The fourth edition of Play It!, the concert series dedicated to the music of today presented by ORT – Orchestra della Toscana and directed by Giorgio Battistelli, will take place at the Teatro Verdi in Florence from 23 to 26 September.  

The four concerts, conducted by Daniele Rustioni, Francesco Lanzillotta, Luca Pfaff and Marco Angius, will include several world premieres commissioned by the Fondazione ORT, among them: Francesco Antonioni’s Nostro mare for orchestra, and Lorenzo Pagliei’s A.L.M.A. for cello and orchestra (soloist: Francesco Dillon) both on 24 September, and Claudio Ambrosini’s Morte di Caravaggio for bassoon and orchestra (soloist: Paolo Carlini) on 26 September. During the concert series Ambrosini will be awarded the 2015 Play It! prize for his contribution to music.

Also included in this edition will be the Italian premiere of Emanuele Casale’s 11 for ensemble and electronics. In addition, ORT will pay homage to past Play It! prize winners as Azio Corghi, whose …ite bellu ‘Rondeau’  for soprano and strings (with Laura Catrani) will be performed on 23 September and Giacomo Manzoni, whose piece Allen for reader and chamber orchestra (actor: Riccardo Massai) will be performed on the 26th.

From 8 to 12 September, the MITO SettembreMusica Festival will dedicate a portrait of four concerts to Luca Francesconi. The program will be made up of a number of the composer’s most representative compositions for orchestra and ensemble.

The Orchestra della Toscana, conducted by Francesco Lanzillotta, will perform the world premiere of Francesco Antonioni’s Nostro mare, five short scenes for small orchestra, on 24 September. The performance will take place at the Teatro Verdi in Florence as part of the fourth edition of the Play It! Festival.

On February 8, Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists will perform the world premiere of Silvia Colasanti’s Preludio, Presto e Lamento in Foligno, Italy.

10 years ago, Pierre Boulez premiered Dai Fujikura’s Stream State with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra. To celebrate this anniversary, the full recording is now available as an audio stream.

The critical edition of Gioachino Rossini’s La gazzetta, a comic opera in 2 acts on a libretto by Giuseppe Palomba, goes on stage this summer at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro (11, 14, 17 and 20 August). The Orchestra and Choir of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna will be conducted by Enrique Mazzola and directed by Marco Carniti. Performed for the first time in 2001 at the ROF and then revived there in 2005, Stefano Scipioni and Philip Gossett’s critical edition returns to the Rossini Festival after being performed in cities like Barcelona, Liege, London and Boston. We asked Enrique Mazzola to talk to us about this opera and his relationship with the world of Rossini.

We are pleased to announce that as of July 1 Ricordi London, part of Universal Music Publishing Classical, has signed Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo. We will represent his entire existing catalog as well as all future works.

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In the spring of 2011, Susanna Mälkki, undertook the daunting task of taking up the baton at the Teatro alla Scala to conduct the world premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Quartett, an opera in 13 scenes, based on the play of the same name by Heiner Müller, drawn from Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses. Driven by a keen interest in the music of today, she spoke to us on a sunny afternoon in Chicago about Quartett and the music of Luca Francesconi.

"Triumphal" (FAZ), "a big, brash, brilliant showpiece, continuing in the raucous line of Strawinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Varèse’s Amériques" (New York Times) - find out more about Olga Neuwirth’s orchestral work Masaot/Clocks without Hands.