One of the greatest conductors of our times, former musical guide of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Simon Rattle makes his debut at 9pm this evening at the Ravenna Festival. Appointment at the Pala De André, where Rattle will be on the podium of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the group founded in 1981 by Claudio Abbado, from which Rattle himself had collected the prestigious Berliner podium in 2002.
With the British director, appointed baronet by Queen Elizabeth, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená also made her debut in Ravenna. The evening’s programme, particularly varied and heterogeneous, is built on the alternation between rarely heard pages and great pillars of the repertoire: a journey into the heart of Central Europe which will take Simon Rattle from Bohemia to Austria and Hungary, which will be crossed on the ridge that separates the nineteenth and twentieth centuries both in the great classical structures of the symphony and in popular song revisited for voice and orchestra. By the Bohemian Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) we will hear the rare ‘Scherzo capriccioso’ from 1883, characterized by a more dramatic and aggressive style compared to the proverbially carefree and country atmospheres of this author. We will then move on to the ‘Rückert lieder’ that Gustav Mahler composed from 1901 to 1904, taking inspiration from the poems of the ‘Kindertotenlieder’ cycle by Friedrich Rückert, a reflection on the fleeting nature of life in an attempt to mourn the death of his children. The ‘Five Hungarian folk songs’ by Béla Bartók are instead the most sophisticated example of adaptation of folk songs ever made by the Hungarian composer (of particular note is the first song, ‘”In prison’). The journey ends with the great architecture of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, a masterpiece with a bumpy genesis, rediscovered by Schumann almost ten years after the composer’s death in 1828 in Vienna.
Tickets: from 15 to 65 euros (reduced from 12 to 55), ‘Young people at the Festival’: under 18, 5 euros; National Youth Card (18-35 years): 50% discount. Info and advance sales: 0544-249244, www.ravennafestival.org. Free shuttle to the concert with two departures from the station (19.40 and 20.20) and return; in the outdoor area next to the Danteum, the Mercato Coperto bar is open.
