Sinfonica di Milano, Tjeknavorian's first season between Sostakovic and Piovano

Thirty-one symphonic productions flanked by as many collateral reviews and a varied artistic offer with performers of very different ages, origins, and repertoire, ranging from the youngest such as Diego Ceretta, Francesca Dego, and Kiron Atom to big names such as Thomas Hampson, Sergei Babayan, Xiang Zhang, Andrew Litton, John Axelrod, and Afred Eschwé. This is, broadly speaking, the 2024-2025 season of the Milan Symphony Orchestra.

It is the premiere of Emmanuel Tjeknavorian, 29, in the role of Music Director of the Milanese ensemble, a brilliant violinist, but a successful conductor already on the podium of some of the world's greatest symphony orchestras. In the Filarmonica della Scala's traditional free concert in Piazza Duomo scheduled on 9 June, in Piazza del Duomo, Riccardo Chailly wanted him as violin soloist. The Sinfonica's will be a season with a new slant 'that blends the familiarity and warmth of the best-loved classics', says Tjeknavorian, 'with the exciting discovery of some of the lesser-known works of the great composers we admire'.

There will be six appointments with chamber music, six for the 'Crescendo in musica' review, three for the 'POPs' review and two for the 'Musica&' review, with which symphonic music will dialogue from time to time with another discipline, from science to cinema. It opens on 15 September - at La Scala, as is now tradition - with Sostakovic, whose 50th death anniversary falls in 2025 (Festive Overture in A major op. 96), Beethoven (Symphony no. 2 ) and Tchaikovsky (Symphony no. 4). While the first programme at the Auditorium, on the 27th, will be a homage to Italy, as it will feature Luigi Piovano, formerly first cello at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and now an established conductor, who will be engaged in the double role of soloist and conductor in Saint Saens' Concerto No. 1 for cello and orchestra.

On 11 and 13 October, another very young conductor, 28-year-old Diego Ceretta (Music Director of the Orchestra della Toscana) will be at the side of Francesca Dego in Beethoven's concerto for violin and orchestra. Two premieres will take place in the same month: on the 6th at the Museum of Science and Technology for the 150th anniversary of Marconi's birth, with "Musica trasparente" by Nicola Campogrande (composer-in-residence of the Sinfonica), and on the 10th the Italian premiere of "Cinque modi per aprire un concerto", also by Campogrande, and on the 12th "La sinfonia degli animali" by Dan Brown. And more premieres will be heard in 2025. At the Teatro Gerolamo on the 27th, chamber music with a programme featuring pieces by Popper, Cjaikovsky, De Falla, Bernstein and Sollima. But later at the Auditorium there will also be favourites such as Verdi, on 31 October with the Messa da Requiem. And then Berlioz and Chopin, Brahms, Schubert, Mozart, Rossini and others; Beethoven with the Ninth on New Year's Eve.