On Tuesday, November 12th at 8:30 PM at the Giovanni Agnelli Auditorium

From France to the atmospheres of Broadway musicals. The second appointment of the Concerti del Lingotto Series, dedicated to the early 20th century French and American music scene, will take place on Tuesday, November 12th at 8:30 PM at the Giovanni Agnelli Auditorium. The charismatic Italian-British conductor Sir Antonio Pappano will lead the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, a forty-year-old ensemble among the most appreciated in the world, bringing together musicians from all over Europe. A long-awaited return for Pappano and the COE, who, absent from the season since 2018, return to Lingotto in the penultimate Italian stop of a European tour that will also touch France and Germany. Protagonists of an effervescent evening in the shadow of New York skyscrapers, celebrating the influence of jazz on classical music, they will perform Milhaud’s ballet La création du monde and Bernstein’s Fancy Free, alongside Gershwin’s Variations on “I Got Rhythm.” The highlight of the program is Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2, entrusted to the luminous pianism of Bertrand Chamayou, a five-time winner of the French “Victoires de la Musique” award and already a guest at Lingotto Musica in 2016.

The return of the Italian-British conductor Sir Antonio Pappano and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe after six years

Sought after by the world’s major theaters and concert halls and boasting a formidable career, Sir Antonio Pappano is Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and was Music Director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden from 2002 to 2024. He is also Conductor Emeritus of the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, where he was Music Director from 2005 to 2023. Among the most sought-after opera conductors, he has collaborated with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Vienna and Berlin State Operas, the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and La Scala in Milan. His award-winning discography (Classic BRIT, ECHO Klassik, BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone Awards) includes collaborations with the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, the London Symphony and the Berliner Philharmoniker, as well as with the ensembles of the Royal Opera House and the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, ranging from Pergolesi and Mendelssohn to the avant-garde of Panufnik, Boesmans and Maxwell Davies. His awards include: “Artist of the Year” for Gramophone magazine (2000), Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera (2003), Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award (2004), Bruno Walter Prize from the Académie du Disque Lyrique in Paris.

Since 2016, Pappano has maintained a close relationship with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, founded in 1981 by a group of young musicians who met in the European Community Youth Orchestra (now EUYO). Claudio Abbado was an important mentor in the early years of the ensemble: he led the COE in works such as Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims and Il barbiere di Siviglia or Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni and conducted various concerts, especially of works by Schubert and Brahms. Nikolaus Harnoncourt also had a great influence on the development of the COE thanks to his interpretations of all of Beethoven’s Symphonies and opera productions at the Salzburg, Vienna and Styriarte Festivals. Currently, the ensemble is pursuing intense collaborations with Sir András Schiff and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, both honorary members in the wake of Bernard Haitink and Harnoncourt. The COE is also a frequent guest at the Berlin, Cologne, Luxembourg and Paris Philharmonics, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Alte Oper Frankfurt. Since 2022, it has been the Orchestra in residence at the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt and, with over 250 recordings, has received numerous awards, including two Grammys and three Gramophone Awards.

A Frenchman in New York: Milhaud’s ballet La création du monde

The evening opens with the sparkling ballet La création du monde, Op. 81a composed by Darius Milhaud in 1922 after visiting New York and being captivated by the jazz and spirituals of African Americans in Harlem. First performed by the Swedish Ballet of Rolf de Maré at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1923, it is a product of the fertile collaboration between the artists of the Parisian avant-garde during those unique and exuberant years: the subject, based on the creation of the world as narrated in an African legend, is in fact due to the pen of Blaise Cendrars while Fernand Léger painted the scenes for the premiere.

Bertrand Chamayou’s luminous pianism in Saint-Saëns’ Second Concerto

Following is the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22, written by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1868 to fulfill a request from Anton Rubinstein, a virtuoso with directorial ambitions who wished to present himself in this role to the Parisian public. Saint-Saëns composed the work in three weeks but, as the soloist at the keyboard in the premiere at Salle Pleyel, he did not achieve the hoped-for success. He had very little time to study and he himself had to admit his poor preparation. However, within a short time, the piece became famous, thanks also to the admiration of Liszt.

Performing the piece is Bertrand Chamayou, a specialist in French music who includes in his repertoire the complete piano works of Ravel, Liszt’s Études and Années de pèlerinage, and Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus. A distinguished performer who demonstrates in his concerts a surprising mastery, imagination, and artistic approach, he also has a deep passion for contemporary music, thanks to collaborations with composers such as Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, György Kurtág, Thomas Adès, Bryce Dessner, and Michael Jarrell. Chamayou regularly performs in the most prestigious venues and festivals, from the Philharmonie de Paris to London’s Wigmore Hall, from the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, from Berlin’s Philharmonie to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, from the Lucerne Festival to the Salzburg Festival. He has numerous award-winning recordings to his credit, including that of Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concertos, which earned him the Gramophone Award in 2019. His latest albums, Letter(s) to Erik Satie (2023) and Cage² (2024), pay tribute to two unique, innovative, and influential composers like Erik Satie and John Cage. Since 2021 he has been co-artistic director of the Ravel Festival in the French Basque Country.

Gershwin, Bernstein, and the American Musical Renaissance

The program concludes with two symbols of the American renaissance: George Gershwin, who went from being a song-plugger in the most fashionable clubs in Manhattan to an acclaimed composer. We will hear his sparkling Variations on “I Got Rhythm” for piano and orchestra, included in his musical Girl Crazy, which conquered the Alvin Theater in New York in 1930 with its swinging rhythm; and Leonard Bernstein who, at just over twenty years old, with his first ballet Fancy Free, choreographed by Jerome Robbins and staged at the Metropolitan in 1944, was catapulted to fame. Set in a bar in the Big Apple during wartime, the story tells the adventures of three sailors on shore leave, between drinks, quarrels, and fights. The ballet was adapted into the successful musical On the Town, and part of the music was also used for the opening scenes of Hitchcock’s Rear Window.