Opera-symphonic season in Sassari, first concert with Massimo Quarta next Wednesday

Sassari. The 2024 symphony season of the Marialisa de Carolis Concert Authority will begin next Wednesday 24 April at the Teatro Comunale of Sassari. However, the scheduled concert with Uto Ughi will not open the bill. The famous Milanese violinist will not be able to be present as announced: health reasons force him to postpone the event in Sassari until October 13th. «I am deeply sorry to have to postpone this concert, which I was very keen on – explains Uto Ughi in a note –, but I am sure that the public will understand and will be happy to attend a new project next October, which I am working on in this period which involves the newly formed “Ughi Foundation” and which I decided to bring to Sassari. For now I can tell you that it is a wide-ranging work, designed for those who love music, created to arouse curiosity and involve the new generations too.”

In Ughi’s place, on the Comunale stage, there will be the violinist and conductor Massimo Quarta, winner of the 1991 Paganini Prize in Genoa, the second Italian after Salvatore Accardo to win the prestigious award. Already in Sassari last year for a symphony concert dedicated entirely to Mendelssohn (Violin Concerto in E minor op.64 and Symphony in A major n.4 “Italiana”), Massimo Quarta was recently appointed principal guest conductor of the Concert Institute for the symphonic repertoire. Next Wednesday he will perform as soloist and director of the institution’s orchestra two very well-known compositions by Wolfgang Mozart, the Concerto for violin and orchestra n.5 in A major “Türkish” K219 and the famous Symphony in G minor n.40 K550, and Nicolò Paganini “I Palpiti” op.13 (Introduction and variations for violin and orchestra on the theme “Di tanto palpiti” from Gioacchino Rossini’s Tancredi). Quarta will return to the stage of the Comunale di Cappuccini on May 4th to conduct the institution’s orchestra in the planned program dedicated to the music of Piotr Ilic Tchaikovsky, with the Symphony in F minor n.4 op. 36 and the famous Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major op. 35.

The third appointment of the symphony season is scheduled for May 11th with the return to Sassari of Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, Arturo’s nephew, who will conduct the Concerto for piano and orchestra in A major n.23 K 488 by Wolfgang Amade’ Mozart and one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s masterpieces, the Symphony in C minor n.5 op.67. On the stage of the Comunale the pianist Leonora Armellini, very young winner in 2020 of the “Janina Nawrocka Prize” at the Fryderyk Chopin International Piano Competition, in which in 2021 she then placed fifth.

The symphony season includes two other events, scheduled for next October. One will be on October 13th, with the aforementioned project by Uto Ughi, the other on October 19th with the return of the director Daniele Agiman in a concert that will see the artists of the SIAA Foundation (Sic itur ad astra) on the stage of the Teatro Comunale, with based in Liechtenstein which, as a non-profit, supports young people from the beginning of their careers by introducing them to the profession. Sassari has been chosen among the locations for 2024.

Created thanks to the contribution of the Ministry of Culture, the Sardinia Region, the Municipality of Sassari and the Sardinia Foundation, the program of this year’s opera-symphonic season also includes opera events. On June 28th (and a repeat on the 30th) “the great summer opera” will return with the world premiere of the Italian version of the opera “False betrayal” by Marco Tutino. While on July 12th in Piazza d’Italia it will be the turn of an adaptation of Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece “Otello”. The traditional autumn season will return with Tosca (1-3-5 November), Werther (29 November – 1 December) and “La bohème” (18-20-22 December).

LF