Saturday, 1st June 2024 at 8pm in the Mehta Hall. 

The Orchestra della Toscana, guest in the 86th Maggio Musicale Festival.

Riccardo Bisatti on the podium to conduct the concert with compositions by Ferruccio Busoni, Gustav  Mahler, Charles Ives and Pëtr Il'ič Čajkovskij. 

Violin: Simon Zhu.

Florence, May 28th 2024 – The collaboration between the Teatro del Maggio and the Orchestra della Toscana is renewed: on the podium of the Zubin Mehta Hall, on Saturday, June 1st, 2024 at 8 pm the maestro Riccardo Bisatti, who returns to the podium of the Maggio after the highly acclaimed concert for the youngest of the "C'è musica & musica" cycle last December.

Riccardo Bisatti therefore joins the group of young and talented conductors - such as Nikolas Nägele, Hankyeol Yoon and Min Chung - who, starting from the beginning of the last Autumn Season, debuted, with great success, on the podium of the Maggio: maestro Bisatti , after specializing at the "Verdi Conservatory" in Milan, he participated in important international competitions, winning numerous prizes including the "Prize of excellence at the VII Concours international de piano junior in Orléans", the "Premio Serbian National Theater - Novi Sad" at the IX “Luigi Mancinelli” International Competition for Opera Conductors and the First Prize (Orchestra Conducting Section) of the Italian “Premio delle Arti”. Bisatti will also direct the next performances of Il barbiere di Siviglia – directed by Damiano Micheletto - scheduled for the summer and staged at the Cavea del Maggio on July 18th, 20th, 22nd and 24th 2024 at 9pm.

On the lecterns of the Orchestra della Toscana - with which the collaboration with the Maggio is happily renewed, after the concert held last October in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence - at the opening of the show Berceuse élégiaque op. 42 (BV 252a), which Ferruccio Busoni, a pianist recognized as one of the greatest of all time, an important composer, an original animator of European musical culture, and in particular that of the German language, composed in 1909 after the death of his mother, to whom the page is dedicated; follows Gustav Mahler's Blumine: originally titled "Little Serenade on the Rhine", reworked for small orchestra and renamed Blumine (i.e. "flowering") this simple and idyllic musical picture was the second movement of Mahlerian's First Symphony until 1894, to then be separated from the final version. The concert continues with a musical page 'far' from European tradition and uncommonly performed, namely the evocative The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives programmed to commemorate the one hundred and fifty years since the birth of the American composer. Without the typical characteristics of classical-romantic symphonism, this piece can be considered a starting point of new American music.

The concert ends with one of the most beautiful and beloved pages of the repertoire and with a finale of enthralling and pyrotechnic vitality: the Concerto for violin and orchestra in D major op. 35 by Pëtr Il'ič Čajkovskij. The great Russian composer began working on his only violin concerto in March 1878 in Clarens, on Lake Geneva, where his great friend and violinist Josif Kotek had invited him to spend a period of rest: it was completed by mid-April the orchestration of the piece, performed for the first time on 4 December of the same year.

On the violin, the protagonist alongside the ORT and maestro Bisatti during the performance of the Concerto for violin and orchestra is another young talent on the international scene, Simon Zhu, a contemporary of Bisatti, who is attracting international attention. After the first prize in 2016 at the 13th “Georg Philipp Telemann” Competition in Poznan, numerous other important awards came for him: the last one, last October, when he won the first prize at the prestigious “International Violin Competition Paganini Prize” 2023 in Genoa and the special prize for the best Paganini concert, as well as a series of important concert commitments. He made his debut at the Berlin Philharmonic in 2015; he has given concerts in Germany, England, France, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Switzerland and China, performing with renowned orchestras including the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and the Salzburg Chamber Soloists.