Marked by the great symphonic tradition of 19th Century, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia opens 2026 season of the Concerti del Lingotto series on Friday, January 9th at Auditorium Giovanni Agnelli with the double debut at Lingotto of conductor Manfred Honeck and pianist Simon Trpčeski. The evening’s program centers on the great Piano Concerto No. 1 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, preceded by the Overture from Oberon by Carl Maria von Weber and followed by Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major.
Founded in 1908, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia was the first Italian ensemble to devote itself exclusively to the symphonic repertoire. It has worked with some of the greatest interpreters of the twentieth century and our own time—from Mahler, Strauss, and Stravinsky to Toscanini, Furtwängler, Karajan, Bernstein, and Abbado—and today it is a regular guest in the world’s leading concert halls.
After beginning his career in Vienna as Claudio Abbado’s assistant, Manfred Honeck has established himself as one of the most authoritative figures on the international music scene, building a distinguished career that has led him to collaborate with major European and American orchestras. Since 2008 he has served as Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, with which he has produced a highly acclaimed, award-winning discography.
The soloist of the evening is Simon Trpčeski, the Macedonian pianist who came to prominence as a BBC “New Generation Artist” from 2001 to 2003. Since then, he has collaborated with more than 100 orchestras across four continents—including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—conducted by interpreters such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Gustavo Dudamel, and Sir Antonio Pappano.
The program illustrates three faces of the long 19th Century, through an ideal journey from Germany to Russia, via Central Europe. Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon Overture reflects the Romantic fascination with fantasy and folklore, putting into symphonic form the fairy-tale characters and atmospheres of the opera from which it is drawn. Born of a long and complex compositional process, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 combines immediate expressive power with Lisztian virtuosity, while Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8—known as the “English” Symphony because of its success in London—is deeply inspired by the Bohemian folk tradition.