Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 October 2022, 8 pm, two of the greatest pianists in the world ends an October full of events for the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino: on Saturday evening, in the Sala Grande, together with the conductor emeritus Zubin Mehta and to the Orchestra del Maggio, Maurizio Pollini. On Sunday 30, again in the Sala Grande, the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit in the evening that marks Martha Argerich’s return to Maggio.

On 27 October at 12 noon, Maestro Pollini meets the students of the Cherubini Conservatory of Florence, in the Buonumore Hall.

Florence, 26 October 2022 – A weekend dedicated to two of the biggest names on the international piano scene of the last half century and beyond closes an October full of events for the Teatro del Maggio. In the Sala Grande, Saturday 29 October at 8 pm, the two great maestri Zubin Mehta and Maurizio Pollini, together with the Orchestra del Maggio, for the awaited recovery of the concert scheduled for last January 19: on the lecterns the Symphony no. 104, London by Franz Joseph Haydn, Symphony no. 1 by Franz Schubert and, in closing, the Concerto in B flat major K. 595 for piano and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Sunday 30 October, still at 8 pm in the Sala Grande, the Teatro del Maggio opens its doors to host the maestro Charles Dutoit, at the head of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, and Martha Argerich, who finally returns to the Florentine scene from a distance six years since his last performance: Maurice Ravel‘s Valses nobles et sentimentales and Robert Schumann‘s Concerto in A minor for piano and orchestra are on the program. Le Sacre du printemps, by Igor Stravinskij, closes the show. The concert recovers the date originally scheduled for January 10, 2022.

On the occasion of the concert on 29 October, Maestro Maurizio Pollini will meet the students of the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in the Sala del Buonumore, on Thursday 27 October at 12, for a conversation with Giovanni Vitali, the head of the Maggio Cultural Promotion. Admission is reserved for students of the Conservatory with a small availability of other places until the hall is sold out.

The first month of the Maggio’s Autumn Festival ends with two very precious evenings, with two operas Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi and the first Florentine representation of Alcina by Händel both with unamime and very warm feedback from the public, and numerous symphonic concerts conducted by Zubin Mehta, Daniele Gatti and Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

The Autumn Festival then continues until the first days of the new year, when it will give way to the Carnival Festival, with numerous other appointments: from the other two great Spanish-themed operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Ernani, from 10 November under the direction of James Conlon and directed by Leo Muscato, and Don Carlo, from December 27, under the direction of Daniele Gatti and directed by Roberto Andò at the numerous symphonic concerts conducted by James Conlon, Dame Jane Glover, Daniele Gatti, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Mark Elder, Diego Fasolis.

The evening of Saturday 29 October sees the return to Maggio of the great maestro Maurizio Pollini on the bill, after the concert on 18 September 2020: to lead the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, its director emeritus for life, Zubin Mehta. A completely ‘Viennese’ program is on the bill: the concert opens with Symphony no. 104 in D major, London by Franz Joseph Haydn, performed for the first time in London on May 4, 1795 and last of the “London” symphonies, followed by Symphony no. 1 in D major D. 82 by Franz Schubert and composed in 1813; in closing the Concerto in B flat major K. 595 for piano and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which the genius of Salzburg wrote between 1788 and 1791.

Maestro Maurizio Pollini, who made his debut at Maggio in 1959, is undoubtedly one of the most important piano performers of the last sixty years of music history: a pupil of Carlo Lonati and Carlo Vidusso, he turned out to be very young by winning the 2nd prize at the Geneva international competition and in 1959 the 1st prize at the Pozzoli competition. Absolute winner of the Chopin competition in Warsaw in 1960, he embarked on an intense concert career both in Italy and abroad. Considered one of the most significant performers of the twentieth century, he was present in all the most important international festivals, in particular in the one in Salzburg, where he collaborated with conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Karl Böhm, Claudio Abbado and Zubin Mehta, and where he held recitals characterized by programs of intelligent organicity and breadth of repertoire, ranging from the classics of the piano to Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He also held specialization courses at the Chigiana Academy of Siena; and in 1974, on the occasion of the centenary of Arnold Schönberg’s birth, he performed his complete piano work in many centers. In 1982, after some rehearsals in which he presented himself as conductor and soloist, he made his debut in the direction of an opera, in Pesaro, with Rossini’s La donna del lago, which was also recorded on disc. The singular interpretative qualities and the perfect piano technique have allowed him to face with equal success the romantic and the contemporary repertoire. Committed to spreading the ethical and educational value of music, Pollini recently organized numerous cycles called “Progetto Pollini”, in which the pianist brought together various musicians for a series of concerts linked by very close cultural relations, with which he touched important world capitals: New York, Tokyo, Vienna, Paris and Rome in 2003. Among the numerous prizes awarded to the maestro during his career, we remember the “Prix mondial du disque” (1978) obtained for the engraving of the latest Beethoven piano sonatas ; and the “Grammy Award” (2007) for best solo instrumental performance received for the performance of Chopin’s Nocturnes. In 2012, as part of the initiatives for his 70th birthday, the pianist presented a new studio recording dedicated to Chopin, entitled Chopin: 24 préludes, nocturnes, mazurkas, scherzo while the CD, also from 2017, is recorded in the studio, “Chopin: Late works”.

