SPECIAL EVENT
Riccardo MutiCONCERT FOR A FRIEND
Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra
Riccardo Muti conductor
David Fray piano
in collaboration with the Ravenna Festival Ludwig van Beethoven Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in C minor, No. 3 Op. 37 Franz Schubert Symphony No.4 in C minor "Die Tragische" D 417 In a world where culture is almost always ignored, or even trampled on, the thought of adding new splendor to the beautiful "Caio Melisso" theater in Spoleto, is a reason for great praise and gratitude towards Carla Fendi for wanting to reinstate the theater to Italy and the world, in the utmost condition. This is the reason why I could not refuse the request of my dear friend Carla to conduct a concert dedicated to her husband Candido in this venue, thus participating in the Festival of Spoleto together with my beloved Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra. Riccardo Muti RICCARDO MUTIBorn in Naples, he studied piano at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella under Vincenzo Vitale, graduating with distinction. He was subsequently awarded a diploma in Composition and Conducting from the Conservatory "Giuseppe Verdi," Milan, where he studied under the guidance of Bruno Bettinelli and Antonino Votto. He first came to the attention of critics and the public in 1967, when he was unanimously awarded first place by the prestigious jury of the "Guido Cantelli" competition for conductors in Milan. The following year he was appointed principal conductor of the "Maggio Musicale Fiorentino," a position he maintained until 1980. In 1971 Muti was invited by Herbert von Karajan to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, the first of many occasions, which led in 2010 to a celebration of forty years of artistic collaboration with the Austrian festival. During the 1970s, he was chief conductor of the London Philharmonia (1972 to 1982) succeeding Otto Klemperer. From 1980 to 1992, he inherited the position of Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from Eugene Ormandy. From 1986 to 2005, he was Music Director of the Teatro alla Scala and under his direction important projects were undertaken such as the Mozart-Da Ponte Trilogy and the Wagner Ring Cycle. Alongside the classics of the repertoire, he brought many rarely performed and neglected works to light,including pieces from the eighteenth century Neapolitan school as well as operas by Gluck, Cherubini, Spontini and most recently performance of Poulenc’s "Les dialogues des Carmélites" earned Muti the prestigious "Abbiati" prize from the critics. The long period spent as musical director of the La Scala organization culminated on December 7, 2004, in the triumphant re-opening of the restored La Scala with Antonio Salieri’s "Europa riconosciuta," Incredible his contribution to Verdi’s repertoire, he conducted Ernani, Nabucco, I Vespri Siciliani, La Traviata, Attila, Don Carlos, Falstaff, Rigoletto, Macbeth, La Forza del Destino, Il Trovatore, Otello, Aida, Un ballo in Maschera, i Due Foscari, I Masnadieri. His tenure as Music Director has been the longest at Teatro alla Scala. Over the course of his extraordinary career, Riccardo Muti conducts most of the important orchestras in the world: from the Berlin Philharmonic to the Bayerischer Rundfunk, the New York Philharmonic to the Orchestre National de France, as well as, the Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestra to which he is linked by particularly close and important ties, and with which he has appeared at the Salzburg Festival since 1971. When Muti was invited to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in a concert celebrating its 150 years,he was presented with the Golden Ring by the orchestra as a sign of special appreciation and affection, awarded to only a few select conductors. Four times he conducted the prestigious and extremely famous New Year’s Concert in Vienna in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004. In April 2003, the French national radio channel, France Musique, broadcast a "Journée Riccardo Muti" consisting of 14 hours of his operatic and symphonic recordings made with all the orchestras he has conducted throughout his career. On December 14 of the same year, he conducted the long-awaited opening concert of the newly renovated Opera House "La Fenice" in Venice. In 2004, Muti founded the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, which is composed of young musicians selected by an international committee from some 600 instrumentalists from all over Italy. Muti’s recording activities span the classical symphonic and operatic repertories to contemporary works , which have received recognition in the form of many prizes. Riccardo Muti’s social and civic conscience as an artist is demonstrated by concerts in a number of places symbolising our troubled past and contemporary history, which he has conducted as part of "Le vie dell’Amicizia" (The Paths of Friendship) project, produced by the Ravenna Festival . These include Sarajevo (1997), Beirut (1998), Jerusalem (1999), Moscow (2000), Yerevan and Istanbul (2001), New York (2002), Cairo (2003), Damascus (2004), El Diem, Tunisia (2005), Meknes (2006),Concert for Lebanon (2007), Mazara del Vallo (2008), Sarajevo (2009), Trieste (2010) and Nairobi (2011) with the La Scala Philharmonic and Chorus, the Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the "Musicians of Europe United," a group made up of the top players of Europe’s major orchestras and most recently with the Cherubini Youth Orchestra. Innumerable honors have been bestowed on Riccardo Muti over the course of his career. He has been made a Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Italian Republic and has received the Verdienstkreuz from Germany; recently he received the decoration of Officer of the Legion of Honor from French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a private ceremony held at Élysée Palace. He also was made an honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in Britain. The Salzburg Mozarteum awarded him its silver medal for his contribution to Mozart’s music, and in Vienna was elected an honorary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle and the Wiener Staatsoper. Russian President Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship, and the State of Israel has honored him with the Wolf Prize for the arts. He has received honorary degrees from many universities in Italy and abroad. He conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the opening concert for the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in Salzburg Grosses Festspielhaus. In 2012 the continuous collaboration between Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic will reach 42 years. In Salzburg for the Whitsun Festival with the Cherubini Orchestra he began in 2007 a five-year project dedicated to the rediscovery and the valorization of the musical heritage, operatic and sacred of the Neapolitan School of the 18th Century. In September 2010 he became Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and he was named 2010 Musician of the Year by Musical America. In February 2011 Riccardo Muti was awarded two Grammy Awards at the 53rd annual awards ceremony for his live recording of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. His recording won Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance. In March 2011, Riccardo Muti was selected as the recipient of the coveted Birgit Nilsson Prize, presented in a ceremony on October 13 at the Royal Opera in Stockholm in the presence of H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf and H.M. Queen Silvia. In April 2011, he was honored at the sixth annual Opera News Awards, and in May 2011 he was awarded Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts. The award was presented last autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias. In July 2011 he was named an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic and in August 2011 he was named an honorary director for life at the Rome Opera. In May 2012, he was awarded the highest Papal honor: the Knight of the Grand Cross First Class of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI. www.riccardomutimusic.com
LUIGI CHERUBINI YOUTH ORCHESTRA Founded by Riccardo Muti in 2004, the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra took the name of one of the finest Italian composers of all times, who was also active in the European context, to highlight its penchant towards an European perspective on Music and Culture, alongside with a strong national identity. The Orchestra, which is the privileged means to link the academia and the professional world, divides its head office between the city of Piacenza and the Ravenna Festival, where every year the intense Summer School experience is renewed. The Cherubini Orchestra consists of young instrumentalists, all under 30 and coming from all over Italy, selected via thousands of castings by a committee of top musicians from prestigious European orchestras and chaired by Muti himself. According to a spirit which gives the orchestra the dynamism of an endless renewal, the musicians stay in the orchestra only for a three year-period, and at the end of it they have the opportunity to find their own position within the finest orchestras. "After a period driven by the joy of learning and free from the vices of routine and competition – as Riccardo Muti points out – these guys will take with them, from an ethical and artistic viewpoint, a new way of being musicians". Over these years, the Orchestra, conducted by Riccardo Muti, engaged in a repertoire which spans from Baroque to the 20th century, by alternating concerts in several Italian cities with prestigious European tournées, while it has performed at the opera houses in Wien, Paris, Moscow, Salzburg, Cologne and Saint Petersburg, to mention only a few. The Cherubini Orchestra has added to the intense activities with its founder many collaborations with such artists as Claudio Abbado, John Axelrod, Gérard Depardieu, Kevin Farrell, Patrick Fournillier, Herbie Hancock, Leonidas Kavakos, Lang Lang, Alexander