CANCELLED: Filarmonica della Scala / Tjeknavorian / Chailly

There is no evidence that Gustav Mahler ever visited Milan. Yet the world-famous orchestra of the Milan Opera can look back on an extensive Mahler tradition. This is undoubtedly the doing of Claudio Abbado, who founded the Filarmonica della Scala in 1982, enlisting members of the opera orchestra for the new ensemble. Abbado, who studied the Austrian composer’s music throughout his career and later founded the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, worked together with the Filarmonica to create a new musical idiom. Riccardo Chailly, who has headed the orchestra as its principal conductor since 2015, said in an interview with Die Zeit: »The extremes in today’s world, the neuroses, the hysteria and inhumanity, all this fits in very well with the drama present in Mahler’s works.« A score dating from 1888 with a message surprisingly relevant to the world we live in!