Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Founded in Rome in 1908, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia was the first Italian orchestra to dedicate itself exclusively to the symphonic repertoire and has consequently given the premiere performances of numerous 20th-century masterpieces, including works by Ottorino Respighi, Hans Werner Henze, Arvo Pärt, Salvatore Sciarrino and Péter Eötvös. With eminent names such as Mahler, Debussy, Strauss, Toscanini, Furtwängler and Karajan among its past conductors, the orchestra will be led on this occasion by the British conductor Daniel Harding, the winner of a Grammy Award in 2009, who became its new music director in October 2024. The soloist will be the Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, Gramophone’s Artist of the Year in 2004, whose repertoire runs from the Baroque to the 20th century. The evening will begin with the overture to Giuseppe Verdi’s »cursed« opera La forza del destino. This will be followed by the song cycle Folk Songs by the avant-garde composer Luciano Berio, consisting of arrangements of traditional music from the United States of America, Armenia, France, Italy and Azerbaijan. The concert will resume after the interval with Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms, which in contrast to the composer’s first symphony radiates warmth and melodiousness, interspersed with melancholy. While Brahms took 21 years to complete his first symphony, he composed the second in the summer of 1877 while staying in the Austrian province of Carinthia.