See you in Siena for the Accademia Chigiana Festival

As the festival season gets into full swing, classical music – and chamber music in particular – takes centre stage. In Siena and the surrounding area, the 12th Accademia Chigiana Festival is set to begin, continuing the decades-long tradition of the Settimana Musicale Senese. In Lecce, pianist Beatrice Rana launched a wonderful festival dedicated to chamber music ten years ago, called ‘Classicha Forme’. In Verbier, in the Swiss canton of Valais, the renowned festival welcomes the stars, featuring both symphonic and chamber music.

The 12th edition of the Chigiana Festival and Summer Academy runs until 1 September. Over a hundred concerts spread across Siena and the most beautiful locations in the Sienese countryside and throughout Tuscany, in a programme spanning styles and eras – from Renaissance music to the great classical repertoire, from the historical avant-garde to electronic music, from opera and musical theatre productions to world premieres of new contemporary works, and an extraordinary focus on Hans Werner Henze, marking the centenary of his birth. | On 18 July, Piazza del Campo is transformed into a spectacular open-air stage for the ‘Concerto per l’Italia’: Daniel Harding conducts the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia with Stefano Bollani as soloist in Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. The programme opens with Ravel’s ‘Alborada del gracioso’, followed by Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’. Broadcast live on Rai Radio 3; on television on RAI 3 and available on RaiPlay. With a total of forty-one works on the programme, the Festival then presents one of the most extensive and comprehensive surveys ever dedicated to Henze: from his symphonic and choral works to his chamber music, right through to pieces for solo instruments, revealing the richness of a body of work characterised by a constant tension between formal innovation, expressiveness and social responsibility.

Siena Palazzo Chigi Saracini

From 19 to 26, the 10th edition of Classiche Forme, the chamber music festival founded and directed by pianist Beatrice Rana, will take place in the historic, monumental and natural settings of the city and the Salento region. The programme is rich and varied; alongside the classics, it features a tribute to Benjamin Britten on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, and two tributes to Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein. ‘Family Lexicon’ is the theme chosen for this first decade. The expression deliberately echoes Natalia Ginzburg’s famous novel, *Family Lexicon*, in which recurring words, shared phrases and idioms become the hallmark of a community. The same is true in music: there is a lexicon made up of sounds, gestures and shared breaths, passed down through generations, between teachers and pupils, between artistic and biological families, and amongst artists who, over time, build a shared language. Presenting established artists alongside emerging young talent has always been a hallmark of Classiche Forme. Ever since the very first edition, Beatrice Rana has helped to launch the careers of rising new talents at her festival, many of whom had never performed in Italia before, acting as a sort of talent scout – a role so vital to the world of art and culture today.