On Thursday, June 5th at 8 pm, Maestro Thomas Guggeis will be on the podium of the Sala Mehta for the first time, leading the Orchestra del Maggio, for a symphonic event of the Maggio Festival.

The program includes the Symphony in C major K. 551, “Jupiter”, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Symphony no. 5 by Sergej Prokof’ev.

The concert will be broadcast on Rai Radio 3

Florence, June 3rd, 2025 – The rich symphonic program of the 87th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival continues: on Thursday, June 5th at 8:00 pm, in the Zubin Mehta Hall, Maestro Thomas Guggeis will make his debut at the helm of the Maggio Orchestra.

Maestro Guggeis, for the first time a protagonist on the Maggio podium, after studying in Munich and Milan was Staatskapellmeister at the Berlin State Opera and First Kapellmeister at the Stuttgart State Opera. Student of Daniel Barenboim, he has collaborated with important orchestras such as the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Munich Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Milan Symphony Orchestra and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra.

Over the past few seasons he has been a guest conductor at the Teatro alla Scala in Giorgio Strehler's historic production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, at the Metropolitan Opera with Der fliegende Holländer and at the Vienna State Opera with Die tote Stadt, Salomè, La Traviata and Falstaff.

The evening opens with one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's most beloved compositions, the Symphony in C major K. 551, known as Jupiter: the last symphonic act in the life of the genius from Salzburg, it was composed during the summer of 1788, at a time in his life saddened by the lack of money and above all by the death of his very young daughter Theresia. During these months he wrote the three Symphonies that would be his last, born amid bitterness but also drawing on a mysterious and inexhaustible fund of musical joy. The Symphony K. 551, whose nickname of Jupiter was perhaps suggested by the London impresario Johann Salomon, is a sort of apotheosis of the dialectical principles of the sonata form, extended to each of the four movements and yet innervated by a use of counterpoint capable of opening up new expressive horizons: the grandiose final fugue, for example, stands at the top as the masterpiece of the classical style in its most mature season.

Next comes Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, op. 100 by Sergej Prokof’ev: it was written in one go, in just one month; the composer usually wrote the score on two staves so that it could be played on the piano; he then devoted himself to the instrumentation, even though he had already added indications to this effect to the already written score. Prokofiev himself declared that he conceived the symphony as "…A hymn to the free and happy Man, to his powerful forces and to his pure and noble spirit".