Lonquich, Wayne Marshall, Kurt Masur, Krzysztof Penderecki, Giovanni Sollima, Jurij Temirkanov e Alexander Toradze. The first perfomance as Orchestra-in-residence in Salzburg, at the Whitsun Festival, of Il ritorno di Don Calandrino by Cimarosa marked in 2007 the first step of a five-year project that the prestigious Austrian festival, in co-production with Ravenna Festival, has realised with Riccardo Muti to rediscover and appreciate the musical heritage of the Neapolitan 18th century. In the Forties and the Fifties there is still an intense activity of the best prose (Randone, Gassman, Piccolo Teatro Milan, Compagnia dei Giovani, etc.) and revue companies, whereas the musical activities are divided between chamber concerts at a local-scale (but there are also Benedetti Michelangeli, Cortot, Milstein, Segovia, the Quartetto Italiano, I Musici) and an already crystallized and stale operatic repertoire, though revived by top voices (among the others, Olivero, Tebaldi, Simionato, Corelli, Di Stefano, Valletti, Bergonzi, Gianni Raimondi, Tagliabue, Bechi, Gobbi, Taddei, Panerai, Siepi, Rossi Lemeni, Tozzi, not to forget Maria Callas, who performed in 1954 Forza del destino with Del Monaco, Protti, Modesti and Capecchi, conducted by Franco Ghione). The triumphant welcoming that the Cherubini Orchestra received from the public at the Goldener Saal (Golden Hall) of the Musikverein in Wien was followed in 2008 by the prestigious Abbiati Prize as best musical venture for "the outstanding results which made it an excellent ensemble renowned in Italy and abroad".
DAVID FRAY David Fray was born in 1981 and began the piano when he was 4 years old. He worked with Jacques Rouvier at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, and graduated with top honours. David Fray has received numerous prizes and awards including a prize and a grant by the Banque Populaire, the Diploma of Outstanding Merit at the Fifth International Hamamatsu Competition in Japan; the Jeune soliste de l’année (Young Soloist of the Year) award, the most important prize awarded by the Commission des radios publiques de langue française; the Feydeau de Brou Saint Paul grant and the Révélation classique (Classical discovery) prize from ADAMI. At the 2004 Montreal International Music Competition, David Fray received both the Second Grand Prize, and the Prize for the best interpretation of an imposed Canadian work. As a direct reward for his success in this competition, ATMA Classique released his first CD (Liszt and Schubert). David Fray gave numerous recitals in Europe, America and Asia, in the most prestigious halls : New York Carnegie Hall, Cité de la Musique, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Théâtre du Châtelet, Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Place des Arts in Montréal, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Alti Hall in Kyoto, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, as well as in festivals such as La Roque d’Anthéron, Montpellier, Piano aux Jacobins in Toulouse, Colmar, Saint-Denis, Bad Kissingen, Ruhr, Rheingau. David Fray has been supported by artists such as Dimitri Bashkirov, Menahem Pressler, Paul Badura-Skoda, Christoph Eschenbach, and Pierre Boulez. Under his recommendation, David Fray received in Germany the prize for young talents of "Klavier Festival Ruhr" where he played in Summer 2006. Christoph Eschenbach invited him at the 10th Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw to play Bach Concertos with him, Robert Levine and Ya-Fei Chuang. He performed with the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Orchestre de Paris under Christoph Eschenbach and John Axelrod, the Orchestre National de France and Kurt Masur in Paris, Vienna, Germany and the USA, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris under Andrew Davis, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Deutsche Sinfonie-Orchester, the Jerusalem Symphony, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic, New-York Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, London Philharmonic, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchester, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Rome Santa Cecilia Orchestra with Semyon Bychkov as well as in tour with Riccardo Muti in Italy and with Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra, again with Riccardo Muti. He will soon play with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland, San Francisco, Boston Symphony, and the NHK in Tokyo. His first recording as a Virgin Classics exclusive artist was devoted to Bach and Boulez and won him great critical acclaim (Newcomer of the Year 2008 by BBC Music Magazine, Best recording / Echo Preis 2008), as well as his recording of Bach Concertos with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (with a DVD by Bruno Monsaingeon.) Subsequently released are a Schubert recital, Mozart concertos with the Philharmonia and Jaap van Zweden and, most recently a Bach recital disc (Partitas Nos. 2 and 6 and the Toccata in C minor).
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