No living conductor can touch Riccardo Muti as an interpreter of Giuseppe Verdi. His performances of the tremendous Requiem are invariably red-letter occasions, all the more because they never lapse into routine. But then, the same is true no matter what Muti turns his hand to, be it Bach or Mozart, Beethoven or Berlioz, Nino Rota or Philip Glass. In 1992, the maestro rang down on two historic decades as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra with the Requiem at Carnegie Hall. In a rare return engagement, Muti will be joining the musicians at the Kimmel Center, the new home that began construction four years after his departure. Presumably, the familiar faces onstage will be few. Time to take a new generation up the mountain! The soloists this time are Juliana Grigoryan, Isabel De Paoli, Giovanni Sala, and Maharram Huseynov. —Matthew Gurewitsch