Viotti, Singverein / Schoenberg, Verdi

Lorenzo Viotti ranks among the great new international stars of the classical music scene. He is already highly decorated as a winner of the Young Conductors Award of the Salzburg Festival 2015, of the Eleventh International Conducting Competition of the Orchestra de Cadaqués, and the first-prize winner of the Conducting Competition of the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra. The charismatic Swiss conductor recently took over the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, and, at the age of only 29, he has just been appointed Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. He will take up this new position from the 2021-22 season. Since his debut in 2016, the son of the well-remembered Marcello Viotti has been working with the Wiener Symphoniker on a regular basis: After a first and highly praised common concert at the Vienna Musikverein concert hall in the last season presenting orchestral songs by Hans Pfitzner, the programme will now include Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night”, one of the composer’s most popular works, also described as a peak of late-romantic development. There, it will be combined with Verdi’s “Four Sacred Pieces”, the composer’s last great work. These recapitulate not only his compositions but also centuries-old traditions, particularly of Italian vocal music.