On the podium of the Autumn Trilogy, Riccardo Muti has just concluded Ravenna Festival 2023…and on the podium of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Riccardo Muti will open the Festival’s 35th edition. On Saturday 11 May in the Pala De André, the Maestro will again conduct the legendary Viennese ensemble in little big Ravenna, for the special opening concert of the 2024 Festival, whose full programme will be revealed on Saturday 24 February. On the strength of a bond cultivated over more than fifty years of memorable concerts in Vienna and Salzburg, world tours and precious recordings, Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic will perform Mozart’s Symphony No. 35, known as “Haffner”, and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, known as “The Great”. The first participation of the Vienna Philharmonic to the Ravenna Festival dates back to 1992 and, over the years, it has enriched the programme with unforgettable events, such as the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy. The concert in May will be its twelfth visit to the Byzantine city (the eleventh was in 2021, the year in which they celebrated the 50th anniversary of their association with Muti) and the first of only three Italian stops on the tour – Florence and Bari will follow. Pre-sales for the concert open on Thursday 11 January, at the Ticket Office of the Alighieri Theatre, also by phone +39 0544 249244 and online ravennafestival.org.
The concert is the new chapter in a story that sees the Vienna Philharmonic among the most recurring foreign guest orchestras at the Ravenna Festival, in the name of their long-standing friendship in music with Riccardo Muti: an accord of style, a communion of intentions and civilisation that delight the audience and contribute to the transmission of Europe’s musical heritage, which owes so much to countries such as Italy and Austria. It is precisely that heritage that is distilled in the concert programme, which navigates between Mozart and Schubert. The former’s sparkling, euphoric Symphony No. 35 in D major ‘Haffner’ K. 385 originated as a Serenade from a commission from a Salzburg family – the Haffners – when the composer had already moved to Vienna after his break with the Archbishop of Salzburg. Just a few months after the commission was completed, Mozart had his father Leopold send him the score of the Serenade and turned it into a Symphony; the new composition was presented at the Burgtheater in Vienna in March 1783.
When he wrote the Symphony No. 9 in C major, Franz Schubert had already been considering for some time (he had confided this to his friend Kupelweiser in a letter) to return to composing a symphonic work of grand proportions after abandoning his Symphony No. 8. However, ‘The Great’ was rejected by the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna because it was judged too long and difficult; it was Robert Schumann who found it among the papers of the composer’s brother and obtained its performance led by Felix Mendelssohn in the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1839. Although extremely personal, studded with thematic gems such as only the liederist Schubert could imagine, it quotes the Ode to Joy in the last movement, in homage to Beethoven. Thus the concert in Ravenna is also an ideal continuation of the appointments that the Vienna Philharmonic and Muti will dedicate to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, on the occasion of the bicentenary of its first performance, in the days immediately preceding their arrival in Italy.
Tickets from 30 to 130 Euro (discounted tickets from 27 to 120 Euro)
Discounted rates for Ravenna Festival 2023 carnet holders from 23 to 100 Euro
