Riccardo Muti
Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Symphony No. 4 in A major “Italian”, Op. 90 (MWV N 16)
Giuseppe Verdi
I vespri siciliani Sinfonia
Fate knocking at the door: probably the most famous opening motif in the history of music. This is what Muti chooses to begin one of the most eagerly awaited and ‘popular’ of the Festival’s concerts from the rostrum of ‘his’ young and constantly renewed orchestra. This unmistakable, abrupt introduction is underlined by the sweetness of the second theme, before dissolving into the rest of the symphony: the Fifth par excellence. The tone of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, on the other hand, is quite different – “it is the most cheerful piece I have ever written, especially the last movement”, the composer wrote in a letter from Rome in 1831. A rhythmic and fatalistic style re-emerges, albeit in a completely different form, in the brilliant and passionate symphony with which, at the Paris Opera, Verdi introduced the expressive atmosphere of The Sicilian Vespers, and, inevitably, the impetuosity of the Italian Risorgimento.
