Florence, Teatro Verdi: Yutaka Sado for the first time on the podium at the ORT
FLORENCE – Wednesday 25 January at 9 pm at the Teatro Verdi in Florence grand debut with the Orchestra della Toscana (ORT) of Yutaka Sado, one of the greatest Japanese batons, acclaimed by critics as one of the most fascinating and charismatic conductors of his generation, former assistant by Seiji Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein; two cornerstones of the Viennese repertoire are on the program: the famous Symphony K.550 by Mozart (universally known as the “Fortieth”) and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in the arrangement by Klaus Simon. Sado is a “musical globetrotter”, a cosmopolitan who feels at home in many parts of the world and is considered a star in some. He signs autographs for the tourists who flock to him in front of the Vienna Musikverein; the degree of his popularity in Japan is exceptional, especially for his appearance as host in the weekly program Untitled Concert, awarded by Guinness World Records as “the longest-running classical music television program”. Born in Kyoto in 1961, he began his professional training as a conductor in the United States, assistant to Leonard Bernstein. He lived and worked in Vienna and after winning the “Grand Prix” at the 39th Besançon Competition, he moved to France, where he was principal conductor of the Orchester Lamoureux in Paris; in Italy he was principal guest conductor of the Filarmonica del Regio di Torino; he was recently appointed music director of the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. As artistic director of the Hyogo Performing Arts Center (HPAC) and HPAC’s resident orchestra, he has made the concert hall one of Japan’s premier concert halls.
Symphony No. 40 is the most famous and certainly the most dramatic of Mozart’s orchestral pages, tense and nervous in every fiber. Contemporaries recognized some distortions, in this as in the other two symphonies, but after his death the three extreme symphonies became objects of worship and still are today. Mahler’s symphonic debut is proposed, from 1889, inspired by an early romantic novel, The Titan by John Paul. But since the Malherian orchestra has truly titanic dimensions, in order to approach this score the ORT has to resort to the rewriting for a smaller number of performers edited in 2008 by Klaus Simon. The First Symphony already constitutes the initial chapter of the composer’s spiritual autobiography in music. Mahler’s world, with its uncertainties and its torments, its ecstasies and its despairs, undermines the architectures of the classical symphony and opens them to new perspectives, while being inspired by his romanticism and ideals. Klaus Simon’s adaptation takes place in respect of the musical and expressive meaning of the original: it is inspired, in fact, by the reductions that Arnold Schönberg proposed in the context of the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen, the musical association he created in Vienna, which had the main purpose was to make the music of his time known and more easily usable.
Tuesday 24 January 2023 at 21:00, Livorno, Teatro Goldoni
Wednesday 25 January 2023 at 21Florence, Verdi Theater (via Ghibellina 99)
Concert season 2022/23
Tuscany Orchestra – YUTAKA SADO conductor
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Symphony n.40 K.550
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No.1 ‘The Titan’ (chamber version by Klaus Simon)
Livorno Tickets from €5.00 to €10.00. On sale at the Teatro Goldoni Box Office (tel. 0586 204290 – [email protected]) open Tuesday and Thursday 10:00-13:00, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 16:30-19:30 and online at Ticketone. it