Fabio Luisi Helms Top European Orchestras and Makes London Symphony Orchestra Debut

This month, Grammy Award-winning conductor Fabio Luisi begins a series of guest-conducting engagements with Europe’s top orchestras. Following successful presentations of Madama Butterfly and La Cenerentola –Joyce DiDonato’s long-awaited company title role debut – at the Metropolitan Opera, where he is in his third season as Principal Conductor, Luisi departs for Europe to helm Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (May 15–18), Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (May 31–June 3), and the London Symphony Orchestra (June 19 & 22), where he will make his own hotly anticipated debut. Luisi will then conduct the last program of his season with the Philharmonia Zurich, where he serves as the General Music Director.

For his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall, Luisi leads the famed British orchestra in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8. Bruckner’s technically challenging last symphony, sometimes called The Apocalyptic, presents an opportunity for Luisi to showcase his “lithe, crisp conducting” (New York Times). Also on the program is Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, K. 488, with French pianist Lise de la Salle as soloist (June 19 & 22). He and De la Salle are frequent musical partners; she is his current Artist-in-Residence at the Philharmonia Zurich, where they recently impressed the Neuer Zürcher Zeitung with their “intelligent structural awareness. She took her time, the orchestra his, and between the two resulted in a flow of energy that sent a shiver down one’s spine.”

Luisi returns to Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for three performances of an all-French program comprising Saint-Saëns’s Third “Organ” Symphony, Honegger’s Rugby, and Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. It was with Saint-Saëns that he impressed Seen and Heard International with the “rich texture and fine sense of detail that is [his] calling card” (May 15-18). Then, back in his native Italy, the conductor leads programs of Richard Strauss, Schumann, and Bernhard Lang with Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (May 31–June 3), as well as an evening with the Filarmonica della Scala featuring works by Strauss and Saint-Saëns (June 9). 

Last season saw Luisi launch his tenure at the Philharmonia Zurich in a new, season-opening production of Jenufa that was pronounced “a triumph” (Seen and Heard International), followed by Tosca, La bohème, Rigoletto, La straniera, and Der Rosenkavalier. He also embarked upon a special initiative, programming and conducting an increasing number of orchestral concerts. For his final program of this season with the Philharmonia Zurich, Luisi reunites with De la Salle for Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto, paired with Beethoven’s exuberant Mass in C, as he and the orchestra draw their second season together to a close (July 6).

The former artistic director of the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Luisi returns to Japan in August to conduct Verdi’s Falstaff, in a revival of David Kneuss’s hit staging – dubbed “a Falstaff you want to have a beer with” (New York Times) – at the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto. The performance stars U.S. baritone Quinn Kelsey, who the Chicago Sun-Times called “the Verdi baritone we’ve been waiting for,” mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, and Richard Tucker Award-winning tenor Stephen Costello in his role debut as Fenton. Finally, next season finds Luisi back at the Cleveland Orchestra after this year’s critically acclaimed season-opening performance. The Cleveland Plain Dealer concluded: “Here was an artist of true distinction, an interpreter in possession of a bold, unique, and clearly discernible voice.”

A list of the conductor’s upcoming engagements follows, and more information is available at www.fabioluisi.net 

Fabio Luisi: Upcoming engagements

May 15, 16 & 18

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Honegger: Rugby 

Lalo: Symphonie espagnole 

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3

May 31; June 1 & 3

Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

June 9

Filarmonica della Scala

Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2 (with Lise de la Salle, piano)

R. Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie

June 19 & 22

London Symphony Orchestra

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23, K. 488 (with Lise de la Salle, piano)

July 6

Philharmonia Zurich

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 (with Lise de la Salle, piano)

Beethoven: Mass in C, Op. 84

Aug 20, 22, 24 & 26

Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto

Verdi: Falstaff