Aziz Shokhakimov conducts the Maggio Orchestra and Women’s Chorus on Thursday 15 October

Thursday 15 October at 8 pm, in the Sala Mehta, Aziz Shokhakimov takes the podium to conduct the Orchestra and Women’s Chorus of the Maggio.

The programme features Ludwig van Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, followed by Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets.

Pianist Alexandra Dovgan appears as soloist.

Florence, 12 October 2026 – On Thursday 15 October at 8 pm, in the Sala Mehta at the Teatro del Maggio, Aziz Shokhakimov makes his debut conducting the Orchestra and Women’s Chorus of the Maggio.

Alexandra Dovgan, who is also making her Maggio debut, appears as piano soloist. The Chorus Master is Lorenzo Fratini.

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1988, Aziz Shokhakimov has been Music and Artistic Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg since 2021. He embarked on his conducting career at a remarkably young age: at thirteen, he made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, and the following year he conducted his first opera, Bizet’s Carmen.

In 2010, he won second prize at the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg. In 2016, he received the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival and subsequently won the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition.

Since then, he has regularly conducted leading international orchestras, including the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Oregon, Pacific and Houston Symphony Orchestras and the Rai National Symphony Orchestra in Turin. His engagements have also included the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano.

In 2024, his recordings of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 and Suites Nos. 1 and 2 from Romeo and Juliet were released, following his 2023 recording of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. In May 2025, marking the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth, he released a complete recording of the ballet score Daphnis et Chloé, which received widespread critical acclaim.

Also active in the operatic repertoire, Shokhakimov served as Kapellmeister at Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 2015 to 2021. His debut at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino marks a new milestone in his international artistic career.

Born in 2007 into a family of musicians, Alexandra Dovgan began studying piano at the age of four and a half. At just five, she was admitted to the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory, where she studied with Mira Marchenko.

In 2018, at the age of ten, she won the Grand Prix at the Grand Piano Competition for young pianists, attracting the attention of audiences and music professionals alike. Since then, she has embarked on an international career, performing at some of Europe’s most prestigious concert venues, including the Berlin Philharmonie, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. She has also collaborated with conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Paavo Järvi and Trevor Pinnock.

Her playing is distinguished by its interpretative depth, natural expressiveness and exceptional tonal quality, combined with remarkable musical insight. At the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Alexandra Dovgan makes her debut with an international career already firmly established.

The symphonic evening opens with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Op. 84, composed for performances of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play of the same name. Commissioned by Vienna’s Imperial Theatre, the work was inspired above all by Beethoven’s profound interest in Goethe’s drama.

The play tells the story of Count Egmont, who was beheaded by the Spanish in Brussels in 1568. He sacrificed his life in a powerful expression of his devotion to his Dutch homeland, during the repression carried out by the Duke of Alba on behalf of the Spanish Crown.

The programme continues with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15, featuring Alexandra Dovgan as soloist. Completed in 1798 and published in March 1801 by the Viennese publisher Mollo, the concerto was dedicated to one of Beethoven’s young pupils, Anna Luisa Barbara von Keglevich, known as “Babette”. The composer had recently dedicated to her another work, the Piano Sonata in E-flat major, composed in 1797.

The concert concludes with the work that gives the evening its title: Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Op. 32. Composed between 1914 and 1917, this orchestral suite calls for a large ensemble and consists of seven movements, each devoted to a planet and its corresponding astrological character: “Mars, the Bringer of War”; “Venus, the Bringer of Peace”; “Mercury, the Winged Messenger”; “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity”; “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age”; “Uranus, the Magician”; and “Neptune, the Mystic”.