On Friday 9 September 2022 at 8 pm, the conductor emeritus of the Maggio maestro Zubin Mehta returns to the podium of the Sala Grande in Maggio for the last concert of the Beethoven Cycle. The concert, recovered from 05/12/2020 then moved to 04/01/2022, features the last two symphonies composed by Ludwig van Beethoven; soloists in the Ninth Symphony, Mandy Fredrich, Marie-Claude Chappuis, AJ Glueckert and Tareq Nazmi.

Florence, 7 September 2022 – A few weeks after his last two concerts which closed the last 84th Festival of the Maggio Fiorentino, and just returned to Florence after concerts in Sydney and Melbourne with the Australian World Orchestra in early September, the conductor emeritus Zubin Mehta returns to the podium of his Theater at the head of the Choir and the Orchestra del Maggio for the third symphonic appointment of the new season, which finally recovers the long waited last appointment of the Beethoven Cycle: the concert recovers the originally scheduled date for 05/12/2020 and then moved to 04/01/2022. On the lecterns of the Orchestra the last two symphonic compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven: the 8th symphony, written in the summer months of 1812 and presented for the first time in Vienna in 1814 and the famous 9th symphony, by far one of the best known musical pieces of all time and that had a gestation period of more than ten years. Both symphonies have been addressed in the course of his career countless times by the master Mehta who made the production of the genius from Bonn one of the spearheads of his symphonic repertoire, becoming one of the most authoritative and acclaimed interpreters in the world.
On this occasion, as well as in the previous events of the Beehtoven Cycle, the concert will be recorded and then finally recorded on a disc, the next release from the rich collection of the Maggio on CD. There are also numerous recordings of the two symphonies performed by Zubin Mehta over the years, among which the one recorded together with the New York Philarmonic and the one together with the Israel Philarmonic stand out.

Alongside Maestro Mehta an ensemble of soloists formed by Mandy Fredrich, Marie-Claude Chappuis and AJ Glueckert, who return to Maggio after the concert on July 13, also directed by Maestro Mehta in homage to the City of Florence and who were also protagonists of the two final stages of the May summer tour in Macerata, for the inauguration of the Macerata Opera Festival, and in Marbella for the first symphonic concert hosted in the renovated arena, and Tareq Nazmi, making his absolute debut on the Florentine scene.

The maestro of the Maggio Choir is Lorenzo Fratini.

Mandy Fredrich was artistically trained at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig and is a constant presence in the programming of the most important opera houses such as the Berlin Staatsoper, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan or the San Carlo in Naples. During his career he has also taken part in some of the most prestigious festivals, including the one in Salzburg where he made his debut in 2012. With a repertoire that embraces both lyrical and symphonic compositions, recently, in addition to the concert for Florence on the 13th last July, she performed together with maestro Zubin Mehta in the new year’s eve concert on December 31, 2021.

Marie-Claude Chappuis, who also returns to Maggio after the concert dedicated to the city of Florence in July, studied at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg and is already a name of great international importance: she has collaborated with some of the most prestigious festivals and opera houses in the world, as well as having worked with some of the greatest conductors such as René Jacobs, Riccardo Muti, John Eliot Gardiner and Riccardo Chailly.

AJ Glueckert made his debut in Maggio in the last concert at the end of the year and was among the protagonists of the recent and applauded Ariadne auf Naxos, penultimate opera title of the 84th Maggio Festival staged in June at the Teatro alla Pergola under the direction of Maestro Daniele Gatti and directed by Matthias Hartmann. In addition to being among the soloists in the performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Macerata and Marbella, Glueckert sang in the oratorio Oedipus Rex by Igor Stravinskij, directed by Daniele Gatti, performed last June as part of the 84th Festival. The American tenor is a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, has twice won the “Metropolitan Opera National Auditions” and his repertoire includes numerous composers including Puccini, Wagner and Donizetti.

Tareq Nazmi was artistically trained at the Bayerischen Staatsoper, where he was able to play some important roles such as Masetto in Don Giovanni, Colline in La Bohème and Truffaldino in Ariadne auf Naxos. He has also taken part several times in the Salzburg Festival and trod some of the most prestigious international stages such as the Metropolitan and the Theater an der Wien; Nazmi’s particularly varied concert repertoire ranges from Bach to Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, Mozart and Dvořák. He has worked with the Washington National Symphony Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach, the Orchester de Paris and Daniel Harding, performed in the Brahms Requiem in San Sebastian under the direction of Jukka-Pekka Saraste, and was a soloist in Mozart’s Requiem with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester led by Manfred Honeck in Berlin.

The program:

Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony n. 8 in F major op. 93
The composition of the Ova committed Beethoven in the summer months of 1812, a relative short time for him, even if the numerous sketches and sketches of the work return the measure of the meticulous work carried out by the composer to eliminate any superfluous tinsel from his new creation. After a first private performance in the residence of Archduke Rudolph, the Symphony n. 8 in F major op. 93 debuted in 1814 at the Burgtheater in Vienna without arousing, however, the usual enthusiasm of critics and audiences. Compared to the older sisters, that ‘little symphony’, as the author himself defined it, has in fact unusual characteristics: reduced dimensions let the listeners return, lightness of spirit and an apparent sound and dubious forms. Of the four movements, the most curious are undoubtedly the central ones. Between the opening Allegro and the jovial final Rondò Beethoven sets two surprising movements: an Allegretto instead of the fun of the Adagio, a fun that emphasizes more the joyful character of the work, and a Minuet in sort of the Scherzo, where the symphony deliberately retro dresses, pompously moving in step with the ancient dance.

Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony n. 9 in D minor for solos, choir and orchestra op. 125
Beethoven’s last symphonic creature, the Symphony n. 9 in D minor op. 125 “Corale” marked a point of no return in the history of music; after the Ninth, no composer was able to try his hand at the genre without having to deal with that unsurpassed model of art bequeathed by the Maestro from Bonn. The genesis of Beethoven’s last symphony from afar, ever since, in 1793, the author expressed the desire to be part of the desire to set Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy to music. The message of freedom and brotherhood contained in the verses of the ode settled in the mind of the young composer so much so that in 1795 he composed a lied, Gegenliebe, in which the melody appears in the embryonic state which would later take final form in the Hymn to the joy of Symphony n. 9. Even more evident analogies are found years later in the Choral Fantasy op. 80, a preparatory laboratory of the Ninth Symphony to which Beethoven devoted himself to composition from 1822 to the first months of 1824. The sort – at the Theater an der Wien on 7 May 1824 – was preceded by exhausting rehearsals, made even more difficult by the fact that a conducting was Beethoven himself, now completely deaf and no longer able to govern the orchestra. However, this did not affect the success of his latest symphony, which was immediately hailed as an absolute masterpiece. As a litmus paper, Symphony No. 9 summarizes in fact all the musical achievements matured over the years by Beethoven: from the freedom of form – with the fourth movement in which for the first time in the symphonic setting instrumental music gives way to the human voice – to the masterful use of variation and counterpoint , from the thematic affinities that run after each other in the work, giving a sense of cyclicality and unity to the score, up to the universal message of brotherhood sung by the soloists and the choir in the final movement.