Opening concert

Filarmonica della Scala was founded in 1982 by the musicians of La Scala Opera House and Claudio Abbado with the aim of developing the symphonic repertoire. It has remained a self-directed ensemble to this day. Carlo Maria Giulini was its first conductor and led the first international tours; Riccardo Muti, principal conductor from 1987 to 2005, promoted its artistic growth and made it a regular guest of the most prestigious international concert halls. From the outset it has been led by a series of internationally renowned conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Seiji Ozawa, Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Riccardo Chailly, Yuri Temirkanov, Daniele Gatti, Fabio Luisi, Gustavo Dudamel. A deep collaboration has been established with Myung-Whun Chung, named Conductor Emeritus, and Daniel Harding. Daniel Barenboim, music director of La Scala from 2006 to 2015, and Valery Gergiev are honorary members, just as Georges Prêtre, Lorin Maazel, Wolfgang Sawallisch were. In 2015 Riccardo Chailly was named principal conductor. During the years that followed, the orchestra has reached a new performance standard. The tours they undertook and the recordings they have made also contributed to the reputation of the group.

Filarmonica has performed more than 800 concerts on tour. Important milestones have included the Orchestra’s debut in the United States with Riccardo Chailly and in China with Myung-Whun Chung. The Orchestra has a particular interest in contemporary music, and every season features a new commission by an important composer of our time.

Since 2013 Filarmonica della Scala hosts the Concerto per Milano in Piazza Duomo, an acclaimed free event which has had an attendance of more than 40,000 people every year. The educational project Sound, Music!, dedicated to primary school children, brings music to wider audiences and gives special attention to young people. Filarmonica also supports Milan’s main scientific institutions, social and voluntary bodies through special concerts and open rehearsals belonging to the series Prove Aperte. In 2024, the Municipality of Milan awarded the Filarmonica della Scala the Ambrogino d’oro, a certificate of Civic Merit reserved for Milanese personalities and entities who have significantly contributed to the city.

Filarmonica has made numerous recordings. In 2017 Decca published Ouvertures, Preludes and Intermezzi from operas premiered at La Scala and in 2019 The Fellini Album with film music by Nino Rota, followed by Cherubini Discoveries and Respighi, both part of the acclaimed series celebrating the great Italian composers. The last release celebrates music inspired by Italy and includes Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony alongside Schubert’s two Rossini-inspired overtures In the Italian Style and three early Mozart overtures to Italian operas first performed in Milan.

Filarmonica della Scala’s activity is supported by the Main Partner UniCredit.

source: Künstleragentur Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm

photo © Andrea Veroni

Riccardo Chailly is Music Director of Teatro alla Scala and Principal Conductor of Filarmonica della Scala. He has been Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the oldest orchestra in Europe, and served for 16 years as Principal Conductor of the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
He also serves as Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, a position held in the past by Claudio Abbado.
He regularly conducts the most important European symphonic orchestras, including the Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is regularly invited to festivals such as the Salzburg Festival and London’s BBC Proms.

As an opera conductor, his career includes productions at Teatro alla Scala, Wiener Staatsoper, New York Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, London Covent Garden, Bayerische Staatsoper and Opernhaus Zurich. He is a Grand Officer of the Republic of Italy and a member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1998 he was made Knight Grand Cross of the Republic of Italy; that same year, the Queen of the Netherlands vested him with the title of Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. In 2011 he was appointed Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand.

Riccardo Chailly is a Decca exclusive artist. He has been honoured for his more than 150 CDs with many prizes, including the ECHO Klassik in 2012 and 2015; among the most recent prizes is the Gramophone Award as Recording of the Year for the complete edition of Brahms’ Symphonies. His recording activity with Filarmonica della Scala was renewed in 2013 with Viva Verdi, marking the 200th anniversary of Verdi’s birth. It includes a CD released in 2017 with Overtures, Preludes & Intermezzi from Operas that had their first performance at Teatro alla Scala; this was followed in 2019 by The Fellini Album with film music by Nino Rota. The latest releases are Cherubini Discoveries (2020), Respighi (2020) and Musa Italiana (2021), all part of the acclaimed series celebrating Italian composers and Italian influences in the music of European composers such as Mozart and Schubert.

source: Künstleragentur Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm

photo © Stefano Guidani

Naturalness and warmth, vitality, and the courage to take risks: these qualities are often used to describe Julia Hagen’s playing. The young cellist from Salzburg is just as convincing as a soloist with orchestra as she is in recital or in numerous chamber music constellations alongside prominent partners. She combines technical mastery with high artistic standards and a direct, communicative approach to music-making.

Julia Hagen was awarded the UBS Young Artist Award in 2024, which included a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Christian Thielemann at the Lucerne Festival. In 2025, she will return to the Lucerne Festival as a soloist – this time with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

At the Vienna Musikverein, Julia Hagen will be featured as “Artist in Focus” during the 2025/26 season, performing Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jakub Hrůša, in a recital with Sir András Schiff, and in two piano trio programmes.

Julia Hagen is a regular guest at the Salzburg Festival, the Schubertiade, the Heidelberg Spring Festival, and the Festival de Pâques in Aix-en-Provence. She has enjoyed a long-standing collaboration with both the Camerata Salzburg and the Mozarteum Orchestra, with whom she will be touring Spain this season. As a soloist, she performs with major orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orquesta Nacional de España, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. She works with conductors such as Alain Altinoglu, Elim Chan, Thomas Guggeis, Paavo Järvi, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, and Petr Popelka.

Chamber music is particularly close to her heart, and has taken her to the Berlin Philharmonic, London’s Wigmore Hall, Zurich’s Tonhalle, and Vienna’s Musikverein. Her chamber music partners include Igor Levit, Gautier Capuçon, Renaud Capuçon, Isabelle Faust, Lukas Sternath, and Leif Ove Andsnes. In the current season, she is appearing with the Hagen Quartet at the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Dresden Music Festival, and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. The Dortmund Konzerthaus is presenting Julia Hagen over three seasons as a “Junge Wilde” in chamber music formats as well as as a soloist with orchestra.

Her studies with Enrico Bronzi in Salzburg and Reinhard Latzko in Vienna were followed by formative years in Heinrich Schiff’s class in Vienna and studies with Jens Peter Maintz at the Berlin University of the Arts. As a scholarship holder at the Kronberg Academy, Hagen also studied with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt. In autumn 2025, she will take up a professorship in cello at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

Deutsche Grammophon and Hänssler Classic have released recordings of works by Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Fauré, and Richard Strauss. Julia Hagen plays a cello by Francesco Ruggieri (Cremona, 1684), which has been made available to her privately.

source: Künstleragentur Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm

photo © Simon Pauly