will provide live accompaniment to complete screenings of the films "West Side Story" and "The Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King."



Of unusual interest is the premiere of "The Devil's Tale," composer James Stephenson's sequel to Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale." Hershey Felder will direct both music theater pieces in a double bill by Chicago Pro Musica.



The classical roster is to include cellist Yo-Yo Ma; guitarist Milos Karadaglic; singers Deborah Voigt, Dawn Upshaw and Nathan Gunn; the vocal group Chanticleer; The Knights chamber ensemble; Zukerman ChamberPlayers; and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Jarvi.



The Martin Theatre will host concerts by the Takacs, Juilliard, Emerson and Orion string quartets in addition to piano recitals by Garrick Ohlsson, Alain Lefevre, Denis Matsuev, and Misha and Cipa Dichter. The "$10 BGH Classics" series will comprise nearly 30 performances, many by young artists making their Ravinia debuts.