A Perfect Combination for an Extraordinary Project!

1 February 2018
WRITTEN BY
Mariafrancesca Latella

Mariafrancesca Latella

Musician

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Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Daniele Gatti, Schumann and Beethoven: a perfect combination for an extraordinary project!

January 20th, the rehearsal of this wonderful first tour of 2018 with Artistic Advisor Daniele Gatti is ready to start... Let’s go, destination Lucerne.

This city feels like home for MCO because of many appearances at the Lucerne Festival since 2003 as the heart of Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

At the same time Lucerne is very dear to me because I had the honor to be invited from Claudio Abbado to join the LFO.

There will be four concerts in this tour, the first in Lucerne, then Zurich, Geneva and Dortmund presented by Migros Kulturprozent Classics with a very exciting program: Schumann’s Genoveva Overture, Beethoven’s Symphony no. 4 and Schumann’s Symphony no. 3, also known as the Rhenish Symphony.

While I was traveling by train from Como to Lucerne, crossing lake “Ceresio”, the alps and the “Vierwaldstättersee”, I was captured from the beauty of nature and it reminded me of my experiences with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.
I suddenly realized that day was the fourth anniversary since Claudio Abbado left us: the fact I was going back to Lucerne brought me back to many special moments I shared in the past here.


This tour marks my first collaboration with Daniele Gatti.
During the first reading of Schumann’s Symphony no.3 I was surprised how he established a perfect contact with the orchestra: music lines were matching and musical phrases were flowing.
What a great conductor and artist, so elegant, with a charismatic personality and sense of humor!
We had two days of very efficient rehearsals and between the conductor and the orchestra it feels like there was a great musical understanding and trust.

January 23rd, the day of the first concert has arrived.
There was a lot of waiting in the backstage of KKL and adrenaline.
From the first notes of the Genoveva Overture all the orchestra in a single breath dialogued with the conductor: it is very difficult in words to describe the beautiful feelings and happiness we had on stage!

Our tour continues.

We left Lucerne on a sunny morning to get to our next destinations: the new concert hall of Tonhalle in Zurich, Victoria Hall in Geneva and Konzerthaus in Dortmund.

The following concerts were great successes, all of them signed by a very warm and enthusiastic audience who made these concerts really special.

Thank you to everybody for playing such brilliant concerts, it was a really privilege for me to take part in this unforgettable experience!


Photos: Geoffroy Schied

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