Programme: 
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
***
Maurice Ravel:
Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 1
Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2

This year’s summer festival will also be marked by the return of Riccardo Chailly, who appeared at the 61st Ljubljana Festival with the renowned Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. The world-renowned Italian conductor was formerly Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and led the Concertgebouworkest (Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra) for 16 years. He is currently Music Director of the Teatro alla Scala, the famous and historically important opera house in Milan, founded in 1778, and Principal Conductor of the Filarmonica della Scala (La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra). He regularly conducts major symphony orchestras and participates in international festivals. On this occasion, he will lead the Filarmonica della Scala in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64.  This work, inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven and Robert Schumann, is conceived in a cyclical manner, with a recurring main theme in all movements, and characterised by an absolute musical language, as it is free of non-musical allusions, unlike many of the composer’s works. Next, Chailly will conduct the orchestral suites Daphnis and Chloé  by Maurice Ravel, who is regarded as a master of orchestration. In this work, Ravel created entirely unique and novel orchestral colours by distorting familiar sounds, with the use of damping, unusual registers, and so on.

• Riccardo Chailly, born in Milan in 1953, studied at the conservatoires in Perugia, Rome and Milan and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana; he began his conducting career as assistant to Claudio Abbado at the Teatro della Scala in Milan
• as an opera conductor – in addition to his performances at La Scala – Riccardo Chailly has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London, the Opernhaus Zürich (Zurich Opera), Bayerische Staatsoper (Bavarian State Opera),  Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera), the Chicago Lyric Opera and the San Francisco Opera
• Riccardo Chailly has received numerous awards for his more than 150 recordings, including two Echo Klassik awards (2012 and 2015); Gramophone  magazine chose his account of the Brahms symphonies as Recording of the Year in 2014
• the name La Scala derives from the church of Santa Maria alla Scala, which once stood on the site now occupied by the homonymous theatre in Milan; this church was named after its founder, Beatrice Regina della Scala, a member of Verona’s noble Della Scala family
• together with the musicians of the Orchestra della Scala, Claudio Abbado established the Filarmonica della Scala on the model of the Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic) (whose musicians are drawn from the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera)) in order to develop a symphonic repertoire to add to La Scala’s operatic tradition