The following evening, Sunday 30 October, again at 8 pm, the Maggio hosts the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Maestro Charles Dutoit: at the piano Martha Argerich, who therefore returns to the stage of the Maggio after the last concert held in September 2016. On the bill Valses nobles et sentimentales for orchestra by Maurice Ravel, composed at the beginning of 1911 in a period of intense activity for the composer; the Concerto in A minor op.54 for piano and orchestra by Robert Schumann, which engaged the composer for a good five years in its drafting and, finally, Le Sacre du printemps, Tableaux de la Russie païenne en deux parties by Igor Stravinskij, elaborated by musician together with the painter and set designer Nikolaj Roerich.

Martha Argerich is one of the most important pianists and performers of the last fifty years: she began studying with her mother, a piano teacher. From the age of five to fifteen, she trained with the pianist and composer from Crotone Vincenzo Scaramuzza. She made her concert debut at the age of eight, playing a Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in C major Op. 15 by Ludwig van Beethoven. She and her family moved to Europe in 1955, to Switzerland where she studied with Friedrich Gulda. Later she was a pupil of the legendary Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, of Stefan Askenase and Nikita Magaloff. In 1957 she won the Busoni Competition in Bolzano and the Geneva Piano Competition within a few weeks and her career as a professional pianist received a major boost. His first recordings of some masterpieces such as Prokofiev’s Toccata Op. 11 and Liszt’s sixth Hungarian Rhapsody, performed live in 1957 in Bolzano and Geneva, remain milestones for these works.

Argerich literally bursts into the musical world in 1965 in Warsaw, obtaining the first prize at the Frédéric Chopin International Piano Competition. In the same year she recorded works by Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Maurice Ravel, Prokofiev and Liszt. A few years later she recorded the Sonata n. 3 Chopin’s Op. 58, the Polonaise Op. 53 and other short compositions. You possess an extraordinary technique and invite you to compare yourself with Vladimir Horowitz, especially as regards the octaves, the control of the attack of the fret and the elasticity and fluidity of the articulation and of the repeated notes.

Since the early years of her career he has also accompanied other instrumentalists, in sonatas or chamber music. She is particularly famous for the engravings of 20th century masterpieces by composers such as Sergej Rachmaninov, Olivier Messiaen and Sergei Prokofiev; his recording of Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto and Tchaikovsky’s first is memorable. Endowed with a vast and articulated discography, she has also worked with some of the most important conductors of recent decades such as Claudio Abbado, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Riccardo Chailly.

Together with the one of Martha Argerich, the Sunday concert marks two other great returns to the Maggio: the maestro Charles Dutoit, absent from the program of the Maggio since February 1987, and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, which returns to the stage Florentine after the concert in May 2002, conducted on that occasion by Maestro Marek Janowski.
Charles Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his broad musical education includes studies in the history of music, composition, violin, viola, piano and percussion at the conservatories of Geneva, Siena, Venice and Boston. Recently appointed Principal Conductor and Music Consultant of the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Dutoit regularly collaborates with the best soloists and orchestras in the world. Renowned for his refined interpretations of a broad and eclectic repertoire of musical styles, Charles Dutoit, since his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980, has been invited each season to conduct the other major orchestras in the United States; those of Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. He has performed regularly with the most important orchestras in Europe, including the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, as well as with the London and leading orchestras of Japan, South America and Australia. He has made many recordings with American, European and Japanese orchestras for various record companies (Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS, Erato). His more than one hundred and seventy recordings, half of which with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, have won more than forty awards and honors worldwide. For twenty-five years, from 1977 to 2002, Charles Dutoit was Artistic Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, a vibrant, globally recognized musical collaboration.

The Monte-Carlo Orchestra was founded in 1856 and was called “Orchester du Nouveau Cercle des Etrangers”, then in 1958 “Orchester National de l’Opéra de Monte-Carlo”, and since 1980 “Orchester Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo” . It occupies a prominent place in the international musical world. Thanks to its ability to combine tradition and modernity, it has always played a leading role in the interpretation of symphonic works from the great repertoire, in the revival of rare and contemporary works and in lyrical creation. and choreography. Since the end of the nineteenth century the number of “world premieres” made in Monte-Carlo has been enormous, passing through great composers such as Massenet, Puccini, Ravel, Mascagni, Fauré, Franck, Honegger, Ibert, Lalo, Milhaud, Poulenc and Satie. Contemporary music has also always been present in the seasons of the Philharmonic, with Henze, Dutilleux, Pärt, Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Holliger, Ligeti, Takemitsu, Eötvös, Amy, Mainz and Hurel. he history was directed by the most important masters of all time such as Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Dimitri Mitropulos, Leopold Stokowski and Leonard Bernstein.